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Conservative political activism has grown increasingly crusading. These Jews feel right at home.
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland (JTA) — A little more than a week ago, 120 Jews gathered at the Residence Inn in National Harbor, Maryland, to spend Shabbat together.
The Shabbaton, or programmed Shabbat, had a structure familiar to many observant Jews: Sabbath meals and prayer service options along with opportunities for group discussions and lectures. The vibe was also characteristic of observant Jewish gatherings on Friday afternoon: Frantic calls to family stuck in the Washington, D.C., area’s notorious Friday afternoon traffic, excited reunions in the lobby and a reverting to Hebrew-inflected Jewish vernacular.
“I come here to meet politically like minded Jews on a more spiritual level and for more like religious Jews, they express their political views and in a way that aligns with [their beliefs],” Jeremy Pollock, 33, said. “So it makes it all cohesive.”
The political views that Pollock alluded to are what set this Shabbaton apart from many others. The participants were there to attend CPAC, the annual conservative activist conference. And at the Gaylord National Resort conference center across the street from the Residence Inn, where the conference was being held, the atmosphere was starkly different.
The older, darker, slightly musty Residence Inn was packed with blocky furniture and buzzing with older staffers who were eager to help and to explain that yes, they understood about helping the Shabbat observant get to their rooms. In the conference center, the massive light-filled corridors across the street with overpriced eateries and harried younger staffers who were few and far between.
“This is a place for open dialogue on all topics,” said Mark Young, a Baltimore physician, noting that he still maintains a few of the liberal beliefs he grew up with, and would not hesitate to air them in the Jewish enclave. “I think it’s very much an open tent.” Pollock, who wears a kippah, said he has never been made to feel uncomfortable in his years of attending CPAC.
The attitude toward Jews at CPAC also felt different at times. One speaker called for mandatory Christian prayer at schools. Multiple sessions opened with Christian prayer. And “evil” was a word used repeatedly to describe George Soros, the Holocaust survivor, billionaire and philanthropist who funds liberal causes, and who even made it into the title of one of the events.
Paintings and prints depicting former President Donald Trump and Jesus are seen for sale on the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, March 02, 2023. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Soros wasn’t alone. “Evil” was also used frequently to describe liberals, Democrats, transgender activists and RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).
But some Jews at the event said they didn’t mind that kind of language. Instead of feeling alienated by calls for Christianity in the public square, or bristling at conspiratorial statements surrounding a leading Jewish progressive philanthropist, Jews at CPAC demonstrated that they felt welcome at an event — and within a larger right-wing political movement — whose rhetoric and aims have grown increasingly assertive.
“If you look at the archives, almost every year one of the opening prayers is delivered by a Jew,” said Yitzchok Tendler, an Atlanta-based rabbi who launched the Shabbat gatherings at CPAC and who has long been involved with the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. “Also any religious language would not be too different from what is heard in legislatures across the United States all the time.”
The conference also demonstrated a commitment to opposing virulent antisemitic rhetoric on the right. Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who Donald Trump had as a dinner guest last year (and who Trump later disavowed) attempted to enter the conference and was ejected.
“His hateful racist rhetoric and actions are not consistent with mission of CPAC,” Schlapp said in a statement. ”We are pleased that our conference welcomes a wide array of conservative perspectives from people of different backgrounds. But we are concerned about the rise in antisemitic rhetoric (or Jew hatred) in our country and around the globe, whether it be in the corridors of power and academia or through the online rantings of bigots like Fuentes.”
As an example of Jewish inclusion at the conference, Tendler referred to a panel at this year’s conference titled “A Rabbi, a Christian and a Cardinal walk into a Bar.” (The “cardinal” in this case was Deal Hudson, who is Catholic, which also makes him Christian, but is not a cardinal.)
Jack Brewer, a panelist who is a former NFL star, said “It’s up to the believer to preach the gospel of Jesus Chris, unabashedly.” Seated near him was his fellow panelist Rabbi Shlomo Chayen, a religious Zionist rabbi based in Tel Aviv who focuses his outreach on encouraging young couples to have a Jewish wedding.
Whether or not the references to Jesus made Chayen uncomfortable, that panel also showed one reason Jews may have felt at home at the conference. The moderator, Elaine Beck, a Christian podcaster, introduced Chayen by noting CPAC’s growing commitment to Israel, where it held an event last year.
“I want to say thank you for having me all the way from Israel, I want to to bless everyone here,” Chayen said, prompting a round of applause and oohs and ahhs from the audience.
The session also hinted at the tensions Jews face in negotiating such an event. Brewer advocated that schools, both public and private, should be required to offer parents the option of teaching children the Christian gospel.
“We should be demanding every single public, private school give parents an option to give their kids the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.
He also pushed for corporal punishment. “Some kids need their butts whooped!” he said. “Amen!” said Beck, to applause.
Chayen skillfully navigated what united the four people on the stage, a commitment to family. His work, he said, focuses on weddings and procreation. “Look at our children and grandchildren and know that we’re leaving behind the set of values that they will continue,” he said.
Another panel may have felt less welcoming to Jews — or to two Jews in particular. The session was titled “The New Axis of Evil: Soros, Schwab, and Fink,” referring to Soros’ Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, who is not Jewish); and Larry Fink, the CEO of the investment firm BlackRock, who is Jewish.
Much of the panel focused on ESG funding, an acronym for environmental, social and corporate governance funding, and the perils of using political criteria to determine investment. (That principle wasn’t universally upheld: A panel just two hours later promoted investment in businesses that embrace conservative and Christian causes.)
Despite the title of the program, Soros was the only name to come up during the conversation between former Trump White House spokesman Sean Spicer, Heritage Foundation think-tanker and former hamburger chain CEO Andrew Puzder and Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall. Spicer cast Soros as a sinister, all-pervasive presence.
“In the title of this [session] is Soros, and one of the things that I find fascinating is over the last several cycles. George Soros has created this web where he has gone into state government, whether it’s secretaries of state, local attorneys, and started to help fund the elections of a lot of these organizations, a lot of these individuals,” Spicer said.
The singular focus on Soros, among a batch of billionaires who fund the left, and the imagery and rhetoric attached to attacks on him — he is often depicted as maintaining secretive control, sometimes as an octopus — has led Jewish organizations to call out the obsession as at least borderline antisemitic.
There were two sessions devoted to Israel, one after the other, and because of delays, they came hard on the arrival of Shabbat. One featured David Milstein, an adviser to David Friedman, the Trump administration ambassador to Israel, and another featured Eugene Kontorovich, a George Mason University professor, and Josh Hammer, a conservative Newsweek editor whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled as “embracing the anti-democracy hard right,” who explained what they said were the stakes for conservatives in the current controversy over judiciary reforms in Israel.
Netanyahu’s proposed reforms, which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power, have triggered a political crisis, sparking weeks of massive protests in the country as well as acts of civil disobedience.
Kontorovich and Hammer made the case that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced the same nefarious elites that riled the conservatives at CPAC. “In Israel, there is a deep state,” Kontorovich said. “There’s a small group of elite lawyers and technocrats that have managed to control the country.”
Kontorovich told JTA it made sense to get into the weeds with the CPAC crowd.
“I believe the U.S. should stay out of its allies’ domestic governance, and it is particularly foolish to take sides in what are largely foreign domestic partisan disputes,” he said. “But as I said in my comments, now that the Biden Administration seems to be weighing in on the reform, it unfortunately becomes an issue for U.S. foreign policy, which those who care about Israel should have informed positions about.”
President Joe Biden has expressed his concern that Netanyahu’s proposed reforms would erode Israel’s democracy, as have almost half of Congressional Democrats and a majority of Jewish Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Support for Israel was one element that underscored the necessity of a Jewish presence at events like CPAC, said Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the managing director of the right-wing Orthodox rabbinical group the Coalition for Jewish Values.
“If you look at both the right and the left, there are voices that want to cut off aid to Israel,” Menken said in an interview. “And we know that Israel is a bastion of freedom and democracy in the Middle East and unlike most other countries where a US military presence is requested, Israel’s willing to do the work and have the boots on the ground all by themselves, they just need help to be that bastion of democracy.”
Another factor was making clear to conservatives that the Jewish community was not monolithically liberal, Menken said. “Jews need to make their presence known, especially in value spaces where there is a prevailing Jewish narrative that goes in the opposite direction,” he said. “They need to see, meaning the larger audience needs to see, that there are Jewish people who stand with them on those issues.”
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Hezbollah enters Iran war, firing on Israel’s north, as US officials say more fighting is to come
(JTA) — Hezbollah fired on Israel for the first time since a 2024 ceasefire on Sunday, opening a new front in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran that began on Saturday.
Israel hammered Hezbollah positions in Lebanon overnight and said it had killed the group’s head of intelligence, Hussein Makled. Israeli officials said they expected further salvos from the Iranian proxy to the north.
The escalation comes as new missile attacks from Iran caused fresh damage and injuries in Beersheba and as the scope of the damage from the first two days of the war have come into focus. That includes sweeping damage in central Tel Aviv, where one woman was killed; a direct strike on a shelter in Beit Shemesh that killed nine, including three teen siblings; and strikes in Jerusalem that both injured Arab Israelis and sent shrapnel close to the holy sites of the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Both Israeli and U.S. officials say they expect operations to last for some time, with President Donald Trump suggesting a four-week timeline even as he indicated that Iranian officials had indicated a willingness to return to the negotiating table. Iran’s top security official, whom Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had identified as a leader in the case of his assassination, denied Trump’s characterization.
Military officials including War Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday morning that they could not offer a timeline or details about the operations but said they were happy with the operations so far, which are designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and topple its Islamic Republic regime. Asked about the significance of the fact that Israel killed Khamenei, Hegseth responded, “I think Israel did a great job in the conduct of that operation.”
A fourth U.S. service member who was wounded over the weekend died on Monday, while multiple U.S. planes were shot down by friendly fire over Kuwait; their passengers survived.
The incident in Kuwait comes as Iran continues to fire on Arab states in the region, in a new escalation of regional conflict. An Iranian drone also crashed into a British base in Cyprus, causing Prime Minister Keir Starmer to agree to a U.S. request to use British bases to support efforts to destroy Iranian weapons. German Chancellor Frederich Merz is visiting Trump on Monday and may also agree to play a role in supporting the U.S.-Israeli operations.
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Jewish Democrats split over Trump’s Iran military strikes as Congress weighs war powers
The joint U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran, launched with a stealth strike early Saturday, has also prompted a political battle in Washington over waging war without authorization from Congress as required by the constitution.
President Donald Trump has offered mixed signals about the operation’s duration, suggesting that it could be prolonged but also floating a possible immediate return to negotiations with Tehran.
At least 10 Israelis and four U.S. servicemembers were killed in Iranian missile strikes over the weekend.
In recent weeks, as the likelihood of war loomed, Jewish Democrats on the Hill highlighted the need for congressional oversight and a formal vote before the U.S. deepens its role in a war with Tehran. Now, as Israeli civilians shelter under sirens and endure repeated missile strikes, the divide has sharpened between members of Congress with longstanding personal and political ties to Israel and those firmly opposed to expanding American involvement in another Middle East conflict.
The divide reflects wider tensions within the Democratic Party in the wake of the Gaza war that are likely to shape the midterm elections. Recent national polls show that Democratic voters as a group have become less sympathetic to the Jewish state. The latest Gallup annual survey found that only 17% of Democrats sympathize more with the Israelis in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while 65% say they are more aligned with the Palestinians. A new Reuters poll showed that 74% of Democrats disapprove of the attack on Iran, and 87% of them think Trump is willing “too much” to use military force to advance U.S. interests.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, called the joint US-Israeli mission an “illegal” and unjustified war that “will bring needless death and destruction.” Nadler is among 84 members who co-sponsored the bipartisan War Powers Resolution, introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, an open critic of Israel. The measure reasserts the 1973 war powers law, which would limit the president’s ability to deploy U.S. forces or declare war without congressional approval.
The House and the Senate could vote on such a measure this week, though the Republican leadership is opposed to it.
“Congress must do everything in our power to stop Trump from continuing his illegal war,” Nadler said in his statement on Saturday. ”I will vote to pass the resolution to bring an end to these illegal attacks, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.”
In contrast, Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Jared Moskowitz of Florida, two Democrats who have at times crossed party lines in support of Israel, have offered forceful support for action against the Iranian regime both before and after the strikes began.
But after previously declaring their opposition to congressional restrictions, Gottheimer is now urging the Trump administration to follow the war powers law, while Moskowitz is asking the president to follow the provision that requires briefing the full Congress within 48 hours of military action. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida echoed Moskowitz, saying that Trump should immediately consult and fully brief Congress before any further action is taken. “President Trump does not possess a blank check to act without consulting Congress or telling the American people what comes next,” she said.
Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, the other co-chair of the Jewish Caucus, said he shifted his position in favor of the war powers resolution after Trump ordered the first wave of strikes in Iran and supported the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei without any engagement with Congress. Yet, like House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he did not explicitly condemn the strikes.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan highlighted Trump’s lack of communication in a speech on Saturday. “He’s taken more military action in his first year than any president in our history,” Slotkin, a former CIA intelligence analyst who served three tours in Iraq, said.
“He’s really become a foreign policy president. He seems to like it and seems to sort of easily engage in it,” added Slotkin, a former Pentagon official who served in the Central Intelligence Agency. “I don’t think he’s interested in the views of many others beyond his maybe inner circle. But whether it’s Venezuela or Iran or the Caribbean, he has shown that he is quick to military action, quicker than most presidents we’ve seen in their first year.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a longtime critic of U.S. military action and Israeli policy, claimed that Israel and Saudi Arabia pressured the United States into attacking Iran. He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s authoritarian rule are at odds with their declared support for freedom in Iran.
What Jewish groups are saying
The divide was reflected in the statements from Democratic-aligned Jewish groups. The Jewish Democratic Council of America said the need to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions requires close coordination with Congress and said it backed the bipartisan measure to limit Trump’s executive powers. “We are gravely concerned about the safety and security of American troops, Israelis, and other civilians in the region, given the lack of a clearly articulated strategy from this White House about its military objectives and what comes next,” JDCA said in a statement.
Meanwhile, J Street, the self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace organization, said it was opposed to open-ended military action, claiming “Iran does not present an imminent threat that requires launching a ‘preventive’ war.”
Speaking at J Street’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland thanked the Jewish advocacy group for its stance on the war. “I would argue it’s not in the interest of the people of Israel or the region.” He added, “We should not be sending America into war for the political ambitions of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Saudi Crown Prince.”
The Democratic Majority for Israel called the action against Iran a “positive development.” It also urged the Trump administration to consult with Congress and outline a “credible plan” to prevent escalation and “clear criteria for success and drawdown.”
National Democrats on the war in Iran
Jewish Democratic leaders outside of Congress, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — all considered possible presidential candidates in 2028 — also chimed in.
“Americans asked for affordable housing and health care, not another potentially endless conflict,” Pritzker posted on X.
Shapiro, whose staunch defense of Israel and criticism of the pro-Palestinian protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks made him a target of progressive backlash, criticized Trump for what he described as a lack of clear objectives and insufficient international backing for the mission.
Emanuel, who was White House chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, said Trump’s remarks that he would seek regime change were a declaration of war that required authorization. It’s a change of government and overthrowing a government,” he said on CNN. “This is not a limited military action.”
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Irish Jews report 143 antisemitic incidents in 6 months through a new reporting system
(JTA) — Jews in Ireland reported over 100 antisemitic incidents through a communal reporting system within six months after it launched, according to a new report.
The findings published early Monday by the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland constitute the first attempt to document antisemitic incidents in Ireland.
Irish Jews, a small community of about 2,200, reported 143 incidents between July 2025 and January 2026. These were dominated by verbal abuse, vandalism, threats, exclusion or discrimination and direct digital hate messages. Physical assault was less common, with only three instances reported.
All incidents were self-reported to the JRCI, which cannot independently investigate or adjudicate them. Ireland does not have an official state mechanism for recording antisemitic incidents, the group said. And while the police record hate crimes based on nationality, ethnicity or religion, they do not isolate crimes motivated by antisemitism.
The JRCI said that 30% of incidents were triggered by cues of Jewish identity or Israeli origin, such as a Jewish symbol, an accent or speaking Hebrew in public. Such patterns often crossed the boundaries of hate driven by nationality, ethnicity and religion.
“These dynamics cannot be adequately addressed through generalized anti-racism frameworks alone,” JRCI chair Maurice Cohen said in a statement. “Antisemitism presents distinct characteristics requiring targeted policy responses.”
Cohen called for “a dedicated, standalone national plan to combat antisemitism in Ireland.”
Of the reported incidents, 25 included “Holocaust distortion” or antisemitic conspiracy theories. These findings add to a Claims Conference survey in January, which said that 9% of Irish adults believed the Holocaust was a myth, while another 17% believed the number of Jews killed had been greatly exaggerated. Half of Irish adults did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
At the same time, a November 2025 survey by the European Commission surfaced broad recognition of antisemitism in Ireland. 41% of respondents said that antisemitism was a problem in the country and 47% said it had increased over the past five years.
At a ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, Ireland’s taoiseach (or prime minister) Micheál Martin said, “I am acutely conscious that our Jewish community here in Ireland is experiencing a growing level of antisemitism. I know that elements of our public discourse has coarsened.”
Martin has strenuously criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying at the United Nations last year that Israel committed genocide and demonstrated “an abandonment of all norms, all international rules and law.” Catherine Connolly, a socialist politician who has faced backlash for saying Hamas is “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people,” was elected as Ireland’s president in October.
Ireland has historically supported the Palestinians, a stance often linked to the country’s own history of British imperial rule, and formally recognized a Palestinian state in 2024.
In Martin’s Holocaust commemoration speech, he also condemned the most recent event to inflame the Irish Jewish community. Late last year, a proposal to rename Herzog Park in Dublin — named for Chaim Herzog, the son of the first Irish chief rabbi who became Israel’s sixth president in 1983 — was decried by Irish Jews who said it would erase Irish Jewish history. The proposal was later tabled.
Martin, who also denounced the proposal when it was active, said the Jewish community “has every right to be deeply concerned and to express that concern.”
Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization and an Irish Jew who grew up in Dublin, said the JRCI report showed a picture of antisemitic incidents that were separate from “a debate about the policies of Israel or a debate about the Palestinian state.”
“When you have discontinuation of service because somebody is heard speaking Hebrew, or has a Jewish-identifying symbol on them, that’s not about a political position on the spectrum towards Israel,” said Taylor. “That’s something that crosses into antisemitism.”
Ireland’s chief rabbi Yoni Wieder said the report reflected experiences he already heard from his congregants.
“The report does not claim that antisemitism has become a daily reality for all Jewish people in Ireland — it has not,” said Wieder. “What it does show is that antisemitism surfaces often enough, and in ordinary enough settings, that it cannot be dismissed as rare or confined to the margins of society. This means that for many, Jewish belonging in Ireland feels more fragile than it should.”
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