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NJ township will pay $575,000 to settle lawsuit alleging discrimination against Orthodox Jews
(JTA) — New Jersey’s Jackson Township has settled a state lawsuit alleging that it used local ordinances to discriminate against Orthodox Jews, after settling both a federal complaint and a private lawsuit based on similar claims.
In the settlement with the state attorney general, Jackson Township will pay $575,000 in penalties and restitution funds, repeal the ordinances that allegedly target Orthodox Jews and adopt new policies and procedures that protect religious freedom. It will also form a multicultural committee composed of residents that will meet quarterly to combat discrimination, and local officials will undergo anti-discrimination training.
“No one in New Jersey should face discrimination for their religious beliefs,” Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement. “We are firmly committed to eliminating discrimination and bias across our state, and we expect local leaders to comply with our robust anti-discrimination laws.”
The settlement comes after years in which officials and community groups in and around Jackson have been accused of trying to push out Orthodox residents. Jackson borders the heavily Orthodox city of Lakewood, and Orthodox Jews have moved into the surrounding towns as Lakewood’s population has swelled.
Activists organized to oppose the arrival of the new residents, including one group that repurposed a famous anti-Nazi poem to cast Orthodox Jews as a threat to the area’s quality of life. In 2019 and 2020, there were multiple instances of swastika graffiti on Jewish-owned property in Jackson.
Local Jewish leaders accused the activists as well as local officials of antisemitism, with a synagogue suing Jackson in 2014 for barring it from building a girls high school. In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Jackson, alleging that it banned religious boarding schools to keep out Orthodox residents. Jackson settled the federal suit last year for $200,000 and a repeal of the boarding school ban. It settled the synagogue’s suit in January for $1.35 million.
The state attorney general filed its suit in 2021, alleging that the township had adopted discriminatory zoning and land use ordinances as well as enforcement practices that targeted Orthodox Jews. The suit said those practices violated New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law.
According to the complaint, which was filed by the the previous state attorney general and the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, the township engaged in discriminatory surveillance of the homes of Orthodox Jews, hoping to spot prayer gatherings that contravened local ordinances. (The city of Miami Beach in Florida recently agreed to pay a single congregation $1.3 million after facing a lawsuit over similar allegations.)
The complaint alleged that the township applied land use laws and zoning ordinances unfairly to inhibit the construction of yeshivas and dormitories as well as sukkahs, the temporary huts built for the fall festival of Sukkot. And it said the town effectively banned the creation of an eruv, or symbolic boundary made of string that allows observant Jews to carry items outdoors on Shabbat.
Under the terms of the settlement, Jackson is required to notify the state of any decision or regulation that would affect local religious land use or practice. The state will monitor the township’s compliance with the settlement requirements for three years.
“Religious freedom is a bedrock principle of American democracy, and we are deeply committed to protecting it here in New Jersey,” Sundeep Iyer, director of the state Division on Civil Rights, said in a statement. “As hate and bias – including against the Jewish community – continue to rise, it is critical that we call out religious discrimination when we see it, and it is especially important that we hold public officials accountable when they treat people differently based on their faith.”
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The post NJ township will pay $575,000 to settle lawsuit alleging discrimination against Orthodox Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.