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The antisemites are enjoying themselves
In a radio interview 16 years ago, Rick Sanchez of Rick’s List on CNN at the time complained that comedian Jon Stewart and other “elite Northeast establishment liberals” had it out for him.
“Yeah, very powerless people,” Sanchez huffed after the host mentioned Stewart was Jewish. “Everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart and a lot of people who run the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.”
Sanchez had worked himself into a furious state before sputtering accusations that were dissected in an extended news cycle — pundits debated whether “elite Northeast liberal” was an antisemitic dogwhistle. The fallout destroyed his career.
Things have changed in the years since Sanchez was fired. Rants about Jews have become more mainstream and, notably, those espousing these views are less likely to fulminate than they are to speak with a bemused irony or detachment.
I was struck by this distinction while watching a viral clip of Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes, on Subway Takes, a social media show filmed on public transit. It has millions of followers and enough cultural cachet that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sought appearances during their White House run, each seeking to share a clever-enough “hot take” to endear themselves to the show’s massive audience.
Casablancas made his way through a series of boring takes — sending people audio messages is bad, modern cars are boring — before he landed on the take that went viral: “American Zionists get the benefits of white-privileged people but talk like they are Black people during slavery.”
What struck me most about the interview was how gleefully Casablancas built up to what was clearly a rehearsed opinion.
“Why don’t we turn the dial up a little bit,” Kareem Raheem, host of Subway Takes, had said early in the conversation.
“A bit?” Casablancas asked with a smirk. “Or all the way?”
He saved his thoughts about “American Zionists” until the very end: “You want the most controversial one? I know you do,” he told Raheem. “Well, it’s been nice having a career with you.”
Casablancas spoke with none of Sanchez’s venom but rather presented himself as gleefully speaking truth to power. It struck me that, where American antisemitism used to be angry, as in the rant from Sanchez and similar tirades by celebrities like Mel Gibson and Kanye West, it has become almost fun for the agitators. Where Sanchez actually did lose his career over his comments, Casablancas can joke about the idea.
Part of what’s going on is that it has never been more acceptable to criticize Israel or Zionism.
This is a huge victory for Israel’s critics who genuinely care about changing American foreign policy. But it simultaneously poses a conundrum for those who had used their criticism of Israel to signal they held verboten beliefs about our political order — beliefs that could range from a generic distrust in “the man” to conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals.
When Casablancas and The Strokes projected a montage of images from the destruction of Gaza during their performance at Coachella earlier this month, they generated a few headlines but there wasn’t widespread outrage. The display likely aligned with the views of many in the young audience.
And so those who want attention, or want to portray themselves as a maverick or outsider, someone who is bold enough to voice uncomfortable truths, must make clear that their criticism of Israel is about something more than Palestinian human rights.
Casablancas used his platform on Subway Takes to call for a populist political movement to “fight the real billionaire gang agenda villains.” But he hastened to caution against class warfare, describing something more amorphous. The only bad billionaires, he clarified, were the ones who sought to “deceive people” and owned media outlets.
This kind of squishy populism, which calls for rooting out a malevolent subset of the ruling class, has animated antisemitism for centuries, and Casablancas mentioned it immediately before complaining about how privileged and whiny “American Zionists” are.
If Casablancas, who is not Jewish, had clearly stated what seemed to be his core contentions — that many Jews don’t recognize that they benefit from being white and that Israel’s supporters exaggerate the severity of antisemitism — viewers of the lighthearted subway-based talk show on which he was appearing might have wondered why he was sharing his thoughts on Jewish identity. Both of those ideas have already been debated ad nauseam by American Jews themselves, so my guess is the clip would have generated a tiny fraction of the controversy in which pro-Israel influencers assailed Casablancas and progressives including Hasan Piker rushed to defend him.
That controversy was a feature, not a bug. All of Casablancas’ vamping about how controversial and career-ending his comments were about to be, and his decision to refer to “American Zionists” when he obviously meant Jews, suggested that the singer wanted to offend while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability.
We’ve seen similar escalations elsewhere.
On the right, this new style of antisemitism often retains a harder edge. James Fishback, who is running in the Republican primary for Florida governor, has mocked Byron Donalds, his Black opponent, for supporting Israel: “We will pull him over, check for drugs, and then arrest him for betraying America to Israel.”
And, on the left and apolitical center there has been a proliferation of memes ostensibly intended to denigrate Israel but often used to troll Jews or anyone else trying to raise sincere concerns about antisemitism.
When Adam Aleksic, a popular TikTok creator and linguist, made a video explaining how “goy” had become an antisemitic dogwhistle — something that is objectively true and unrelated to Israel — his comments were flooded with jokes about how he was being paid by Israel or AIPAC: “Bro got the paycheck 😭💀,” “Gee I could really use around $7k right now,” “’big yahu when will I get the check?’ 🥀.”
These impish expressions of antisemitism are more insidious than the angry outbursts that characterized previous antisemitism scandals.
Riffs that use coded language are harder to push back against, and easier for audiences to latch onto. Watching Casablancas laugh with Raheem, the charismatic host of Subway Takes, it’s much easier to find yourself nodding along than when you hear Gibson drunkenly rant to a police officer about Jews, or watch Ye talking about how he’d been drugged by a Jewish doctor while standing in a parking lot.
As antisemitism makes its way into popular culture with a wink and a nod, I fear that more people are going to want to get in on the joke.
The post The antisemites are enjoying themselves appeared first on The Forward.
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Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case
(JTA) — The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction for the man convicted of killing Etan Patz, the 6-year-old Jewish boy whose 1979 disappearance riveted the nation.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices reimposed the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Patz in 2017 and was serving a 25-year sentence until a New York federal appeals court ruled last year that he was entitled to a retrial.
The justices granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who urged them to overturn the decision last year, writing in an unsigned opinion that the lower court “exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief.”
“Today the Supreme Court agreed with the findings of multiple lower courts and upheld the trial conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the horrific murder of Etan Patz, which changed a generation of New Yorkers,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement Monday. “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction.”
Harvey Fishbein, a lawyer for Hernandez, told the The New York Times Monday that the Supreme Court’s order meant Hernandez would not get a new trial, adding that his team was “terribly disappointed.”
“We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” Fishbein said.
Patz vanished in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop in New York City for the first time. The 6-year-old became one of the first missing children whose photograph appeared on milk cartons nationwide, but despite years of searches and public appeals, he was never found.
Patz’s parents, Julie and Stan, spent decades seeking an arrest for his disappearance, helping to establish a national missing-children hotline. The anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, May 25, also became National Missing Children’s Day.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case appeared first on The Forward.
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Some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies criticize his use of ‘monsters’ to describe AIPAC
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday defended his use of the word “monsters” to describe AIPAC at a rally Friday for progressive candidates, as some of his Jewish supporters expressed concern that the term may connote an antisemitic trope.
The war of words came as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is increasingly a target of the progressive movement — including in acts of attempted violence — and as progressive Jews have accused some Israeli right-wing figures of dehumanizing liberal pro-Israel lobbying groups.
“Calling AIPAC and its backers ‘monsters’ casts them as less than human, rather than as human beings who are one’s political opponents,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, wrote in a Substack post Monday.
“I was taken aback,” Rabbi Misha Shulman, a Mamdani supporter who leads the progressive Brooklyn synagogue The New Shul, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the mayor’s comments. “I didn’t like those remarks. It was a little bit of a flag for me.”
At a press conference, Mamdani said he had been quoting Italian anti-fascist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, whose quote ending “Now is the time of monsters” the mayor had cited at the top of his speech. The rally was intended to boost the mayor’s preferred progressive candidates, including Jewish congressional candidate Brad Lander, ahead of New York’s closely watched Tuesday primaries.
“I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world,” Mamdani told a reporter who asked about the word. He continued, “My use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in this city, all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.” He did not explain how he saw AIPAC as connected to poverty in New York.
Mamdani insisted he was referring to “not solely AIPAC,” but he singled out the organization again in his Monday remarks to reporters, saying the lobbying group was backing “a status quo for immorality.”
During the rally last week, Mamdani had stated that Gramsci’s “monsters take many forms today,” including “AIPAC, for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s wars.” He added that AIPAC’s “goal” is “to turn us against one another.”
For some of the progressive Jews who have supported the mayor, his comments sounded alarms about the use of dehumanizing or sinister rhetoric to describe Jewish groups.
But Shulman said it was actually Mamdani’s remarks in the same speech painting AIPAC as a “dark money” group that was most alarming to him. AIPAC, a lobbying organization that also operates a political spending arm, does not conceal its donors, unlike the traditional profile of a so-called “dark money” campaign finance operation.
“For me, the question of dark money was the tougher knot,” Shulman said, calling Mamdani’s remarks a “tactical mistake.” In the context of rising antisemitism, he added, “For a left-wing leader to use that phrase, and invite traditional antisemitism into this conversation in that way, was not smart.”
Shulman is a member of Israelis For Peace, a New York-based ad-hoc group of progressive Israelis who broadly back Mamdani. While not speaking on behalf of the group, he told JTA their internal group chat lit up with debates over the appropriateness of Mamdani’s speech.
Jacobs of T’ruah said Mamdani’s remarks were part of what she described as a “disturbing trend” of recent left-wing attacks on the lobbying group, including Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner accusing his GOP opponent of being “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu” because of AIPAC’s donations to her campaign.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has aspirations of higher office, also recently became the first sitting member of Congress to sign a pledge from Track AIPAC, a purported AIPAC watchdog that also targets donations from more liberal pro-Israel groups, including J Street.
Over the weekend, a cafe posted on Instagram that it had rejected a payment from liberal Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman, whom Lander is challenging in the primary, because the money was “probably coming from AIPAC.” (Goldman has been endorsed by both AIPAC and J Street.)
While noting that AIPAC “absolutely deserves to be criticized, sidelined, and rejected for its decades of negative influence on American foreign policy,” Jacobs wrote that such critiques should be done “without dehumanizing language, and without hinting at a grand Jewish conspiracy.”
Such pushback from Jews who have worked with Mamdani is rare. JTA reached out to representatives for several of the mayor’s most visible Jewish allies on Monday, including Lander and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke at the same rally. Sanders also criticized AIPAC. Neither returned requests for comment by press time. On social media after the rally, Lander celebrated the event, calling it “a tremendous honor” to rally alongside Mamdani.
IfNotNow and Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, two Jewish activist groups that endorsed Mamdani, similarly did not respond to requests for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Rep. Jerry Nadler, the retiring liberal Jewish Democrat who had endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral bid, also did not respond by press time.
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that positions itself as a foil to AIPAC, declined to comment on Mamdani’s remarks. Last month, hundreds of Jewish leaders criticized Yehuda Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, after Leiter called J Street a “cancer within the Jewish community.” Nadler was among the signatories of an open letter that said Leiter “dehumanizes fellow Jews.”
Centrist Jewish groups and figures, already no fans of Mamdani, also bashed his AIPAC comments. “Referring to fellow New Yorkers as ‘monsters’ is outrageous and dangerous, and the impact of your words extends far beyond politics,” American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch wrote on X, addressing Mamdani.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat representing New Jersey, wrote, “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books.”
Both posts were reposted by AIPAC, which otherwise did not comment.
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U.K. PM Starmer leaves behind mixed record on antisemitism
(JTA) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who resigned the premiership on Monday, leaves behind a mixed record on fighting antisemitism in the Labour Party that Jewish organizations say will help shape their expectations for his successor.
Starmer announced that he was stepping down outside 10 Downing Street in the morning local time. He made the decision in the wake of mounting pressure from Labour members of Parliament and waning political support after the party’s devastating losses in the May 7 local elections and the success of political rival Andy Burnham in Manchester’s parliamentary election last week.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, has emerged as the leading contender after winning a Manchester-area by-election on Friday with 55% of the vote. Burnham has sought to position himself prominently on antisemitism and relations with the Jewish community in his bid to take over from Starmer.
In a post on X, Burnham thanked Starmer for his leadership and said the PM’s decision to resign “marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way. I will put myself forward as part of this process.”
Starmer confirmed he would remain on as caretaker prime minister until a successor was chosen.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” he said. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”
The Jewish Labour Movement thanked Starmer in a post on X, noting that two years ago he inherited the party “at its lowest point” from former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, when it was “institutionally antisemitic.” It added, under Starmer, “our party has a clean bill of health on antisemitism.”
However, Starmer’s tenure was still met with plenty of criticism from the Jewish community over his handling of antisemitism, particularly in light of ongoing antisemitic attacks in the country. In recent months alone, four Hatzola ambulances were lit on fire; there were attempted attacks on three synagogues; two Jewish men in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green were stabbed. Dozens of people have been arrested in connection with the incidents.
Starmer entered office in July 2024, leading his country’s thorny relationship with Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack against the Jewish and the Gaza war that followed. He angered Israel with steps such as recognizing Palestine as a state and promising to uphold the International Court of Justice’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.
With Starmer’s upcoming departure, focus has shifted to the contest to replace him, bringing renewed scrutiny to candidates’ positions on antisemitism, relations with the Jewish community, and Israel.
Starmer said he would give his successor his “full and unequivocal support,” adding that nominations would open on July 9 and conclude before the parliamentary summer recess on July 16.
Board of Deputies of British Jews President Phil Roseneberg posted on X, “When he took on the leadership of the Labour Party the first thing @Keir_Starmer said he would do is ‘tear out the poison of antisemitism by its roots’. His subsequent actions were transformative within the Party.”
He praised Starmer’s government for providing “unprecedented security funding,” and introducing legislation to proscribe the IRGC.
Burnham, for his part, has spoken out against antisemitism in the wake of violence attacks. Following the October 2025 Yom Kippur attack at the Heaton Park Congregation synagogue in Manchester, in which two people were killed, Burnham said in an official release, “Tonight, our first thoughts are with the families of those who have died, those injured and those traumatised by this – a horrific antisemitic attack on our Jewish friends and neighbours. We condemn it outright.”
He also wrote in a post on X on the same day, “Today we have witnessed a vile attack on our Jewish community on its holiest day. We condemn whoever is responsible and will do everything within our power to keep people safe.”
His positions on Israel and Gaza have also come under scrutiny. In a June 4 interview with The Guardian, Burnham did not invoke the term “genocide” in relation to the war in Gaza, but did say, “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester.”
He added, “But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.”
Additionally, 10 days after the Oct. 7 attacks, Burnham called for a ceasefire in a joint statement with 10 Greater Manchester leaders. The statement read in part, “We condemn unreservedly the appalling terror attacks on innocent civilians in Israel by Hamas on 7th October.”
The statement also noted that Israel has the right to take “targeted action within international law” to defend itself and to rescue its hostages, but added, “We also have profound concerns about the loss of thousands of innocent lives in Gaza, the displacement of many more and widespread suffering through the ongoing blockade of essential goods and services.”
Referencing his expected leadership bid, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the Jewish News on June 17 that Burnham had a few weeks earlier met with Jewish communal leaders in Greater Manchester.
When it comes to Israel, Nandy said Burnham “believes in justice, so he’s acutely aware of the need for a safe homeland for Jewish people, you know, and the particularly unique historical reasons why Israel came into existence.”
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