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Israel’s Understanding of Time
Israeli flag. Photo: Eduardo Castro / Pixabay.
JNS.org – For Israel, it’s all about chronology. Time represents both the most critical determinant of Israel’s survival and the context within which such survival must be ensured. As with an individual human being, time is also the reciprocal of death. This vital relationship is currently most conspicuous regarding Hamas and Hezbollah, but it is most urgently meaningful regarding war with Iran.
For Israel, successful geopolitics will necessarily center on this impending war. Whether the expected conflict will be sudden or incremental, its consequences could prove existential. Of greatest significance for Israel will be avoiding a nuclear war. Inter alia, this objective will be contingent on Jerusalem’s “use of time.”
What can these ambiguous observations mean for Israel in operational terms? What might be learned about the estimable probabilities of an unmanageable war with Iran? Hezbollah’s fighting capacities are greater than those of all other jihadist terror organizations, singularly and cumulatively. These belligerent capacities present a strategic threat to Israel even apart from their Iranian backing.
A key question now arises for Israel: To what extent could a greater conceptual awareness of time generate calculable security advantages for the beleaguered Jewish state?
Though generally unrecognized, Hezbollah and Israel’s other principal terrorist adversaries define authentic victory from the bewildering standpoint of “power over death.” For all these recalcitrant foes, becoming a “martyr” (shahid) represents “power over time.” Accordingly, Jerusalem will need to think about how best to undermine such intangible but determinative notions of power.
In Jerusalem, “real-time” ought never to be interpreted solely in terms of clock measurements. But what would constitute a suitably personalized and policy-centered theory of time?
Whether explicit or implicit, Israeli security analyses should contain theory-based elements of chronology. Israel’s many-sided struggle against war and terror will need to be conducted with more intellectually determined and nuanced concepts of time. Though seemingly “impractical,” such “felt time” or “inner time” conceptualizations could sometimes reveal more about Israel’s core survival problem than any easily decipherable measurements of clocks.
The pertinent notion of “felt time” or “time-as-lived” has its origins in ancient Israel. By rejecting time as a simple linear progression, the early Hebrews approached chronology as a qualitative experience. Once it had been dismissed as something that could submit only to quantitative measures, time began to be understood by seminal Jewish thinkers as a distinctly subjective quality. This view identified time as inseparable from its personally infused content.
In terms of current threats from Iran, Israeli planners should consider chronology not only at the most obvious operational levels (e.g., how much “time” before Iran becomes nuclear?), but also at the level of individual Iranian decision-makers (e.g., what do authoritative leaders in Tehran think about time in shaping their nuclear plans vis-à-vis Israel?).
From its beginnings, the Jewish prophetic vision was one of a community living “in time.” In this formative view, political space or geography was palpably important, but not because of territoriality. Instead, the relevance of particular geographic spaces stemmed from certain unique events that had presumably taken place within their boundaries.
It’s time to return to expressly tactical and strategic issues. For Israel, security policy enhancements should include support for “escalation dominance.” When Israel and Iran are engaged in continuous direct warfare, each adversary can be expected to seek primacy during unprecedented episodes of escalation but to accomplish this objective without heightening the risks of an existential conflict. Among other things, any such expectation would require mutual assumptions of enemy rationality.
There will be multiple particulars. If it could be determined that Iran and/or Hezbollah accept a short time horizon in their search for tangible “victory” over Israel, any Israeli response to enemy aggressions would have to be “swift” in the traditional sense. If it would seem that the presumed enemy time horizon was calculably longer, Jerusalem’s expected response could still be more or less incremental. For Israel, this would mean relying more on the relatively passive dynamics of military deterrence and military defense than on any active strategies of nuclear war fighting.
In the final analysis, the worst case for Israel would be to face an irrational Iran. Moreover, this could happen simultaneously with the appearance of the Hezbollah suicide bomber in microcosm: the flesh-and-blood individual terrorist. Of special interest to Israel’s prime minister and general staff, therefore, should be the hidden time horizons of this jihadist suicide bomber. In essence, this self-defiling terror-criminal is so afraid of “not being” that any plan for “suicide” will be intended as personal death avoidance. Prima facie, such a plan is not “only” literal nonsense; it is also patent cowardice.
An aspiring suicide bomber opposing Israel sees himself or herself as a religious sacrificer. This signals a jihadist adversary’s desperate hope to escape from time that lacks any “sacred” meaning. The relevant jihadist adversary could be an individual Hezbollah terrorist, the sovereign state of Iran or both acting in tandem.
What should Israel do with all such informed understandings of its Islamist adversaries’ concept of time? Jerusalem’s immediate policy response should be to convince both aspiring Hezbollah suicide bombers and Iranian national leaders that their intended “sacrifices” could never elevate them or their societies above the immutably mortal limits of time. This will be an intellectual problem, not a political problem.
Israeli policy-makers will need to recognize certain dense problems of chronology as policy-relevant quandaries. They will also need to acknowledge to themselves that any plausible hopes for national security and “escalation dominance” should be informed by reason. In Jerusalem, all ordinary considerations of domestic politics and global geopolitics will need to be understood as both reflective and transient.
“As earthlings,” comments Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut, “all have had to believe whatever clocks said.” As necessary fonts of national security decision-making, Israeli strategic thinkers now have it in their power to look beyond the simplifying hands of clocks and investigate more policy-purposeful meanings of time. For Jerusalem, exercising such latent intellectual power could offer a survival posture of potentially unimaginable value. In the final analysis, Israel must survive in a subjective time that is “felt” by its enemies while it is being measured by clocks.
The post Israel’s Understanding of Time first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust
An antisemitic slur spray-painted on the ruins of a former synagogue in Dukla, Poland. Photo: World Jewish Restitution Organization
Two Jewish sites in Dukla, Poland, were vandalized over the weekend mere days after Polish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Grzegorz Braun claimed gas chambers at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were fake and repeated an antisemitic blood libel in a live radio interview.
Vandals spray-painted the word “F–k” followed by a Star of David on the ruins of a former synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and a memorial commemorating Holocaust victims located at the entrance of the Jewish cemetery in Dukla was defaced with a swastika and the word “Palestine,” according to the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). The memorial honors Jews of Dukla and the surrounding areas who were murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust.
The two Jewish sites in Dukla are cared for by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ), which was established in 2002 by the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the WJRO to protect and commemorate Poland’s Jewish heritage sites.
“These hateful acts are not only antisemitic, but they are also attempts to erase Jewish history and desecrate memory,” said WJRO President Gideon Taylor in a released statement on Tuesday. “Polish authorities must take swift and serious action to identify the perpetrators and ensure the protection of Jewish heritage sites in Dukla and across the country.”
“The vandalism of Jewish sites in Dukla—with swastikas and anti-Israel slurs—is not an isolated act,” insisted Jack Simony, director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF), in a statement to The Algemeiner. The nonprofit focuses on preserving the memory of the Jewish community in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and maintains the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the last remaining synagogue in town.
“While we cannot say definitively that it [the vandalism] was sparked by Grzegorz Braun’s Holocaust denial, his rhetoric contributes to an atmosphere where hatred is emboldened and truth is under assault,” added Simony. “Braun’s lies are not harmless — they are dangerous. Holocaust denial fuels antisemitism and, too often, violence. This is why Holocaust education matters … because when we fail to confront lies, we invite their consequences. Memory must be defended, not only for the sake of the past, but for the safety of our future.”
On July 10, a ceremony was held commemorating the 84th anniversary of the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, when hundreds of Polish Jews were massacred – mostly by their neighbors – in the northeastern town in German-occupied Poland. The ceremony was attended by dignitaries and faith leaders including Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Israeli Deputy Ambassador Bosmat Baruch. Groups of anti-Israel and far-right activists — including MEP Braun and his supporters – tried to disrupt the event by holding banners with antisemitic slogans and blocking the vehicles of the attendees, according to Polish radio.
Hours later, during a live radio broadcast, Braun falsely claimed the Auschwitz gas chambers were “a lie” and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was promoting “pseudo-history.” He also claimed that Jewish “ritual murder is a fact.” Polish prosecutors launched an investigation into Braun’s comments, they announced that same day. Under Article 55 of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Poland.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum issued a swift condemnation of Braun’s remarks and said it intents to pursue legal action. The Institute of National Remembrance — which is the largest research, educational and archival institution in Poland – also denounced Braun’s remarks, saying there is “well-documented” evidence supporting the existence of gas chambers. His comments were also condemned by the Embassy of Israel in Poland, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and the US Embassy in Warsaw, which said that his actions “distort history, desecrate memory, or spread antisemitism.” AJCF called on the European Parliament to consider disciplinary measures against Braun, including potential censure or expulsion.
Auschwitz Jewish Center Director Tomek Kuncewicz said Braun’s comments are “an act of violence against truth, against survivors, and against the legacy of our shared humanity.” AJCF Chairman Simon Bergson called the politician’s remarks “blatant and baseless lies,” while Simony described them as “a calculated act of antisemitic incitement” that “must be met with legal consequences and universal moral condemnation.”
The post Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Photo Credit: ADL.
Following a vote by the National Education Association (NEA) on July 6 to end its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 400 Jewish communal groups, education organizations, and religious institutions have come together to call for the influential teachers union to change course.
“We are writing to express our deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions, particularly since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023,” the letter to NEA President Becky Pringle stated. “Passage of New Business Item (NBI) 39 at the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly this past weekend, which shockingly calls for the boycott of the Anti-Defamation League, is just the latest example of open hostility toward Jewish educators, students and families coming from national and local teachers’ unions and their members.”
In addition to the ADL, signatories of the letter included American Jewish Committee (AJC), Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, #EndJewHatred, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith International, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting & Analysis), Combat Antisemitism Movement, Democratic Majority for Israel, StandWithUs, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zioness Movement, and Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
The group told Pringle that “we have heard directly from NEA members who have shared their experiences ranging from explicit and implicit antisemitism within the union to a broader pattern of insensitivity toward legitimate concerns of Jewish members – including at the recently concluded Representative Assembly. We are also deeply troubled by a broader pattern of union activity over the past 20 months that has targeted or alienated Jewish members and the wider Jewish community.”
The letter to Pringle included an addendum providing examples of objectionable rhetoric. These named such incidents as the Oakland Education Association (OEA) putting out a statement calling for “an end to the occupation of Palestine” and the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) accusing Israel of genocide.
The coalition of 400 organizations urged the NEA to “take immediate action” and suggested such steps as rejecting NBI 39, issuing a “strong condemnation” of antisemitism within the union, drafting a plan to counter ongoing antisemitism in affiliate chapters, and opposing “any effort to use an educator’s support for the existence of Israel as a means to attack their identity.”
ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X that “Excluding @ADL’s educational resources from schools is not just an attack on our org, but on the entire Jewish community. We urge the @NEAToday Executive Committee to reverse this biased, fringe effort and reaffirm its commitment to supporting all Jewish students and educators.”
The post Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him?
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s surge in New York City politics, a disturbing trend has emerged: prominent Jewish leaders are being urged to join “Jews for Zohran,” a newly formed effort to legitimize a candidate whose record and rhetoric are alarmingly out of step with Jewish communal values.
In a city that’s home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel — and where antisemitic incidents are on the rise — this is a profound mistake.
Mamdani has refused to explicitly condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” which has been widely understood as a call to violence against Jews. His defenders insist it’s a symbolic plea for Palestinian rights. But nuance offers little comfort when the phrase glorifies violent uprisings, and is routinely chanted alongside calls for Israel’s destruction.
Institutions such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and watchdogs like StopAntisemitism.org have made it clear: attempts to sanitize violent language must be firmly rejected.
Mamdani’s vocal support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is equally troubling. BDS does not merely critique Israeli policy; it seeks to economically isolate and politically delegitimize the Jewish state. When a candidate stands against the most visible symbol of Jewish survival — Israel — while brushing off violent slogans as misunderstood metaphors, we must ask what message this sends to our communities.
The answer should be clear. Jewish New Yorkers were the targets of over half the city’s reported hate crimes last year. From Crown Heights to Midtown, visible Jews have been harassed, assaulted, and mocked. Mamdani was flagged by national antisemitism monitors in December for promoting material that mocked Hanukkah. This is not abstract. This is personal, present, and dangerous.
Yes, Mamdani has pledged to increase hate crime funding from $3 million to $26 million. But that’s not enough. The Jewish community — especially now — needs more than budgetary gestures. We require moral clarity, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel powerfully stated: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself….”
Moral clarity demands more than financial promises, it requires principled rejection of rhetoric that endangers Jews. Belonging isn’t forged by slogans; it’s proven through sustained empathy, shared responsibility, and unwavering commitment to safety.
Calls for Jewish leaders to publicly support Mamdani, including those made to officials like Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), aim to provide political cover for a candidate whose worldview clashes with core Jewish values. These aren’t harmless endorsements. They’re symbols. And symbols matter.
Endorsing Mamdani sends a troubling signal: that political convenience or progressive branding outweighs communal safety and historical memory. When Jewish leaders align with someone who flirts with the delegitimization of Jewish statehood and refuses to condemn slogans rooted in violence, they are telling our adversaries that our moral lines are negotiable.
New York’s Jewish community has long been a moral compass in American politics. What happens here echoes across the nation. If our leaders can be cajoled into supporting a candidate like Mamdani, what message does that send to Jews in swing districts, smaller cities, and across college campuses? It normalizes equivocation. It emboldens the fringe. It tells the next generation that Jewish dignity is up for debate.
This is about more than Mamdani. It’s about whether Jewish pride and Jewish safety remain non-negotiable pillars of our political participation. Some have argued that this is simply politics as usual — that strategic alliances are part of coalition-building. But the Jewish people know better than most that what begins as a small compromise can metastasize into a much greater danger.
Former Democratic Councilman Rory Lancman said it best: “If ever there was a time to put principle over party, this is it.” He’s right. And that’s why this moment requires Jewish leaders to speak not just as political actors, but as moral stewards.
Jewish leaders are free to engage with any candidate they choose. But engagement is not endorsement. One can listen, challenge, and debate without aligning oneself publicly with a candidate whose positions cross communal red lines. Outreach does not require complicity.
If Jewish political figures join “Jews for Zohran,” they risk helping mainstream dangerous ideologies. They risk fracturing communal unity even further at a time when Jewish communal unity is our best defense. They risk allowing today’s ambiguity to become tomorrow’s regret.
Jewish history teaches us the cost of silence, of appeasement, and of looking away. We cannot afford those mistakes again — not in this city, not in this era; history is beginning to repeat itself and we cannot allow that to happen.
To every Jewish leader now weighing their public stance: choose principle. Choose safety. Choose the kind of moral leadership our tradition demands; reject the logic of “Jews for Zohran.” The stakes are too high — and the message matters.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The post Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Understanding of Time
Israeli flag. Photo: Eduardo Castro / Pixabay.
JNS.org – For Israel, it’s all about chronology. Time represents both the most critical determinant of Israel’s survival and the context within which such survival must be ensured. As with an individual human being, time is also the reciprocal of death. This vital relationship is currently most conspicuous regarding Hamas and Hezbollah, but it is most urgently meaningful regarding war with Iran.
For Israel, successful geopolitics will necessarily center on this impending war. Whether the expected conflict will be sudden or incremental, its consequences could prove existential. Of greatest significance for Israel will be avoiding a nuclear war. Inter alia, this objective will be contingent on Jerusalem’s “use of time.”
What can these ambiguous observations mean for Israel in operational terms? What might be learned about the estimable probabilities of an unmanageable war with Iran? Hezbollah’s fighting capacities are greater than those of all other jihadist terror organizations, singularly and cumulatively. These belligerent capacities present a strategic threat to Israel even apart from their Iranian backing.
A key question now arises for Israel: To what extent could a greater conceptual awareness of time generate calculable security advantages for the beleaguered Jewish state?
Though generally unrecognized, Hezbollah and Israel’s other principal terrorist adversaries define authentic victory from the bewildering standpoint of “power over death.” For all these recalcitrant foes, becoming a “martyr” (shahid) represents “power over time.” Accordingly, Jerusalem will need to think about how best to undermine such intangible but determinative notions of power.
In Jerusalem, “real-time” ought never to be interpreted solely in terms of clock measurements. But what would constitute a suitably personalized and policy-centered theory of time?
Whether explicit or implicit, Israeli security analyses should contain theory-based elements of chronology. Israel’s many-sided struggle against war and terror will need to be conducted with more intellectually determined and nuanced concepts of time. Though seemingly “impractical,” such “felt time” or “inner time” conceptualizations could sometimes reveal more about Israel’s core survival problem than any easily decipherable measurements of clocks.
The pertinent notion of “felt time” or “time-as-lived” has its origins in ancient Israel. By rejecting time as a simple linear progression, the early Hebrews approached chronology as a qualitative experience. Once it had been dismissed as something that could submit only to quantitative measures, time began to be understood by seminal Jewish thinkers as a distinctly subjective quality. This view identified time as inseparable from its personally infused content.
In terms of current threats from Iran, Israeli planners should consider chronology not only at the most obvious operational levels (e.g., how much “time” before Iran becomes nuclear?), but also at the level of individual Iranian decision-makers (e.g., what do authoritative leaders in Tehran think about time in shaping their nuclear plans vis-à-vis Israel?).
From its beginnings, the Jewish prophetic vision was one of a community living “in time.” In this formative view, political space or geography was palpably important, but not because of territoriality. Instead, the relevance of particular geographic spaces stemmed from certain unique events that had presumably taken place within their boundaries.
It’s time to return to expressly tactical and strategic issues. For Israel, security policy enhancements should include support for “escalation dominance.” When Israel and Iran are engaged in continuous direct warfare, each adversary can be expected to seek primacy during unprecedented episodes of escalation but to accomplish this objective without heightening the risks of an existential conflict. Among other things, any such expectation would require mutual assumptions of enemy rationality.
There will be multiple particulars. If it could be determined that Iran and/or Hezbollah accept a short time horizon in their search for tangible “victory” over Israel, any Israeli response to enemy aggressions would have to be “swift” in the traditional sense. If it would seem that the presumed enemy time horizon was calculably longer, Jerusalem’s expected response could still be more or less incremental. For Israel, this would mean relying more on the relatively passive dynamics of military deterrence and military defense than on any active strategies of nuclear war fighting.
In the final analysis, the worst case for Israel would be to face an irrational Iran. Moreover, this could happen simultaneously with the appearance of the Hezbollah suicide bomber in microcosm: the flesh-and-blood individual terrorist. Of special interest to Israel’s prime minister and general staff, therefore, should be the hidden time horizons of this jihadist suicide bomber. In essence, this self-defiling terror-criminal is so afraid of “not being” that any plan for “suicide” will be intended as personal death avoidance. Prima facie, such a plan is not “only” literal nonsense; it is also patent cowardice.
An aspiring suicide bomber opposing Israel sees himself or herself as a religious sacrificer. This signals a jihadist adversary’s desperate hope to escape from time that lacks any “sacred” meaning. The relevant jihadist adversary could be an individual Hezbollah terrorist, the sovereign state of Iran or both acting in tandem.
What should Israel do with all such informed understandings of its Islamist adversaries’ concept of time? Jerusalem’s immediate policy response should be to convince both aspiring Hezbollah suicide bombers and Iranian national leaders that their intended “sacrifices” could never elevate them or their societies above the immutably mortal limits of time. This will be an intellectual problem, not a political problem.
Israeli policy-makers will need to recognize certain dense problems of chronology as policy-relevant quandaries. They will also need to acknowledge to themselves that any plausible hopes for national security and “escalation dominance” should be informed by reason. In Jerusalem, all ordinary considerations of domestic politics and global geopolitics will need to be understood as both reflective and transient.
“As earthlings,” comments Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut, “all have had to believe whatever clocks said.” As necessary fonts of national security decision-making, Israeli strategic thinkers now have it in their power to look beyond the simplifying hands of clocks and investigate more policy-purposeful meanings of time. For Jerusalem, exercising such latent intellectual power could offer a survival posture of potentially unimaginable value. In the final analysis, Israel must survive in a subjective time that is “felt” by its enemies while it is being measured by clocks.
The post Israel’s Understanding of Time first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust
An antisemitic slur spray-painted on the ruins of a former synagogue in Dukla, Poland. Photo: World Jewish Restitution Organization
Two Jewish sites in Dukla, Poland, were vandalized over the weekend mere days after Polish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Grzegorz Braun claimed gas chambers at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were fake and repeated an antisemitic blood libel in a live radio interview.
Vandals spray-painted the word “F–k” followed by a Star of David on the ruins of a former synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and a memorial commemorating Holocaust victims located at the entrance of the Jewish cemetery in Dukla was defaced with a swastika and the word “Palestine,” according to the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). The memorial honors Jews of Dukla and the surrounding areas who were murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust.
The two Jewish sites in Dukla are cared for by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ), which was established in 2002 by the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the WJRO to protect and commemorate Poland’s Jewish heritage sites.
“These hateful acts are not only antisemitic, but they are also attempts to erase Jewish history and desecrate memory,” said WJRO President Gideon Taylor in a released statement on Tuesday. “Polish authorities must take swift and serious action to identify the perpetrators and ensure the protection of Jewish heritage sites in Dukla and across the country.”
“The vandalism of Jewish sites in Dukla—with swastikas and anti-Israel slurs—is not an isolated act,” insisted Jack Simony, director general of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF), in a statement to The Algemeiner. The nonprofit focuses on preserving the memory of the Jewish community in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and maintains the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the last remaining synagogue in town.
“While we cannot say definitively that it [the vandalism] was sparked by Grzegorz Braun’s Holocaust denial, his rhetoric contributes to an atmosphere where hatred is emboldened and truth is under assault,” added Simony. “Braun’s lies are not harmless — they are dangerous. Holocaust denial fuels antisemitism and, too often, violence. This is why Holocaust education matters … because when we fail to confront lies, we invite their consequences. Memory must be defended, not only for the sake of the past, but for the safety of our future.”
On July 10, a ceremony was held commemorating the 84th anniversary of the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, when hundreds of Polish Jews were massacred – mostly by their neighbors – in the northeastern town in German-occupied Poland. The ceremony was attended by dignitaries and faith leaders including Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Israeli Deputy Ambassador Bosmat Baruch. Groups of anti-Israel and far-right activists — including MEP Braun and his supporters – tried to disrupt the event by holding banners with antisemitic slogans and blocking the vehicles of the attendees, according to Polish radio.
Hours later, during a live radio broadcast, Braun falsely claimed the Auschwitz gas chambers were “a lie” and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum was promoting “pseudo-history.” He also claimed that Jewish “ritual murder is a fact.” Polish prosecutors launched an investigation into Braun’s comments, they announced that same day. Under Article 55 of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Poland.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum issued a swift condemnation of Braun’s remarks and said it intents to pursue legal action. The Institute of National Remembrance — which is the largest research, educational and archival institution in Poland – also denounced Braun’s remarks, saying there is “well-documented” evidence supporting the existence of gas chambers. His comments were also condemned by the Embassy of Israel in Poland, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and the US Embassy in Warsaw, which said that his actions “distort history, desecrate memory, or spread antisemitism.” AJCF called on the European Parliament to consider disciplinary measures against Braun, including potential censure or expulsion.
Auschwitz Jewish Center Director Tomek Kuncewicz said Braun’s comments are “an act of violence against truth, against survivors, and against the legacy of our shared humanity.” AJCF Chairman Simon Bergson called the politician’s remarks “blatant and baseless lies,” while Simony described them as “a calculated act of antisemitic incitement” that “must be met with legal consequences and universal moral condemnation.”
The post Jewish Synagogue, Holocaust Memorial Vandalized in Poland After Politician Denies Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Photo Credit: ADL.
Following a vote by the National Education Association (NEA) on July 6 to end its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 400 Jewish communal groups, education organizations, and religious institutions have come together to call for the influential teachers union to change course.
“We are writing to express our deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions, particularly since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023,” the letter to NEA President Becky Pringle stated. “Passage of New Business Item (NBI) 39 at the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly this past weekend, which shockingly calls for the boycott of the Anti-Defamation League, is just the latest example of open hostility toward Jewish educators, students and families coming from national and local teachers’ unions and their members.”
In addition to the ADL, signatories of the letter included American Jewish Committee (AJC), Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, #EndJewHatred, American Jewish Congress, B’nai B’rith International, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting & Analysis), Combat Antisemitism Movement, Democratic Majority for Israel, StandWithUs, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Zioness Movement, and Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
The group told Pringle that “we have heard directly from NEA members who have shared their experiences ranging from explicit and implicit antisemitism within the union to a broader pattern of insensitivity toward legitimate concerns of Jewish members – including at the recently concluded Representative Assembly. We are also deeply troubled by a broader pattern of union activity over the past 20 months that has targeted or alienated Jewish members and the wider Jewish community.”
The letter to Pringle included an addendum providing examples of objectionable rhetoric. These named such incidents as the Oakland Education Association (OEA) putting out a statement calling for “an end to the occupation of Palestine” and the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) accusing Israel of genocide.
The coalition of 400 organizations urged the NEA to “take immediate action” and suggested such steps as rejecting NBI 39, issuing a “strong condemnation” of antisemitism within the union, drafting a plan to counter ongoing antisemitism in affiliate chapters, and opposing “any effort to use an educator’s support for the existence of Israel as a means to attack their identity.”
ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X that “Excluding @ADL’s educational resources from schools is not just an attack on our org, but on the entire Jewish community. We urge the @NEAToday Executive Committee to reverse this biased, fringe effort and reaffirm its commitment to supporting all Jewish students and educators.”
The post Coalition of 400 Jewish Orgs and Synagogues Urge Teachers Union to Reverse Decision Cutting Ties with ADL first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him?
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s surge in New York City politics, a disturbing trend has emerged: prominent Jewish leaders are being urged to join “Jews for Zohran,” a newly formed effort to legitimize a candidate whose record and rhetoric are alarmingly out of step with Jewish communal values.
In a city that’s home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel — and where antisemitic incidents are on the rise — this is a profound mistake.
Mamdani has refused to explicitly condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” which has been widely understood as a call to violence against Jews. His defenders insist it’s a symbolic plea for Palestinian rights. But nuance offers little comfort when the phrase glorifies violent uprisings, and is routinely chanted alongside calls for Israel’s destruction.
Institutions such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and watchdogs like StopAntisemitism.org have made it clear: attempts to sanitize violent language must be firmly rejected.
Mamdani’s vocal support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is equally troubling. BDS does not merely critique Israeli policy; it seeks to economically isolate and politically delegitimize the Jewish state. When a candidate stands against the most visible symbol of Jewish survival — Israel — while brushing off violent slogans as misunderstood metaphors, we must ask what message this sends to our communities.
The answer should be clear. Jewish New Yorkers were the targets of over half the city’s reported hate crimes last year. From Crown Heights to Midtown, visible Jews have been harassed, assaulted, and mocked. Mamdani was flagged by national antisemitism monitors in December for promoting material that mocked Hanukkah. This is not abstract. This is personal, present, and dangerous.
Yes, Mamdani has pledged to increase hate crime funding from $3 million to $26 million. But that’s not enough. The Jewish community — especially now — needs more than budgetary gestures. We require moral clarity, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel powerfully stated: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself….”
Moral clarity demands more than financial promises, it requires principled rejection of rhetoric that endangers Jews. Belonging isn’t forged by slogans; it’s proven through sustained empathy, shared responsibility, and unwavering commitment to safety.
Calls for Jewish leaders to publicly support Mamdani, including those made to officials like Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), aim to provide political cover for a candidate whose worldview clashes with core Jewish values. These aren’t harmless endorsements. They’re symbols. And symbols matter.
Endorsing Mamdani sends a troubling signal: that political convenience or progressive branding outweighs communal safety and historical memory. When Jewish leaders align with someone who flirts with the delegitimization of Jewish statehood and refuses to condemn slogans rooted in violence, they are telling our adversaries that our moral lines are negotiable.
New York’s Jewish community has long been a moral compass in American politics. What happens here echoes across the nation. If our leaders can be cajoled into supporting a candidate like Mamdani, what message does that send to Jews in swing districts, smaller cities, and across college campuses? It normalizes equivocation. It emboldens the fringe. It tells the next generation that Jewish dignity is up for debate.
This is about more than Mamdani. It’s about whether Jewish pride and Jewish safety remain non-negotiable pillars of our political participation. Some have argued that this is simply politics as usual — that strategic alliances are part of coalition-building. But the Jewish people know better than most that what begins as a small compromise can metastasize into a much greater danger.
Former Democratic Councilman Rory Lancman said it best: “If ever there was a time to put principle over party, this is it.” He’s right. And that’s why this moment requires Jewish leaders to speak not just as political actors, but as moral stewards.
Jewish leaders are free to engage with any candidate they choose. But engagement is not endorsement. One can listen, challenge, and debate without aligning oneself publicly with a candidate whose positions cross communal red lines. Outreach does not require complicity.
If Jewish political figures join “Jews for Zohran,” they risk helping mainstream dangerous ideologies. They risk fracturing communal unity even further at a time when Jewish communal unity is our best defense. They risk allowing today’s ambiguity to become tomorrow’s regret.
Jewish history teaches us the cost of silence, of appeasement, and of looking away. We cannot afford those mistakes again — not in this city, not in this era; history is beginning to repeat itself and we cannot allow that to happen.
To every Jewish leader now weighing their public stance: choose principle. Choose safety. Choose the kind of moral leadership our tradition demands; reject the logic of “Jews for Zohran.” The stakes are too high — and the message matters.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
The post Zohran Mamdani Won’t Condemn Calls for Violence Against Jews; Why Are Jewish Leaders Supporting Him? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.