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Democratic Socialists of America Rescinds Endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Over Israel Stance
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Photo: Mike Jourdan/Flickr.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a left-wing political organization that counts members of the US Congress among its ranks, has pulled its endorsement of US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) over what it described as insufficient support for the Palestinian cause.
The organization issued a statement on Wednesday night announcing it would no longer back Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection bid this fall. The group explained that its initial endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) was conditioned upon the congresswoman satisfying several demands: publicly opposing all funding to Israel including its Iron Dome air defense system, publicly supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, opposing all policies that would “criminalize” anti-Zionism, and participating regularly in the DSA Federal Socialists in Office Committee.
“Because we have not seen evidence of AOC meeting these conditions, and at the request of the [New York City DSA Steering Committee], the [National Political Committee] is withdrawing our conditional endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, although she will remain endorsed by our New York City chapter,” the DSA wrote.
DSA continued, explaining that over the past several months the organization’s members have deliberated over whether to extend AOC an endorsement. DSA members expressed a greater desire for AOC to fight harder for so-called “Palestinian liberation.”
“Many members have supported national endorsement while at the same time demanding that AOC demonstrate a higher level of commitment to Palestinian liberation, self-determination, and the immediate end to the heinous genocide in Gaza committed by Israel that aligns with DSA’s positions and expectations of socialists in office,” the group wrote.
AOC’s decision to co-host an event with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), a Jewish organization that champions progressive policies, was the final straw for DSA. The organization took issue with the JCPA’s endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
IHRA, an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel, adopted a non-legally binding “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and well over 1,000 global entities, from countries to companies. The US State Department, the European Union, and the United Nations all use it.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
IHRA provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
“Finally, AOC recently hosted a public panel with leaders from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, lobbyists for the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” DSA wrote. “On this panel, she conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism and condemned boycotting Zionist institutions. This sponsorship is a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide through political and direct action in recent months, and in decades past.”
Last month, AOC participated in a livestream event with JCPA CEO Amy Spitalnick and member Stacy Burdett to discuss the surge of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US in the months following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks against Israel. During the event, AOC agreed with Spitalnick that antisemitism has seeped into progressive circles and asked how to best mitigate it.
AOC has long been one of Israel’s harshest critics in Congress. The New York congresswoman has previously called Israel an “apartheid state” and suggested the Jewish state could be enacting a “genocide” in Gaza. She has also expressed support for the anti-Israel protests on college campuses across the United States and repeatedly called for both a “ceasefire” in Gaza and the cessation of US arms transfers to Israel.
However, much to the chagrin of anti-Israel hardliners, AOC has condemned Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza by slaughtering over 1,200 people throughout southern Israel on Oct. 7. She has also acknowledged the mass rape of Israeli women on Oct. 7, an atrocity that many anti-Israel leftist deny happened. AOC has endorsed US President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign despite his support for Israel’s ongoing defensive military operations against Hamas, which rules Gaza.
The post Democratic Socialists of America Rescinds Endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Over Israel Stance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Lawmaker Says Washington Funding Taliban, Pens Letter Urging Trump to Halt Aid
US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) on Dec. 5, 2024. Photo: Mattie Neretin / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) recently penned a letter to President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Washington is “funneling” money to the Taliban government in Afghanistan and calling on his incoming administration to stop such foreign aid, citing the Taliban’s extensive history of supporting Islamist terrorism.
“I write to express my strong concerns with foreign aid being funneled to the Taliban and my desire to work with your administration to stop tax dollars from going to terrorists,” Burchett wrote in the letter dated Jan. 2. “It was brought to my attention the US State Department, under the Biden administration, was funneling money to the Taliban.”
Burchett claimed that after questioning US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the top American diplomat “admitted that non-governmental organizations paid nearly $10 million of foreign aid to the Taliban in taxes.”
The lawmaker said that sending foreign aid to the Taliban undermines US national security, arguing that American government agencies are incapable of tracking how the Islamist movement spends US dollars.
“The larger issue, which Secretary Blinken failed to acknowledge, is the shipments of cash payments in United States dollars to Afghanistan’s central bank,” Burchett wrote. “These cash shipments are auctioned off and after that, they are nearly impossible to track. This is how the Taliban is being funded and plans to fund terrorism around the world.”
We have got to quit funding the Taliban under @realDonaldTrump. $40 million a week to our enemies is a slap in the face to those who served. pic.twitter.com/MVgMnSo1Gn
— Rep. Tim Burchett (@RepTimBurchett) January 6, 2025
The lawmaker did not provide any direct evidence in the letter to support his claims, although the US has provided extensive aid to Afghanistan. According to an October 2023 report from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US has provided nearly $2 billion in humanitarian assistance for Afghans since mid-August 2021, making Washington the largest humanitarian donor in Afghanistan. It is unclear how much of that money has ended up in the hands of the Taliban, which the US and other countries have designated as a terrorist group.
“The United States of America should not fund its enemies abroad. I implore you to take action to put an end to wasteful foreign aid spending and to support efforts in Congress to put Americans first,” Burchett wrote. “I look forward to working with you during your second term as president.”
Burchett added that he plans on reintroducing legislation that would require the State Department to “discourage foreign countries from providing financial or material support to the Taliban, and to report on direct-cash assistance programs and Taliban influence over Afghanistan’s central bank.”
He claimed that while the bill — first introduced in 2023 — passed the US House “unanimously,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Following the release of Burchett’s letter, billionaire and X/Twitter owner Elon Musk, who will serve in the Trump administration as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, sparked a debate online regarding the allegations.
“Are we really sending US taxpayer money to the Taliban?” Musk wrote on X on Monday.
The distribution of American taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan has emerged as a hot-button issue for Republicans in recent months. In December, US Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) blasted Blinken over the transfer of US dollars to the country.
“There’s an American citizen out there, literally woke up this morning losing 30% of their paycheck. And a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban or other programs abroad,” Mast said. “And this is something that we all need to think about, and we will be thinking about deeply for the next two years. There’s a joke that’s made often out there about kids going to college to learn basket weaving, and what a joke that would be. But the United States right now is literally sending tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban. 14.9 million, to be exact, to teach Afghans how to do carpet weaving.”
“Even worse, by the numbers, we spent $9 billion to resettle 90,000 roughly Afghan refugees here since the fall of Afghanistan. My simple Army math tells me that’s about $100,000 a person. That’s absurd. So my question for you. We do not even have an embassy in Afghanistan. We have no diplomats there. What are we doing giving them $1?” Mast continued.
The Taliban infamously provided a safe haven for al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks and was accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group afterward. A US-led military coalition subsequently removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001.
In 2021, however, the Taliban once again seized power in Afghanistan, amid US President Joe Biden’s military withdrawal from the country.
The post US Lawmaker Says Washington Funding Taliban, Pens Letter Urging Trump to Halt Aid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A new style of magazine is coming from The CJN in 2025
When The Canadian Jewish News launched in 1960, it was as a weekly print newspaper. (Sample front-page headline: “Cannot Locate the Organizer of Toronto’s Mysterious ‘Exclusive’ Jewish Golf Club.”) Over the decades, it covered countless community events and developments, shut down and was reborn, moved from weekly to daily, and expanded beyond the written word.
The CJN’s relaunch, in 2021, took place in an entirely different media landscape than in 1960. News was instantaneous and most of it was read on screens or listened to through headphones; The CJN made the most of the immediacy and connection this new world offered: a daily news website and a slate of podcasts ensured that the community was always up-to-date.
That didn’t mean that print had lost its purpose or value, and so editorial staff developed a quarterly magazine to ensure that readers who were looking for deep dives and visual storytelling, who wanted to sit down and take their time with reporting and analysis, would still have a venue for doing just that.
When The CJN approached me about reimagining that magazine, it was still in the throes of mid-pandemic strictures. Our first meetings were held on park benches, and they were to discuss a fascinating challenge: how to make a genuinely contemporary Jewish magazine, one that is steeped in love for our heritage and also clear-eyed about the changing world around us, one that understands tradition and also speaks to younger generations. For a magazine editor — and for someone who grew up with The CJN but hadn’t, in all honesty, looked at it much as an adult — it was a remarkable chance to think through important questions about the function of journalism and about modern life as a Jewish Canadian.
I am thrilled to announce that the next chapter in The CJN’s own story — the culmination of those first park bench conversations and dozens more we’ve had since — will be unveiled this spring. This reimagined magazine is born of two years of reflection and brainstorming, research and design, developed by CJN veterans and newcomers like myself. It is our best effort to create a genuinely honest, open forum for Jewish Canadians of all persuasions, identities, and experiences to come together to learn from and about each other.
We are calling the redesigned magazine Scribe Quarterly — a name that both hearkens to tradition and evokes the journalistic goals we will be pursuing. We’ll be covering everything from politics to religion, education to food culture. We’re envisioning it as a reader’s guide to the contemporary Jewish world, and it will be landing in your mailboxes this spring. You can get a copy delivered to you, for free, by clicking here.
Hamutal Dotan
Editor in Chief
Scribe Quarterly
The post A new style of magazine is coming from The CJN in 2025 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Holocaust Memorial in Poland Dedicated to Warsaw Ghetto Vandalized With Red Spray Paint Condemning Gaza War
The Umschlagplatz monument in Warsaw, Poland. Photo: IMAGO/Schöning via Reuters Connect
A monument in Poland dedicated to the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto was vandalized with a message that compared the extermination of Polish Jews during the Holocaust to Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Vandals spray-painted “Warsaw 1943 = Gaza 2025” onto the Umschlagplatz monument in Warsaw, which commemorates the site where more than 300,000 Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Polish media reported that a representative from the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews contacted Polish authorities about the vandalism on Friday and police said they were looking for the perpetrators.
Israel’s Ambassador to Poland Yacov Livne called the vandalism “shameful” in a post on X, and urged Polish authorities to find the vandals and hold them accountable for their actions. “Poland has a special responsibility to protect Jewish & Holocaust sites,” he wrote.
Shameful vandalism at Warsaw’s memorial for 300,000 (!) Jews deported to Treblinka. Poland has a special responsibility to protect Jewish & Holocaust sites; hold vandals accountable. pic.twitter.com/4No1PI7ZXd
— Amb. Yacov Livne
(@YacovLivne) January 7, 2025
Other Holocaust memorials in Poland have also been vandalized since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. In December, a 36-foot-tall memorial that honors the Jewish fighters who revolted against the Germans during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 was also desecrated with red spray paint. Livne as well as Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced the vandalism on social media.
“The MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] strongly condemns the act of vandalism aimed at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes — a symbol of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and Jewish resistance against German Nazism,” the ministry wrote on X. “Such acts are an attack on history and the values that unite us as a society.”
The European Jewish Congress also condemned the desecration in a post on X. “The vandalism of the Warsaw Ghetto monument is a disgraceful act that disrespects Holocaust victims. We hope authorities will investigate thoroughly and bring those responsible to justice,” the social media post read. “Acts like this highlight the ongoing need for education and vigilance against hate.”
The post Holocaust Memorial in Poland Dedicated to Warsaw Ghetto Vandalized With Red Spray Paint Condemning Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.