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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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Australia Invites Israeli President for Official Visit, Set to Pass New Gun, Hate Speech Laws After Boni Attack
People attend the ‘Light Over Darkness’ vigil honoring victims and survivors of a deadly mass shooting during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday he called Israeli President Isaac Herzog and invited him to visit Australia, expressing his shock and dismay over the attack at the Jewish community Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach last week.
Herzog said he would accept the invitation, conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims, and mentioned that the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia also sent him an official invitation expressing their wish for him to visit, and he intends to do so, Albanese said in a post on X.
Herzog conveyed his condolences to the families of the victims and said he would accept the invitation, the president‘s office said in a statement.
“President Herzog underscored the importance of taking all legal measures to combat the unprecedented rise in antisemitism, extremism, and jihadist terror,” the statement said.
News of the planned visit comes as Australia‘s most populous state is set to pass tougher gun laws, ban the display of terrorist symbols, and curb protests in an emergency sitting following the Bondi mass shooting, as authorities stepped up their response to the antisemitic attack.
Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured in the mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi on Dec. 14, a shock attack that prompted calls for tougher gun laws and stronger action against antisemitism.
Albanese said earlier on Tuesday his government would address hate speech and gun control, working with the states on new laws.
The terrorism and other legislation amendment bill is expected to clear the upper house of the New South Wales parliament on Tuesday.
The state’s center-left Labor government has proposed capping most individual gun licenses at four firearms with farmers allowed as many as 10.
Police said one of the alleged Bondi gunmen, Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot dead by officers at the scene, owned six firearms. His 24-year-old son Naveed, who was transferred from hospital to prison on Monday, faces 59 charges, including murder and terrorism.
Although Australia tightened gun laws after a 1996 shooting that killed 35 people, a police firearms registry showed more than 70 people in New South Wales, which includes Sydney, each own more than 100 guns. One license holder has 298 weapons.
A Sydney Morning Herald poll on Tuesday found three-quarters of Australians want tougher gun laws. The rural-focused Nationals Party opposed the gun reforms in New South Wales, saying the amendments would disadvantage farmers.
A Muslim prayer hall previously linked by a court to a cleric who made statements intimidating Jewish Australians was shut on Monday by local authorities, a move described by New South Wales Premier Chris Minns as an “important step” for the community.
Minns said authorities “need to make decisive steps, whether it’s through planning law or hate speech [law], to send the message to those who are intent on putting hate in people’s heart or spreading racism in our community that they will be met with the full force of the law.”
The Canterbury Bankstown Council said on Tuesday it had issued a “cease use” directive to shut down an “illegal prayer hall” run by cleric Wissam Haddad after surveillance of the Al Madina Dawah Centre showed the premises was being used in violation of planning laws.
An official at the center told Reuters by telephone that Haddad was no longer involved in managing the center.
The Al Madina Dawah center said in a statement on social media on Dec. 15 that Haddad’s involvement was “limited to occasional invitations as a guest speaker, including delivering lectures, and at times Friday sermons.”
A source close to Haddad, who declined to be named, also told Reuters the preacher was no longer involved in the management of the center.
Haddad denies any involvement or knowledge of what happened in Bondi, the source added.
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Two Men Found Guilty of UK Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews as ISIS Fears Grow
Surveillance image showing Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, pictured near Dover, as they have been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout surveillance image dated May 8, 2025. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were found guilty on Tuesday of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community in England, a planned attack investigators say demonstrates the resurgent risk posed by the terrorist group.
Police and prosecutors said Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who went on trial a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the nearby northwest city of Manchester in October, were Islamic extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could.
Had their plans come to fruition, it would have resulted in “one of, if not the, deadliest terrorist attack in UK history,” said Assistant Chief Constable Robert Potts, in charge of Counter-Terrorism Policing in northwest England.
Their convictions come little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Islamic State said the Australian attacks were a “source of pride.” Although the jihadist group did not claim responsibility, its response has heightened fears of an increase in violent Islamist extremism.
While not posing the same threat of a decade ago when Islamic State controlled vast areas of Iraq and Syria, European security officials caution that IS and affiliated al Qaeda groups are once again looking to export violence abroad, radicalizing would-be attackers online.
“You can see signs of some of those terrorism threats starting to grow again and starting to escalate,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said last week.
TWO MEN PREPARED TO BECOME MARTYRS
British prosecutors told jurors that Saadaoui and Hussein had “embraced the views” of Islamic State and were prepared to risk their own lives in order to become “martyrs.”
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol, and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles, another pistol and collect at least 900 rounds. Unbeknown to him, a man known as “Farouk” he was trying to get the weapons from was an undercover operative, which police said meant his plan never came close to being put into operation.
Sandhu said the assault rifles Saadaoui wanted were similar to those used in a 2015 Islamist terror attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris that killed 130 people. He added that Saadaoui “hero-worshipped” Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who coordinated that attack.
Saadaoui said in a message to “Farouk,” whom he thought was a fellow militant, that the Paris attack was “the biggest operation after that of Osama [bin Laden]”, an apparent reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States.
“Based on Walid’s communications and interactions with the undercover operative, and some of the things he said, that made it very clear that he regarded a less sophisticated attack with less lethal weaponry as not being good enough,” Potts said.
“Because, in effect, it was his role and his duty to kill as many Jewish people as he could, and that wasn’t going to be achieved via the use of a knife or, for example, potentially a vehicle as a weapon.”
Both Saadaoui and Hussein had pleaded not guilty and Saadaoui said that he had played along with the plot out of fear for his life.
Hussein did not give evidence and barely attended his trial after he angrily shouted from the dock on the first day “how many babies?” in an apparent reference to Israel’s war in Gaza.
They were convicted in Preston Crown Court on a single charge of preparing terrorist acts.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 36, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism but prosectors said he had been reluctant to join the attack.
ISLAMIC STATE THREAT GROWING
The foiled plot is the latest in Britain and elsewhere inspired by Islamic State, which emerged in Iraq and Syria a decade ago and quickly created a “caliphate,” declaring its rule over all Muslims and largely displacing al Qaeda.
At the height of its power from 2014-17, Islamic State held swathes of the two countries, ruling over millions of people and imposing a strict, brutal interpretation of Islamic sharia law.
Its fighters also carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world, which were often claimed by Islamic State even without any actual connection.
The SITE Intelligence Group said in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia that IS had encouraged Muslims to take action elsewhere, particularly singling out Belgium.
A European intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said IS was flooding social media with propaganda and while this impacted only a handful of people, it meant there were more terrorism investigations than last year.
Ken McCallum, head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, said in October that his service and the police had thwarted 19 late-stage attack plots since the start of 2020, and intervened to counter many hundreds of other terrorism threats.
“Terrorism breeds in squalid corners of the internet where poisonous ideologies, of whatever sort, meet volatile, often chaotic individual lives,” McCallum said.
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Syria Detains Prominent American Islamist Journalist, Sources Say
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a Ministerial formation of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, in Damascus, Syria, March 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
A prominent American Islamist journalist who has been critical of Syria‘s new government and its nascent partnership with the United States has been detained by Syrian security forces, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Bilal Abdul Kareem, a former stand-up comedian in the US turned war journalist who has lived in Syria since 2012 and worked with many foreign media outlets, was detained in Al-Bab in northern Aleppo province on Monday, they said.
Syria‘s information ministry, an interior ministry spokesperson, and a spokesperson for the US special envoy to Syria did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Abdul Kareem has been a prominent voice among foreign Islamists in Syria, giving air to hardliners who view President Ahmed al-Sharaa – who once commanded Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria – as compromising too much on Islamic values since taking power.
In August, Abdul Kareem petitioned the Syrian state to give citizenship to foreign jihadists among the rebels who swept to power with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that ousted autocratic President Bashar al-Assad a year ago.
The fate of foreign fighters has loomed large since then, with few countries willing to take back people they often view as extremists and some Syrians wary of their presence.
Al-Sharaa’s government has progressively limited their space for expression, detaining several, including some with a significant online presence.
In Abdul Kareem’s latest video, he criticized Syria‘s decision to join the US-led global coalition fighting Islamic State. The video was published a day after a gunman said by the US and Syria to have been a member of Islamic State killed two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter in eastern Syria. IS has not directly claimed responsibility for the attack.
In the video posted on X, Abdul Kareem begins: “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, and it probably is going to get me in trouble, but here is the reality. The Americans have no legitimate reasons to be here.”
He adds: “We simply cannot legitimize the presence of the enemy, and I said America is the enemy of the Syrian people.”