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Jewish teens, led by Ezra Beinart, are gathering on Zoom to meet prominent Palestinians

(JTA) — When Rep. Rashida Tlaib joined a Zoom with 40 teenagers, she soon found herself talking about the kinds of topics — academic and otherwise — that tend to take up their days. 

There was discussion of the stress of AP exams, embarrassing dads and social media memes. She showed them pictures on Instagram of her dog at the U.S. Capitol. Everyone was on a first-name basis. 

“My son is a [high school] junior,” she said, responding to a message in the Zoom chat from one of the teen participants. “Oh my God, the SAT — I was stressed out. I’m stressed because he’s stressed. He had to take all his AP exams and stuff.”

Tlaib got personal too — talking about her grandmother, with whom she last spoke on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.  

But the conversation also turned to a question many of the teens had encountered at high school, camp, youth groups or elsewhere in their lives: Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?

As the only Palestinian-American in Congress — and perhaps the chamber’s most prominent anti-Zionist — Tlaib was in a unique position to answer. And the students on the call had a particular interest in the question as well: They were all Jewish.

The teens are all participants in a new initiative, launched last year, to expose young American Jews to Palestinian voices through video chats. Founded by Ezra Beinart, a junior at a Jewish day school in New York City, the project’s goal is to bring Palestinian perspectives to a demographic that, he says, sorely lacks them. 

“I live in a very Jewish community and most of the people around me are very educated on the Israeli perspective, but not as knowledgeable about the Palestinian side,” Beinart said in an interview. “And that’s why I decided to create the group to inform young Jews about the other side of the story, which I don’t think most Jewish students know much about.”

In her response to the question about antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Tlaib again turned to her grandmother, Muftieh, whom she refers to with the Arabic term “Sity” and whom she has portrayed as the face of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. She said people were “weaponizing antisemitism” in order to chill criticism of Israel.

“My grandmother, literally solely based on the fact that she was born Palestinian, she just doesn’t have equality,” Tlaib told the teens. “Her life would be completely different if that wasn’t the case. And so, you know, for me criticizing that, if anything, is more chipping away at this form of government that does that to my Sity.”

Michigan House Rep. Rashida Tlaib speaks on stage at a concert in Detroit, July 16, 2022. (Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)

Beinart said he wants to increase opportunities for Jewish-Palestinian interaction. So he said he has reached out to “very Jewish” communities around the country, through chat groups and progressive synagogues, to get the word out. He started out with just a handful of teens, but his numbers are growing: His session with Tlaib drew 40 viewers. 

Such interest comes at a time of political flux in Israel, and as young Jewish adults in the United States view the country less favorably than their elders. A 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center found that Jews aged 18-30 were less emotionally attached to Israel than older generations, more skeptical of its efforts toward peace and likelier to support efforts to boycott it. In recent years, activist groups founded by young Jews have pushed institutions such as campus Hillels and the Conservative movement’s Camp Ramah network to be more inclusive of Palestinian or anti-Zionist perspectives.  

The initiative’s format has speakers introduce themselves for five minutes or so and then take questions, which Beinart selects, for another 30 minutes. It has held about half a dozen sessions with speakers like Ayman Mohyeldin, a journalist at MSNBC, and Amahl Bishara, a professor at Tufts University. Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, is its most prominent guest so far. (Her office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or for comment.)

Beinart wanted his peers to have their minds opened, as he said his was when he interned last summer at the Jerusalem Fund, a pro-Palestinian think tank and advocacy organization in Washington D.C. He noticed that a friend of his who worked there used “Palestine” as readily as he used “Israel,” and described to him how fraught traveling to the region was for her, whereas he took his ability to enter the country for granted.

“It made it much more tangible to have friends explain how Israel’s actions affect them in everyday life,” he said. “It’s different from just reading about it or seeing a video.”

If Beinart’s name is familiar, it’s because his father is Peter Beinart, the writer who was once an outspoken advocate for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and now is a prominent Jewish voice supporting a single, binational Israeli-Palestinian state. The elder Beinart declined to comment for this article, as the initiative is his son’s project rather than his. But for a decade, Peter Beinart has been making the case that American Jews need to spend more time listening to Palestinian voices. 

Resistance to hearing from Palestinians, the elder Beinart wrote in 2013 in the New York Review of Books, “make[s] the organized American Jewish community a closed intellectual space, isolated from the experiences and perspectives of roughly half the people under Israeli control. And the result is that American Jewish leaders, even those who harbor no animosity toward Palestinians, know little about the reality of their lives.”

Ezra acknowledges his father’s influence, albeit reluctantly. The first speaker in the series was Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist Ezra met when he accompanied Peter on a West Bank tour.

 “Yeah, obviously, but I’m going my own way with it,” Ezra Beinart said, asked about his father’s influence. “I’m connecting Israel-Palestine to what I see going on with my peers, my friends.”

In the Zoom session, Tlaib intuited Ezra’s ambivalence about bringing his father into the conversation, so she trod carefully when she quoted the elder Beinart to make a point.

“Ezra, your dad said something once — I know you don’t want me to mention your dad, you’re like my son,” she said. But she then brought up a quote by Peter Beinart to explain why she had chosen, despite considerable backlash, to host an event in the U.S. Capitol commemorating the Nakba, the word meaning “catastrophe” which Palestinians use to describe their displacement during and after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. 

Peter Beinart’s quote was, “When you tell a people to forget its past, you are not proposing peace, you are proposing extinction.”

Tlaib said, “I used [Beinart’s quote] today when I got interviewed because I love this, but when Peter says it, it’s like okay, look at this is, this is a Jewish American man speaking up about the importance of understanding history.” 

After the meeting, Ezra Beinart told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he chose questions that reflected the narrative Jewish youth were exposed to in their communities. In addition to discussing anti-Zionism and antisemitism, one question was, “What is your response to those who believe that using the word ‘occupation’ is harmful?” (Avoiding accurate terminology inhibits the advance of peace and human rights, Tlaib said.)

“Jewish people, when they think about Palestinians, they think of terror, most of them,” Beinart said. “So that’s something they should hear about from Palestinians.”

Teaneck, the northern New Jersey suburb that would qualify as a “very Jewish” community by nearly any standard, is where one of the participants, Liora Pelavin, 15, lives. Her mother, who is a rabbi, saw a post about Beinart’s Zoom meetings on Facebook and thought her daughter might be interested.

“Hearing from Palestinians really humanizes them,” Pelavin, who attended a Jewish day school through eighth grade and now goes to a public high school, said in an interview.  “It makes me learn and also realize that they all have different opinions, too.”

Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, an organization whose programs include facilitating dialogue between American Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, said any interaction would be welcome.

However, he was concerned that most of the Palestinians Ezra Beinart had selected were political or advocacy leaders, instead of ordinary Palestinians who might be better suited to explain everyday realities to high school students.

“There’s probably a version of a way to do this like Encounter,” a long-running program that brings American Jews to the West Bank for dialogue with Palestinians, “where you are hearing from people and learn their stories, and you are free to come to the political conclusions you want,” Kurtzer said. “But you  humanize their experience. That’s one way of doing any of this work. There’s another way to do this work, which is, ‘I want to influence the politics of your own community.’”

Jonathan Kessler — a former senior official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who now leads Heart of a Nation, a group that facilitates dialogue among Jewish American, Palestinian and Israeli teens — said he was aware of Beinart’s initiative, and that it is an example of how Gen Z may be better able to break down barriers than their elders.

“A generation that does not think of gender and sexuality in binary terms is uniquely well positioned to approach a conflict, which has for too long been defined in a binary way,” Kessler said.

Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian political scientist who has spoken to Beinart’s group, said it was particularly important for Palestinian speakers to reach Jewish teens.

“Within the Jewish community, particularly in the organized Jewish community, there may be a lot of pro-Israel perspectives represented and not a whole lot of Palestinian perspectives represented,” he said. “I’m always inspired when I speak to younger people about this issue who have an interest in learning more.”

For Tlaib, it was also a forum where she had expressed views that she hasn’t otherwise voiced publicly — saying that she felt conflicted about evacuating Israeli settlers because they had lived in the West Bank for so long.

“Just the idea around taking families that — that’s been their home — it’s just completely uprooting, forcibly displacing,” Tlaib said. “It’s something I struggle with because, like, we’re doing it all over again, right? This happened during the Nakba.”

Beinart said he and others on the call, including Pelavin, were moved by her sentiments.

“A lot of the Jewish community thinks like, ‘Palestinians hate us, and don’t think we’re people too,’” Pelavin said. “I think that’s so wrong, and being on these calls has just confirmed that for me.”

Ezra Beinart favors a single binational state — Tlaib is the only elected lawmaker who also takes that position —  and Pelavin said her views on Israel trended left. But while much of the organized American Jewish community has historically bristled at criticism of Israel, neither teen said that they were made to feel like a pariah in their Jewish milieus. 

“They think it’s cool that I do these types of things, but I think a lot of their goal is to just stay away from this topic around me, because they don’t really want to get into an argument about it,” Pelavin said of her peers.

And Beinart said holding a minority viewpoint hasn’t been a problem for him, either. “The kids in my school know who I am,” Ezra Beinart said. “No one’s mean to me. There are kids who share my views — a few, but not many.”

Despite the weighty subject matter, the conversation had an informal, friendly feel. Tlaib also wanted to learn more about the participants, but when she asked what colleges they were planning to attend, no one spoke up — until she noticed answers to her question piling up in the Zoom chat.

“Oh look there — you guys looove the chat!” she said. She then attempted to get her dog to hop on screen, but settled for showing the teens photos. 

Ezra Beinart said he was fine with Tlaib’s cooing and kvelling about the college plans.

“I’m not going to pretend that this is a group of well-educated adults,” he said. “This is a group of kids who don’t know about this stuff as well. And that’s why that’s why I’m doing it — it’s not supposed to be for people who are experts, right?”


The post Jewish teens, led by Ezra Beinart, are gathering on Zoom to meet prominent Palestinians appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Jan Schakowsky retracts endorsement in a congressional race over candidate’s AIPAC funding

(JTA) — Rep. Jan Schakowsky withdrew her endorsement of a congressional candidate in a neighboring Illinois district on Thursday, citing the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby as a reason.

Schakowsky endorsed Donna Miller, the Cook County commissioner, in the 2nd Congressional District last month. Now, she said, she cannot let her endorsement stand.

“Illinois deserves leaders who put voters first, not AIPAC or out-of-state Trump donors,” said Schakowsky, who herself was an AIPAC stalwart early in her tenure. “I cannot support any candidate running for Congress who is funded by these outside interests.”

Schakowsky’s comments reflected the increasing toxicity of AIPAC’s brand in Democratic politics — and an acknowledgment that the pro-Israel group is in fact playing a role in the district ahead of next month’s primary election.

Like two other candidates in different Illinois races, Miller has received contributions from a number of AIPAC-affiliated donors. She has also gotten boosts from ads paid for by brand-new local groups that have been accused of being AIPAC shell organizations.

But AIPAC has not endorsed her, and it has not put its name, or that of its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, on any of the ads.

The dustup comes as AIPAC prepares to hold a major convening behind closed doors.

Back in early 2020, nearly 20,000 people attended AIPAC’s policy conference in Washington, D.C. When the group resumed in-person gatherings post-pandemic in 2023, it stuck with much smaller, closed-door affairs.

This week, after several years in which the lobby grew increasingly radioactive, fueled by backlash against the war in Gaza, the only public sign of its conference came from acknowledgement in Israeli media that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had canceled his plans to attend in person.

An AIPAC source confirmed late Thursday that a conference was taking place Sunday to Tuesday and said it would feature U.S. politicians from both parties as well as Israeli officials, including Netanyahu and opposition leader Yair Lapid, by video. The gathering would focus on “the evolving threats facing Israel; the negotiations with Iran; solidarity with the Iranian people seeking freedom from a brutal regime; continued U.S. security assistance; and expanding joint defense cooperation,” according to the source, who said the conference was meant “to further accelerate the community’s political efforts this election cycle.”

Even before that cycle got underway, AIPAC was looming large. Having targeted progressive politicians like “Squad” members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush in 2024, AIPAC drew the ire of many on the left. And its public image has become increasingly scrutinized as it has supported unconditional military aid to Israel throughout its war in Gaza.

This month’s primary in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District was a coming-out party for AIPAC’s current strategy. There, it spent more than $2 million to attack a progressive Democrat, Tom Malinowski, who had joined dozens of his colleagues in saying he would support conditions on military aid to Israel under certain circumstances. An anti-Israel progressive prevailed.

Now, the group has shifted its energies to Illinois, one of the next states to hold primaries, scheduled for March 17.

The United Democracy Project has so far spent more than $750,000 in support of Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin in the 7th Congressional District, according to its federal filings.

Conyears-Ervin, a former state representative, is up against a crowded field that includes state Rep. La Shawn Ford, who said he turned down support from UDP because he would not support unconditional military aid to Israel; Jason Friedman, a longtime Jewish federation leader and real estate developer; and Kina Collins, who protested for a ceasefire in Gaza in November 2023 with anti-Zionist groups Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow.

In three other races, the group has been accused of covertly backing candidates. Former Rep. Melissa Bean, state Sen. Laura Fine and Miller have not been formally endorsed by AIPAC, but have all received contributions from a number of donors who have also given to AIPAC. Fine raised $1.2 million last quarter — $1 million of which came from donors who’ve given to AIPAC-affiliated groups, according to the Washington Post, mostly from outside Illinois. Bean and Miller have reported more than $400,000 and $875,000 in donations from AIPAC donors, respectively.

They’ve also gotten boosts from ads paid for by Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now, a pair of new organizations that have been accused of being AIPAC shell organizations. Like the Malinowski attack ads and others from the UDP playbook, the ads did not mention Israel.

The Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, another pro-Israel advocacy group, jumped in on Thursday, endorsing both Bean and Miller.

Fine’s opponents include Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive 26-year-old Palestinian-American who has called for an end to U.S. weapons sales to Israel and accuses Israel of committing genocide; and Daniel Biss, the Jewish mayor of Evanston who is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and supports the Block the Bombs Act that would limit some weapons from being sold to Israel.

One of Bean’s opponents in the 8th district, Junaid Ahmed, spoke against AIPAC at a joint press conference with Biss, plus candidates from the two other races where AIPAC is thought to have been spending. Ahmed’s platform includes ending all military aid to Israel and a right of return for Palestinians.

First elected in 1998, Schakowsky, who is Jewish, was once an AIPAC acolyte herself. Back in 2010, facing a challenger from the right who made Israel an issue in their campaign, she boasted of having a 100% record of voting with AIPAC; the lobby, meanwhile, said that it did not endorse candidates but noted that Schakowsky “has an excellent record on issues important to the pro-Israel community.” Over time, though, she emerged as a senior leader among the pro-Israel progressives, becoming a headliner at conferences of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street and protesting against Israeli government actions. She announced last year that she would not run again.

Responding to Schakowsky’s endorsement reversal, Miller did not mention AIPAC. Noting that she and Schakowsky had been friends for decades, she said her campaign would continue to focus on affordability issues.

Schakowsky added that she would continue to endorse Biss, who’s been outspoken against AIPAC amid reports of its involvement in Illinois’ congressional races, to replace her.

Biss responded enthusiastically on Thursday. “Proud to be endorsed by @RepSchakowsky,” he tweeted, “and proud to NOT be endorsed by AIPAC and MAGA donors.”

The post Jan Schakowsky retracts endorsement in a congressional race over candidate’s AIPAC funding appeared first on The Forward.

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Door-to-Door Anti-Israel Boycott Campaigns in Britain Raise Alarm Bells Over Hostile Environment Toward Jews

Protesters from “Palestine Action” demonstrate on the roof of Guardtech Group in Brandon, Suffolk, Britain, July 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Chris Radburn

Across Britain, local Jewish communities are raising alarms bells over pro-Palestinian boycott activists going door-to-door to track residents who refuse to shun Israeli products, fueling an increasingly hostile and intimidating environment for Jews and Israelis.

Earlier this week, South Yorkshire Police, which serves Sheffield and surrounding areas in northern England, opened an investigation following a violent clash in the Woodseats neighborhood, in the southern part of the city, between the anti-Israel activists demanding residents boycott Israeli goods and opponents who called them “Jew hunters.”

Known as Sheffield Apartheid Free Zone (SAFZ), this anti-Israel group has been active for months across neighborhoods in Sheffield and other parts of the United Kingdom.

As part of a broader effort to undermine the Jewish state internationally, the group distributes materials urging boycotts of Israeli products, claiming that “Israel thrives on international support.”

“When we choose not to buy Israeli goods, it hurts them in the most central place – their economy. Boycotts have worked before. They were a powerful factor in ending apartheid in South Africa and together we can replicate that success,” says one of the group’s propaganda materials. 

Sparking outrage among local Jewish communities and political leaders, the group reportedly tracks residents’ responses, noting whether they are “no answer, not interested, or supportive.”

Earlier this week, a violent confrontation erupted in the Woodseats neighborhood in northern England after pro-Israel activists who had learned of the group’s activities on social media arrived on the scene.

Jean Hatchet, a local activist, confronted the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, following them through the streets while shouting “Jew hunters are coming” and waving a sign reading “No tolerance for Jew hatred.”

According to Hatchet’s testimony, one group member snatched the sign from her hands and struck her on the head, prompting her to file a police complaint alleging assault motivated by religion.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hatchet claimed the group actively maintains a “blacklist” of anyone who supports Israel.

“They’re taking addresses of people who don’t agree with their point of view,” the pro-Israel activist said. “We have data protection regulations in this country and they’re committing acts that cross the boundaries of what’s permitted.”

Similar door-to-door boycott campaigns have been reported in Bristol and Hackney in England, Cardiff in Wales, and Belfast and Glasgow in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Last Saturday, pro-Palestinian activists were filmed going door-to-door in Brighton, a coastal city in southern England, asking residents to sign pledges to boycott Israeli products.

Vicky Bogel, founder of the pro-Israel group “Jewish and Proud” in Brighton, denounced the incident after witnessing eight teams of volunteers moving systematically from house to house with clipboards and lists of addresses.

“They found out who has ‘Zionist tendencies’ and who doesn’t and where they live,” Bogel told the Jewish Chronicle. “This is cunning and dangerous activity; we’re talking about an intimidation campaign at another level.”

Peter Kyle, the British trade secretary and a member of Parliament representing Brighton, strongly condemned these latest incidents, calling for police investigations into the groups for potential hate crimes and incitement.

However, Sussex Police, which covers the Brighton area, said that “there is currently no evidence of criminal activity,” while acknowledging that the reports are under review.

The Israeli embassy in London also condemned the incidents, calling them a “disgrace” and warning that such campaigns fuel intimidation and hostility toward Jewish communities across the country.

“Compiling lists of homes and businesses to enforce a boycott of Israeli products is not principled protest, it is intimidation,” the statement read.

“Targeting people and shops because of their Israeli identity echoes some of the darkest chapters of European history,” it continued. “Decent people should call this out, clearly and without hesitation.”

Earlier this month, the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, revealed in an annual report that it recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025, the second-highest total ever in a single calendar year and an increase of 4 percent from the 3,556 in 2024.

Last year averaged 308 antisemitic incidents each month — an exact doubling of the 154 monthly average in the year before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

Antisemitic incidents had fallen from the record high of 4,298 in 2023, which analysts say was fueled by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack — the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

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Two Men Spit, Say ‘Free Palestine’ as They Attempt to Gain Access to Jewish Center in Dallas

Two young men who attempted to gain entry to a Jewish life center in Dallas by claiming to be window cleaners. Photo: Screenshot

Jewish community leaders on Monday denounced an antisemitic incident in which two men trespassed the grounds of the Olami Dallas Center in Texas and demanded entry to the home of its rabbi by claiming to be window cleaners.

According to StandWithUs, the perpetrators rang the doorbell of Rabbi Yaakov Rubin, who refused to let them, in response to which one of the men spat on the property as the other said “Free Palestine.” StandWithUs added that they also said “fake Jews” during their attempt to gain access to the building.

However, after realizing they were caught on camera, one of the perpetrators then yelled: “I love the Jews.”

StandWithUs shared video footage of the incident.

“There’s much brazenness required to walk up to a house, in an attempt to intimidate a Jewish Life center, and its host family, ring the doorbell, and say, ‘Free Palestine,’” Rubin said in a statement included in a press release StandWithUs issued following the incident. “This requires us to be that much bolder and proud of our Jewishness and Israel, through open pride, a strong sense of identity and nurturing our mission from G-d. We don’t run, won’t hide, we will be a light to the world.”

The incident at the Olami center comes amid a period of anti-Jewish violence in the US that is unprecedented in the country’s history. Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Jews have been murdered on the streets of Washington D.C., firebombed in Colorado with Molotov cocktails, and gang assaulted. In a recent incident just last month, a young man apparently radicalized by the far right set the Beth Israel Congregation on fire over its “Jewish ties,” a catastrophic event which has shut down the Jewish house of worship for the foreseeable future. Another arsonist struck the San Francisco Hillel building in December.

In Monday’s press release, Jordan Cope, director for policy and education at StandWithUs, said this latest incident is a reminder of the degree to which antisemitism is coupled with anti-Zionism.

“The youth’s mention of ‘fake Jews’ before his subsequent ‘free Palestine’ assertion followed by his ‘I love the Jews’ comments, is a clear reminder of how bigots all too often disingenuously disguise their antisemitism as a matter of Middle Eastern politics,” Cope said. “Efforts to intimidate the Jewish people into abandoning their pride of their indigenous homeless ultimately seek to intimidate Jews into silence and submission at a time where antisemitism continues to run rife throughout the West.”

He added, “Antisemitism is an age-old hatred. Anti-Israel sentiment is its newest spear.”

For several consecutive years, antisemitism in the US has surged to break “all previous annual records,” according to a series of reports issued by the ADL since it began recording data on antisemitic incidents.

The FBI disclosed similar numbers, showing that even as hate crimes across the US decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this rise in antisemitic hate crimes, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.

The wave of hatred has changed how American Jews perceive their status in America.

According to the results of a new survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Federations of North America, a majority of American Jews now consider antisemitism to be a normal and endemic aspect of life in the US.

A striking 57 percent reported believing “that antisemitism is now a normal Jewish experience,” the organizations disclosed, while 55 percent said they have personally witnessed or been subjected to antisemitic hatred, including physical assaults, threats, and harassment, in the past year.

The survey results revealed other disturbing trends: Jewish victims are internalizing their experiences, as 74 percent did not report what happened to them to “any institution or organization”; Jewish youth are bearing the brunt of antisemitism, having faced communications which aim to exclude Jews or delegitimize their concerns about rising hate; roughly a third of survey respondents show symptoms of anxiety; and the cultural climate has fostered a sense in the Jewish community that the non-Jewish community would not act as a moral guardrail against violence and threats.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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