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American Jewish giving to Israel spikes as a ‘tangible’ way to express grief after Hamas attack
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For more than a week, Herbert Block’s phone has been buzzing nonstop with messages from people he doesn’t know who want to give him money.
He doesn’t mind the unsolicited callers, all of whom are asking the same thing: How can they donate to Israel right now?
“People from all parts of the country, people who say, ‘I tried to get on the website and I couldn’t figure it out,’ or, ‘I’m not good at technology, how do I make the donation?’” said Block, the executive director of the American Zionist Movement.
Block isn’t alone. Jewish officials say the level and intensity of incoming cash for Israel since Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded the country and killed and injured thousands, is unprecedented in their adult lifetimes.
On Tuesday, the Jewish Federations of North America announced that it had raised $388 million, just five days after setting an overall goal of $500 million. The JFNA money is mostly going to medical and psychological relief. Other groups, like the Friends of the IDF, are raising money to meet urgent military needs.
Julie Platt, JFNA’s chairwoman, said she remembered similar periods when she was a child and her parents were active in pro-Israel fundraising — during and after the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then as now, American Jews feared for Israel’s survival and opened their pocketbooks in response.
“For me as an adult, I’ve never experienced a day like today,” Platt said in an interview.
“Since the Hamas attack it doesn’t feel like a trickle of support,” she said. “It feels like a flood.”
It’s not just the intensity of the giving but the amounts, said Gil Preuss, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. “People are giving 10, 25, 50,000 dollars,” he said.
Preuss said he was approaching a local total haul of $10 million as of Monday, an amount that was included in the $388 million that JFNA announced Tuesday.
While the sums raised now are a spike when compared to recent years, they are so far dwarfed by previous crises. In the week following Oct. 7, New York’s UJA-Federation raised $75 million. The week after the 1967 war, it raised the equivalent of $180 million in today’s dollars. (That $75 million, like the money raised by the Washington federation, is part of the total JFNA announced.)
But the current fundraising drive comes after years of fraught relations between Israel and American Jews, as well as longstanding anxiety over a growing subset of Jewish Americans who feel increasingly distant from Israel. This year, another subset of American Jews expressed their ties to Israel through sympathy with the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who protested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his effort to weaken the courts.
Now, American Jews who weeks ago might not have paid attention to Israel, or even felt alienated from it, were turning up and opening their wallets, Preuss said.
“We had two couples, probably around the age of 40, convene their network of friends, some who had been involved with Federation, but most who weren’t involved and didn’t give previously to the federation,” he said, recalling an event that took place last Thursday, five days after the attack. “And that night, they raised a million dollars.”
Platt said that giving was the most immediate and convenient thing a Jew could do in the face of the helplessness they felt when confronted with images and accounts of Hamas terrorists murdering families in their homes and young adults at an outdoor party.
“You’re able to express your emotions in this way,” she said. “It’s the one very concrete and tangible thing that we can do. It’s a way for us to express our deep grief and fear and love for the people of Israel.”
One big difference from 1967 and 1973 is that U.S. Jews can now donate with relative ease directly to Israeli charities and to research a wide array of possible destinations for their financial support. That means the fundraising totals reported by JFNA are likely to reflect a smaller proportion of the total transfer of resources from the United States toward Israel this week.
Still, traditional fundraising venues, including synagogues and federations, were proving durable. And some of their appeals have been dramatic: The Forward reported that New York City’s Park Avenue Synagogue set a goal of $18 million; by Friday, six days after the war broke out, the synagogue had reached $16 million. Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove, citing the Jewish imperative to save a life, asked congregants to break their Sabbath observance and scan a QR code on their programs to reach the goal, and by Sunday, they were within striking distance.
Included in the $75 million UJA raised is $22,000 brought in by New York University students who came together to read psalms as they learned of the carnage and decided they needed to do something more tangible.
Block said his organization was edging close to $100,000 as of Wednesday — not a huge amount compared to the millions others are pulling in, but a significant sum for a group that focuses more on advocacy than fundraising. The money will go to the World Zionist Organization’s crisis response efforts.
The appeal, he said, is immediate gratification of the need to do something.
“Here’s something that I can do, you know, at my desk,” he said. “The uniqueness of this situation, it’s something that is unprecedented in every way.”
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The post American Jewish giving to Israel spikes as a ‘tangible’ way to express grief after Hamas attack appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust
Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June, 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Right-wing American political commentator and YouTube content creator Candace Owens has been denied a visa to enter New Zealand because she was banned from the nearby country Australia, immigration officials reportedly said on Thursday.
Owens was scheduled to embark on her first speaking tour across Australia and New Zealand in February and March of next year. The tour includes a stop in Auckland, New Zealand, on Feb. 28 and tickets remain on sale online.
Australia rejected her request for a visa last month. Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke said the decision was made because of Owens’s past remarks, including her apparent denial that Nazis forcibly did medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about [Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef] Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” Burke said at the time. “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.
Jock Gilray, a spokesperson for New Zealand’s immigration agency, said on Thursday that Owens was refused an entertainer’s work permit for New Zealand because visas legally cannot be granted to someone who have been banned from another country, The Associated Press reported on Thursday. New Zealand officials did not refer to Owens’s past comments when announcing the denial of her visa.
Owens and the Australia-based promoter behind her speaking tour, Rocksman, have yet to comment on news regarding the ban from New Zealand but said in October that they will file a legal appeal to a federal judge in response to the ban from Australia. Owens commented on Burke’s decision to deny her a visa for Australia and blamed it partially on the alleged influence of the global “Zionist media empire.”
Owens, who has over 3 million subscribers on YouTube and hosts the podcast titled “Candace,” has promoted conspiracy theories and made numerous antisemitic comments about Israel, Jews, Zionists, and the Holocaust. She has also made controversial comments against Black Lives Matter, feminism, vaccines, and immigration.
The post Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Bus Attacked in West Bank, At Least Eight Injured
Israeli police officer works at the scene of a shooting attack near the Jewish settlement of Ariel, in the West Bank, Nov. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
A Palestinian opened fire on a Tel Aviv-bound Israeli bus near the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank on Friday, wounding at least eight people before he was killed by Israeli troops, the Israeli military said.
Israel‘s MDA medical service said four people suffered gunshot wounds, with three in a serious condition, and four others were hurt by flying glass.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the shooter as a 46-year-old local man. Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said he belonged to the terrorist group.
Violence has surged across the West Bank since the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza in October last year.
In the first six months of 2024, the West Bank experienced more than 500 Arab terrorist attacks each month on average, according to data made public by Hatzalah Judea and Samaria (Rescuers Without Borders).
Dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian street attacks, Israeli authorities say, while hundreds of Palestinians — including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths, and civilian bystanders — have died in clashes with Israeli security forces.
The post Israeli Bus Attacked in West Bank, At Least Eight Injured first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Winds Are Blowing Agains the Jewish People; But the Response to Chaos and Violent Protests Could Lead to a Reversal
A Torah scroll is seen on display at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, Israel, April 16, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen.
People are asking why we are now experiencing such a tsunami of hatred — a kind of Ma Nishtana moment. There are very different factors that have come together to create a perfect storm of conflicting world and ethical values. Old certainties have died, and new ones are flourishing, and not always for the best. One can look at this from different perspectives — the historical, the social, the religious, and the long-term instability of societies and governments.
For thousands of years, the fate and role of societies have been determined by the people who exercised power and what religion or gods they adhered to. Power rose or fell violently and unpredictably. Authorities cared little for human life. Religions were supposed to take care of morality. Winners determined the fate of humans — who was accepted and who was not, or merely tolerated. Every country was guilty at some stage of abuse, and benefited from servitude. This does not mean one cannot try to make things better.
Throughout history, rival religions competed for supremacy and Jews were always caught in the middle. Judaism found itself attacked both by religions and by secular ideologies. And many Jews themselves abandoned their religion and culture ,and joined the different and conflicting ideologies and fought for recognition and rights for everyone. We expected to be hated by the European devils of Stalin and Hitler. But we never believed we would be hated by so many Americans. By Harvards and Columbias.
The First and the Second Great Wars were watersheds. They created new global rivalries and exacerbated cultural opposites. The dream that a United Nations could bring peace has been shattered by its politics. The dove of peace is crippled, and the lion will not lie down with the lamb. As many societies have advanced technologically, and billions were raised out of poverty and servitude, people began to talk about rights instead of obligations. And different groups who felt poorly treated, began to demand respect and amelioration.
Unfortunately, like all such movements, they developed into orthodoxies that allowed for no dissent or criticism. The current curse in the West is wokeism. And in the east, it is the curse of totalitarianism.
Another important factor in a changing world is migration. In the past, people fled prejudice, wars, and oppression. Many wanted a freer life and opportunities. And they integrated into the host societies. Ease of travel and access have now meant that larger numbers are fleeing, bringing with them values directly in conflict with host societies. The Western world is being and will continue to be challenged by massive immigration because it needs more workers to fill the gaps left by declining birthrates. In itself this is not a problem. But by refusing to deal with the issue of integration, by burying heads in sands, and now by fearing to act to remove those inciting hatred, it is only stoking up more chaos for the future. In many places, the character of nations has already begun to change.
Multiculturalism, once seen as an ideal, is now becoming a problem. It has led to a choice, between cultural capitulation and an alliance of false brothers, religious fundamentalists allied with left-wing progressives to gain power despite opposing values. One day, they may overturn states from within.
Some will argue that Israel is the cause of world dysfunction. Strange that such a small people are thought to have such influence. Others argue that Israel was a mistake, and all other states that emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire are legitimate. And they argue that Israel has no right to defend itself. All these are both nonsensical and evidence of prejudice. And they simply reiterate what the Bible foretold, that we are people who are alone, not appreciated by other nations (Numbers 23:9).
If the world is bent on tearing itself apart, we can only look on in despair for them. And do our best to ensure that we are well protected.
All is not lost. There are signs of a reaction. The winds that bring storms can also revive and refresh.
Florence, Italy, in the 15th century was the pinnacle of wealth, culture, and influence. Its banking families controlled the Western world. The Franciscan monk Savonarola (1452-1498) attacked the power and the wealth of the wealthy rulers. But he went too far in destroying great art, music, and what he saw as luxury. Instead, he enforced dull pious conformity. For a while, he was successful. But people soon tired of it, and in the end, he was burnt as a heretic. After the French Revolution came the Reign of Terror. Let us hope it won’t happen now.
The author is a writer and rabbi, based in New York.
The post The Winds Are Blowing Agains the Jewish People; But the Response to Chaos and Violent Protests Could Lead to a Reversal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.