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As Israel reels from violent attack on Palestinians, settler leadership remains unapologetic
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Despite resounding condemnation from across the world and efforts by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to denounce the outbreak of Jewish violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, settler leaders remain defiant and are backing members of their community involved in what has been described as the one of the worst events of Jewish mass rioting against Palestinians.
“In no way whatsoever do I condemn them,” veteran settler activist Daniella Weiss told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“The shocking thing is that the government is unable to provide security to residents. This is very grave. I am not surprised that there was such an outburst,” said Weiss, a former mayor of the Kedumim West Bank settlement. “The pressure kept building up and the murder of the two brothers influenced people, as did the [recent] murder of two brothers in Jerusalem.”
The settlers’ attack centered on the Palestinian village of Hawara near Nablus, hours after a Palestinian gunman killed two young residents of the nearby Har Bracha settlement, Hillel Yaniv and his brother Yagel, 21 and 19. Hillel had just concluded his military service in a special program for yeshiva students and Yagel was due to finish a Magen David Adom emergency training course next week.
Following the terror attack, hundreds of settlers gathered to seek revenge from the neighboring village, unleashing their rage at residents who were not involved in the attack on the Yaniv family. They set alight 11 houses, damaged many others and burned 32 cars, according to initial data from the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
One settler said in a video clip from the scene as the rampage was underway that it was “a very moving experience.” With flames rising in the background, the settler, identified only as Rafael, added that the settlers “are torching everything that comes to hand.” In another video that was shared widely by critics of the settlers, a group of settlers is seen praying outside a Palestinian home on fire.
Settlers taking a break from carrying out a pogrom in Huwara to daven maariv (evening prayer). pic.twitter.com/OMbKmqXSRO
— Benzion Sanders (@BenzionSanders) February 26, 2023
A large number of settlers also proceeded to Burin village, where they were “escorted” by soldiers, Burin resident Munir Qadoos told JTA. The settlers broke windows, slaughtered two sheep and stole others, burned a barn and pelted homes with stones, he said.
“I felt that it was going to be my last day alive,” Qadoos said. ”Settlers have attacked us many times, but never have they gone so far into the village.”
Human rights organizations have documented a steady increase in settler violence directed at Palestinians in recent years, citing hundreds of cases of vandalism, harassment of Palestinians working their fields or harvesting olive trees and nightly raids into West Bank villages. Settler leaders have disputed these claims, noting that most claims were dismissed by the Israeli police. They have also argued that only a small group of extremists, mostly teenagers, are responsible for these violent attacks.
Qadoos said that on Sunday night, rather than stop the settlers, IDF soldiers “fired tear gas at residents who were trying to defend themselves.” Two people were transferred to the hospital after being struck by stones and five treated locally, he said. “Everyone in the neighborhood is afraid but they also say we will not be moved from here. As I see it, things will get even worse.”
The army did not respond to a request for its account of what transpired in Burin.
By Monday morning, as the extent of the damage became apparent, Israelis began to grapple with the consequences of the attack, described by some in the media as a “pogrom,” and whether it was an ominous sign of authorities losing control over Jewish extremists in the West Bank.
Palestinian Authority officials said about 400 settlers joined the attacks. Eight Israelis were detained but all had been released by Tuesday morning.
The violence marks a significant “escalation” because of the large numbers of settlers involved and the sense that they have backers in the government, foremost Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, said Menachem Klein, professor emeritus of political science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
Klein predicted there would be further such attacks. ”The radical settlers see they are kings with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in power,” he said. “We will see more of these because they are built into the power balance.”
It was a test for Netanyahu’s two-month old government, made up of the center-right Likud in partnership with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s far-right parties.
“There is no place for anarchy. We will not accept deliberate harm to innocent civilians,” Netanyahu told the Knesset on Monday. But his coalition partners, who are aligned with the settlers and have supported their actions, did not all share this sentiment. Smotrich, who serves as finance minister but also holds the portfolio of settler affairs in the defense ministry, endorsed the idea of harsh vengeance in the immediate aftermath of the killing of the settlers, liking a tweet by a settler leader, Davidi Ben-Zion, that called for “erasing Hawara today” and for “no mercy.”
Palestinian health officials said that settlers also attacked Sunday night other nearby villages and that a 37-year-old man was killed by Israeli gunfire in Zaatara, two others were shot and wounded, a third stabbed and a fourth beaten with an iron bar. Ninety-five other Palestinians were treated for tear gas inhalation.
The umbrella group for settlers, the Yesha Council, remained silent about the violence, offering no response to a query by JTA. The council serves as the political arm representing more than 500,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank (but not in East Jerusalem and the surrounding neighborhoods, where another 375,000 Jewish Israelis reside). The council does not control individual settlements, which range in their political views from more moderate towns such as those in Ariel and in the Gush Etzion and Ariel region, and the smaller settlements and outposts considered to be home to extremists.
Settler leader Daniella Weiss speaks during a protest for the return to the Evyatar outspot, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Feb. 18, 2022.(Sraya Diamant/Flash90)
By Sunday night, Smotrich changed tack, saying, “It is forbidden to take the law into one’s own hands and create a dangerous anarchy which could cost lives.”
But Ziv Stahl, director of Yesh Din, a human rights group which promotes legal action against violent Jewish settlers, claims that Smotrich’s action on social media was highly significant and could be interpreted by settlers as showing the spirit that should guide their actions.
“Even though it’s not an official policy to be violent towards Palestinians, if Ben-Gvir is in charge of police and enforcement against settler violence and Smotrich is in charge of illegal construction, you can do the math of what message the settlers get from that.”
Weiss indicated she had no misgivings that the 37-year-old Palestinian, identified as Sameh Akatsh, who had just returned from participating in an earthquake relief mission in Turkey, had died. “If he was killed, he was killed,” she said.
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The post As Israel reels from violent attack on Palestinians, settler leadership remains unapologetic appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Abdul El-Sayed and Jamie Raskin sidestep Hasan Piker, and Israel, in Michigan campaign stops
(JTA) — ANN ARBOR – As Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made campaign stops with a prominent Jewish congressional leader on Wednesday, there was one subject neither he, nor his Democratic allies onstage, were interested in discussing.
“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” Michigan U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell told the crowd at an Ann Arbor, Mich., town hall, to cheers. “It’s not what November is about.”
Dingell’s crack was the only time the prominent left-wing streamer’s name was mentioned at all during the pair of El-Sayed rallies that day. Piker’s recent comments that American Jews who “tie” themselves to Israel would “suffer the consequences of the actions of that state” prompted uproar from several corners of Democratic leadership. Despite this, El-Sayed’s new Jewish campaign surrogate, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, avoided the topic altogether.
That reluctance to talk about Piker on the campaign trail Wednesday extended to the candidate himself. El-Sayed didn’t mention Piker, nor Israel, once in either of his campaign stops with Raskin, except when asked directly by reporters.
The former county health official campaigned with Piker during the primary — including at one stop at the University of Michigan a stone’s throw away from Wednesday’s event — as the two made opposition to Israel a central issue of his candidacy. But at a press conference following his Ann Arbor event, El-Sayed described Piker as “a streamer in California,” adding that the media was putting too much focus on his most prominent supporter.
“I’m less interested in going to the tabloid version of our politics where we cover this as who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down, who’s talking to who,” El-Sayed said. “I’m a lot more interested in talking to the people in the state who had a bum deal because of Donald Trump and the politics that [El-Sayed’s GOP opponent] Mike Rogers has been the epitome of for a very long time.”
Raskin, one of the most prominent Jewish Democrats in the House, also showed a reluctance to talk about Jewish voters in general. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked the congressman in Ann Arbor how he would sell El-Sayed to Jewish Democrats uncomfortable with his rhetoric. In response, he did not mention Jewish concerns.
“Those of us who have been fighting Donald Trump and his authoritarianism and corruption and violence against American citizens and immigrants for 10 years now understand that this is an essential referendum about the future,” Raskin said in response. “Will we have democracy or will we have autocracy?”
He added that he has been “campaigning for Democrats all over the country,” and praised the party for being “a very big tent.”
“Just like any big family Thanksgiving dinner, there can be arguments and people jostling, and there’s unruliness,” Raskin said. “But fundamentally, we all believe in democracy and freedom and the progress and prosperity of our people.”
Yet questions about Piker, and how close the movement he represents may come to remaking the Democratic Party’s values, hang over both Michigan’s Senate race and the future of Jewish inclusion in the party. As the party fights to retake Congress this fall, some liberal Jewish voters believe the growing backlash against Israel among the “big tent”’s progressive wing is damaging their historic coalition. A growing number of Jewish voters in Michigan who previously backed Democrats are now supporting Rogers instead, and El-Sayed’s association with Piker is often cited as a key reason why.
In playing the role of uniter, Raskin is slaloming carefully between the party’s different factions. Before campaigning with El-Sayed, the congressman stumped for Michigan Rep. Hillary Scholten, a moderate Democrat who has withheld her endorsement of El-Sayed while specifying his association with Piker as a sticking point.
Also being silent on the rallies is a key target of Piker’s: Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, whose likeness the streamer had made his latest comments in front of. The Jewish and pro-Israel Democratic congressional candidate is running in a heavily Jewish district that encompasses Oakland County, where El-Sayed’s second rally of the day took place. In recent days, Moss said that El-Sayed was “going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland County’s Jewish community.” He declined to comment to JTA about the day’s rallies.
As they largely avoided the elephant in the room among Democrats, El-Sayed and his allies also preached the importance of party unity in taking on their Republican opponents.
“There’s a big effort to divide us,” Raskin told the second rally’s audience in Farmington Hills. “They’re trying to pick on disagreements in our party, trying to exacerbate conflict, because we have freedom of thought in our party and freedom of speech in our party and freedom of dialogue.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Abdul El-Sayed and Jamie Raskin sidestep Hasan Piker, and Israel, in Michigan campaign stops appeared first on The Forward.
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Dolly Parton’s legacy includes the Jewish children’s book program she inspired
(JTA) — Dolly Parton, the singer who died Tuesday at age 80 after a brief bout with cancer, was mourned around the world as a stellar songwriter, consummate country hitmaker, savvy entrepreneur and generous philanthropist.
In Jewish circles, she was also remembered as the inspiration for PJ Library, a program that sends free children’s books to Jewish families in order to foster Jewish values and traditions.
In 2015, when Harold Grinspoon launched PJ Library, he took a page from Parton, who a decade earlier had started Imagination Library, a literacy program that mails free children’s books to families across the U.S.
After hearing Parton interviewed about the program, Grinspoon, a philanthropist in and out of the Jewish community, signed on as a sponsor of the Imagination Library in Western Massachusetts, where he lives.
“We should create a Jewish version of Imagination Library,” said Grinspoon, according to a 2023 recollection by his daughter-in-law and president of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, Winnie Sandler Grinspoon.
“Harold was looking for ways to build Jewish literacy,” she wrote. “He was witnessing a lack of connection to the values, stories, and traditions that have been at the center of the Jewish experience for millennia.”
Two decades later, PJ Library has more than 670,000 subscribers in 40 countries.
On Tuesday, in a tribute to Parton, PJ Library and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation recalled a meeting between the two in 2023. According to an Instagram post, “she shared the following with him: ‘I am honored to get to help inspire a love of reading in children. They truly are our future.’”
“Harold remembers Dolly as ‘a truly amazing person — not only a great artist, but a great entrepreneur and philanthropist,” according to the post. “We honor Dolly for educating millions, for her remarkable career, her kindness, her art, and especially her generosity.”
“Dolly’s generosity of spirit extended far beyond inspiring the creation of PJ Library,” Alex Zablotsky, PJ Library’s executive director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Parton drew inspiration for her art and philanthropy from her hardscrabble roots in rural Tennessee. She was one of 12 kids growing up in a one-room log cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Parton’s father never learned how to read or write.
“This actually started because my father could not read and write, and I saw how crippling that could be,” Parton said of the Imagination Library at a ceremony where she was awarded a Carnegie Medal for her partnership with a pediatric hospital in East Tennessee, now named for Parton.
“My dad was a very smart man. And I often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write. So that is the inspiration,” she said.
Parton had a close bond with other Jews, notably Sandy Gallin, the manager who guided her from Nashville to mainstream pop stardom, according to the Forward.
When Gallin died in 2017, Parton said, “Nobody could quite get how the Christian Southern girl and the New York Jewish boy could have so much in common. But it was real.”
One trouble spot, however, came in a 1994 interview with Vogue Magazine, when Parton mused about starting a television series about a country singer who turns to gospel music. She gave up the idea, she said, because “most of the people out here [Hollywood] are Jewish and it’s frightening for them to promote Christianity.”
She later apologized in a letter to Abe Foxman, then head of the Anti-Defamation League, JTA reported at the time.
“I know how stereotypes can be hurtful,” she wrote. “Like all Americans of good will, I recognize the importance of rejecting prejudice.”
Foxman accepted her apology. “Whatever she said was unfortunate, and she recognizes that,’” Foxman told The New York Times. “I know it’s not easy for celebrities to publicly say they made a mistake. As far as we are concerned, the matter is behind us.”
On Tuesday, Laura Liebman, director of development for The Bronfman Fellowship for young Jewish leaders, paid tribute to the singer, who was a feminist and an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Dolly somehow managed to transcend race, class, religion, politics and gender,” Liebman wrote in an essay for eJewishPhilanthropy. “As the Jewish community becomes increasingly siloed, we could all learn from Dolly’s radical acceptance and show more love and compassion for our fellow Jews.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dolly Parton’s legacy includes the Jewish children’s book program she inspired appeared first on The Forward.
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Second Reform synagogue in Israel has windows broken
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – A window was broken at a Reform synagogue on Sunday in the central Israeli city of Ramat Hasharon less than two weeks after a similar incident occurred in Jerusalem in an incident the mayor called an act of vandalism.
Congregation Darchei Noam called the incident a hate crime, and Ramat Hasharon Mayor Itzik Rochberger condemned the incident and called for police investigation.
Police said the damage was most likely caused by rocks thrown at the building during the night but said the motive remained under investigation.
Rabbi Eli Levin, who leads Darchei Noam, said a heavy paving stone had been used to smash the window.
“This wasn’t children playing and a stone accidentally being thrown,” Levin told JTA.
The incident came just over a week after vandals broke into Kol HaNeshama, a prominent Reform synagogue in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. In that occurrence, a group of youths smashed a window, entered the prayer hall, damaged artwork and tore down Pride flags displayed by the congregation. No worshippers were present at the time. Police opened an investigation but have not publicly announced any arrests.
“The smashing of the windows tonight at the Reform synagogue in the city is a serious act of vandalism and we will not let it pass without response,” Rochberger said, calling on police to thoroughly investigate the attack and bring those responsible to justice.
He added that Ramat Hasharon was committed to “freedom, tolerance, pluralism and coexistence” between religious and secular residents and said the city would not allow extremists to intimidate residents or damage the fabric of communal life.
“We will stand together against any attempt to harm the character of Ramat Hasharon and the values on which it is founded,” Rochberger said.
Democrats MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi who previously headed Israel’s Reform movement, linked the attack to recent violence against Reform congregations, businesses operating on Shabbat and anti-government protesters.
“They will smash and break – we will repair and build,” he wrote on X.
Darchei Noam was founded in Ramat Hasharon in 1981 and serves residents of that city, Herzliya and northern Tel Aviv. The congregation holds egalitarian services in which women and men participate equally and also runs educational programs, bar and bat mitzvah preparation and community volunteer activities, according to its website.
The congregation spent years fighting for the right to build a permanent synagogue. After the municipality declined to allocate land to a non-Orthodox congregation, the dispute ultimately reached Israel’s High Court of Justice, which ruled that the community could receive a plot.
Darchei Noam said it would hold its regular Friday night service as planned and called on supporters to attend in a show of solidarity following the attack.
“We will continue and we will not be deterred,” Levin said. “We will continue to hold egalitarian ceremonies and celebrate the holidays in our Jewish-Israeli way.”
The incident came as Ramat Hasharon and nearby Herzliya have been locked in disputes over businesses operating on Shabbat. In June, a Tel Aviv court dismissed a petition seeking to force the Ramat Hasharon municipality to enforce its existing Shabbat closure bylaw at the BIG Fashion Glilot shopping complex after the city pledged to apply the law under a new enforcement policy.
The municipality has simultaneously sought Interior Ministry approval to amend the decades-old bylaw to permit businesses to open on Saturdays in designated areas. Rochberger has repeatedly defended that effort, saying Ramat Hasharon should remain pluralistic and protect both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
Just a few hundred meters away from the synagogue, businesses in the Neve Israel neighborhood of Herzliya have repeatedly been vandalized after opening on Shabbat. The local Othello ice cream shop was attacked three times before its owners stopped opening on Saturdays, citing safety concerns, while the windows of the nearby Pasta Basta restaurant were smashed in late July. Pasta Basta continued operating on Shabbat.
Herzliya Mayor Yariv Fisher has urged residents to support businesses that remained open on Saturdays.
“This will only spur me to keep working day and night to ensure that Herzliya remains a beacon of liberalism,” Fisher wrote on Facebook. “I invite the public to support all the city’s restaurants, entertainment businesses and cafes.”
Jerusalem has seen a parallel fight over Shabbat commerce in recent weeks. Cafe Basimta, near the Mahane Yehuda market, has faced weekly demonstrations by haredi Orthodox protesters since early July over its decision to remain open on Saturdays. Police have been deployed repeatedly at the site as protesters and counterprotesters faced off. A 75-year-old woman was arrested this month on suspicion of repeatedly vandalizing the cafe by damaging its lock and throwing garbage at the premises.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Second Reform synagogue in Israel has windows broken appeared first on The Forward.
