Uncategorized
Far-right Israeli minister finds enemy in JDC, the mainstream American Jewish aid group
(JTA) — An American Jewish group that has provided aid to Jewish communities in crisis for more than a century has become the target of one of Israel’s newly empowered far-right ministers.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, who serves as national security minister, said on Wednesday that he was shutting down a program dedicated to reducing violence in Arab Israeli towns. His reason: The program is operated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which he called a “leftist organization.”
“JDC is a nonpolitical organization and has been so since our founding in 1914,” Michael Geller, a spokesperson for JDC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Ben-Gvir’s characterization baffled many across the Jewish communal world who know the JDC as a nonpartisan group with an extensive track record of providing humanitarian aid to Jews in distress.
To them, Ben-Gvir’s criticism of the group is the latest sign that the rupture of political norms in Israel extends beyond the judicial reforms advanced by the government, which have drawn unprecedented protests.
“To call the JDC a left-wing organization is a joke. It is not political in any way,” said Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, co-CEO of the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit that works toward an “equal and shared society” for Jewish and Arab Israelis.
Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, who is Jewish, said he anticipated changes by the right-wing government, which was inaugurated in December. But he was surprised by Ben-Gvir’s announcement.
“I could expect revisiting collaboration with organizations that are branded as civil rights or human rights or Israeli-Palestinian organizations,” he added. “But the JDC — it’s very strange.”
Founded in 1914 by the American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff to aid Jews living in Palestine, the “Joint” has distributed billions of dollars in assistance across 70 countries — including, over the last year, to 43,000 Ukrainian Jews amid the war there. It played a central role in aiding Holocaust survivors following World War II, as well as in the resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Among its biggest sources of support are Jewish federations, the nonpartisan umbrella charities found in nearly every major North American Jewish community.
“JDC is an apolitical organization that has worked with every government since the establishment of the State of Israel, providing critical services to the elderly, youth-at-risk, people with disabilities and other underserved populations across all sectors, including Haredim and Arab-Israelis,” the Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement. “JDC’s activities are a living and breathing example of the Jewish values of tikkun olam and tzedakah that guide Jewish Federations’ work every day,” Hebrew phrases that connote the Jewish imperative to repair the world, as well as charity.
JDC staff packing matzahs and haggadahs for online seders in Odessa, Ukraine, April 7, 2022. (JDC)
In Israel, the group funds and operates efforts to help needy populations — including immigrants, the elderly, people with disabilities and people living in poverty. Those efforts often involve working with the government, which in 2007 gave the JDC Israel’s most prestigious prize for its work. This year, according to a spokesman, the group is spending $129 million on Israel initiatives.
The JDC’s government-funded programs include the anti-violence effort that Ben-Gvir is targeting. It was made possible last year due to nearly $1 billion in funding to curb crime in Arab communities by the previous governing coalition, which was centrist. The allocation followed lobbying by Arab and civil society organizations, including the Abraham Initiatives, which is now monitoring how the money is being used as well as its impact.
Arab citizens of Israel make up 84% of crime victims despite comprising just 20% of the population, according to government data released last year that showed a sharp rise in the proportion of Arab Israelis who had experienced violent crime.
Many in Arab communities have called for heightened law enforcement and have charged Israeli police with making inadequate efforts to keep their communities safe. This week, commenting on the shooting death of an Arab Israeli woman, Arab Israeli opposition lawmaker Ahmad Tibi accused Ben-Gvir of being “occupied with other matters,” such as clashes with the attorney general and police officials in Tel Aviv. “Maybe the time has come for senior officials to demonstrate responsibility when it comes to crime organizations and weapons running rampant,” Tibi said.
Other initiatives have aimed to tackle the violence in ways that go beyond policing. The program that Ben-Gvir said he is shutting down is one of them. Called Stop the Bleeding, it involves multiple government ministries as well as local community groups and education efforts and has operated in seven cities with large Arab populations, including a Bedouin town and Lod, a city with significant Arab organized crime networks that also has a large Jewish population.
Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said the program was already starting to bear fruit and had contributed to a slowdown in a multi-year rise in murders. Canceling the program, he said, reflects the current government’s general approach to tackling Israel’s problems.
“It’s not about collaboration. It’s not about hearing the concerns and pain and hopes and needs of the Arab community,” he said. “It’s about doing everything unilaterally, and really without a lot of care for the lives of those people. I think that’s what we are watching.”
MK Ahmad Tibi attends a meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Dec. 6, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
A year ago, around the time when the previous government awarded the Stop the Bleeding contract to the JDC, Bezalel Smotrich, a key Ben-Gvir ally who was then an opposition lawmaker and now serves alongside Ben-Gvir as finance minister, proposed that Israel create a “command center” of “all of the relevant entities” that provide humanitarian assistance to Ukrainian Jewish refugees. Included on his list, alongside the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Red Cross: the JDC.
The JDC is not the first mainstream group to be targeted by far-right members of Israel’s new right-wing government, whose signature legislative effort aims to sap the power and independence of the country’s judiciary. That legislation has given rise to a sweeping protest movement and to grave warnings about Israel’s future from a broad range of public figures — including elder statesmen, foreign governments and religious leaders.
Avi Maoz, the leader of the anti-LGBTQ Noam Party who briefly held a leadership role in Israel’s Education Ministry, compiled a list of American and British groups that he believes are trying to impose their liberal values on Israeli schoolchildren. “We must protect our people and our state from the infiltration of the alien bodies that arrive from foreign countries, foreign bodies, foreign foundations,” Maoz once said. Maoz has since resigned from that role, saying that he did not think he was being sufficiently empowered to fulfill his goals by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
But Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said he remains concerned about civil-society programs, especially those falling under the purview of far-right ministers including Ben-Gvir or those funded by American Jews, whom some on the right perceive as universally liberal.
People who are paying attention to local governance in Israel expect further tensions around initiatives that do not match Ben-Gvir’s attitudes about harsh policing. Ben-Gvir wants officers to have the right to shoot Arabs who throw stones, has called for a crackdown on anti-government protesters and is increasingly clashing with police officials who believe his orders could jeopardize public safety. Multiple former police commissioners have called for his dismissal.
“Ben-Gvir has his own political agenda and he has his own ax to grind, and at the moment, I think he’s not keen on developing services of the Arab population, either in security or juvenile delinquency or education,” said Amos Avgar, who worked for the JDC in Israel, Russia and the United States for 30 years until 2010, including as chief programming officer.
Avgar emphasized that the JDC has always studiously avoided political activity. “If there’s one thing that the JDC is not, it is not political,” he said. “It always shied [away] from anything that had the smell of politics and never dealt with any project by political agenda.”
It’s unclear how quickly Ben-Gvir’s announcement, made during a government meeting and first reported by Israel’s public broadcaster, will ultimately translate into changes. Geller, the JDC spokesman, said the organization had learned about the criticism only from the media, not from Ben-Gvir’s office. Later, amid an outcry, Ben-Gvir’s office said the funding decision had followed a review of contracts that revealed missing documentation from the JDC, a charge that the JDC denied.
Amnon-Sulitzeanu said he didn’t have high hopes for the program’s future.
“I think the first [characterization] is unfortunately going to be the correct one — that he is actually intending to stop it, which is very unfortunate because it is among the more serious programs that are willing to deal with this catastrophe,” he said. “And it shows again that the current minister is not so much interested in saving lives of Arab citizens.”
—
The post Far-right Israeli minister finds enemy in JDC, the mainstream American Jewish aid group appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Prized Sketchbook at Palace of Versailles Was Stolen by Nazis During WWII, Investigation Reveals
The Palace of Versailles. Photo: Sandrine Marty / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
The Palace of Versailles said it will conduct further research into the origins of a sketchbook owned by French painter Jacques-Louis David after a recent investigation revealed that it was stolen by the Nazis during World War II before joining France’s national collection.
Radio France said on Monday that it launched an investigation into the provenance of the prized sketchbook after being contacted by a descendant of its original owner. The broadcaster said just “a few weeks” later, it had compiled enough evidence to support the descendant’s claim about the sketchbook being looted by the Nazis during the war.
The evidence relies on public data accessible online, such as diplomatic archives and the French Holocaust Memorial’s database of Nazi-stolen property. France’s Ministry of Culture admitted that both the ministry and the Palace of Versailles did not know the sketchbook was stolen by Nazis during World War II, but they vowed to “continue research on this notebook and have discussions with the descendants of the owners.”
The Ministry of Culture told Radio France that in the Palace of Versailles, a team of three people are “actively working and reviewing works in the collections to verify their provenance” but the team “had not yet examined this notebook.”
A relative of the sketchbook’s original owner took Radio France he was shocked when he discovered by chance that the Nazi-looted sketchbook was a part of the collection at Versailles. “It’s a key work by David, and the Palace of Versailles does a lot of publicity around these notebooks … So, I’m very surprised that there isn’t more research into their provenance,” he said. “At the moment, there are 100 police officers looking for jewels stolen from the Louvre while to return the works stolen – and there are many at the Louvre and other museums – I find that the means are very, very low.”
The sketchbook dates back to 1790 and includes drawings, sketches, and notes related to one of David’s most famous works, “The Tennis Court Oath” (1790), a painting about the French Revolution that was never finished. The painting belongs to the Palace of Versailles but is currently on display in the Louvre as part of its limited time exhibition that celebrates the 200th anniversary of David’s death. The sketchbook is not part of the exhibit.
German Nazi soldiers stole an entire library, including David’s sketchbook, from Professor Lereboullet in July 1940 when they occupied his home. Lereboullet’s daughter Odile reported the theft in November 1945 to the Commission for Art Recovery (CRA), a French public body responsible for recovering and returning looted pieces of art to their rightful owners or their heirs. She never received a response from the CRA. The sketchbook reappeared in January 1943, when it was sold at auction by the Karl & Faber art gallery in Munich, Germany. It came into the possession of German Jewish art dealer and art historian Otto Wertheimer. A former German professor of art history and curator at the National Museum in Berlin, Wertheimer himself fled Nazi persecution and settled in Paris in 1944. He became a well-known art dealer who provided museums with masterpieces and missing pieces of European art. He sold the David sketchbook to the Palace of Versailles in 1951.
The Palace of Versailles has previously returned only one Nazi-looted item to its original owners: a small Louis XVI era writing table that was returned in 1999.
Uncategorized
Israeli Singer Noa Kirel Blasts Anti-Israel Boycotts of Eurovision Contest: ‘Letting Politics Ruin the Celebration’
Noa Kirel performing “Unicorn” for Israel at the first semifinal at the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. Photo: ESC/Sarah Louise Bennett
Israeli pop star Noa Kirel lambasted the countries that have decided to boycott the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s participation, defended her country’s involvement in the competition.
On Wednesday, Iceland joined Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and The Netherlands in announcing that it will pull out from next year’s Eurovision in protest of Israel’s participation due to its military actions in the Gaza Strip during its war against Hamas terrorists. The war started after Hamas-led terrorists carried out a deadly massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and The Netherlands made their announcement last week after the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the competition, decided to allow Israel to participate in the song contest.
Kirel, who represented Israel in the 2023 Eurovision and finished in third place, told the BBC podcast “The World Tonight” on Wednesday she was “deeply disappointed” that countries have decided to withdraw from the 2026 Eurovision, set to take place in Vienna, Austria, in May. She spoke to the podcast before news broke about Iceland’s withdrawal.
“Eurovision is a bridge, not a wall, and the heart of this competition is to connect hearts through music,” she said. “Unfortunately, some countries are letting politics ruin the celebration. Israel has not violated any rules of the Eurovision. Israel is a peace-seeking nation.”
Kirel also clarified key details about the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which launched the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. “On Oct. 7, Israel did not attack anyone,” the singer noted. “Israel was brutally attacked in a way unseen before. Entire families were murdered, including children. Civilians were kidnapped. Israel defended itself like any other nation would do and those countries are choosing to see the opposite, to ignore the reality. And to boycott Israel – that is antisemitism. I think boycotting Israel on political fronts – it’s not just an injury to us; it’s an injury to everything that Eurovision represents.”
Kirel further noted that claims about Israel manipulating votes during the 2025 Eurovision are total “nonsense” and added, “Instead of searching for excuses for [Israel’s] success, let’s focus on music.”
Wednesday was the deadline for countries to confirm whether they will join the 2026 Eurovision or withdraw without being penalized. Eurovision Director Martin Green said, “We respect the decision of all broadcasters who have chosen not to participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest and hope to welcome them back soon.”
Iceland’s national broadcaster RÚV said it believes Israel’s participation in the Eurovision has “created disunity among both members of the European Broadcasting Union and the general public.”
“There is no peace or joy connected to this contest as things stand now. On that basis, first and foremost, we are stepping back while the situation is as it is,” added RÚV Director-General Stefan Eiriksson.
Israel has won the Eurovision Song Contest four times, most recently in 2018, and came second in last year’s contest.
Uncategorized
Columbia University Antisemitism Task Force Calls for Viewpoint Diversity on Israel, Zionism
Students walk on campus at Columbia University in New York City, US, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
Columbia University’s Antisemitism Task Force on Tuesday implored the school to foster “intellectual diversity” with respect to the subjects of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, concluding its fourth and final report on the origins of antisemitism on the campus.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Columbia University was, until the enactment of recent reforms, the face of anti-Jewish hatred in higher education in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Dozens of reported antisemitic incidents transpired on its grounds, including a student’s proclaiming that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and the participation of administrative officials, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes which described Jews as privileged and grafting.
In its report, the Columbia Task Force on Antisemitism cited ideological conformity — as well as professors’ discussing the Middle East as would politicians framing a narrative which aims for accessibility and the swaying of democratic opinion — as an outsized contributor to the climate which yielded the slew of outrages.
“The [Columbia Faculty Handbook] is clear that [professors] should stick to the subject matter of the course and avoid political advocacy in the classroom,” the report said. “We heard from many students that an academic perspective that treats Zionism as legitimate is underrepresented in Columbia’s course offerings, compared to a perspective that treats it as illegitimate. The university should work quickly to add more intellectual diversity to these offerings.”
The task force also said that it is the university’s responsibility to reconcile viewpoint diversity —which may give voice to ideas which some deem offensive — with an American culture which prizes unfettered free speech, meritocracy, social equality, and racial and ethnic plurality, all at once. The university must not censor ideas, the report said, but it also cannot facilitate discrimination — which the American government, responding to popular outrage over racism perpetrated against African Americans, proscribed by passing the Civil Rights Act in 1964. In the 60 years since the law’s passage, lawmakers and the courts have affirmed the law’s applicability to other protected groups, including, women, sexual minorities, the Jewish people, and, among many others, Arab Muslims.
“When faculty members publish books, studies, articles, or other academic work, drawing on their expertise and using the methodologies of their disciplines, this work generally should be protected, even if it offends other members of our community, so long as it does not violate antidiscrimination laws,” the report continued. “We recommend seeking ways to comply with antidiscrimination laws that do not limit offensive speech. In some cases, for example, the university may be able to respond to offensive speech by condemning it instead of limiting it.”
It added, “Admittedly, condemning speech might at times be in tension with a commitment to institutional neutrality. Yet, when a university is faced with a choice between limiting speech, on the one hand, or condemning it, on the other, the latter strikes us as a less restrictive response.”
Even as it pursues a policy of “no orthodoxies,” the university must also protect itself from “outside influence” which may, for political purposes, demand its adoption of a particular viewpoint, the report continued. Donors, federal and state governments, or American voters, whose agents of action are their representatives in government, all “present challenges to academic freedom.”
In a statement, Columbia University president Claire Shipman thanked the task force for its work and said the university will “work on” translating its recommendations into policy.
“The work of this task force has been an essential part of the university’s efforts to address the challenges faced by our Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” Shipman said. “We have also been working this semester to focus on discrimination and hate more broadly on our campuses — which has long been a strong recommendation of the task force. All of this work must become part of our DNA.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Columbia University agreed in July to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secured the release of billions of dollars in federal grants the Trump administration had impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the agreement included Columbia’s pledging to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and admission practices and [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI] programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race” — which, if true, could mark the opening of a new era in American higher education.
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” McMahon added. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.