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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.”
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As Political Lines Blur, Republican Jewish Coalition’s Matt Brooks Warns of a Deeper Shift Facing American Jews
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, holds a kippah in support of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as he speaks on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, July 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
At some point, the question stops being which political party you belong to — and becomes what, exactly, you believe that party stands for.
That was the underlying tension in a recent conversation with Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks, who offered a stark assessment of the changing political landscape for American Jews: the erosion of bipartisan support for Israel, the reemergence of antisemitism across ideological lines, and a growing sense that long-held assumptions about political alignment no longer cleanly apply.
For decades, support for Israel functioned as one of the few durable points of agreement in American public life. It transcended party, survived shifts in leadership, and provided a kind of baseline continuity in an otherwise volatile political system. That consensus, Brooks suggested, has now meaningfully weakened.
“There is only one pro-Israel party today,” he said on The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “And that’s the Republican Party.”
It is, in his telling, less a triumph than a warning — a sign that what was once shared ground has become contested terrain.
The shift did not happen overnight. Brooks, who has spent nearly four decades at the intersection of Jewish communal life and Republican politics, described a long internal effort to strengthen pro-Israel sentiment within the GOP — one that has, by his account, succeeded.
What concerns him now is not where the Republican Party has landed, but where parts of the Democratic Party have moved.
Yet the more unsettling dynamic, he argued, is not confined to partisan drift. It is structural.
Invoking the “horseshoe theory,” Brooks pointed to a phenomenon that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: the convergence of the political extremes. While the far left and far right often present themselves as opposites, he argued, their rhetoric — particularly when it comes to Jews — can begin to mirror itself in striking ways.
“The language may be different,” Brooks said, “but the themes are familiar.”
On one end, Jews are cast as agents of capitalism, landlords, or power brokers within systems of inequality. On the other, they are portrayed as shadowy manipulators of media, finance, or political institutions. The ideological framing shifts. The underlying instinct does not.
That convergence, he warned, creates a more diffuse and unpredictable threat environment — one in which antisemitism is no longer easily located or dismissed as belonging to a single fringe.
The implications of these changes, Brooks suggested, extend into the political behavior of American Jews more broadly.
For much of the modern era, Jewish voting patterns have been closely tied to identity, history, and inherited political affiliation. But Brooks indicated that those patterns may be undergoing a quiet but significant recalibration — one driven less by ideology than by a more immediate question: security.
“It’s not about who you like,” he said. “It’s about who you trust to keep you safe.”
That framing, he noted, has proven especially resonant in recent election cycles, where data-driven outreach efforts have shown that concerns about personal safety, antisemitism, and the security of Israel can outweigh longstanding partisan loyalties — particularly among undecided voters.
It is, in many ways, a shift from expressive politics to consequential politics — from signaling identity to assessing risk.
And yet, for all the instability he described, Brooks did not frame the moment as one of inevitable decline.
On the contrary, he returned repeatedly to the idea of resilience — not as a slogan, but as a historical pattern.
“We’ve faced adversity before,” he said. “We’re a resilient people.”
That resilience, in his view, is what underwrites his long-term optimism about American Jewry.
Still, optimism, as Brooks articulated it, is not the same as comfort. It is contingent. It requires recognition — of shifting alliances, of emerging threats, and of the limits of assumptions that may no longer hold.
The deeper question raised by his analysis is not simply which party is more aligned with Jewish interests at a given moment. It is whether the framework through which those interests have historically been understood — bipartisan consensus, stable coalitions, predictable boundaries — is itself in the process of being rewritten.
If so, then the challenge facing American Jews is not only political, but conceptual. It is to understand where they stand in a landscape that is less fixed than it once was — and to decide, with greater clarity and less nostalgia, what matters most when the ground begins to shift.
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Federal Complaint Alleges Antisemitic Housing Discrimination at Williams College
Williams College in Massachusetts. Photo: Wikipedia commons.
A federal complaint filed with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development accuses Williams College in Massachusetts of practicing housing discrimination against an Orthodox Jewish student whom it allegedly denied kosher foods and other religious accommodations that would have promoted his integration into the mainstream campus culture.
Filed on Thursday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the complaint presents a harrowing portrayal of an observant Jewish student forced to eat vegan cuisine which falls far below the culinary standards of meals prepared for other students, to stand in the cold for hours when observance of the Sabbath prevents his using an electronic keycard to enter residence halls, and to “confine” himself to his room on Saturdays to avoid being locked out.
So indifferent is the college to the student’s situation, the Brandeis Center alleges, that it once discouraged him from moving to campus at the same time as it promised other incoming students a “learning community you live in.” The Brandeis Center adds that the school’s alleged violation of its own values is underscored by the fact that it mandates on-campus residency for most students due to its belief that living at the college is an integral part of the undergraduate experience.
“It saddens me as a proud Williams College alumnus to see my alma mater treat a Jewish student as a lesser member of the community because of his religion, turning him away as he was freezing and hungry,” Brandeis Center chairman and chief executive Kenneth Marcus said in a statement announcing the legal action. “Religious discrimination is discrimination. Jews, as well as other students and people of faith, should be able to practice their religion freely, without prejudice or discrimination. That is what religious freedom in America is all about, and we must continue to stand up when this freedom is denied.”
On Wednesday, the college told The Algemeiner that it has “no tolerance for antisemitism or discrimination” and would “welcome” a “dialogue with the student and Brandeis Center to ensure a welcoming and inclusive educational environment.”
“We are devoted to ensuring that all students have success to appropriate living spaces, dining options, and our full range of learning opportunities,” the college’s media relations director said. “The college’s leaders and chaplains are strongly committed to working with students and their families to address student concerns.”
The complaint trails years of reports that American higher education institutions fail to protect the civil rights of Jewish students even as their leaders proclaim a commitment to promoting equity and inclusion. While many institutions have pledged to combat antisemitism in recent months with new initiatives and policies, surveys of Jewish students continue to suggest that those reforms have not yet produced a meaningful reduction in antisemitic bigotry.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students report having experienced antisemitism at college, according to a survey released by the American Jewish Committee and Hillel International in February. Of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. The survey also found that 32 percent of Jewish students believe that campus groups promote antisemitism or a learning environment that is hostile to Jews, while 25 percent said that antisemitism was the basis of being “excluded from a group or an event on campus.”
On Thursday, the Brandeis Center said the specifics of the William College case prompted a “first of its kind” approach to representing a campus antisemitism victim. The group has filed scores of federal complaints alleging antisemitic discrimination in higher education, but the agency petitioned in those cases was the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Additionally, the suits demanded redress for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now, the Brandeis Center contends that Williams College ran afoul of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and is contesting the matter in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“The filing reflects the expansion and strengthening of the Brandeis Center’s legal advocacy efforts to push back against discrimination targeting Jewish Americans wherever their civil rights are threatened,” the group said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Democratic Nominee for University of Michigan Regent Refuses to Condemn Hezbollah
Attorney Amir Makled accepts the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement for the University of Michigan Board of Regents in Detroit, Michigan on April 19, 2026. Photo: Andrew Roth/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A political controversy is intensifying in the race for a spot on the University of Michigan’s top governing body, as Democratic nominee Amir Makled faces mounting criticism for failing to explicitly condemn Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group responsible for attacks against not only Israel but also Western targets — including US soldiers.
Makled, an attorney who last Sunday secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for a seat on the university’s Board of Regents, has come under scrutiny following the resurfacing of social media activity in which he appeared to engage with or amplify content viewed as sympathetic to Hezbollah and hostile toward Israel.
When asked last week by MLive, a local news outlet, to clarify his views on Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist organization, Makled deflected and refused to criticize the Islamist group. However, Makled stated that he would continue condemning the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
“I will continue to talk critically of the policies of the Israeli Defense Forces and of the state of Israel,” Makled said. “But I’m not playing a condemnation game of Hezbollah, because I believe that’s a trap designed to put Arab Americans on the defense simply for existing.”
Makled also dismissed the notion that his Jewish opponent in the Democratic primary, incumbent Jordan Acker, lost his reelection bid due to antisemitism.
“Hatred against Jewish people is wrong, period,” Makled said. “Acker didn’t lose because of antisemitism. People are tired of Islamophobia. They’re tired of being told that standing up for Arab lives is somehow disqualified.”
In the two years following the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Acker has been targeted by anti-Israel activists with a relentless barrage of protests. In December 2024, for example, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car with the message “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted on Acker’s car an inverted red triangle, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership, and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel on campus.
Makled initially came under immense scrutiny after an investigation by The Detroit News revealed that he was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of Hezbollah. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder, and blackmail.”
While Makled has issued statements broadly disavowing antisemitism, his refusal to emphatically denounce Hezbollah has raised eyebrows among moderate Democrats and Jewish voters in Michigan. Jewish organizations and community leaders have expressed alarm over what they describe as a troubling pattern of ambiguity.
The controversy has already had political consequences. A major labor union withdrew its endorsement of Makled, citing concerns over his past rhetoric and associations. Within the Democratic Party, the episode has exposed widening divisions over how to address extremism linked to anti-Israel activism.
The dispute comes amid heightened sensitivities surrounding the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as well as increased scrutiny of campus climates across the United States. Further, the controversy remains especially sensitive in Michigan, as a Hezbollah-sympathizing terrorist targeted a major synagogue, Temple Israel, in suburban Detroit last month.
Further, higher education institutions like the University of Michigan have faced criticism over their handling of anti-Israel protests, some of which have drawn accusations of crossing into antisemitic territory. Against this backdrop, Makled’s candidacy has become a flashpoint in a broader debate over whether anti-Israel activism is being sufficiently challenged when it veers into support for extremist groups.
Critics note that as a regent, Makled would help oversee university policy, including responses to campus discrimination and student safety concerns. His reluctance to explicitly condemn Hezbollah could raises serious questions among voters about his judgment and fitness for the role.
Makled’s willingness to frame violent anti-Israel protests as a legitimate expression of grievances and expression further casts doubt over whether he would be willing to dispatch law enforcement to control raucous demonstrations on campus.
The controversy underscores a growing tension within Democratic politics, where progressive activism related to the Palestinian cause has, in some cases, blurred lines that critics say should remain clear—particularly regarding terrorist organizations and incitement against Israel. This issue has become more salient in recent months, as Democrats have increasingly cozied up to individuals that espouse extremist beliefs, such as anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.