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How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council
(JTA) – When Brother John Muhammad emerged this fall as the leading candidate for a vacant city council seat in St. Petersburg, Florida, local Jews were distressed.
Muhammad is well known in the city as the president of a local neighborhood association and as a frequent advocate for minority groups. But Jewish leaders learned that he was also a follower of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a long history of antisemitism, and that he had made comments dismissing concerns about Farrakhan’s record.
Jewish leaders tried to stave off Muhammad’s appointment, pushing for more extensive vetting of the seven candidates and, in the case of the local Holocaust museum, actively lobbying against him. But the council confirmed him in a 4-3 vote, leaving local Jews frustrated — before they considered ways to make the situation a learning experience for their city.
“When I see a situation like this, it screams ‘opportunity’ to me,” Michael Igel, chair of the Florida Holocaust Museum, located in St. Petersburg, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The saga playing out in St. Petersburg, Florida’s fifth-largest city, unfolded during the same period that a handful of Black celebrities, including Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, first became enmeshed in controversy over their own antisemitic comments and social media posts. The coincidence meant a dicey environment for broaching a conversation about the antisemitism of the Nation of Islam, whose rhetoric disparaging Jews overlaps with that of Hebrew Israelites, the ideology that Irving promoted by sharing a link to an antisemitic film.
It also turned St. Petersburg into a window for understanding how ties forged between Jewish groups and others can be tested.
Local Jewish leaders initially sought to stop Muhammad from gaining the city council seat, which was vacated after its previous holder resigned following redistricting and accusations she no longer lived in her district. They learned about Muhammad’s city council application only a week before the council’s vote, leaving them with little time to mobilize. The information came from a political rival of Muhammad, former mayoral candidate Vince Nowicki, who shared information about Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation with local Jewish groups.
Nowicki also shared a comment Muhammad had made about Jews in a 2016 video in which Muhammad interviewed local Black LGBTQ activists. In the video titled “A Conversation About Growing Up Black And LGBT,” which JTA viewed, Muhammad said, “Minister Farrakhan got accused of being antisemitic for a long time because he pointed out and made some corrections about the activity of Jews. And anybody who says anything critical of the Jewish community is labeled as being antisemitic. Good, bad, right or wrong, it doesn’t matter what you say. If you criticize them that’s what you are.”
He continued, saying, “And I’m finding that it happens when you are critical of the gay community, when you say anything critical or anything that doesn’t align with that ideology, now all of a sudden you’re homophobic.” Muhammad’s comments about gay people received some light but friendly pushback from his interview guests.
Muhammad did not reply to multiple requests for comment by JTA, including to questions emailed to him at his request. He said during a public meeting ahead of the council vote that he thought scrutiny of him by Jewish groups had been unfair.
To Jewish leaders, the comments in the video coupled with Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation were clear signs that he should not be appointed to the city council.
“I would sure hope that being antisemitic would be a red line, that you could not be a candidate,” said Rabbi Philip Weintraub of Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the city.
Jewish leaders began to take action, issuing statements and launching a letter-writing campaign to the council. They felt so much urgency that some even conducted business on Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday when Jewish organizations typically pause their activities in accordance with Jewish law.
As a nonprofit, the local federation was constrained in how it could weigh in. Since it could not endorse or oppose specific candidates, it instead pushed for every candidate to be “properly vetted” and informed council members about Muhammad’s affiliations and past comments, according to Maxine Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Florida’s Gulf Coast. She said the efforts did not have their intended effect.
“I don’t think anybody said, ‘Well, who is this Farrakhan, what does he stand for?’” Kaufman said. “I don’t think enough was done, personally.”
The entrance to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Nov. 27, 2016. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Florida Holocaust Museum took another approach, circulating information about Muhammad to the wider community, along with a statement opposing the candidacy of anyone who would support Farrakhan’s antisemitism. Their goal, Igel said, was to educate the community about the severity of these views.
“There’s nothing else to talk about when somebody is supporting Louis Farrakhan,” Igel told JTA. “Particularly when you are seeking a position representative of a city, particularly one like St. Petersburg that is so known for its inclusivity and its openness.”
Igel praised some members of the city council who asked Muhammad pointed questions about his views at the vote, giving him the opportunity to refute Farrakhan’s comments about Jews. One council member who voted against Muhammad, Lisset Hanewicz, said her stepfather is Jewish and read Farrakhan’s past antisemitic statements into the record, saying, “I think people need to understand why a certain part of this community is upset.”
Igel acknowledged that getting involved in a city council appointment was an unusual move for a Holocaust museum. He said museum leaders had held a meeting beforehand to determine how to proceed but made a decision fairly quickly to weigh in.
“In this case, we don’t consider this to be a matter of politics,” Igel said. “This is a matter of morality. And this is what we teach.” If the candidate had been a white supremacist, Igel said, “that person would have been disqualified out of the gate.”
The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, two hate watchdogs, define the Nation of Islam as a group that propagates antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, not a religion. Founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad, the Black nationalist group is not the same as traditional Islam and is rejected by most Muslim clerics; it entered mainstream prominence in the 1960s after civil rights leader Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali publicly joined the movement. (Both later left the group, with Malcolm X publicly denouncing its leadership; he was assassinated shortly after, and two Nation of Islam members who were wrongfully convicted of his murder recently received a large settlement from New York City.)
The Nation of Islam entered its current era after Farrakhan took over the group in 1977. Now 89, he has used his platform to issue a steady stream of antisemitism, including calling Jews “wicked” and the “synagogue of Satan,” saying they have “wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government,” and calling Hitler “a very great man.” Only a few years ago, the Women’s March progressive activist collective was nearly derailed over some of its founders’ associations with Farrakhan.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for public officials to have current or former associations with the Nation of Islam. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a practicing Muslim, was dogged by accusations that he had formerly been a member of the group when he first ran for Congress in 2006; he apologized for his past associations with the group. Trayon White, a Washington, D.C. council member and onetime mayoral candidate who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, has donated to the group in the past. Former President George W. Bush once praised the group, and a photograph showing Barack Obama in the same room as Farrakhan was fodder for Obama’s critics during his presidential run.
Muhammad, who is referred to on the city council website as John Muhammad and whose legal name is John C. Malone, declined to condemn Farrakhan at the city council meeting.
“I am not willing to denounce the leader of my faith no more than a Catholic would be willing to denounce their pope,” he said.
Muhammad’s reaction to questions about Farrakhan particularly concerned the federation and other local Jewish groups. Kaufman told JTA she didn’t know whether Muhammad himself is antisemitic, but she said his refusal to disavow Farrakhan was alarming.
“I do have issue with his reverence of someone who is blatantly antisemitic, and he won’t disavow him, he won’t reject him,” she said, echoing the the federation’s official statement on the vote.
At the meeting, Muhammad did say that he had reached out to the Florida Holocaust Museum but had not heard back — and that he thought the museum’s criticism of him was unfair.
“What I found when we reached out to have dialogue with the Holocaust Museum director, they did not want to talk to me,” he said. “They wanted to evaluate and disqualify me based on the association that I have as an individual. I don’t think that that’s just.”
Muhammad also defended his record with Jews by claiming that they were among the “diversity of those who support me.” He added, “And if you look at those who oppose me, they’re coming from one particular group.”
Since the vote, a local Black newspaper condemned the scrutiny on Muhammad, calling it a “perusal into his faith practice.”
Igel said the museum had no record that Muhammad had reached out but encouraged him to come and learn more about the Holocaust and the nature of antisemitism. Stuart Berger, head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council, acknowledged at the city council meeting that Muhammad “has made himself available to us” at the federation, but that none of the federation staff “had been in direct contact with him.”
The federation’s involvement in Muhammad’s case became its own issue at the council vote, when the candidate referenced an email Berger had written to the county commissioner. In the email, Berger wrote that Muhammad’s vetting process had been “good enough for me!”
While Muhammad took the email as proof that the federation believed him to be fit for office, Berger and Kaufman maintain that it meant nothing of the sort. Berger had not been speaking on behalf of the federation, they say, and had not intended for his email to be shared publicly.
Now that Muhammad is on the council, attention has turned to building relationships with him. Kaufman has been meeting with individual city council members, and hopes to eventually meet with Muhammad himself. She also aims to have the federation make a presentation to the council about the dangers of antisemitism and push them to make a statement about it.
She doesn’t think it’s complicated. “I think hate’s hate,” she said. “Many different colors.”
Weintraub’s congregation is celebrating its 100th anniversary in March, and one of its congregants, Eric Lynn, is also involved in politics: he was the Democratic nominee for Florida’s 13th Congressional district in the midterms but lost his race to Republican Anna Paulina Luna, who said she was raised as a Messianic Jew and campaigned with far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Weintraub himself is a member of an interfaith ministerial dialogue group with Black churches and says he’s “a professional optimist” when it comes to managing conflict between different communities. He sent JTA an episode of the public radio podcast “Hidden Brain” about how to keep conflict from spiraling, saying it “describes what I’ve tried to do.”
Since Muhammad was appointed, Weintraub has met with him; the pair had what Weintraub described as “a pleasant conversation.” The two talked about parenting and “shared traumas,” he said. They did not discuss Muhammad’s comments supporting Farrakhan, but the rabbi couldn’t help but think about him.
“I thought I was a termite, according to Farrakhan,” Weintraub said. In contrast, Muhammad “said I was a person, so that was nice.”
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The post How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Latest Epstein files release unleashes wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media
(JTA) — A bank account named for an ancient god in Israel. A “synagogue of Satan.” References to “goyim” that hint at a Jewish-run global cabal. The mystery of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged visit to China.
These are among the latest antisemitic conspiracy theories to be born from the Jeffrey Epstein files, following the document dump that has occupied online commentators for days.
Since the financial advisor and sex trafficker’s arrest by federal authorities in July 2019 and death by suicide a month later, antisemitic conspiracy theories about him have circulated widely, often invoking his Jewish identity and connections with Jewish and Israeli leaders.
But the Justice Department’s newly released batch of Epstein files on Friday, which contained over 3 million pages of documents, has taken things to a new intensity.
“If you think Epstein was just some rich pedo, you’re missing the big picture,” wrote the X account Clandestine, which has more than 734,000 followers. “Epstein was part of the satanic global elite that pull the strings from the shadows. Epstein was a Deep State puppet master.”
Mike Rothschild, a writer who researches antisemitic conspiracy theories on the far right, said the amount of material available in the files made them fertile ground for misinterpretation and confirmation bias.
“Whatever your particular brand of conspiracy theory is, there’s something in the files for you,” Rothschild told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “One of the problems that we’re having is that there is so much information and there’s no filter for it.”
Among the real revelations in the documents are a variety of exchanges of relevance to the broader Jewish world. Those include revelations that various Jewish nonprofits had courted Epstein for donations even after his conviction, evidence of Epstein’s financial ties with several Orthodox yeshivas, and new details about his well-known relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Some of the emails also show Epstein referencing the High Holidays and deploying Jewish phrases like “goyim” in a disparaging manner.
“This is the way the jew make money.. and made a fortune in the past ten years„ selling short the shippping futures„ let the goyim deal in the real world,” wrote Epstein in a 2009 email to the cognitive psychologist and onetime Trump University executive Roger Schank.
In another email dated August 2010 to Jewish entertainment publicist Peggy Siegal, discussing a party guest list, Epstein wrote, “No, goyim in abundance- jpmorgan execs brilliant wasps.”
Some of the largest conspiracist personalities seized on the new document dump, claiming that it confirmed their longstanding beliefs about secret Jewish control.
“Remember the end of last year when I was called antisemitic for telling you this is the literal, religious worldview of many people in power?,” Candace Owens, right-wing commentator turned conspiracist, wrote in a post on X responding to a photo of an email where Epstein used the term. “Type in ‘goy’ or ‘goyim’ in the Epstein files and be sure to tag a Christian who needs to wake up and leave the Zionist cause.”
In an hour-long livestream titled “BAAL SO HARD: The Epstein Files,” Owens referred to Jews as “pagan gypsies” and repeated the neo-Nazi conspiracy that B’nai Brith was behind the “ritualistic murder” of Mary Phagan, whose killing sparked the antisemitic lynching of Leo Frank in 1915.
“The Epstein files create an opportunity for us to discuss this, to hear the way they speak about us behind closed doors exactly how Sigmund Freud spoke, it’s racist,” said Owens during the stream, which had reached 2 million views on YouTube Thursday. “I want to make it clear that this is for them a religious philosophy, a racist perspective that we are goyim, meaning cattle, that are meant to be herded and ruled over.”
On Sunday, Owens posted on X, “Yes, we are ruled by satanic pedophiles who work for Israel,” adding “This is the synagogue of Satan we are up against.”
It isn’t just leading antisemitic personalities but rank-and-file social media users who have sought to paint the data dump as an indictment of Jewish power.
“Normies: ‘let’s not jump to any antisemitic conclusions, we don’t know why Epstein did these terrible things.’ Epstein: ‘I love trafficking children, manipulating markets, and don’t believe goyim are human. Also this is all because I am Jewish,’” wrote an Eastern Orthodox Christianity influencer on X.
The Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog group, condemned the proliferation of antisemitic Epstein conspiracy theories in a series of posts on X, writing, “The Epstein files are real. The antisemitism they’re fueling is also real. And right now, the second part is getting almost no attention.”
“Jeffrey Epstein was a monster. His crimes were real. His victims deserve justice and are being revictimized right now by the DOJ,” the Nexus Project wrote. “Turning his private emails into proof of a Jewish conspiracy is pure antisemitism. And it is spreading faster than anyone is willing to say.”
Rothschild said he believed the files were “reinforcing stuff that these people already are pushing out.”
“If you are predisposed to believe Candace Owens’ theory that Israel is behind everything bad that’s ever happened, you’re going to find it in the Epstein files, even if it’s not there, because there’s so many mentions and there’s so much intrigue swirling around about it, because it’s just all this raw material you can kind of use it to make whatever you want,” said Rothschild.
New conspiracy theories also stemmed from an email exchange where Epstein requested money be wired to a bank account that some concluded was titled “Baal,” the name of an ancient Canaanite god.
“BREAKING: 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 EPSTEIN NAMED HIS BANK ACCOUNT BAAL,” wrote AdameMedia, a popular right wing X account that frequently posts conspiratorial content. “Baal is a demonic being that was worshipped in ancient israel by some hebrews before they converted to Judaism. Child sacrifice is a ritual of Baal worshippers, usually through burning, like lsraeI did to Gaza. Archaeological discoveries have found thousands of urns with cremated infant and small children remains. Now we have evidence of Epstein’s circle kiIIing and even eating children.” (Similar files say “bank name” where this one says “baal,” suggesting an error.)
Others across the ideological spectrum extended longstanding theories about Epstein’s ties to Israel.
On Friday, the right-wing anti-Israel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Cenk Uygur, the progressive co-creator of The Young Turks, for a podcast interview titled “Cenk Uygur: Epstein, JFK, 9-11, Israel’s Terrorism and the Consequences of Opposing It,” during which the pair claimed that Epstein was an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. (In July, Carlson received pushback from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett after he said Epstein worked for Mossad.)
“Jeffrey Epstein was much more powerful than we realized. He could set up a meeting with almost any world leader. He can get almost anyone into the White House. Again, Ehud Barak has trouble getting into the White House, Epstein makes a call, boom, he’s in the White House. Israeli spy stays over at Epstein’s house,” said Uygur. “There’s just no question about it. He is definitely intelligence and in every turn he’s looking to help one country and it’s Israel. American media says shut up.”
Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker also repeated the claim that Epstein was working for Israel in a post on X Sunday.
“Benjamin netenyahu [sic] is in the files and former pm ehud barak has such an extensive relationship w esptein [sic] they might as well call it the israel files what the fuck are you talking about,” wrote Piker in another post on X, responding to influencer Eyal Yakoby’s claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not named in the files.
The DOJ’s Epstein database includes 659 search results for “Netanyahu,” but the vast majority of the documents that appear under the search include news articles forwarded to and from Epstein relating to the Israeli leader.
“Going by sort of the raw number of mentions in an email database is not helpful, because there’s no context for it,” said Rothschild. “If there’s 630 mentions of Netanyahu, but 100 of them are just forwarded articles, and 100 of them are people responding to Epstein saying how much they hate Netanyahu, that doesn’t mean anything. It just means that you have this number and people run with it, because people are taking these things and turning them into proof for whatever conspiracy they already believe in.”
On X, another conspiracy theory took hold after users claimed that an email sent from China to Epstein in April 2009 coincided with a trip by Netanyahu that same month. (The article cited said Netanyahu met with the Chinese foreign affairs minister in Jerusalem, not China.)
“Benjamin Netanyahu was in China and it seems likely that he was the man sending Jeffrey Epstein torture videos,” wrote Jake Shields, a far-right influencer and former MMA champion, in a post on X.
Other emails appeared to tie Epstein to Russia, leading to speculation that he had provided intelligence to the country and prompting calls for an investigation by the Polish prime minister.
Some conspiracy theorists online rejected the idea that Epstein might have been a Russian asset, instead suggesting it is a distraction being offered to take the heat off Israel.
“The memo went out, and the media is trying to say that Jeffrey Epstein worked for the KGB,” said the TikTok influencer “contraryian” in a video posted Tuesday that has amassed more than 30,000 likes. “He might have had multiple passports, but he talked to Israeli politicians, Jewish businessmen, and repeatedly invokes his Jewish identity.”
In response to a New York Post article about Epstein’s alleged Russian affiliations, one X user with 300,000 followers and a stream of antisemitic posts claimed that the coverage was evidence of a “Jewish controlled media.”
“Jeffrey Epstein- ‘I work for the Rothschilds, Israel, and world Jewry.’ Jew York Post- ‘Epstein probably worked for the Russians….,’” the post, read. “You don’t hate the Jewish controlled media enough.”
In a podcast episode Monday, Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, who has previously criticized conservative rivals for linking Epstein with Mossad, said there was not evidence in the files that Epstein was blackmailing people “on behalf of a foreign power or a cadre of powerful people who are attempting to shape global policy.”
Rothschild, the conspiracy theory expert, said everything he has seen reflects deep-seated antisemitic animus among conspiracy theorists.
“Antisemitism is huge in these circles, it always has been,” he said. “Whether it’s just outright attacks on Jews, or the sort of more crouched globalists, European bankers, you know, antisemitism is a huge part of that world.”
But he emphasized that not all claims about Epstein amount conspiracy theories — which is why the drumbeat of antisemitism can continue unabated.
“Jeffrey Epstein was part of a cabal. I mean, it’s not like the Elders of Zion sitting around in a dark room, you know, deciding on the fates of nations, but it’s pretty clear that Epstein was at the center of a gigantic conspiracy,” said Rothschild. “That’s not a theory. That has nothing to do with Judaism. It has everything to do with greed and perversion.”
The consequences, he said, are bad for the Jews and for everyone else.
“Anything that calcifies our politics and our discourse even more, I think is very dangerous,” Rothschild said. “Certainly there’s always going to be a danger that it falls disproportionately on the Jewish community. I think it’s probably making life difficult for actual survivors of trauma like this to get people to pay attention to them.”
The post Latest Epstein files release unleashes wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu is floundering without the hostages
After the return of the final hostage last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a fresh wave of propaganda aimed at rewriting history.
Among the false claims spread by him and his allies: That outrage against Haredi draft dodgers is an exclusively leftist issue (it’s not); that opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz collaborated with Qatar, rather than any of Netanyahu’s aides (the facts say differently); that former United States President Joe Biden is to blame for Israeli soldiers’ deaths — despite the exceedingly limited reach of the arms embargo Netanyahu cites as being at fault; that the attorney general’s office is trying to dismantle Israel’s democracy, when it is simply holding Netanyahu and his cronies to account.
Perhaps worst of all, a Netanyahu envoy baselessly claimed that Israeli hostages’ families aided Hamas
These lies are bolder and more pernicious than those we have become accustomed to from the prime minister’s office. And it’s because, with elections quickly approaching, Netanyahu is in a particularly precarious situation.
The return of the body of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili marks a closing point in the war: One of its two stated aims — to secure the return of all hostages and oust Hamas — has been completed. Now, all the public attention that was focused on protesting to secure the hostages’ return for nearly two-and-a-half years is ready to be redirected.
Focusing on ousting Netanyahu is an easy next step, and the prime minister knows it. Which means the only way he can hope to maintain enough support to hold on to the government is by doing what he knows best: Pushing an aggressive propaganda campaign to rewrite history.
Since the onset of war with Hamas, Netanyahu and his inner circle have been selling half-truths, deceptions and flat-out lies to convince the public that the war would end in “total victory.” But Israelis remain unconvinced. Fewer than one-third of Israelis believe that Israel won the war.
Netanyahu, who is currently ahead in the polls for November’s election but lacks a majority coalition, can’t easily change that skepticism. What he thinks he can do, it seems, is spin a convincing story of his own victimhood and blamelessness.
Netanyahu has been laying the groundwork for this campaign for years. His first interest after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, according to one of his former aides, was figuring out how to avoid taking responsibility for the security failures that primed the ground for the massacre. Since those early days, his brazen willingness to push false narratives and point fingers at anyone but himself has been on full display.
Now, he’s amping up the falsehoods, using the rhetoric of terror and treason to inflame animus toward those seeking his removal and convince his base that they, too, are under attack. He has leaned into his focus on certain favorite targets: protesters, the opposition, and the so-called “deep state,” a term mainstreamed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has used it to spread the conspiracy that government workers are trying to undermine the national interest.
“In these days we are witnessing an illegal and deliberate witch hunt,” read a Likud Party statement that Netanyahu reposted last week, claiming that effort aimed for “the overthrow of the right-wing government by the Israeli deep state and its operatives in the State Attorney’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, and the police.”
“This witch hunt is designed to instill fear and terror” in Israeli politicians, the post continued, “while creating a noose around the people surrounding the Prime Minister.”
Days later, on Feb. 2, Netanyahu reposted a clip from Channel 14, with which he is generally allied, implying that Lapid and some hostage families were involved with Qatari foreign agents. Here, too, the message was the same: Don’t believe the bad press about Netanyahu — he, like the Israeli public, is a victim.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Netanyahu is staking his political future on conspiracy theories and lies. His commitment to that strategy was on full display on Thursday, at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
There, Netanyahu regurgitated false excuses for Israel’s failures leading up to and on Oct. 7, 2023. He said that defense officials thwarted his past attempts to deter Hamas, when he in fact spent years allowing Qatari funds to be channeled to the group. And he accused former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar — whom he fired last year — of falsifying documents that show he was updated about a possible Hamas invasion before Oct. 7, as part of an effort to claim that Israeli intelligence shown to him never indicated an impending attack. Yet independent Israeli media have confirmed that the documents Bar produced are legitimate.
What this barrage of untruths shows us: Netanyahu is floundering without the hostages.
Many believe he unnecessarily prolonged the war to sell the public on the idea that they needed him. No matter how much the hostage families might accuse him of delaying their loved ones’ return, he could still argue that the war he was leading gave Israel its only shot at their recovery.
Now, all the accountability that he sought to avoid over the last several years is coming to a head. What remains to be seen: Will he finally have to face the music, or will he succeed in manipulating Israeli voters into giving him another shot at power?
The post Netanyahu is floundering without the hostages appeared first on The Forward.
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A maligned marker honoring a French Nazi sympathizer is off NYC’s streets — for now
(New York Jewish Week) — Menachem Rosensaft was pleasantly surprised this week to learn that a historical marker honoring a Nazi collaborator that has been a bane of his existence for years had been removed.
Then panic set in: Could New York City really be planning to reinstall the plaque honoring Pierre Laval, the Vichy prime minister during World War II who was executed for treason?
“It’s one thing of making a decision to remove something,” Rosensaft told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It’s quite another to make a conscious decision, of doing the work in order to replace it and put it back.”
For years, Rosensaft — general counsel emeritus of the World Jewish Congress and the son of Holocaust survivors — has lobbied against the plaques honoring Laval and Philippe Pétain, hero of the French army during World War I and later head collaborator with the Nazi regime. They are two of 206 names embedded on a half-mile stretch of Lower Broadway known as the “Canyon of Heroes.”
Rosensaft published an essay several years ago urging the removal of the plaques. He wrote another last month in conjunction with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
What he didn’t know at the time was that Laval’s name had been removed back in November after city officials deemed it a tripping hazard. The cold snap and winter weather have wreaked havoc on the pavement, causing more than a dozen markers in total to be removed.
They could return. The Alliance for Downtown New York, the nonprofit that installed the plaques, plans to eventually replace them, the New York Times reported. The Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers has previously fended off calls to remove the markers.
In 2017, following the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted that his administration would remove all hate symbols from city property — starting with the Philippe Pétain plaque downtown. (The plaque is still in place.)
But in 2018, the monuments commission recommended that the Pétain plaque remain where it is — though it advocated for “re-contextualizing them in place to continue the public dialogue.” The commission also recommended the removal of all official references to the name “Canyon of Heroes,” so as not to mischaracterize the markers as a “celebration” of any historical figures.
In 2023, following a national reckoning over Confederate statues that saw many of them torn down, then-Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who is Jewish, attended a Holocaust Remembrance Day event where he said it was “unacceptable” that Laval’s and Pétain’s names remained on the marker. Levine also sent a letter to the city’s Public Design Commission calling on the city to remove the plaques.
JTA has reached out to Mark Levine’s office — he is now the city’s comptroller — and City Hall for comment on the current situation.
The Alliance for Downtown New York contends that the removal of any of the plaques is a form of erasing history.
“Trying to render history free of mistakes, free of contradictions and horror, risks sanitizing our past and perhaps makes us more likely to repeat those mistakes,” Andrew Breslau, a representative from the Alliance for Downtown New York told The New York Times this week when it broke the news that Laval’s name had at least temporarily disappeared.
Before they became war criminals responsible for the deaths of more than 75,000 Jews, Laval and Pétain were honored in ticker-tape parades in 1931. Laval was even named Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” that same year for his management of the Great Depression in France.
Rosensaft concedes that an additional plaque with the full context of who these men were would be “better than nothing.” But he said he would not give up advocating for their full removal.
“Controversial is one thing,” Rosensaft said. “And being convicted war criminals, both sentenced to death — one executed, the other had his sentence commuted — who were responsible for sending over 70,000 Jews, deporting them from France and sending them to their death is in a separate category.”
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