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At an American Jewish conference in Tel Aviv, protesters are driving the energy
TEL AVIV (JTA) — At a marquee conference of American Jewish leaders that kicked off tonight in Tel Aviv, the loudest cheers were for anti-government protesters, most of the energy could be found outside of the convention center’s gates, and the biggest news was who didn’t show up.
The General Assembly, the signature conference of the American Jewish organizational world, was meant to be a celebration of Israel’s 75th birthday and a testament to the enduring strength of ties between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. Sunday’s opening event, the Jewish Federations of North America said, was meant to pay tribute to that relationship — and feature speeches by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But in the face of loud protests outside the event, Netanyahu abruptly canceled his appearance on Sunday, citing a full schedule ahead of Israel’s Independence Day on Wednesday. Over the course of a series of speeches by international Jewish dignitaries, his name was not mentioned once.
Instead, both inside and outside the conference walls, the tone of the evening was set by the protesters. They gathered by the hundreds opposite one of the convention center’s entrances — and in smaller clusters around the building — giving the thousands American Jewish visitors a taste of the protest culture that has developed this year in Israel as huge numbers Israelis have taken to the streets to oppose Netanyahu’s sweeping proposals to sap the power of the judiciary.
From the stage, the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Tel Aviv was mostly business as usual — except that the prime minister backed out of attending. (Courtesy JFNA)
Protesters waved Israeli flags, chanted the word “democracy” syllable by syllable, and blew into small plastic horns whose blaring sound carried remarkably well — permeating the walls of the conference plenary session. An entrepreneur standing at a card table was selling packages each containing a horn and a small Israeli flag for, depending on who asked, either 20 or 30 shekels (roughly $5.50 or $8).
The most direct route from the train to the conference was blocked off, owing to Tel Aviv’s ongoing attempts to build a citywide light rail system. So, with roads closed, the best way to get from the train station to the event was to follow the protesters — identifiable by the huge Israeli flags they carried or wore around their necks. Many were also pushing strollers or walking dogs.
“Israel must be a free democracy,” protesters chanted as attendees exited the event. “Please help us. Fascism shall not pass.”
Most of the protesters were gathered far from the gate where conference participants actually entered. But they got a shout out in the conference program as well. Julie Platt, the Jewish Federations’ board chair, drew a sustained round of applause and whooping from the 2,000 attendees when she spoke about how inspiring the protests were.
“What is clear is how passionate we all are about Israel and how central Israel is to our lives,” Platt said. “Its struggles our are struggles, its success is our success, and its debates are our debates. To the leaders of Israel, including those attending tonight, we stand united in our support of dialogue and broad consensus based on mutual respect.”
Then, she added, “To the protesters exercising their democratic rights, we see you, we hear you and we are inspired by your love of Israel.”
When the Jewish Federations last held the General Assembly in Israel, in 2018, Netanyahu sat onstage for a Q&A with the group’s chairman for more than half an hour. In Netanyahu’s absence this year, the night’s keynote speaker was Israeli President Isaac Herzog. His role is largely ceremonial, but he has been spearheading dialogue about the judicial overhaul — as well as issuing dire threats about what may happen if that dialogue fails.
Herzog repeated a version of those warnings Sunday night, portraying the debate over judicial reform as a cautionary tale about the dangers of polarization.
“The fierce debate over Israel’s direction in recent months is a striking example of the ways that alienation between different groups, and polarization that festers for years, becomes corrosive and weakens the pillars that hold our nation together,” he said. “I am convinced that there is no greater existential threat to our people than the one that comes from within.”
In his speech, Herzog announced an initiative called “Voice of the People” that will be aimed at fostering dialogue between Jews of differing opinions across Israel and the Diaspora. That initiative will be anchored by a conference he called the “Jewish Davos,” in a nod to the Switzerland-based annual economics conference that is seen as a global meeting of the minds.
“Nonpartisan, apolitical, Voice of the People will be a collaborative forum — one that can hold and reflect the full and diverse range of Jewish voices,” he said. “It will be a place where we can engage in serious, sensitive and strategic discussions on the most complex and pressing issues facing our people.”
If that conference happens, it would not be the first of its kind. Israeli President Shimon Peres, who served from 2007 to 2014, held an annual conference featuring famous names discussing hot-button issues. And historically, the federations’ General Assembly itself has been viewed as an ecumenical Jewish conference to discuss a wide range of issues.
Aside from that, the night’s program featured mainstays of traditional American Jewish gatherings celebrating Israel: a video with black-and-white stills from the country’s founding years, testimonials from Jewish immigrants to Israel from around the world, a performance by a musical group composed of Israeli soldiers. The conference will continue with a full day of sessions on Monday.
Near the end of the night, as the festivities were winding down, two people in the audience held up Israeli flags. One of them, in the corner, featured a quote from Israel’s national anthem that has become a protest slogan: “Free in our land.”
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Academic BDS Gains Ground in Europe, Poses Strategic Threat to Israel, New Report Warns
Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Advocates of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel have intensified efforts to sever ties between the European Union and Israeli academic institutions, according to a new bombshell report published on Thursday.
Israel’s Association of University Heads (VERA) Task Force to Combat Academic Boycotts said it has documented a surge in “academic BDS” activity across Europe and other Western countries, including the United States, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
VERA warned that mounting political pressure against Israel’s participation in the European Union’s Horizon Europe research initiative could increasingly influence the continent’s approach to academic cooperation with the Jewish state. The report went so far as to call Brussels’ stance on BDS “closer to establishing itself as an official foreign policy.”
Founded in 2021 as a seven-year EU project, Horizon Europe funds research related to sustainability, climate change, medicine, and emerging technologies. Israel’s participation in the multi-billion-euro initiative has long reflected both the country’s scientific reputation and its integration into major European research networks.
In recent years, however, several member states and activist groups have challenged Israel’s participation in the program, while the share of Horizon funding awarded to Israeli researchers has declined sharply.
According to VERA’s report, which covered the period from October 2025 to April 2026, there has been a 150 percent increase in efforts to exclude Israel from Horizon Europe.
In 2022, Israeli researchers received 5.4 percent of all Horizon grants. By 2025, that figure had fallen
to 2.5 percent — a decline of more than 50 percent.
“Israel’s participation in the ‘Horizon Europe’ association agreements is a strategic objective and
national goal of the State of Israel. For adversaries in this arena, this represents a major vulnerability
for Israel,” the report said.
It seems for this reason anti-Israel activists have specifically targeted the program. Indeed, VERA found that nearly 25 percent of all recent boycott reports were associated with Horizon Europe.
“Participation in the Horizon program provides not only an irreplaceable boost of valuable funding, but also enables Israeli researchers to establish research partnerships, maintain interactions with researchers from European countries and from countries outside Europe, and influence from within the scientific-academic agenda of Europe,” the report explained.
“This is the most prestigious and largest scientific club in the world,” VERA added. “Israel has earned a place within it, and every effort must be made to remain there in order to preserve scientific leadership and maintain our status as the ‘Start-Up Nation.’”
However, the BDS movement and other efforts to weaken Israel’s international standing create “a significant threat to Israel’s continued participation in the existing Horizon agreements,” VERA warned, “and a serious danger to its inclusion in the next Horizon agreements that will be signed during 2027 and implemented in 2028 for the years ahead.”
The report described the BDS movement’s string of victories as posing a “clear and immediate danger” to Israeli scientific and academic interests, while calling for a broader effort to improve public perceptions of Israel and its military operations in the Middle East.
VERA previously documented about 500 incidents of academic boycotts were reported just during the half-year through February 2025, a 66 percent increase compared to the six months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Since then, the onslaught has continued, although at a slower rate.
“There has been a relatively moderate increase in the number of reports concerning new academic
boycotts of all types, whether at the level of the individual researcher, the academic institution, or
professional associations. This is most likely the result of the fact that anyone who wished to boycott
Israeli researchers and institutions has already acted in this direction over the past two years, and
therefore, there are now fewer new participants in such boycotts,” VERA found.
“At the same time, there has been no decline in the scope or quantity of the existing boycotts. The
meaning is that the broad academic boycott trend continues, and there is clearly a pattern of
gradual strengthening,” the report added.
The initiatives included efforts to exclude Israeli academics from conferences, research collaborations, publications, and other forms of scholarly exchange.
In May 2024, for example, Ghent University in Belgium banned partnerships with Israeli universities altogether.
The exact number of academic boycotts remains unclear. According to the Israeli news outlet Ynet, which first reported on VERA’s latest findings, 1,120 boycott complaints were recorded during the period examined in the report. However, Daniel Chamovitz — president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a member of VERA — wrote that nearly 1,000 academic boycotts against Israeli universities have been recorded since the Oct. 7 attack, and a quarter of them came last summer.
“Academic boycotts do not pressure governments,” he posted on LinkedIn. “They isolate scientists. They sever the collaborations that science depends on, and they send a message to a generation of young researchers that their work is unwelcome. Not because of its quality, but because of their passport. That is not a political position. It is a betrayal of what science is for.”
The VERA report argued that the rise in academic boycott campaigns reflected a broader surge in antisemitism and anti-Zionist activism across Europe following the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, an overwhelming majority of 2,030 EU teachers surveyed in a study released in January said antisemitic incidents occur daily in classrooms and workplaces. Seventy-eight percent “encountered at least one antisemitic incident between students,” and 27 percent “witnessed nine or more such incidents.” Another 61 percent saw students promoting Holocaust denialism, while others reported students drawing or wearing Nazi symbols. Forty-two percent said they had witnessed “other teachers being antisemitic.”
Amid the academic boycott campaign, Europe has seen a relentless wave of antisemitic incidents on campuses across the continent.
At the University of Strasbourg, a group of Jewish students was assaulted by an individual shouting “Zionist fascists,” while the University of Vienna hosted an “Intifada Camp,” a pro-Hamas encampment.
At the Free University of Brussels campus in Solbosch, a pro-Hamas group illegally occupied an administrative building and renamed it after a terrorist. Elsewhere, anti-Zionist demonstrators damaged property to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros, desecrated Jewish religious symbols, graffitied Jewish students’ dormitories with swastikas, and assaulted Jewish student leaders.
Antisemitic violence in the streets of Europe’s major cities is perpetrated regularly, too. In July 2025, a group wielding knives attacked Jews walking home from an event on the Greek island of Rhodes. In Davos, Switzerland, a man spat on, attacked, and verbally abused a Jewish couple — behavior he reportedly repeated multiple times against other Jewish individuals.
Jewish communities across the West continue to face similar threats and require stronger governmental protections for their civil and human rights, the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combatting Antisemitism (SECCA) group proclaimed on Tuesday after convening in Geneva.
“Antisemitism is a threat to Jews — and that alone would be reason enough to fight it,” the group said.
“But it also erodes the very foundations of democratic societies: human rights, dignity, equality, and the rule of law. A society in which Jews cannot live openly and safely is one in which fundamental rights are under threat for everyone.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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The profound internal contradiction that could spell doom for Hillel
Shortly after I graduated from Swarthmore College, it became the first campus to formally break with Hillel International. The campus Jewish organization began, instead, to call themselves an “Open Hillel,” then rebranded entirely after the parent organization threatened legal action over a civil rights panel it deemed too critical of Israel.
Swarthmore Jewish students lost the name, but they kept their integrity. Jewish students at Middlebury just faced the same question. They answered it the same way. And they were right to do so.
What happened in Vermont is not just a local story about one campus organization. It is a story about a deep contradiction at the heart of Hillel International — one that the organization may no longer be able to sustain.
Hillel presents itself, publicly and forcefully, as the Jewish student organization at colleges and universities across the United States. It’s the home of Jewish campus life, where Jewish students celebrate the High Holidays, eat kosher meals, light Hanukkah candles and gather for Shabbat. It describes itself as the world’s largest Jewish campus organization, serving nearly 200,000 students at more than 850 colleges and universities. It is, at many of those colleges, the only such institution that exists.
Precisely because of that monopoly position, Hillel and its allies have argued — with some justification — that protests targeting Hillel are a form of antisemitism. To make Jewish students feel unwelcome at the one place on campus where they can observe their religious obligations, they argue, is to attack Jewish students as Jews, not merely to criticize a political organization.
That argument has real force. Jewish students deserve to celebrate their holidays without running a political gauntlet. No one should have to defend their views on the West Bank occupation before they can get a bowl of matzo ball soup.
But the problem is that Hillel is also an explicitly political organization. And as such, it should be fair game for protesters.
Hillel International has a mandatory political line that all affiliated chapters must enforce: Its guidelines declare that Hillel is “steadfastly committed to the support of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” and campus chapters are prohibited from partnering with or hosting any group or individual that supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, “delegitimizes” Israel by Hillel’s own definition, or questions Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
When the Middlebury Jewish students met with Hillel International representatives, they were told that board members must universally adopt the organization’s political values about Israel. Universally. There is no asterisk, no opt-out, no room for the challenging pluralism of Jewish life in 2026.
This, from an organization that recently used imagery showing the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as part of Israel, without distinguishing the West Bank and Gaza.
This is not a neutral cultural position. It is a political one, and a fairly aggressive one at that. Hillel sends students on trips to Israel through Birthright and similar programs and received $22 million from a $66 million Israeli government initiative called Mosaic International to promote pro-Israel sentiment in the U.S. These are choices a political organization makes.
So which is it? Is Hillel a cultural and religious organization that provides communal Jewish life for all students, in which case it has no business enforcing political litmus tests? Or is it a politically committed advocacy organization with a defined ideological position — in which case it cannot claim special immunity from protest on the grounds that criticizing it means attacking Jewish students’ ability to celebrate Passover?
The answer, uncomfortable as it is, is that Hillel is both. For students like those at Middlebury, the tension between those two identities has become impossible to manage. I suspect more will soon follow their lead.
This contradiction matters now more than ever, because the American Jewish community is changing.
A major recent survey by the Jewish Federations of North America found that 14% of Jews ages 18 to 34 identify as anti-Zionist. Even among younger Jews who support Israel’s existence, the survey found, less than half agreed that Israel makes them feel proud to be Jewish. The Jewish Electorate Institute’s most recent survey found that only about a third of American Jews self-identify as Zionist. As the government of Israel moves further and further to the right, the divide between American Jews and the state of Israel is only likely to grow.
Under current Hillel rules, the meaningful and growing number of Jewish students who identify as non-Zionist or anti-Zionist are effectively excluded. If they choose to participate, they are required to keep their politics at the door — but the organization doesn’t require the same of itself.
The Middlebury case illustrates the absurdity with unusual clarity.
The students’ discomfort with Hillel International began, they explained, after a November 2023 challah sale raised $656 for World Central Kitchen, an organization that provides food relief in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. That act of simple, universalist charity created friction with the chapter’s parent body. Co-president Caroline Jaffe put the stakes plainly: “How are we ever going to get to peace in Israel and Palestine if we can’t even have a Middlebury Jewish group and a Middlebury SJP” — Students for Justice in Palestine — “talk to each other in Vermont, pretty much as far removed as you could be?”
That should not be a radical question.
The solution is not to try to reform Hillel International from within; that project has been tried repeatedly, by the Open Hillel movement and others, and the structural incentives against change are too powerful. The solution is instead what the Middlebury students are pointing toward: decentralization.
Political pluralism within Jewish campus life is not a threat to Jewish students. It is a reflection of the actual diversity of Jewish opinion, which surveys consistently show to be far wider than Hillel International’s guidelines allow. An American Jewish community that can only cohere by suppressing internal dissent is far more fragile than one that has learned to argue openly and remain in relationship. The students at Middlebury, by renaming themselves the Jewish Association of Middlebury and insisting on a more pluralistic identity, are not abandoning Jewish community. They are building a community that is more honest about what it is and who it is for.
I remember the moment at Swarthmore when Jewish students stopped asking permission and started asking a different question: not “what will Hillel International allow?” but “what do our Jewish students actually need?” The answer turned out to be more interesting, more contested, and, in its way, more Jewish than anything the guidelines had room for.
The post The profound internal contradiction that could spell doom for Hillel appeared first on The Forward.
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US May Ask Israel to Put Palestinian Tax Money Toward Trump’s Gaza Plan, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump takes part in a charter announcement for his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The US is considering asking Israel to give some tax money it is withholding from the Palestinian Authority to Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to fund the US president’s post-war plan for Gaza, five sources familiar with the matter said.
The Trump administration has not yet decided whether to make a formal request to Israel, said three of the sources, officials with knowledge of US deliberations with Israel.
The two other sources, Palestinians with knowledge of the deliberations, said that under the proposal a portion of the tax money would go to a US-backed transitional government for Gaza and other funds to the PA if it makes reforms.
The PA puts the amount of tax being withheld at $5 billion.
The prospect of the Palestinians’ own tax money being repurposed toward Trump’s Gaza rebuilding plan, over which their government has had no input, could further sideline the Western-backed PA even as Israel‘s withholding of the funds begets a financial crisis in the West Bank.
The PA exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank but has not had any sway over Gaza since it was exiled from the territory after a brief civil war with terrorist group Hamas in 2007.
Trump’s plan for Gaza, shattered after more than two years of war, has been held up by a refusal by Hamas to lay down their weapons.
‘MONEY HELD IN A BANK DOES NOTHING’
The Board of Peace declined to comment on whether a proposal to use Palestinian tax money was under consideration.
A Board official said it had asked all parties to leverage resources to support Trump’s rebuild plan, estimated to cost $70 billion.
“That includes the Palestinian Authority and Israel. There is no doubt that money held in a bank does nothing to further the President’s 20-Point Plan,” the official said.
That appeared to refer to the PA tax revenue that Israel has withheld from the body in a long-running dispute over payments it makes to Palestinians and their families for carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Under this policy, official payments are made to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and Palestinians injured in terrorist attacks.
Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget has been allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
Israel collects taxes on imported goods on behalf of the PA and is meant to transfer the revenue under a longstanding arrangement. The PA is supposed to use the funds to pay civil servants and fund public services.
The sources did not say how much of the tax money Washington was considering asking Israel to transfer to the Board.
The US State Department, Israeli government, and PA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The US and Israel have long pressured the PA to abolish payments to Palestinian prisoners and families of those killed by Israeli forces, arguing it encourages violence.
In response to US pressure, the PA in February 2025 said it was reforming the payment system, but the US said those changes did not go far enough. As punishment, Israel has withheld taxes it collects on the PA’s behalf, an amount that Palestinian officials say has reached $5 billion – well over half of the PA’s annual budget.
That has set off a financial crisis in the West Bank, with the PA slashing salaries of thousands of civil servants.
Israel accepted a US invitation to join the Board of Peace. The PA was not invited.
Under Trump’s plan, a group of Palestinian technocrats dubbed the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza would take control of Gaza from Hamas as the terrorists lay down their weapons.
Nickolay Mladenov, Trump’s Board of Peace envoy for Gaza, said during a press conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday that reconstruction planning was in advanced stages.
“We’re doing it sector by sector. We’re costing things. We’re coordinating with donors and we’re ready to begin in earnest once the conditions allow it,” Mladenov said, without mentioning the tax issue.