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NYC Mayor Eric Adams, in interview, seeks ‘pipeline’ to mend Black-Jewish relations
(New York Jewish Week) — After attending a mayors’ gathering in Athens Wednesday to discuss solutions to antisemitism, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he wants to build “a pipeline” of young people from all walks of life to fight back against hate.
“When you see these interactions that are negative, it’s involving young people,” Adams told the New York Jewish Week in a brief phone interview from Greece. “We have to go and build up that pipeline. We have not done that, and that is where I think we made a mistake.”
Adam’s reply came in response to a question about the controversy surrounding Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who was suspended after tweeting an endorsement of a film that features Holocaust denial and other antisemitic tropes. Adams appeared to agree that the incident threatened to further cool an already lukewarm relationship between Blacks and Jews.
“The error that I believe we’ve made is that we didn’t continue to build out the pipeline, because many of those who had strong relationships between communities, some have transitioned and may have passed on,” Adams said. “Some of us are still here.”
Adams continued, “We have to start them young, doing different sporting events together, doing different video games together, doing projects together, visiting mosques, synagogues and Baptist churches.”
Mayor Eric Adams calls New York City ‘the Tel Aviv of America’ while speaking in Athens, Greece. pic.twitter.com/hvUN8OGwf9
— Jacob Henry (@jhenrynews) November 30, 2022
In a virtual press conference that followed his one-on-one with the New York Jewish Week, Adams continued with this idea, saying that the communities that value relationships between the Black and Jewish communities “must now expand and recruit and bring in other young people.”
“We have an obligation to bring those young people together and start being creative in how we foster those relationships,” Adams said. “That is what I’ve heard my mayors across the entire entire participant group in this workshop and seminar.”
In the same press conference, Adams called on federal lawmakers to take on more of a role in looking at social media’s influence on hate, adding that he wants to “convene together leaders of the social media industry.”
He also said that “it is troubling to find that many people who commit these hate crimes are not going to jail” and that he wants to hold people committing hate crimes more accountable for their actions.
The two-day summit, which began Wednesday, is a gathering of more than 50 mayors and municipal leaders from across the globe. It was created in partnership with the Combat Antisemitism Movement, a global coalition of 65 Jewish and interfaith organizations; the Center for Jewish Impact, an Israeli relationship-building organization, and the Jewish Federations of North America.
On Thursday, Adams was scheduled to visit the Beth Shalom Synagogue in Athens, lay a wreath at a Holocaust memorial and meet with the city’s Chief Rabbi, Gabriel Negrin.
During the first day of the conference, Adams was presented with the organizers’ Civic Leadership Award for “his dedicated commitment to fighting antisemitism and religious bigotry of all forms,” according to a press release.
His biggest success in that regard was also the most recent: On Nov. 10, following a tip from the Jewish-run Community Security Initiative, transit police arrested two men at Penn Station who were threatening to shoot up a synagogue. A representative of Flatbush Shomrim, a Jewish neighborhood watch group in Brooklyn, said at the time that the Jewish community of New York has “an unprecedented relationship” with the mayor.
Adams reflected on that relationship, telling the New York Jewish Week that he’s “not trying to tell them everything is alright when they don’t feel alright.”
“I notice the antisemitic acts that are happening,” Adams told the New York Jewish Week. “I’m clear that we must stop them. This is not something that started as mayor. This is how I’ve been as a state senator, as a borough president and now I’m continuing that as mayor.”
After Greece, the mayor will head to Qatar for the World Cup, which his team has described as a research trip ahead of 2026, when the global soccer tournament will include games at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
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Two Men Jailed in UK for Islamic State-Inspired Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews
Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who along with Amar Hussein, 52, has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. They are due to be sentenced on Friday. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were jailed on Friday for plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired attack on the Jewish community in England, a plan prosecutors said could have been deadlier than December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both convicted after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester, in northwest England.
Prosecutors said the pair were Islamist extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could in an attack in Manchester.
They were found guilty little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said on Friday that, had Saadaoui and Hussein carried out their plan, it “could have been very much more serious” than the attacks in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced Saadaoui to a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein to a minimum term of 26 years, saying: “You were very close to being ready to carry out this plan.”
Hussein refused to attend his sentencing, having refused to attend most of his trial, which Wall said reflected Hussein’s cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten an unarmed group with an AK-47 but not sufficiently courageous to face up to what he did.”
POTENTIALLY ONE OF DEADLIEST ATTACKS ON UK SOIL
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, Sandhu told jurors at the trial.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles and another pistol, and to collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition.
“This would likely have been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on British soil,” Wall said.
Unbeknown to Saadaoui, however, a man known as “Farouk,” from whom he was trying to get the weapons, was an undercover operative who helped foil the plot.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. He was sentenced to six years in jail.