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Condoms and tikkun olam: An Orthodox woman strives to aid sex workers in Prague

PRAGUE (JTA) — Not long after she puts away her silver Shabbat candlesticks and home-baked challah, Yael Schoultz walks through a cavernous hallway, and up a set of gray concrete stairs. Past a door, she finds a group of heavily made-up women in red and black G-strings and spike heels, listlessly beckoning men for sex in return for cash.

Schoultz, 43, spotted about 30 women at the Prague brothel floating from room to room in various states of undress — negligees, see-through bras — with accents as varied as their lipstick shades. Some are smiling, some appear bored as they play games on their phones, others are trying to woo potential clients with a simple, “Come have a good time, come to my room.”

It’s a typical Saturday night post-Shabbat routine for Schoultz, an Orthodox Jewish South African who recently launched L’Chaim, an organization dedicated to helping sex workers in the Czech Republic.

Schoultz and her colleagues engage the women with friendly banter about health and the weather, careful not to interrupt those with customers. The L’Chaim volunteers collectively carry a few hundred free condoms along with high-end soaps and hand-crafted bracelets.

“The girls always ask for extras for their friends,” Schoultz said.

Schoultz, who has been visiting Czech brothels since she moved to Prague in 2011, is not a mere purveyor of gifts. Her goal is to establish a rapport with the women she meets so that they can leave the business of sex work if they so wish. And her Jewish faith is a core driver of Schoultz’s quest to provide a better life for the sex workers.

“Some of the women have been trafficked,” she explained, referring to the term governments and human rights advocates use to describe a contemporary form of slavery. “There are girls who were tied up for days and raped, even by the police. Some might seem to be in the brothel voluntarily, but not really, because they owe a lot of money on a debt and feel sex work is only way they can pay it back.”

Dressed in black from head to toe, in what a fashion magazine might describe as modest goth, Schoultz is a veteran of global anti-trafficking efforts. A few decades ago, while teaching English in South Korea, Schoultz volunteered for an organization that was trying to stop the trafficking of North Korean women to China. At the same time, she was getting a master’s in theology and wanted to move to Europe to get her doctorate, which was possible at Prague’s Charles University.

“When I got to the Czech Republic, I started looking for people who were working on the trafficking issue and found three women: a Catholic nun and two Protestant missionaries. All of them were in their 60s,” Schoultz said.

Schoultz asked if she could join them in their visits to brothels.

“I just went in and started talking to women, about really anything. Language wasn’t a barrier because most sex workers speak English,” she recalled. “But it was a bit weird walking into these places with a nun in full habit.”

After a few months Schoultz began to feel uncomfortable — not with the sex workers, but with her philanthropic colleagues’ proselytizing and “religious agenda.”

“I wasn’t interested in giving out Virgin Mary medallions,” she said.

Schoultz, who teaches English at an international school in Prague, started her own informal volunteer group to help sex workers in 2012, while also embarking on a deeply personal Jewish journey.

Although she believes her father has “Jewish ancestry,” Schoultz was brought up in a Protestant home. Still, she long maintained a deep interest and connection to Judaism which intensified when she pursued her studies in theology. For several years, she regularly attended Orthodox services at 13th-century Old New Synagogue and volunteered for the Prague Jewish Community’s social services department before completing an Orthodox conversion in 2020 with Israeli rabbi David Bohbot. She has now begun her master’s degree in Jewish Studies at the Ashkenazium in Budapest, a division of the secular Milton Friedman University operated by the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

“From the beginning when I knew I wanted to make the conversion, Orthodox Judaism was something I agreed with theologically, it is where I felt most comfortable,” said Shoultz, who describes herself as Modern Orthodox.

Rabbi Dohbot praised Schoultz’s dedication. “This work she does is noble, and isn’t that what most big religions are based on? Showing love and respect for others?” he said.

Schoultz completed an Orthodox conversion to Judaism in 2020. (Courtesy of Schoultz)

Last year, Schoultz achieved another transitional milestone: obtaining Czech government recognition of L’Chaim as a registered nonprofit.

Although L’Chaim is a secular organization, Schoultz sees her work through the lens of tikkun olam, the rabbinical command to repair the world.

“I feel like as a Jewish person, you’re supposed to bring light to the world,” said Schoultz. “And the sex industry is very dark, because even if you choose to be a sex worker, it’s not a job that anybody really enjoys as the customers are often drunk or abusive.”

“It might sound strange, but I feel very connected to Hashem when I am in the brothel, because he is there for me, and for these women too,” she added, using the preferred Orthodox Hebrew term for god.

Schoultz’s co-volunteers, who are mostly not Jewish, are aware of her commitment to the faith.

“After Yael started getting serious about Judaism, she found her path, she was more complete and found her purpose,” said Natalia Synelnykova, who worked with Schoultz to launch L’Chaim. “Everyone would say that their friends are unique, but I have rarely met someone who is so human-centered as Yael, and that is definitely linked to how she sees Judaism.”

Schoultz named her new organization L’Chaim — to life, in Hebrew — as a message to those she seeks to help.

“We want the women in the brothels to have a life because a lot of them feel like they don’t have any life, like they’re barely making it,” she said.

There are about 100 brothels in Prague, according to media reports, and roughly 13,0000 sex workers in the Czech Republic, of which about half are thought to be single mothers. Although sex work is legal, pimping is not, so the brothels operate in a murky legal area that legislators have been trying to address for decades.

Once a hotspot for human trafficking, today the Czech Republic has a relatively low rate of human sex slavery according to government statistics. But Schoultz said the numbers are misleading.

“No one really knows how many trafficked women there are in the country,” she said.

A U.S. State Department report praised the Czech Republic’s efforts to limit trafficking but also noted that the country is more focused on prosecutions of criminals rather than on helping victims. Their stories stay with Schoultz.

“I meet many Nigerian women who may not be locked up in a room, but they are locked up by Juju,” she said, referring to a form of “black magic” that some Nigerian traffickers reportedly use to scare women into prostitution.

She also counsels “Romanian girls who are initially romanced by men that turn out to be traffickers.” A man will have many women he calls “wives,” and each one has a baby with him, “The women give him all their money to support the baby who he keeps as a form of collateral in Romania,” Schoultz said.

(Shoultz turned down JTA’s request for contacts of sex workers she has helped, noting that this would violate L’Chaim’s promise of confidentiality).

The Czech Republic’s leading anti-trafficking organization, La Strada, takes a different orientation towards sex work than L’Chaim, focusing on it more as a legitimate profession that should be organized and regulated.

“We believe women are fully able to decide for themselves if they want to be sex workers and our goal is to provide safety for those who do so, to help them organize, fight stigma and have the rights of all other workers,” said Marketa Hronkova, La Strada’s director. La Strada defines trafficking strictly as those who are physically coerced or blackmailed into providing labor.

Hronkova said there are many sex workers who choose their profession willingly and that it is patronizing and often damaging when those who say they want to help focus exclusively on “pushing women to exit a path they have chosen, as if they have no minds of their own.”

The alternative to sex work, for a single mother, can often put her in an even worse financial situation, she noted. “Our goal is to make sex work safe, not to get women to stop doing it,” said Hromkova.

Concerning L’Chaim, she said as long as its aim was listening to women, and not making them feel ashamed, it could be helpful. La Strada already cooperates with another Czech organization, Pleasure Without Risk, which maintains a neutral stance towards sex work and provides women with access to testing for sexually transmitted diseases as well as counseling.

L’Chaim’s goal, Schoultz explained, is to identify who might be trafficked and provide them with the confidence and practical resources to rebuild their lives. But since getting access to the women requires earning the trust of brothel owners and managers, L’Chaim doesn’t advertise itself as an anti-trafficking group.

“We show up as providing support to women in prostitution, that gets us in the door,” she reflected. L’Chaim has about a dozen volunteers.

It can take Schoultz six months of relationship building before she finds out what brought the client into sex work.

“We start by talking about her kids, talking about her dogs,” said Schoultz “and eventually their stories come out, many involving abuse, trauma and mental health problems.”

She estimated that at the 13 or so brothels she regularly visits in Prague and Brno, at least half the sex workers were not there on a fully voluntary basis.

In the future, Schoultz hopes to create trafficking awareness campaigns and help the customers of sex workers recognize the signs that a woman is working against her will.

The brothel owners are not always pleasant to deal with, Scholtz acknowledged.

“At one place an owner came behind me and kissed my neck on the back of my neck. It was really creepy,” she said.

And despite her modest dress, or tznius, in keeping with her Orthodox values, she said she was pursued by a brothel customer to participate in “group sex.” She fended him off calmly by explaining that she “offered services, but not those kinds of services.”


The post Condoms and tikkun olam: An Orthodox woman strives to aid sex workers in Prague appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Most Jewish voters rate Mamdani poorly, new poll finds

As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marks four months in office, a new survey of New York City’s Jewish voters suggests he has done little to ease concerns among a community that overwhelmingly did not support his election and remains uneasy about his handling of antisemitism and Israel.

A Mercury Public Affairs poll of 665 Jewish voters who cast ballots in last year’s mayoral election found that 58% rate his performance as “poor” or “fair,” compared to 32% who say “excellent” or “good.” Among the 18% who described his performance as “fair,” a majority — 56% — said they disapprove, while 24% approve.

The poll sponsored by The Jewish Majority, an advocacy group led by AIPAC veteran Jonathan Schulman, was conducted from Feb. 17 to 28 in English and Yiddish via landline and cell phone. The sample has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 3.7%. It included a diverse cross-section of the city’s Jewish electorate: 30% Orthodox; 32% Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist; and 20% unaffiliated.

The results published Sunday underscore a political reality that has shadowed Mamdani since taking the helm of the city that is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the U.S. He won just 26% of the Jewish vote in the 2025 election, compared to 55% for Andrew Cuomo and 8% for Curtis Sliwa, according to the poll. His support was strongest among younger voters ages 35-44 (34%) and unaffiliated Jews (42%). He drew just 7% among Orthodox voters.

Antisemitism and Israel loom large

A central tension in Mamdani’s relationship with Jewish groups has been his effort to separate his views critical of Israel from his repeated commitment to protect Jewish New Yorkers.

Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, has so far declined calls from Jewish leaders to acknowledge the community’s connection to Israel more directly. That comes into sharper focus now as the Jewish community marks Jewish American Heritage Month. Mamdani is not expected to march in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue on May 31, a choice likely to reinforce perceptions of that distance. This year’s parade theme is “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.”

Last month, Mamdani vetoed a City Council bill requiring safety plans for protests near schools, while allowing a separate measure protecting houses of worship to become law. Mamdani said he shared concerns raised by progressive groups and labor unions that the legislation could impact their ability to organize and potentially limit demonstrations, particularly on campuses. He also faced backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations on his first day in office after revoking executive orders tied to antisemitism and campus protests.

At the time the poll was taken, an overwhelming 84% of respondents said they had supported the Council’s initial proposal to establish a safe perimeter around houses of worship to prevent harassment and intimidation, while preserving First Amendment rights. Only 7% opposed it.

According to the survey, 82% of respondents said they are concerned about the rise in antisemitism in New York City, and 58% said they believe the increase is linked to the normalization of anti-Zionism.

A majority — 61% — said Mamdani’s refusal to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the Intifada” has emboldened pro-Hamas protesters. Nineteen percent disagreed.

Mamdani stands firm 

The Jewish Majority spearheaded an open letter during the mayoral election, signed by more than 1,100 Jewish congregational leaders opposing what it described as “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization” among figures like Mamdani.

Four months in, Mamdani is showing little sign of changing course, sticking with the coalition that brought him to power even as many Jewish New Yorkers say their concerns remain unresolved.

“I am deeply committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani told the Forward last week. “It’s part of a commitment to ensure that public safety is delivered for each and every New Yorker. And I also believe that as we deliver that public safety, as we show an absolute rejection of antisemitism across the five boroughs, we can also do these things while protecting our fundamental constitutional rights.”

The post Most Jewish voters rate Mamdani poorly, new poll finds appeared first on The Forward.

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After a Maryland teacher’s death, her 200-piece Judaica collection finds new life in a Jewish museum

(JTA) — As Rae Ann Kaylie sat on her mother’s couch in the wake of her death, the Judaica felt overwhelming.

Over 50 menorahs adorned the shelves. A dozen seder plates had been meticulously hung alongside a trove of Jewish art on each wall. And countless dreidels, kiddush cups and shofars filled every corner of the 1,100-square-foot home in Rockville, Maryland.

There were so many hamsas hanging near the entrance, Kaylie joked, “Whoa, Mom, what on earth? Like, how much evil eye do we have in here?”

For 35 years, Kaylie’s mother, Deborah Brodie, had amassed a collection of over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she had used as a hands-on classroom for her Hebrew school students with special needs. Among the collection, Brodie had also obtained a Torah from Ebay, which her students used to practice for their b’nai mitzvah.

“She wasn’t the one who was like, ‘Oh, don’t touch it. You’re going to break it,’” Kaylie said. “She was like, ‘Touch it, here, take a bunch,’ you know what I mean, and that was really cool about her entire collection.”

Brodie — known as “Bubbie Cookie” to her family — had not built the collection alone. Her longtime partner, Jay Brill, whom she met through a Washington Jewish Week personals ad in 1986, was alongside her throughout the journey, traveling with her to all 50 states to sell Jewish jewelry and a computerized Hebrew-learning program they created together.

Over the years, the couple attended both B’nai Shalom and Shaare Tefila Congregation, two Conservative synagogues in Olney, Maryland. Toward the end of their lives, they attended Chabad of Olney, whose rabbi officiated their funerals.

Deborah Brodie and Jay Brill spent decades building a vast collection of Judaica that will now be housed at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum. Photo by Rae Ann Kaylie

But after Brodie, 76, and Brill, 74, died in February just 19 days apart, Kaylie said she and her family were faced with a painful question: What would happen to the couple’s lifetime of Jewish devotion in their absence?

“We all picked something we wanted, but then, you know, you don’t want to sell it, you don’t want to make any money off of it,” Kaylie said. “It was just trying to figure out, like, what can we do to further her passion, her vision?”

The answer, Kaylie said, arrived through Instagram.

Earlier this month, Kaylie sent a simple message to Nick Fox, who operates a social media series titled “Millennial Inheritance,” writing, “Hey, you want to see a lot of menorahs?”

Since October, Fox has documented dozens of inheritance stories across his social media channels, featuring people grappling with their late parents’ vast collections of Breyer Horse figurines, salt and pepper shakers and Christmas decorations.

But while Fox said the mission of his page is not necessarily to help people find homes for inherited collections, Kaylie’s story felt different.

As he viewed images of Brodie and Brill’s home, Fox, who is Catholic, said that he immediately flashed back to childhood memories attending his classmates’ bar mitzvahs and receiving souvenir hamsas from their trips to Israel.

“It was the fact that she was actively grieving and really had no idea what to do, and I think the fact that I was raised how I was, where I was, that I had a knowledge of what this stuff was and what it meant,” Fox said.

Just days later, Fox posted a short video for his 200,000 followers featuring snippets of the sprawling collection along with a call to help find it a permanent home that would “love it the way Rae Ann’s mom did.”

As the post garnered hundreds of comments offering ideas for the collection’s future and tributes to Brodie’s contributions to Jewish education, it was also making its way through Washington’s Jewish community.

Menorahs inside the home of Deborah Brodie and Jay Brill in Rockville, Maryland. Photo by Alex Fradkin

The morning after the post, Jonathan Edelman, the collections curator for the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, said he woke up to dozens of messages from people urging the museum to find a home for the collection.

“It was so meaningful that so many people in the broader community, and who have never stopped in our museum, tagged us and said, you know, this should be the home of this sort of wild story and this amazing collection,” Edelman said.

By the following weekend, Edelman had travelled to Brodie’s home to meet with Rae Ann to view the collection himself. But even after seeing Fox’s post, Edelman said he was unprepared for what awaited him inside.

“It was incredible, floor-to-ceiling Judaica like I’d never seen in anyone’s home before,” Edelman said. “It wasn’t just thrown on a shelf. It was so thoughtfully laid out. I mean, she had seder plates and hanukkiot hanging on the wall, which is no easy task to do…it felt like a museum quality display. It was really impressive.”

Edelman quickly reported back to the museum, which opened in June 2023, telling them that he believed he had stumbled upon an “incredible opportunity” to launch its inaugural education collection.

Now, the Capital Jewish Museum has plans to house the entirety of Brodie and Brill’s collection in its second-floor education and program space, the Community Action Lab, where visitors will be able to interact with the Judaica firsthand, just as Brodie encouraged her students to do in her home.

The museum also plans to photograph the collection so it is accessible online, and lend individual pieces to schools and organizations in the area for educational use.

The Community Action Lab in the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum. Photo by Alex Fradkin

“When I heard her mother’s story, you know, we were doing the same thing. Our goal was Jewish education, and she did it as an individual, we’re doing it as an institution,” Edelman said. “It means so much for us to honor her mother’s memory by doing the work that she dedicated her life to…it feels particularly special.”

But while Fox said he was not surprised by the outpouring of support and suggestions from the Jewish community, he said other Jews that inherit large quantities of Judaica should not look to Kaylie’s story as a roadmap.

“This is absolute best-case scenario, but it also makes it so very unique, because there aren’t going to be a lot of collections that museums usually are going to take on,” Fox said, adding that people should not assume that inheritances will find a place in a museum.

Instead, Fox said he encouraged people that inherit Jewish collections to consult their local Jewish community centers or synagogues to see if they might have a use for them.

“In the case of someone having a tremendous amount of Judaica, I think the best way would be to tap into your network, first, talk to people that you know that are in your community,” Fox said. “And then if it goes nowhere, then you have every right to, you know, if you’re looking to sell it, or if you’re looking to donate it, I think the big ask would be, what would your relatives want done with that stuff?”

Rae Ann Kaylie and her mother, Deborah Brodie. Courtesy of Rae Ann Kaylie

Rachel Steinhardt, a California resident who organized a large-scale Judaica drive for people impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires last year, recommended that people who find themselves with inherited Judaica they cannot keep turn to local Facebook groups or Judaica rehoming communities such as L’dor V’dor Judaica or Heritage Judaica.

“New Judaica is great, but people definitely value something that has been touched and loved and appreciated over the years…you want something that has a little soul in it,” Steinhardt said. “So I think that even something that’s not of value, other people can appreciate that it has been loved and want to acquire it.”

Reflecting on Fox’s decision to spotlight her mother’s collection, Kaylie said that he had been a “guardian angel.”

“He didn’t have to do that, and really, it’s because of him that we’re able to have my mom’s legacy be how we could have wanted it,” Kaylie said.

Edelman said he expects the collection to be installed in the museum sometime this summer, where it will be displayed alongside a plaque honoring “Bubbie Cookie” and “Zayde Jay,” names the couple were referred to by their families.

For Kaylie, imagining the future museum visitors handling her mother’s kiddush cups and menorahs felt like “exactly how she would have wanted it.”

“When we lost Bubbie Cookie, we said the legend of Bubbie Cookie was over,” Kaylie said. “And now, for the legend and the legacy to move on, I mean, it’s unreal. It’s, I have no words, I can’t even articulate it. It’s just amazing.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post After a Maryland teacher’s death, her 200-piece Judaica collection finds new life in a Jewish museum appeared first on The Forward.

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British Green Party candidate tweeted about killing Zionists from Anne Frank parody account

(JTA) — A candidate in the United Kingdom’s Green Party is under fire after posting under that social media handle “thereal.anne.frank” that “every single Zionist” should be killed, marking the latest antisemitic scandal to hit the party in a matter of days.

Two other candidates have been charged with spreading hate online in relation to anti-Israel social media posts, while the party’s Jewish leader, Zack Polanski, is fending off allegations of deep-seated antisemitism.

The latest scandal came after the Jewish News revealed that in a series of posts on Threads, Tina Ion, a Green party candidate in Newcastle, referred to “Zionists” as “vermin” and “rats” and posted an image of an industrial shredding machine, which she called a “Zionist juicer.” She also referred to “Jewish Nazis” as “money grubbing thieves” who “have built mountains of money over centuries,” according to the newspaper.

The profile photo for the account, titled “thereal.anne.frank,” featured an image of a young woman wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf. In one post referencing the image, Ion allegedly wrote that it was used “because Ann Frank wearing a keffieh pisses Zionists off.”

Ion’s rhetoric, which was first surfaced by Labour party activist Steve Cooke, was quickly condemned by a host of Green Party lawmakers, who wrote in a joint statement posted on X Friday that the party was “reviewing our vetting processes.”

“We are appalled by the racist material written and shared by Tina Ion,” the statement read. “We are anti-racists and are clear that antisemitism has no place in our party or society. We do not support her candidacy.”

Ion defended her posts in a statement posted on Facebook, writing that “isolated fragments” of her statements had been used to “distort” her core values and that she “absolutely reject any accusation of antisemitism.”

“My criticism is not directed at an ethnicity or a religion; it is directed at a political ideology and a set of state actions,” Ion wrote. “The common denominator among those I criticise – from Zionist Jewish hardliners to Western supporters and our own government – is not their culture, but their active support for what the International Court of Justice has deemed a ‘plausible risk of genocide.’”

She added, “I acknowledge that in moments of raw, unshielded grief, witnessing live-streamed images of children being torn to pieces, I have used dehumanising language toward those supporting these acts.”

Ion is not the only Green Party candidate facing scrutiny for posting antisemitic content online.

Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, who are both running for seats in the Lambeth borough of London, were detained by the Metropolitan police Thursday “on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred online,” an offense under the UK’s Public Order Act. Mairey and Ali were taken into custody for questioning.

Mairey posted an image on Facebook with text that read, “Ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism, it’s revenge,” according to a screenshot from The Telegraph. The post referenced Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a U.S. citizen and Lebanese immigrant who drove an explosives-laden truck into a synagogue in Michigan in March, shortly after losing several of his family members to Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Ali has shared an image on Instagram of an armed man wearing a Hamas headband, together with the slogan, “Resistance is freedom,” according to another screenshot.

Other Facebook posts by Ali, which have now been deleted, allegedly claimed that 9/11 was a “false-flag attack” engineered by Israel. She also allegedly posted an image of a serpent marked with a Star of David choking the Earth, and a caricature of a Jew with the caption, “We went through the Holocaust, and now we get to kill everyone, forever!”

The arrests came hours after the stabbing of two Jewish men in London’s heavily Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green, which police are investigating as terrorism. London has also recently seen a string of arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites. And in October, a man drove his car into people gathered outside a synagogue in Manchester and fatally stabbed one man.

The left-populist Green Party seized major gains in recent months, riding issues that have animated the global left — including affordability, the environment and widespread anger over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Polanski, the party’s Jewish leader who hopes to topple the Labour government’s power in local elections next week, has accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of complicity in “the very obvious genocide in Gaza.”

Amid the Green Party’s sudden growth, it has faced mounting scrutiny over its candidates. Polanski admitted during the selection process that vetting was a “real challenge” for the Greens, though he has since said he has confidence in “99%” of his candidates.

Several other candidates have been accused of making antisemitic comments. A candidate in Newcastle, Philip Brookes, said in a Facebook post about Gaza that it “takes serious effort not to be a tiny bit antisemitic.” Aziz Hakimi, a candidate in Camden, has shared content blaming “Zionists” for 9/11 and claiming that Israel orchestrated an arson attack on ambulances owned by the Jewish charity Hatzolah in Golders Green. Other candidates have posted comments that appeared to sympathize with the Hamas attack on Israel or promote tropes about the global influence of Jewish people.

The deputy leader of the Greens, Mothin Ali, privately told the Greens for Palestine group that candidates who were accused of antisemitism should seek “serious legal advice,” The Times of London reported. Ali suggested a “class action” against his own party over its handling of suspensions as “they’re coming after more and more people.”

Polanski has said that some of his candidates were falsely accused of antisemitism because they challenged the Israeli government or supported Palestinians.

“It is really important that we do not conflate genuine antisemitism with legitimate criticism of an Israeli government which is committing war crimes,” Polanski told the BBC, adding that complaints of antisemitism were taken seriously.

“Where you have 4,500 candidates, to have a handful of cases I would say is not some kind of big scandal,” he said.

Polanski has also accused Starmer of weaponizing fears about antisemitism to stifle criticism of Israel. “We’ve got into a bizarre situation in this country where a non-Jewish prime minister is attacking the one Jewish leader on a case of antisemitism,” he told The Guardian.

Since the nomination deadline for the upcoming elections has passed, even if parties withdraw support from candidates, their names cannot be legally removed from ballots even if they are suspended.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post British Green Party candidate tweeted about killing Zionists from Anne Frank parody account appeared first on The Forward.

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