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Virginia cultural festival says it won’t hold a menorah lighting due to Israel-Hamas war
(JTA) – When the director of the Chabad-Lubavitch center in Williamsburg, Virginia, pitched a local arts and culture festival last month on the idea of holding a public menorah lighting to celebrate Hanukkah, he thought it made sense.
“We look to bring people together with Jewish pride and unity,” Rabbi Mendy Heber, of Chabad of Williamsburg, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Likewise, Second Sundays, a monthly cultural festival held in historic Colonial Williamsburg that features artisans and musical performances, also has a mission to bring about “peace for all humans everywhere”
So it seemed to Heber a natural fit to hold the menorah lighting as part of the next Second Sunday, which falls on Dec. 10, the fourth night of Hanukkah. In fact, Chabad of Williamsburg already had a months-long relationship with the festival, having sold challah as a vendor at prior installments.
And like the thousands of other Chabad outposts around the world, public menorah lightings are a big part of Heber’s mission; the Chabad Hasidic movement claimed to have staged 15,000 such events worldwide in 2021. When Heber proposed the lighting, he said, he and Second Sundays founder Susan Vermillion had a series of “positive communications” about the event.
Instead, the planned celebration turned into a debacle when Second Sundays leadership decided, on Nov. 16, not to hold the menorah lighting because they feared it would be seen as an endorsement of Israel during its war with Hamas in Gaza. Organizers then suggested that the lighting could go forward only if they could get an Islamic group to participate, or if they could hold it under a banner calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“This hurt,” Heber said. “It was a kick in the gut, not just for the Jewish community here, not just for Jews throughout the United States, but for all decent people who believe in the American dream.”
Since the war began nearly two months ago, a range of American institutions have seen cancellations, protest and heightened rhetoric related to the debate over Israel and Hamas, from college campuses to cultural centers to local governments. But the Williamsburg incident is an example of how expressions of Judaism that are unrelated to Israel — from synagogues to kosher restaurants and, now, Hanukkah celebrations — are being implicated in the debate over the war.
Last week a Maine town removed a Star of David from its holiday lights display after a local resident had complained it was taking sides in the war, though officials insisted to JTA that the complaint was unrelated to the removal.
Unlike in those two incidents, it is clear that Israel was a direct factor in organizers’ decision not to hold the menorah lighting in Williamsburg. Vermillion, a dental hygienist who founded and oversees Second Sundays through her nonprofit LoveLight Placemaking, told Heber directly that she and her board did not want to be perceived as taking sides in the conflict.
The “National Menorah,” erected by Chabad-Lubavitch in front of the White House in Washington, Dec. 2, 2021. (Kerem Yucel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In a series of messages, portions of which were read to JTA and whose exact wording was confirmed by Heber and another local rabbi who received them, Vermillion wrote that the event wouldn’t happen “unless we can get an Islamic group to participate at essentially the same time,” adding, “We don’t want to make it seem we’re choosing a side.”
Vermillion went on to state that she wanted to avoid “letting a specific church or religion seeming to be supported” by her organization, and that “timing isn’t good or appropriate at this time.”
Heber insisted the event would have nothing to do with Israel or Zionism (Chabad is not an explicitly Zionist movement, though many of its adherents are Zionist and many of its chapters host pro-Israel programming) and would consist only of a few prayers. Vermillion wrote back, “Our board members said they’d be OK with proceeding if you do it under a ceasefire banner. Bombing and killing thousands of people isn’t spreading love and light, and we aren’t going to openly support any religious/cultural holidays/celebrations.”
“I’m really not sure why you guys are making it such a big deal,” Vermillion continued. “This is my event. My nonprofit. You guys are more than welcome to do whatever you want to do on your own.”
After Vermillion informed Heber that the menorah lighting would not move forward, the rabbi looped in the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula, a local communal organization that provides services to around 2,000 Jews between the communities of Williamsburg, Newport News and Hampton. (Williamsburg itself has only one Jewish congregation, apart from the Chabad and a Hillel that serves a few hundred students at the College of William & Mary.)
Vermillion did not respond to subsequent attempts by UJCVP to arrange a sit-down, leading the organization to make good on a threat that it would go public with the exchange on Sunday. In a statement, UJCVP asserted that it “is shocked and alarmed” by LoveLight Placemaking’s decision.
“We should be very clear: it is antisemitic to hold Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s policies and actions, and to require a political litmus test for Jews’ participation in community events that have nothing to do with Israel,” the statement read.
A Chabad menorah, distinguished by the diagonal—rather than curved—arms. (Mindy Schauer/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
In text messages with JTA, Vermillion said, “It’s sad that the most inclusive organization and event in Williamsburg is being targeted for trying to stay neutral.”
In Vermillion’s telling, the menorah lighting “was proposed but was not consistent with the purpose of this non-religious, community art and music festival, and the proposal was denied.”
She continued, “It feels very wrong to label anyone associated with this as an antisemite when the rejection of this religious programming was entirely consistent with our decision to keep our gathering focused on music and art, rather than religious ceremonies.” She added that she has received “some threats” over the matter and would be reporting them to the local police.
Speaking to other media outlets, Vermillion seemed to reaffirm that she and the board viewed a menorah lighting as akin to making a political statement on Israel. In an interview with a local newspaper, Vermillion said that the event “seemed very inappropriate” given the situation in Gaza, and added, “The concern is of folks feeling like we are siding with a group over the other.”
As of Monday, a posted online schedule for the Dec. 10 Second Sundays made no mention of a menorah lighting. Videos for the event, posted to the Second Sundays Facebook page, include montages of Christmas tree ornaments, wreaths and other Christmas-related paraphernalia, and are set to the songs “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “Deck the Halls.”
UJCVP’s executive director, Eric Maurer, did not return JTA requests for comment. But another UJCVP member said he was troubled by the incident.
“It came across to me as ignorant, in the most literal sense of the word: just not understanding what this was about,” Rabbi David Katz, who leads Temple Beth El in Williamsburg, told JTA.
Katz, whose unaffiliated congregation uses a Reconstructionist prayer book, was not involved in Heber’s efforts to hold the menorah lighting — and was out of town for a bar mitzvah as the weekend’s controversy was unfolding. He told JTA that he lives close enough to the Second Sundays festivities that “there’s a decent chance I might have walked over there this Sunday.”
But as a member of UJCVP, he read and relayed the text and email exchanges to JTA and says that, in a small community with few Jews, an incident like this can travel and is most likely born out of “a lack of knowing, of being connected to Jews.”
“This form of underlying antisemitism is in so many places where a lot of us wouldn’t expect,” Katz said. “If you want to protest the IDF, that’s not the same thing as protesting Jews lighting the menorah.”
Heber, who has been in Williamsburg for two years, agrees. “Giving American Jews a political litmus test is just discriminatory, ugly and un-American,” he said. “And doing it with Hanukkah, which symbolizes liberty, is just ironic, especially during these times when Jews are facing tremendous amounts of antisemitism.”
The controversy seemed poised to continue to snowball Monday, as Heber said he has been in communication with the Virginia attorney general’s office and its antisemitism task force. This summer the state commissioned the task force, unique among state attorneys general offices, which includes representatives of groups including the Anti-Defamation League, regional Federations, and Hillel International. The task force’s establishment followed a lengthy report on antisemitism in the state commissioned by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin last year. The attorney general’s office did not return requests for comment.
Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick, who is working with UJCVP on its response to the incident, said it was “such a clear cut example of antisemitism.”
“We were horrified by the festival’s decision to cancel the menorah lighting — so clearly seeking to collectively blame the Jewish people for Israel’s actions and create poltical litmus tests for events that have nothing to do with Israel,” she told JTA in a text message.
Another public menorah lighting is still on the table in Williamsburg, as the Chabad will also be holding one Thursday on the William & Mary campus. Scheduled before the Second Sundays controversy and primarily intended for Jewish students, Heber said Thursday’s lighting would now become a much larger communal event. He has also received words of sympathy from some non-Jews who have said they will now light menorahs in their own windows in solidarity.
“We’re going to make this Hanukkah bigger and brighter than ever,” he said. “That is how we respond to darkness.”
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The post Virginia cultural festival says it won’t hold a menorah lighting due to Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Rejects US Nuclear Proposal, Says ‘Counteroffer’ Coming as Talks Stall Over Uranium Enrichment, Sanctions
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has denounced the latest nuclear proposal from the United States as “unprofessional and untechnical,” reaffirming the country’s right to enrich uranium and announcing plans to present a counteroffer in the coming days.
“After receiving the American proposal regarding the Iranian nuclear program, we are now preparing a counteroffer,” Ali Shamkhnai, political adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Shamkhani criticized the White House draft proposal as “not well thought out,” emphasizing its alleged failure to address sanction relief — a key demand for Tehran under any deal with Washington.
“There is no mention whatsoever of lifting sanctions in the latest American proposal, even though the issue of sanctions is a fundamental matter for Iran,” Shamkhnai said.
The Iranian official also warned that Tehran will not allow the US to dismantle its “peaceful nuclear program” or force uranium enrichment down to zero.
“Iran will never relinquish its natural rights,” Shamkhani said.
Washington’s draft proposal for a new nuclear deal was delivered by Omani officials — who have been mediating negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff — during last month’s talks in Rome.
On Wednesday, Khamenei dismissed such an offer, saying it “contradicts our nation’s belief in self-reliance” and runs counter to Iran’s key objectives.
“The proposal that the Americans have presented is 100 percent against our interests,” the Iranian leader said during a televised speech.
“The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear program. Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” Khamenei continued.
After five rounds of talks, diplomatic efforts have yet to yield results as both adversaries clash over Iran’s demand to maintain its domestic uranium enrichment program — a condition the White House has firmly rejected.
In April, Tehran and Washington held their first official nuclear negotiation since the US withdrew from a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that had imposed temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has sought to curtail Tehran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon that could spark a regional arms race and pose a threat to Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran seeks to have Western sanctions on its oil-dependent economy lifted, while maintaining its nuclear enrichment program — which the country insists is solely for civilian purposes.
As part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon — Washington has been targeting Tehran’s oil industry with mounting sanctions.
Amid the ongoing diplomatic deadlock, Israel has declared it will never allow the Islamist regime to acquire nuclear weapons, as the country views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to uphold any agreement that prevents Tehran from enriching uranium.
“But in any case, Israel maintains the right to defend itself from a regime that is threatening to annihilate it,” Netanyahu said in a press conference last month, following reports that Jerusalem could strike Iranian nuclear sites if ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran fail.
The post Iran Rejects US Nuclear Proposal, Says ‘Counteroffer’ Coming as Talks Stall Over Uranium Enrichment, Sanctions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Day After Colorado Attack, Founder of Anti-Israel Group Chides Activists Who Are Insufficiently ‘Pro-Resistance’
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of WithinOurLifetime (WOL), leading a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on Aug. 14, 2024. Photo: Michael Nigro via Reuters Connect
Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the radical anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime, chastised those within the pro-Palestinian movement who only support “resistance” in the abstract but not in practice following Sunday’s antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado.
“A lot of people who call themselves anti-Zionist or pro-resistance don’t actually understand what resistance is,” Kiswani posted on X/Twitter on Monday. “They support it in theory, but when it shows up in practice, they hesitate, distance themselves, or shift the conversation entirely.”
She continued, “And it makes it even harder for those of us who are principled to take public stances. We’re already marginalized, already painted as extreme or dangerous and that isolation only deepens when others in the movement won’t stand firm when it counts.”
Kiswani’s comments came the day after a man threw Molotov cocktails at a Boulder gathering where participants were rallying in support of the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza — which resulted in 15 injuries, including some critically, in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. Her tweets also came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. In both attacks, the perpetrator yelled “Free Palestine” as they targeted innocent civilians, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
After Kiswani’s social media posts sparked some backlash among pro-Israel users on X, she provided limited pushback on the idea that it was an expression of support for the prior day’s attack in Colorado.
“Zionists are freaking out in the QTs about this, insisting it’s about Colorado,” she wrote. “Newsflash: the world doesn’t revolve around you. Resistance hasn’t stopped in Gaza, look at what just happened in Jabalia [where three IDF soldiers were killed] for instance. The perpetual victimhood is getting old.”
However, Kiswani did not say her comment had no connection to the attack in Colorado, and she did not say that she opposed the firebombing.
Kiswani and her group, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), have been at the forefront of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activism since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages during their invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a massacre that started the war in Gaza.
On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the biggest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, WOL organized a protest to celebrate the prior day’s attack, which it described as an effort to “defend the heroic Palestinian resistance.” Kiswani notably refused to condemn Hamas and the Oct. 7 massacre following the atrocities.
Then, in Apil 2024, Kiswani refused to condemn the chant “Death to America” and organized a mass demonstration to block the “arteries of capitalism” by staging a blockade of commercial shipping ports across the world in protest of Western support for the Jewish state. That same month, she was banned from Columbia University’s campus in New York City after leading chants calling for an “intifada,” or violent uprising.
The following month, Kiswani led a demonstration in Brooklyn, New York in which she lambasted the local police department, claimed then-US President Joe Biden will soon die, and called for the destruction of Israel.
That proceeded the activist saying she does not want Zionists “anywhere” in the world while speaking in defense of a person who called for “Zionists” to leave a crowded subway car in New York City.
WOL, which planned a protest last year to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, was also behind demonstrations at the Nova Music Festival exhibit, which commemorated the more than 300 civilians slaughtered by Hamas while at a music festival.
The latter protest prompted widespread condemnation, including from Biden and even progressive members of the US Congress who are outspoken against Israel.
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example, posted on social media that the “callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism – plain and simple.”
The post Day After Colorado Attack, Founder of Anti-Israel Group Chides Activists Who Are Insufficiently ‘Pro-Resistance’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Defense Exports Hit Record $15 Billion in 2024 Despite European Pressure, Calls for Arms Embargo
Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza. Photo: IDF via Reuters
Israel reached a new all-time high in defense exports in 2024, nearing $15 billion — the fourth consecutive year of record-breaking sales — despite mounting international criticism over the war in Gaza and growing pressure from European countries to suspend arms deals.
In a press release on Wednesday, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that defense exports reached over $14.7 billion last year — a 13 percent increase from 2023 — with more than half of the deals valued at over $100 million.
According to the ministry, Israel’s military exports have more than doubled over the past five years, highlighting the industry’s rapid expansion and growing global demand.
“This tremendous achievement is a direct result of the successes of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and defense industries against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Ayatollah regime in Iran, and in additional arenas where we operate against Israel’s enemies,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
“The world sees Israeli strength and seeks to be a partner in it. We will continue strengthening the IDF and the Israeli economy through security innovation to ensure clear superiority against any threat – anywhere and anytime,” Katz continued.
In 2024, over half of the Jewish state’s defense contracts were with European countries — up from 35 percent the previous year — as many in the region have increased their defense spending following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Despite increasing pressure and widespread anti-Israel sentiment among European governments amid the current conflict in Gaza, this latest data seems to contradict recent calls by European leaders to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state over its defensive campaign in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Wednesday, Germany reversed its earlier threat to halt arms deliveries to Israel, reaffirming its commitment to continue cooperation and maintain defense contracts with Jerusalem.
“Germany will continue to support the State of Israel, including with arms deliveries,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told lawmakers in parliament.
Last week, Berlin warned it would take unspecified measures against Israel if it continued its military campaign in Gaza, citing concerns that exported weapons were being used in violation of humanitarian law.
“Our full support for the right to exist and the security of the State of Israel must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip,” Wadephul said in a statement.
Germany would be “examining whether what is happening in the Gaza Strip is compatible with international humanitarian law,” he continued. “Further arms deliveries will be authorized based on the outcome of that review.”
Spain and Ireland are among the countries in Europe that have threatened or taken steps to limit arms deals with Israel, while others such as France have threatened unspecified harsh measures against the Jewish state.
According to the Israeli defense ministry’s report, since the outbreak of war on Oct. 7, 2023, after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, the operational successes and proven battlefield performance of Israeli systems have fueled strong international demand for Israel’s defense technology.
Last year, the export of missiles, rockets, and air defense systems reached a new high, making up 48 percent of the total deal volume — up from 36 percent in 2023.
Similarly, satellite and space systems exports surged, accounting for 8 percent of total deals in 2024 — quadrupling their share from 2 percent in 2023.
While Europe dominated Israel’s defense export market in 2024, significant portions also went to other regions. Asia and the Pacific made up 23 percent of total sales — slightly lower than in previous years, when the region approached 30 percent.
Exports to Abraham Accords countries fell to 12 percent, down from 23 percent in 2022, while North America remained stable at around 9 percent.
The post Israel’s Defense Exports Hit Record $15 Billion in 2024 Despite European Pressure, Calls for Arms Embargo first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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