Uncategorized
Historian sheds new light on a famous story about Abraham Lincoln and a New York cantor
(New York Jewish Week) — A new book untangles one of the best known incidents involving Jews in the American Civil War — and suggests the real version is both more complicated and more interesting than the legend.
In “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” historian Adam D. Mendelsohn recalls the story of Arnold Fischel, the Dutch-born hazan, or cantor, at New York’s Shearith Israel Congregation, and how he persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to support the idea of allowing Jews to serve as military chaplains.
That much is true, as Mendelsohn explained in an online talk Tuesday sponsored by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Under a congressional statute, only Christian ministers could be chaplains, so in December 1861 Fischel traveled to Washington to argue his case directly to the president. Lincoln agreed to see Fischel, and a few days later wrote the cantor saying he would “try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in behalf of the Israelites.”
On July 17, 1862, Lincoln signed the law permitting Jews to serve as chaplains.
And yet, in research for his new book — which relied in large part on a vast database of Civil War soldiers known as the Shapell Roster — other parts of the story don’t hold together, Mendelsohn explained. According to a frequently retold version of the story, Fischel had been nominated to replace a Jewish layman named Michael Allen who had been forced out as chaplain of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry, allegedly at the request of a visiting delegation from the YMCA. Horace Greeley’s crusading New-York Tribune and other papers picked up the story and made a hero of the Jewish officer who had mustered the cavalry, Colonel Max Friedman, supposedly for “leading the charge against the unjust law.”
In fact, writes Mendelsohn, Allen was not kicked out as chaplain but probably resigned because he wasn’t enjoying his army service far from home. As for the colonel, “There is no evidence of a coordinated campaign by Friedman and his fellow Jews to elect Arnold Fischel in place of Allen.” Instead, Fischel’s contract with Shearith Israel was about to expire, and he sought the cavalry job because was in “urgent need” of the army’s relatively generous pay for chaplains.
Friedman, meanwhile, vigorously denied press reports that his 700-man cavalry, which had fewer than 20 Jewish soldiers, needed a Jewish chaplain. Mendelsohn found evidence that Friedman shrank from the attention, in part because he was a bit of a scammer: Like many officers in his day, he charged the government for no-show recruits, sold commissions to officers and got a cut of the profits from government contractors, known as “sutlers.” Even Michael Allen — who sold liquor — might have been in on the grift.
“It is a much more tangled tale than originally thought, but the outcome is the same,” Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said Tuesday. “In fact, the Jewish community does lobby Lincoln to change the law, and there is a considerable effort to do so.”
Mendelsohn said the story of Fischel and Lincoln underscores the need to dig more deeply into American Jewish history, and how the Shapell Roster helped him do just that. His book about the 1,700 Jewish soldiers who served in the Union Army is, he writes, “a story of ordinary men in extraordinary times, as fine and as flawed as their fellow soldiers, and Jewish too.”
As for Fischel, he served for a time as sort of a chaplain-at-large to the Army of the Potomac, but never got the lucrative appointment he sought. Lincoln appeared skeptical of his request that a Jewish clergyman was needed as a hospital chaplain in Washington, where Jews were but a tiny fraction of the dead and wounded. Denied that commission, a disappointed Fischel returned to Europe.
—
The post Historian sheds new light on a famous story about Abraham Lincoln and a New York cantor appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Stop Platforming Bigotry and Hate: We Can’t Build Bridges with Destructionists
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Photo: Mike Jourdan/Flickr.
A society that cannot distinguish between a critic and a destructionist is a society in the process of dismantling itself.
For decades, the leaders of Western institutions — universities, legacy media, and political think tanks — have operated on the Liberal Consensus Model. This model assumes that every stakeholder, no matter how radical, ultimately wants a seat at the table to negotiate a better version of the status quo.
But we are currently witnessing the total collapse of this assumption. Institutions are mistaking a siege for a negotiation.
The “Destructionist” does not want a seat at the table; they want to use the wood for kindling. When an institution offers a “bridge” to someone whose starting premise is the dismantling of liberal democracy or the erasure of a people, they aren’t practicing “inclusion.” They are providing a tactical ramp for an assault.
This is not a “Left” or “Right” problem; it is a vulnerability of the center. Across the political spectrum, we see the same mechanics of “laundering” at work — where moderate leaders trade their institutional credibility for access to a radical’s megaphone.
On the left, we see the normalization of figures like Hasan Piker. When the “Pod Save America” crew or politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) treat Piker as a “bold youth voice,” they are signaling that his destructionist starting points — such as supporting the eradication of Zionism — are within the bounds of a reasonable democratic coalition.
They frame it as “outreach,” failing to realize that they are importing eliminationist rhetoric into the heart of the mainstream.
On the right, the rot is equally visible in the laundering of Tucker Carlson. When Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, or politicians like Vice President JD Vance defend Carlson even as he platforms Holocaust revisionists and Nazi apologists, they are breaking a decades-old covenant. By framing Carlson’s descent into conspiratorial bigotry as “challenging the establishment,” they are laundering a brand of hatred that was rightly ostracized from the movement generations ago.
In both cases, these “bridge-builders” suffer from a form of institutional narcissism: the belief that their own empathy or political utility is powerful enough to transcend a destructionist ideology. They believe they can negotiate a floor plan with an arsonist who has already lit the match.
It is common to lump these figures in with Joe Rogan, but the distinction is critical for understanding where our accountability must lie.
Rogan is a private citizen having a public conversation. While he causes undeniable material harm by uncritically platforming bigoted views –and we should absolutely pressure him to do better — he is fundamentally only representing himself.
Conversely, we must hold the Ezra Kleins, the Jon Favreaus, and the Heritage Foundations to a far higher standard because they represent institutions. When a gatekeeper stops guarding the gate on behalf of an institution, the gate ceases to exist. Rogan is a symptom of a culture that finds fire interesting; these institutional leaders are the architects who were supposed to be building the firewalls. Their failure is not just an error in judgment; it is professional malpractice.
The solution is not state-censorship, but a renewal of communal self-respect. We must re-learn the lesson of how we defeated the KKK: we didn’t “win the debate” at a shared seminar; we made the white hood socially disqualifying.
The path forward requires a two-fold strategy:
1. Enforce “Social Jail”
We must return to a model of principled ostracization. If your starting point is the destruction of a people or the subversion of the democratic covenant, you belong in “social jail.” This is not “cancel culture” — which often offers no path back — but a boundary. Social jail allows for repair. When an individual renounces the destructionist framework and demonstrably accounts for the harm they’ve advocated through public renunciation and restorative action, the door can be reopened. But until then, the line must be held.
2. Critical Friction vs. Laundering
Journalists and pundits must stop acting as facilitators. If they choose to engage with these figures, the “friendly engagement” model must be replaced with hostile exposure. You can interview an arsonist about why he likes fire, but you don’t hire him as a fire safety consultant.
The standard defense for this laundering is the phrase: “I don’t agree with everything he says.”
In the context of eliminationist bigotry, this is not a defense; it is a confession of moral cowardice — or at best, professional dereliction. To be a journalist or a civic leader is to have the courage to name the “tripwire.” If you platform a bigot, you have a professional obligation to state, explicitly, which of their hateful taboos you oppose. If you refuse to name the bigotry — if you treat it as a mere “difference of opinion” — you are not conducting an interview; you are providing a sanitation service.
We have spent years building bridges with people who are committed to destroying them. We have watched as they used those bridges to infiltrate our schools, our media, and our political parties.
It is time to stop being the architects of our own demise. If we cannot say “No” to those who wish to see our foundations destroyed, our “Yes” to progress and our democratic system will eventually mean nothing at all. We must stop exhausting our moral vocabulary on minor transgressions so that we have the collective clarity required to name the destructionists for what they are.
It is time to stop building the bridge and start holding the line.
Uncategorized
78 Years Later, the Palestinian Authority Still Dreams of Israel’s Demise
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
As Israel celebrates the 78th anniversary of its Independence, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its government-run media continue to promote the ideology that Israel has no right to exist and is a temporary “occupation” that will soon vanish.
Here are some examples that Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented recently:
PA Jerusalem District Spokesman Ma’arouf Al-Rifai: “Ever since Allah created this land, we have continued to live here and defend it, we are the spearhead on defending these holy sites.
The occupation [i.e., Israel] is ultimately destined to disappear.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Individuals, Jan. 31, 2026]
Palestinian National Council member Dr. Shafiq Al-Talouli: “This state [i.e., Israel] is revealing the true face of the occupation that has stolen Palestine since 1948, and which relies on the same ideology of carrying out forced expulsion, and which strives through the use of force, committing massacres, starvation, and the like to remove the Palestinian people from its land.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Nov. 6, 2025]
Official PA TV programs, interviews, and documentaries repeat the ideology that Israel’s existence is temporary:
Official PA TV Israeli affairs “expert” Nizar Nazzal: “Palestine is the compass, and here the empires crashed down. Whether it was the Mongols, the Crusaders, or others. Therefore, these empires [i.e., Israe] too, here on the land of Palestine, will crash down.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Jan. 20, 2026]
The PA tells its people that Israelis, deep down, agree that Israel is doomed:
Official PA TV narrator: “Even in the depths of the Israeli public, there is an understanding that their presence here is temporary. The dual citizenship of the soldiers and settlers is not just a coincidence but rather an escape plan ready to be executed if the balance of powers changes.”
Jurist Sufian Siyam: “The Israeli knows in his subconscious mind that his existence on this land is temporary. …In 2006, there was an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. We were surprised to discover later that Gilad Shalit has French citizenship … Israeli soldier Edan Alexander [a hostage captured and released during Hamas’ Oct. 7 war] has American citizenship. Why do the Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians insist on having another citizenship besides Israeli citizenship? Because deep in his heart, his grandfather before him and his son after him knew that his existence on this land is temporary.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Time Without Ceasefire, Jan. 28, 2026]
Whether from PA officials or its state media, the message to Palestinians remains constant: Israel has no right to exist, Israel is temporary, Palestinians are permanent, and time will erase the Jewish State.
At the same time, the PA continues to demand Western governments fund this culture of hate and rejectionism while choosing to look the other way.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
Uncategorized
PA Libel: Jewish Scripture Says Non-Jews Are ‘Pigs in the Form of Humans to Serve the Jews’
Palestinians shout slogans at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, following clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem’s Old City April 15, 2022. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
In addition to its eliminationist rhetoric, the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s brainwashing of its people is ongoing and effective.
Palestinian Media Watch regularly documents that ordinary Palestinians echo the antisemitic and Nazi-like statements by PA leaders and officials. The PA portrays Jews as being “arrogant by nature,” and planning to “subjugate the entire world.” Palestinian citizens adopt and repeat these teachings.
Accordingly, anti-Israeli activists spread the libel that the Jewish Talmud teaches that non-Jews are “pigs in the form of humans [created] to serve the Jews”:
Anti-Israeli activist in the Jordan Valley Ayman Ghraib: “The colonialism began in the [Jewish] religious schools where the colonialists [i.e., Jews] were educated to hate the Arabs and Palestinians and everything that is not Jewish.
We have obtained booklets that contain an exact quote from the Talmudic text — that non-Jews are pigs that God created in the form of humans to serve the Jews … In their religious books it is written that Allah created this [olive] tree for the Jews … and if they cannot enjoy its fruits, they should burn it.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Crops, April 6, 2026]
The Talmud contains no such statement about non-Jews being pigs.
Even as Palestinians falsely accuse Jews of dehumanizing non-Jews, the PA itself portrays Jews as sub-human.
In the words of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor, Jews are “grazing herds of humanoids … apes and pigs.” Recently, a Palestinian in Lebanon expressed a similar view, saying Jews are “pigs and donkeys”:
Lebanese singer and actor Abd Asqoul: “The enemy [Israel] is very stupid. He does not understand that it is impossible, regardless of what will be, there is something that lives inside us [Palestinians] … But this pig is not just a pig, he is a donkey who does not understand.
He thought my identity is a few papers and flour, and it escaped him that I am from the seed of heroes. .. My identity is land and rock and the sand of the beaches with shells and the blue color in their waters, from Rosh Hanikra [i.e., on Israel’s northern border] to proud Umm Al-Rashrash [i.e., Eilat, Israel’s southern border].” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, The Creativity of the Refugee Camp, Jan. 20, 2026]
The Palestinian Authority’s antisemitism also portrays Jews as the “enemy of humanity.” A Palestinian academic and former PA deputy minister stressed this recently, specifying that Jews are not only the “enemy” of Palestinians, but of all “humanity”:
Bethlehem University political science lecturer and former PA Deputy Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Sa’id Yaqin: “Jerusalem … is also the strongest symbol in this conflict, which is being waged with this enemy [i.e., Israel]. This is the enemy of humanity and not of the Palestinian people.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, March 14, 2026]
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.