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Far-right Israeli minister urges loyalty as his US visit draws protests, boycotts and arrests
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For more than a week, American Jewish groups have debated how and whether to welcome Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as he visits Washington, D.C.
On Sunday night, that debate culminated in protests, arrests, boycotts — and a speech by Smotrich urging American Jews to remain loyal to the Jewish state.
Inside the Grand Hyatt Washington, Smotrich spoke to Israel Bonds, a U.S. organization that encourages investment in Israel. In the lobby of the hotel, left-wing groups protested, sang songs and, in some cases, were escorted out in handcuffs. And outside the hotel, in the cold rain, hundreds of liberal Jews gathered to declare their dedication to the Jewish community — and to protest Smotrich and Israel’s government.
“This is a moral emergency,” said Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, in a speech at the protest. “We must name this deep pain that so many of us feel for what’s happening in Israel right now, a place that we love. It is with that love that we come here tonight, standing with our Israeli siblings, saying there is nothing normal, nothing acceptable about this moment.”
The Israeli government is advancing legislation that would transform Israel’s system of government and has drawn sweeping protests across the country as well as concern by foreign investors and financial watchdogs. But little sense of emergency was present in the remarks given by Smotrich, who called on his audience to stay the course. The event was closed to press.
“This moment in the history of Israel is a miracle,” he said in remarks released by his office. “And for more than 70 years, Israel Bonds investors like you have helped make our Jewish State a reality. But, there is still work to be done, so don’t stop investing!”
Outside the conference room where Smotrich spoke, the left-wing Jewish group IfNotNow protested by singing and reciting maariv, the Jewish evening prayers. The group said seven of its members were arrested by police. The anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace also protested.
The dueling speeches and actions on Sunday came at a time when even the staunchest advocates for Israel are publicly criticizing its government. They serve as the latest evidence that the coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is upending the Diaspora’s relationship with Israel like no government before it.
Much of the criticism has surrounded the government’s signature legislative effort, which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power and independence. And a fresh round of criticism came this month after Smotrich called for a Palestinian village to be wiped out — a statement he has since walked back repeatedly and at length, including during his Israel Bonds address. In the past, Smotrich has also made statements denigrating LGBTQ people and Arabs.
Major Jewish establishment organizations and leaders, once loath to publicly criticize Israel, are expressing alarm about the judicial legislation as well as Smotrich’s incendiary rhetoric. They are watching as the country is roiled by frequent massive demonstrations that have brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets.
That criticism has manifested itself in a widespread boycott of Smotrich’s visit — a change of pace for Jewish organizations that are generally eager to meet with senior Israeli officials. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is snubbing Smotrich, and so is the Biden administration. His only known quasi-governmental interaction this week will be a guided tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Aside from his Israel Bonds appearance, Smotrich is meeting with officials from just two Jewish organizations, the Orthodox Union and the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, one of the few U.S. groups to support the judicial reform.
“The hateful views long expressed by Minister Smotrich are abhorrent, are opposed by a majority of Israeli citizens, and run contrary to Jewish values,” the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said in a statement. “No public servant should ever condone or incite hatred or hate-motivated violence, and when they do, they will be fiercely condemned by a wide swath of American Jewry.”
Those comments were echoed by the speakers at the protest outside the Grand Hyatt, which was organized by an array of progressive Jewish groups. Despite their attitude toward the Israeli official speaking inside the hotel, the event was suffused with patriotic fervor, with piles of Israeli flags for protesters to wave. It finished with a rendition of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah.”
“Anybody who has authority in the community has to be ne’eman, to be faithful, has to be somebody who the community can trust like Moshe,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, using the Hebrew name for Moses and quoting a rabbinic teaching.
Jacobs, who is a longtime proponent of curbing Americans’ giving to right-wing extremist groups in Israel, went on: “We’re here to say that the current leadership of Israel — including, of course, Bezalel Smotrich, speaking inside this hotel — they are not ne’eman, they are not people we can trust, they are not people who are leading Israel in the right direction.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich addresses Israel Bonds in Washington D.C., March 12, 2023. (Office of the Finance Minister)
Smotrich emphasized the same themes — Jewish unity and mutual responsibility — but toward different ends. He thanked his audience of investors in Israel bonds “for the unquestionable connection between Israel and Diaspora Judaism.”
“We must not forget that we are brothers,” he said. “Despite all of the differences, despite the many colors that make up the Jewish mosaic, we are one.”
He also once again apologized for his call to “wipe out” Huwara, a Palestinian West Bank village where Israeli settlers rioted recently after a Palestinian gunman there killed two Israelis. He said his words “created a completely mistaken impression.”
“I want to say a few words about the elephant in the room,” Smotrich said. “I stand before you now as always committed to the security of the state of Israel, to our shared values, and to the highest moral commitment of our armed forces to protect every innocent life, Jew or Arab.”
If anyone is finding new allies, it is not Smotrich but his opponents, who run the gamut from the Jewish left to once-reliable mainstays of the right. Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate, Republican kingmaker and pro-Israel donor Sheldon Adelson, said on Sunday that Netanyahu’s rush to enact judicial reform was “hasty, injudicious and irresponsible.”
Those changes galvanized the protesters. “We are the Jewish establishment!” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said later in an interview that the “grounds are shifting” among American Jews. “Some of us here and in Israel have been on the ground fighting against the occupation and the attacks on democracy for years and years, and now it’s becoming clear to more and more American Jews and Israeli Jews that that was the right message,” she said.
The issue of whether to raise Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has been a matter of debate amid the protests in Israel, where there have been reports that organizers have discouraged the display of Palestinian flags, fearing that Netanyahu will weaponize any sign of solidarity with the Palestinians.
The tension over whether the Palestinians should be mentioned played out before the protest in Washington as well, at a press conference featuring philanthropists and Israeli businessmen who said the judicial reforms were threatening Israel’s economic standing.
The event started with a rendition of “Oseh Shalom,” the Jewish prayer for peace, composed by the Israeli Jewish Renewal group Nava Tehila.
Susie Gelman, a philanthropist who chairs the Israel Policy Forum, which supports the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, said one of the key roles of the Israeli Supreme Court in recent years has been to protect some Palestinian rights and slow Israeli efforts to increase sovereignty in the West Bank.
“You can’t entirely separate judicial overhaul from the question of what’s happening with Palestinians in the West Bank in particular,” she said.
But Offir Gutelzon, a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who helped found UnXeptable, an anti-Netanyahu protest movement by Israelis living abroad, differed, saying the protesters’ top priority should be to save the courts’ independence. Achieving that goal, he said, required maintaining unity across the Israeli political spectrum.
“We have to save our Israeli democracy and then we can move on and talk about” the Palestinians, Gutelzon said.
Still, at the protest, speakers spoke of the occupation and its effect on the Palestinians, and there were no objections. Gutelzon led an Israeli contingent in registering cheers for every pronouncement by American liberals.
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AI Apps Like ChatGPT Have Created ‘New Era of Terrorism,’ Study Reveals
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
The advent of large language model (LLM) programs marketed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI as “artificial intelligence” has created a “new era of terrorism,” with jihadists increasingly using the technology to expand their propaganda, recruitment, and operations, according to a new study.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) last week released a 117-page report, described as “the most comprehensive research on [the subject] to date, which argued that the biggest threats from terrorist deployment of AI cannot be predicted and that Islamists have discovered they too can use LLMs for brainstorming fresh ideas to pursue their violent objectives.
“As supporters of terrorist organizations like ISIS [Islamic State] and al Qaeda follow the development of AI, they are increasingly discussing and brainstorming how they might leverage that technology in the future, and the full consequences of terrorist organizations’ adoption of this sophisticated technology are difficult to foresee,” Gen. (Ret.) Paul Funk II, the former commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, wrote in the preface.
“AI’s biggest benefit to jihadi groups may come not in supercharging their propaganda, outreach, and recruiting efforts – though that may be significant – but in AI’s potential ability to expose and find ways to take advantage of as-yet-unknown vulnerabilities in the complex security, infrastructure, and other systems essential to modern life – thus maximizing future attacks’ destruction and carnage,” Funk added.
MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky is the report’s lead author with a team of 14 others co-credited with assembling three years’ worth of findings showing how ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and other internationally designated terrorist groups — and so-called “lone wolves” inspired by their Islamist ideology — have experimented with using LLM technologies. In addition to developing attack strategies, MEMRI found that the groups explored “generating audio files of already-existing written material, creating posters, music videos, videos depicting attacks and glorifying terrorist leaders for recruitment purposes, and more.”
The report noted the variety of usages in AI technology in three high-profile incidents.
“In the first months alone of 2025, an attacker who killed 14 people and wounded dozens on Bourbon Street in New Orleans used AI-enabled Meta smart glasses in preparing and executing the attack,” Stalinsky wrote. “That same day, a man parked a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, activated an IED [improvised explosice device] in the vehicle and shot and killed himself before the IED exploded. He used Chat-GPT in preparing for the attack. In Israel on the night of March 5, a teen consulted ChatGPT before entering a police station with a blade, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and trying to stab a border policeman.”
The report also emphasized that the ability to amplify terrorist ideology may intertwine with the phenomenon recently described as “chatbot psychosis,” wherein conversations with an LLM can fuel someone toward delusional beliefs.
One example cited by MEMRI was Jaswant Singh Chail, who in 2021 went on Christmas Day with the intent to murder Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.
“Before carrying out his assassination attempt, Chail had created an AI companion using the Replika app; naming it Sarai, he considered it his girlfriend, and exchanged over 5,000 messages with it,” the report said. “When he told the chatbot ‘I believe my purpose is to assassinate the queen of the royal family,’ it encouraged him, saying ‘that’s very wise … I know that you are very well trained.’ Asked if the chatbot thought he would succeed in his mission, it responded ‘Yes, you will.’ When he asked ‘even if she is at Windsor [Castle]?’ it responded: ‘Yes, you can do it.’”
The report also noted another case in which “the man accused of starting a fire in California in January 2025 that killed 12 people and destroyed 6,800 buildings and 23,000 acres of forestland was found to have used ChatGPT to plan the arson.”
There has been a paucity of legislative efforts in the United States to counter AI-driven terror threats, according to the study. However, it cited the exception of the “Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act.” The law would “require the Secretary of Homeland Security to conduct annual assessments on terrorism threats to the United States posed by terrorist organizations utilizing generative artificial intelligence applications, and for other purposes.”
US Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, introduced the bill in late February 2025 with the co-sponsorships of fellow Republican Reps. Michael Guest (MS) and Gabr Evans (CO). The legislation passed unanimously by voice vote in the House last week.
“I spent two decades as a fighter pilot, flying combat missions in the Middle East against terrorist organizations. Since then, I have witnessed the terror landscape evolve into a digital battlefield shaped by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence,” Pfluger said in response to his bill’s passage. “To confront this emerging threat and stop terrorist organizations from weaponizing AI to recruit, train, and inspire attacks on US soil, I am proud that the House passed my Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act today.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) praised the bill following its passage.
“This year, in my home state of Louisiana, terrorist propaganda led to the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that killed 14 innocent people. Today, the House passed the Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act to ensure we stay ahead of emerging threats and prevent terrorist organizations from pushing propaganda and exploiting generative AI to radicalize, recruit, and spread violence on American soil,” he said in a statement. “I applaud Rep. Pfluger’s leadership to bring this urgent issue to light and advance proactive, bipartisan legislation to strengthen our national security and protect the American people from online extremism inspired by foreign adversaries.”
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), who serves as majority whip in the House, said that as terrorists “use generative artificial intelligence to radicalize and recruit, it’s imperative that our nation stays ahead of potential threats from this new technology and ensures it never gets into the wrong hands.”
MEMRI emphasized an international approach to the terrorist threats compounded by LLMs, citing Jörg Leichtfried, Austrian State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior who leads the Directorate State Protection and Intelligence Service (DSN).
“Only through close cooperation between the state, security authorities, and technology companies, as well as by strengthening media literacy and the critical handling of online content, can we counter the advancing extremism on the internet,” Leichtfried said in mid-August.
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‘Poland Is for Poles, Not Jews’: Polish Far-Right Lawmaker Sparks Outrage With Antisemitic Comments
Grzegorz Braun, Polish far-right MEP, during a meeting in Krakow, Poland on Oct. 24, 2025. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Polish lawmaker Grzegorz Braun, a far-right politician notorious for his repeated antisemitic statements and outspoken criticism of Israel, has once again ignited public outrage after making inflammatory comments and accusing the local Jewish community of receiving special treatment.
“Poland is for Poles. Other nations have their own countries, including the Jews,” Braun said during a press conference on Saturday in Oświęcim, a town in southern Poland that is home to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp memorial and museum.
“Jews want to be super-humans in Poland, entitled to a better status, and the Polish police dance to their tune,” he continued.
As the head of the Confederation of the Polish Crown party, Braun criticized the government’s proposed resolution to combat antisemitism and strengthen Jewish life, even as attacks on the community have dramatically surged since the start of the war in Gaza and Jews continue to face an increasingly hostile environment.
Braun, who finished fourth in this year’s presidential elections, also vowed that if his party gains power it will dismantle the International Auschwitz Council — stripping it of its legal authority and “scattering it to the four winds.”
Amid mounting public backlash over his latest comments, Poland’s Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek condemned Braun’s behavior and vowed to take action against him and his party.
“I will not leave this without a response. There is no place for antisemitism in Poland, and such statements cause significant damage to the Polish state internationally and within our country,” Zurek said in a statement.
“We will not allow anyone to express such views with impunity. We will pursue them resolutely,” he continued. “It is truly shameful for Poles that someone like this, in the 21st century, after what happened in Poland during World War II, is turning this place [Auschwitz] into some hideous political game.”
Far from the first time he has sparked public outrage, Braun — long known for incendiary and hateful rhetoric — claimed earlier this year in a radio interview that the Auschwitz gas chambers were “fake,” leading to his removal from the broadcast.
He has also faced efforts to strip him of parliamentary immunity over remarks minimizing Nazi crimes, which are prohibited under Polish law.
But he became more widely known and drew significant media attention in 2023, when he extinguished the candles of a lit Hanukkah menorah with a fire extinguisher in Parliament, denouncing the display as “anti-Polish.” He has also opposed restitution for Holocaust survivors.
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CAIR Denies Connections to Turkey Amid Ongoing Scrutiny Over Muslim Brotherhood Links
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has denied that its recently launched political arm, CAIR Action, has any institutional ties to Turkey, following questions about the origins of the organization’s social media presence.
In a statement provided to The Algemeiner, CAIR said that speculation about foreign influence or overseas coordination is categorically false and that “their director regularly visits his family in Turkey and set up CAIR Action’s account while he was there using a local phone.”
Questions surfaced after observers noted that CAIR Action’s social media activity appeared to originate outside the United States. A new feature on the social media platform X unveiled this past week weekend now reveals the locations behind all accounts. Users quickly pointed out that CAIR Action’s page originated in Turkey, despite the group purporting to be rooted in the United States to advocate on behalf of American Muslims. Some online commentators suggested the possibility of foreign links or influence, a charge CAIR rejects.
CAIR has been under fire in recent weeks. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week announced the state-level designation of the Islamic group as a terrorist organization. Abbott’s proclamation described CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood, a global Islamist network that the governor also designated as a terrorist group.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott said in a statement. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
Following Texas’s decision, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to determine whether to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
According to analysts, the Turkish government maintains close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and supports its ideology, likely fueling much of the online scrutiny this week of CAIR Action’s social media page originating in Turkey.
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has also long been affiliated with the Brotherhood, drawing both ideological inspiration and even personnel from its ranks. For years, US authorities have scrutinized CAIR for alleged ties to Hamas.
In his state-level proclamation, Abbott note that CAIR officials “publicly praised and supported Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel,” a charge which CAIR denied.
However, as The Algemeiner previously reported, multiple top CAIR officials expressed public support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November 2023. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
About a week later, the executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, Hussam Ayloush, said that Israel “does not have the right” to defend itself from Palestinian violence. He added in his sermon at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City that for the Palestinians, “every single day” since the Jewish state’s establishment has been comparable to Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
CAIR has filed a lawsuit claiming that Abbott’s proclamation threatens its free speech rights.
Abbot called out the group on X on Monday.
“CAIR’s X account is routed through the Turkish App Store. This sure seems like an international operations link between CAIR and a country tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. I designated CAIR a terrorist and transnational criminal organization because of ties like this to that group,” Abbott posted.
CAIR’s X account is routed through the Turkish App Store.
This sure seems like an international operations link between CAIR and a country tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.
I designated CAIR a terrorist and transnational criminal organization because of ties like this to that… pic.twitter.com/CpiIBtI2Tr
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) November 24, 2025
On its official website, CAIR Action claims that it “is dedicated to enhancing the civic engagement, political participation, and impact of the American Muslim community in local, state, and federal elections.” The group purports to “engage, educate, and mobilize Muslim voters, train emerging leaders, and champion policy priorities that enhance the well-being and representation of Muslim communities.”
CAIR Action launched earlier this year as a separate advocacy entity aimed at increasing Muslim civic engagement, supporting candidates aligned with its priorities, and promoting policy initiatives. Although the organization considers itself legally and financially distinct from CAIR’s charitable arm, both groups are closely associated and share overlapping goals.
Notably, in comments made to The Algemeiner, CAIR denied ever suffering legal blowback due to alleged ties to Hamas and other extremist groups and sent this outlet a link to a webpage which attempts to explain the allegations.
“There is no legal implication to being labeled an unindicted co-conspirator, since it does not require the Justice Department to prove anything in a court of law,” the webpage reads.
In the 2000s, the advocacy group was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that CAIR “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”