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North Carolina Lawmakers at Risk of Losing Re-Election Over Virulent Anti-Israel Activism

Raleigh City council members Mary Black, right, and Christina Jones. Photo: Screenshot

Two City Council members seeking re-election in Raleigh, North Carolina — Christina Jones and Mary Black — are in danger of losing their seats due to widespread concerns from the Jewish community and prominent local Democrats over their history of attacking Israel and working closely with pro-Hamas activist Rania Masri, despite their jobs having no apparent responsibilities concerning Middle Eastern affairs.

On Nov. 28, Masri spoke at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where she referred to Oct. 7 — when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel and perpetrated the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — as “a beautiful day.” Masri demanded “the eradication of Zionism” and added, “We know that one of the most powerful places we can exert our influence is the city councils.” Masri then mentioned the importance of bringing her activism to the Raleigh City Council.

In December, Masri posted a video on Facebook that called Hamas “our heroes.”

Jones and Black — along with Masri — are widely viewed as leading several failed efforts to have the Raleigh City Council pass a one-sided, anti-Israel ceasefire resolution to stop the war in Gaza.

A local news network reported at the time, “Jones says while she can’t promise a ceasefire resolution, she wants to make sure this comes up before her colleagues as much as possible.” A local newspaper reported that during one of the council meetings on the issue, Jones chanted slogans such as “Free, free Palestine” along with other anti-Israel activists. In the end, the ceasefire resolution did not pass.

Raleigh residents and Jewish leaders are appalled that Jones was photographed publicly embracing Masri in January following a Raleigh City Council meeting in which speakers spent almost four hours targeting Israel — the only Jewish-majority country in the world.

“It is sickening to me to see Christina Jones, a member of the Raleigh City Council, embracing Rania Masri, who called Oct. 7 ‘a beautiful day,’” Marcia Harris — a Raleigh resident, Jewish leader, and retired UNC administrator — told The Algemeiner.

Stefanie Mendell, a former Raleigh City Council member who held the same seat currently occupied by Jones, told The Algemeiner that she was once a “huge supporter” of Jones, having worked to place about 800 election signs for her initial campaign and having hosted, with a friend, a “meet and greet” for the local politician. Mendell now opposes Jones’s candidacy for re-election.

In a Sept. 7 email to her large mailing list, Mendell endorsed Jones’s opponent, John Cerqueira.

“Where Christina [Jones] has been particularly active is in international issues that council has no ability to influence. She has promoted divisiveness in the community with her flagrant support of Palestinian demonstrators, including her public embrace of Rania Masri who has called Oct. 7 a ‘beautiful day’ in praising Hamas’s terrorist attacks on innocent civilians,” Mendell wrote.

“Christina insisted on trying to push through a one-sided ceasefire resolution despite calls from her Jewish constituents to refrain from involvement in a very complex issue that she clearly doesn’t fully understand,” Mendell continued. “Christina encouraged Palestinian demonstrators to continue coming to council meetings despite their intimidation of speakers with whom they disagreed. The inordinate amount of time devoted to this resulted in many Raleigh residents opting to forego their opportunity to address council — both because of the intimidating atmosphere and because of the time restrictions imposed as a result of the huge turnout of people speaking on issues that council has no ability to influence.”

Mendell concluded, “In sum, Christina has not lived up to her campaign promises and has disrespected a large segment of her constituency.”

Conner Taylor, 2nd vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party Jewish Caucus, told The Algemeiner that Jones’s public embrace of Masri is now “infamous” and a “slap in the face” to the Jewish community.

Jones and Black were both recently endorsed by Solidarity with Humanity, which describes itself as “North Carolina’s first and only grassroots political action committee (PAC) building power for Palestinian freedom.” Jones and Black were pictured with a smiling Masri while attending a “Raleigh United for Gaza” fundraiser held by this new PAC. The two lawmakers were also photographed wearing keffiyehs at the event. In addition, Jones has recently donated to the PAC, as has Masri.

In a recent Wake County Democratic Party questionnaire, Jones stated that since Oct. 7 she has met “community members from both sides” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In response, Taylor told The Algemeiner, “I find that very concerning. That she [Jones] would have met with leaders from the Jewish community after Oct. 7, listened to the pain and fear our community is going through, and then still embarked on this very cozy political relationship with someone [Masri] who called Oct. 7 ‘a beautiful day.’”

The Algemeiner has reported extensively on Jones’s colleague on the council, Black, who has used social media in ways such as trivializing the Holocaust, using the antisemitic, white supremacist term “zios,” and dismissing concerns she is antisemitic as being “funny.”

Taylor recently explained to The Algemeiner the “betrayal” felt by the Jewish community observing Black and Masri’s close working relationship, seeing Black pose for photographs with Masri, speak on a panel with the pro-Hamas activist, speak at a fundraiser with Masri standing behind her, and speak at a local rally standing with the controversial figure.

The Wake County Democratic Party — which endorsed Black in 2022 — recently endorsed Black’s opponent, fellow Democrat Mitchell Silver. Political insiders told The Algemeiner that Black now has very little chance of winning her re-election bid. The North Carolina Democratic Party Jewish Caucus also endorsed Silver, as did Rabbi Eric Solomon of Beth Meyer Synagogue, the largest congregation in Raleigh.

However, community members, local Democrats, and Jewish leaders are furious that the Wake County Democratic Party — which includes Raleigh — recently endorsed Jones.

Solomon, a political progressive, wrote a widely viewed social media post condemning the decision.

“By endorsing Council Member Christina Jones, whose behavior has been just as abhorrent as Mary Black’s, the Wake County Jewish community’s worst fears were confirmed. Namely, that the local Democratic Party supports candidates who obsessively and singularly criticize Israel,” the rabbi wrote. “Christina Jones has done precious little to honor the trauma the Raleigh Jewish community is experiencing while she continues to embrace outspoken, violence-urging, pro-Hamas organizers like Rania Masri.”

Because of Jones’s endorsement from the Wake County Democratic Party, her re-election bid against fellow Democratic Cerqueira is expected to be close, according to political insiders.

The Algemeiner requested public record emails from the city of Raleigh for Jones and Black that contain keywords such as “Israel” and “Gaza” that were sent or received since Oct. 6. A representative of the city responded, “We’ve run the search you requested, and the volume of results that came back would take a long time for us to process.”

On Sunday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Raleigh and two Raleigh synagogues hosted a “Meet the Raleigh City Council Candidates” event where community members could “get to know” the candidates. About 15 candidates attended. Jones and Black were both invited. Neither attended.

Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.

The post North Carolina Lawmakers at Risk of Losing Re-Election Over Virulent Anti-Israel Activism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Former Clinton Adviser Says Harris Not ‘Sufficiently Committed to Israel and Fighting Antisemitism’

US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an event with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as part of the US-ASEAN Special Summit, in Washington, DC, May 13, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Doug Schoen, a former adviser under then-US President Bill Clinton, revealed on Tuesday that he is not planning to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to serve as the next commander-in-chief in the White House, citing her policies toward Israel and combating antisemitism as the main reasons.

During an appearance on Fox News, Schoen said he “cannot” commit to voting for Harris, stating that he is “undecided” on who he will support in the 2024 presidential race. The former Clinton pollster voiced concern about Harris’s unstable positions on Israel and the Middle East. 

“At this point I cannot [vote for Harris],” Schoen said. “I would call myself undecided, at this point. But I can’t vote for her, for reasons related to her changing position and also the Middle East as we have talked about before. I do not believe she is sufficiently committed to Israel and fighting antisemitism.”

Schoen has previously criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. 

In April, Schoen noted that the administration was under immense pressure by the left wing of the Democratic Party to “take a strong stance against the Jewish State.” He argued that the anti-Israel drift of the Democratic Party is “dangerous” and overlooks the Jewish state’s “strategic importance.” He also lamented that US President Joe Biden adopted a more pointed and adversarial “tone” toward America’s closest Middle Eastern ally. 

“During this turbulent time in Israel, it is crucial that Biden prioritizes realpolitik over politics. He mustn’t cave to the political pressure he is facing from within his own party to denounce Israel forcefully,” Schoen wrote. 

In May, Schoen published an op-ed in the Orange County Register, arguing that the Biden administration’s decision to halt some arms transfers to Israel hamstrung the Jewish state’s ability to eradicate the Hamas terrorist threat from the Gaza Strip. He lambasted the decision as “politically motivated” and argued that it “endangers Israeli lives.”

By trying to prevent Israel from defeating Hamas, the Biden administration is giving Hamas more aid and support than it is giving Israel,” Schoen wrote. 

Schoen’s concerns over the true extent of Harris’s support for Israel has been echoed by other supporters of the Jewish state in the weeks since she has replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Though Harris has voiced support for the Jewish state’s right to exist and self-defense, she harbors close ties to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has become increasingly hostile toward the Jewish state. Harris has been under pressure from pro-Palestinian activists to break with the Biden administration by adopting a more adversarial posture toward Israel.

She has also expressed sympathy for far-left narratives that brand Israel as “genocidal.” The vice president has additionally often criticized Israel’s war effort against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

Harris also pushed the unsubstantiated narrative that Israel has intentionally withheld aid from the people of Gaza, allegedly triggering a famine. 

“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.”

Harris has also expressed sympathy for anti-Israel protesters on US university campuses, saying that they are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be.”

Some indicators suggest that Harris could adopt a more antagonistic approach to the Jewish state than Biden. For example, Harris urged the White House to be more “sympathetic” toward Palestinians and take a “tougher” stance against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a Politico report in December. Then in March, White House aides forced Harris to tone down a speech that was too tough on Israel, according to NBC News.

However, during her speech at the final night of the Democratic National Convention last month, Harris reaffirmed her commitment to ensuring Israel’s security and vowed that her administration would always furnish the Jewish state with the arms necessary to thwart future terrorist threats.

The post Former Clinton Adviser Says Harris Not ‘Sufficiently Committed to Israel and Fighting Antisemitism’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘Student Intifada’: Pro-Hamas Groups to Follow 9/11 Anniversary With ‘Day of Action’

Anti-Israel demonstrators clash with New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers during a protest on April 18, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect

National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is planning to follow up the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a nationwide “Day of Action” on Thursday, Sept. 12, the group’s latest apparent evocation of Islamist terrorism in its campaigns against Israel and what it has described as the “American empire.”

“Last school year, the Student Movement for Palestine showed the world what we’re capable of,” NSJP said in a post published on X/Twitter last week, referring to the anti-Israel demonstrations which included acts of property destruction, antisemitic assault, and celebrations of terrorists its members perpetrated at colleges and universities across the US. “University repression will not stop us. Draconian speech codes will not stop us. There is only one way out: cut ties with the Zionist entity.”

The tweet featured a picture of a young man, who appeared to be Arab, concealing his face with a keffiyeh, a common practice of pro-Hamas activists who engage in unlawful activity and utter profane and antisemitic remarks at their demonstrations.

Last school year, the Student Movement for Palestine showed the world what we’re capable of.

University repression will not stop us. Draconian speech codes will not stop us.

There is only one way out: cut ties with the Zionist entity. pic.twitter.com/GNf6qVGVjh

— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) September 5, 2024

NSJP has been building up anticipation of its “Day of Action” all month, calling it the continuance of a “student intifada” on Instagram on Sept. 2.

“Our universities have done everything in their power to ignore and redirect our demands for divestment, dodging accountability by suspending and surveilling students. Administrators far and wide have chosen to unleash police violence on students rather than end complicity in the Zionist occupation,” it said. “We will not rest until our universities divest. The Student Intifada continues — until divestment, until arms embargo.”

Meanwhile, the group at Pomona College last week promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories falsely accusing Israel and the US of spreading the Covid-19 virus to commit genocide and maintain “colonial” rule over people of color.

“Pandemics are a tool of the colonizer,” said an SJP pamphlet distributed during a club fair at the school, according to a Jewish students club, Haverim, that acquired a copy the document. “By bomb or by pathogen, these attacks on Palestinian life are man-made, intentional policy choices … The american [sic] state and israeli [sic] settler colony have found a dress rehearsal for more targeted genocides in their construction of today’s eugenicist normalcy wherein everyone is expected to sustain repeated covid infections indefinitely until death.”

Earlier this month, NSJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, publicly discussed its grand strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US in a now-deleted tweet that was posted to X/Twitter.

“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said last week. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”

The tweet was the latest in a series of progressive revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the terror group’s movement to destroy Israel during this year’s convocation ceremony.

“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”

Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it says its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.

Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.

In July, US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” However, Haines stopped short of arguing that there a hostile fifth column in the US seeking to subvert it from within, arguing that “Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with our receiving support from a foreign government.”

Nevertheless, Haines confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Student Intifada’: Pro-Hamas Groups to Follow 9/11 Anniversary With ‘Day of Action’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Republican Jewish Coalition Announces $10 Million Anti-Harris Ad Buy in Bid to Bolster Trump Support

Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, holds a kippah in support of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as he speaks on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, July 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) announced a $10 million ad buy targeted at the US Jewish community and in favor of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump amid new polling showing he is trailing his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, significantly among Jewish voters.

“This is, by far, the largest and most comprehensive effort ever to turn out the Jewish vote for President Donald J. Trump,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks said in a statement on Monday announcing the ad buy.

“Never before have American Jews felt so unsafe,” Brooks continued. “Never before has antisemitism in the United States been so prevalent. Never before has Israel’s survival been so threatened. Never before has there been a candidate for president [Harris] that embraces and defends the antisemitic, anti-Israel ‘Squad.’”

As a result, the RJC is launching the $10 million ad buy opposing Harris, the incumbent US vice president, that will first air during Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Harris and Trump, who served as president from 2017-2021.

The ad seeks to link Harris with members of a group of progressive lawmakers in the US House colloquially known as the “squad” — including Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It claims the members of the Squad are “antisemitic” and “anti-Israel” and juxtaposes pro-Hamas protesters chanting in favor of an “intifada revolution” with Harris saying she understands the concerns of the protesters.

The message of the ad is summed up in the RJC’s press release, which argues, “Kamala Harris is no ordinary Democrat. She stands with the Squad, not with us.”

The ad buy comes amid newly announced bad polling news for the RJC. On Monday, the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) released polling showing that Harris is leading Trump among Jewish voters by a 47-point margin — 72 percent to 25 percent.

“Trump clearly has animus for the overwhelming majority of American Jews. This poll confirms that the feeling is mutual,” said Halie Soifer, CEO of the JDCA. “The data is clear: Jewish Americans do not want a Trump second term. If we get Jewish voters to the polls, we will win in November.”

Harris’s net favorability was found to be 13 points higher among Jewish voters than US President Joe Biden’s was, rising from +25 to +38.

Meanwhile, when prioritizing issues, only 9 percent of American Jews said Israel is their top issue, putting it 10th out of 12 issue options, according to the poll. Among Reform Jews it is ranked last and among Orthodox Jews it is ranked fourth.

The results contradicted a July poll conducted by pollster Richard Baris showed that Jewish voters prefer Harris over Trump by a narrow margin of 52.7 percent to 45.9 percent.

The post Republican Jewish Coalition Announces $10 Million Anti-Harris Ad Buy in Bid to Bolster Trump Support first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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