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On a grim Shabbat, Manhattan Jews gather in solidarity with an Israel under attack
(New York Jewish Week) – As reports from Israel and Gaza painted a picture of the region plunged into chaos, dozens of people came together halfway across the world to process the incoming news, share resources and offer a helping hand and a tight hug to anyone who might need it.
Held in the lobby of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, an impromptu support gathering for local Jews, Israelis and other New Yorkers in the metro area coincided with Saturday’s Shabbat and Shemini Atzeret celebrations, and took the place of cancelled pro-democracy rallies against the Israeli government.
Reactions around the room from attendees who requested to remain anonymous all spoke to the same feeling: “shocked,” several said. “Terrible,” said one man. “Dead inside,” another woman answered. “It feels like a movie,” said a third. They had come to the JCC for a variety of reasons: to be with other people in a time of fear; to learn more information about what is happening; to find out how they can help and to show their support for Israel.
On Saturday morning in Israel, as many civilians prepared for a day of Shabbat and holiday celebrations. Hamas militants launched a surprise attack out of Gaza, sending thousands of rockets into the country, taking over kibbutzim and kidnapping Israelis. Official reports count more than 300 Israelis dead and over 1,500 wounded, though numbers are expected to rise. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “we are at war,” in response to the attacks.
The JCC is often a “meeting ground for when anything happens,” Rabbi Joanna Samuels, the organization’s CEO, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s a huge privilege and responsibility of this space that we can open the doors to our community when something happens and we need to gather.”
There was no formal agenda for the meeting. Rather the hope was to provide a space for community members to simply be with each other in a time of crisis and uncertainty. Messages about the gathering were sent via WhatsApp and text message throughout the morning; as the afternoon wore on, more and more people showed up, decked out in rain gear and many with children in tow.
Huddled over coffee and donuts, attendees chatted quietly; some crying and hugging, others communicating with friends and family over WhatsApp, still more with their phones open to Israeli and American news broadcasts.
“We really just wanted to create a space where we can all come together and support each other and strengthen each other and not sit alone at home in front of the television,” Sivan Aloni, the regional director of the Israeli-American Council in New York, told the room. “So really, thank you everyone for coming. Because you’re not only supporting yourself, you’re supporting everyone here in the room.”
For 86-year-old Aryeh Aloni, who fought in the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the war is the worst-case scenario imagined by those who, like him, have protested Israel’s current government for the last year — and experienced the last 75 years of Israeli and Palestinian history. “My parents are rolling in their graves,” he said. “I feel terrible.”
“It’s shocking. It’s cruel. Now what’s going to happen? Who will pay the price but thousands and thousands of innocent Palestinians and Israelis,” he added. Aloni said that while he has lived in the United States since the early 1960s, he has 21 first cousins living in Israel — and many of their descendants were called up from the military reserves earlier this morning.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the Israeli-American founding director of the Lab/Shul community, noted that the attack also coincided In Israel with Simchat Torah (which began in the Diaspora on Saturday evening).
“I’m 54 years old,” he said. “On Oct. 6 ,1973, the middle of the Yom Kippur, the war broke out. I was too young to know. My father and many other men were taken from the synagogue straight to the army. My memory is from the next day in our backyard, with the sukkah half-built and there was a siren. My mother dragged me by the arm to go to the shelter next door.
“I can’t believe that 50 years later, I have to explain to my children what’s going on and that Simchat Torah, the day in which we celebrate our sacred story and our continuity, now, like Yom Kippur, is forever marked with this continuing story of trauma.”
Lau-Lavie encouraged those in the room to share their emotions and not “keep things bottled up” or “sit in front of the phone and doomscroll.”
“This and other gatherings will help us,” he said. “Please hold each other. We’re not alone.”
Also present at the gathering was Tsach Saar, the deputy and acting Israeli consul general in New York. “It’s a very difficult day for all of us. There’s not too much to say, just to be together, I’m very happy to see the Israeli community and Jewish community being together and here for another,” Saar said. He offered a listening ear and to provide as many answers as he could give in the moment.
Some guests asked about canceled flights to and from Israel. Others wanted to know what they could do to help. “Where was the IDF?” Aloni, the veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, wanted to know, wondering like many observers why the military had not anticipated the Hamas assault. Saar answered that the situation is still being investigated.
A QR code was passed around the room for those who wanted to participate in support efforts, including hosting visiting Israelis whose return flights may have been delayed or canceled due to the war.
Across the city, communities were mobilizing to conduct responses. At Anshe Chesed, a Conservative congregation on the Upper West Side, an email was sent out to community members that the Simchat Torah celebration scheduled for Saturday night would be canceled.
“New York City has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, and we stand side by side with Israel every day — but we do so with extra resolve today in light of Hamas’ unprovoked terrorist attacks directed at the country and its people,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a press release Saturday morning. “Today’s attack, coming at the end of what is supposed to be a celebratory time at the end of the Jewish High Holy days, is nothing more than a cowardly action by a terrorist organization seeking to undo that peace and divide us into factions. That won’t happen.”
The release added that there is “no credible threat” to the city at this time and that the Adams administration is in touch with Jewish leaders across the city. The NYPD is deploying additional resources to Jewish community organizations and synagogues across the city.
Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation Of New York, was in Israel when the hostilities broke out. “We are working with our partners to provide urgent resources. New York — the largest Jewish community outside of Israel — is in unbreakable solidarity with Israel at war,” he said in a statement. “The global Jewish community stands in unity with the Israeli people and share their grief and anger at this callous, cowardly assault on Israeli citizens.”
The gathering at the JCC concluded with the entire room — which had grown to nearly 100 people over the course of an hour — rising together to sing Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” which means “The Hope.” “Our hope is not yet lost, It is two thousand years old,” they sang in Hebrew. “To be a free people in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
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Majority of New York City Hate Crimes Targeted Jews in 2024, New Data Shows
Anti-Israel protesters target a synagogue in Queens, New York on July 14, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City last year, according to new data issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
On Monday, the NYPD released its end-of-year crime report, which recorded a precipitous drop in crime overall but also the disturbing numbers on antisemitic hate crimes. Out of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD, 345 targeted Jews, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes in 2024 posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
The explosion of hate continued a trend. In 2023, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City, according to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jews.
Other major cities and states have recently reported increases in antisemitic hate crimes.
In Los Angeles County, antisemitic hate crimes rose 91 percent in 2023, from 127 the prior year to 242 in what the LA County Commission on Human Relations (LACCHR) described as “the largest number of anti-Jewish crimes ever” in the city.
Additionally, the state of Massachusetts saw more antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 than at any time since government officials began tracking such data eight years ago, according to a report issued by its Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS).
A striking 119 antisemitic hate crimes were reported to law enforcement agencies, EOPSS said, a total which, in addition to eclipsing 2015’s total of 56 incidents, amounts to a 70 percent increase over the previous year. Antisemitic hate crimes also constituted 18.8 percent of all hate crimes reported in 2023, a figure which trails only behind the percentage of hate crimes which targeted African Americans.
The report added that 68.9 percent of the antisemitic incidents involved property destruction or vandalism, a total of 82, while another 19 percent involved intimidation. Some physical assaults, six, were recorded or reported to the police.
“The local increase reflects national trends. Our data showed that over 10,000 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the US since Oct. 7, 2023, an over 200 percent increase compared to incidents reported to us during the same period a year before,” Peggy Shukur, vice president of the ADL’s East Division, told The Algemeiner when the information became public. “Behind every one of these numbers are people who have experienced the harm, fear, intimidation, and pain that reverberates from each of these incidents. The fact that numbers increase by 70 percent is a grim reminder that antisemitism continues to infect our communities in real and pervasive ways.”
Overall, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high in 2023, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Majority of New York City Hate Crimes Targeted Jews in 2024, New Data Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Vows ‘Hell Will Break Out in the Middle East’ if Gaza Hostages Not Released by His Inauguration
US President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US, Jan. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his threat to seek retaliation against Hamas if the Palestinian terrorist group does not release the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip.
“If [the hostages] aren’t back by the time I get in office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out,” Trump told reporters.
Trump made the comments during a wide-ranging press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He stood alongside Steve Witkoff, the recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East for his incoming administration.
“They should’ve never taken them. They should’ve never been the attacker of Oct. 7, but there was. Many people [were] killed. They’re no longer hostages,” Trump added.
On Oct. 7 of last year, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages to Gaza during their invasion of southern Israel. During the onslaught, 45 Americans were killed and 12 were abducted.
About 100 hostages, both dead and alive, remain in Gaza, including seven Americans. Three of them — Keith Siegel, Sagui Dekel-Chen, and Edan Alexander — are thought to still be alive. Three others — Itay Chen, Gadi Haggai, and Judi Weinstein Haggai — are believed to be murdered by the terrorist group, with their bodies still in the Palestinian enclave. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed last month that Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, and his body was taken by terrorists into Gaza. Neutra was initially presumed to be among the living captives.
In total, 100 hostages remain in Gaza, and at least a third of them are believed to be dead.
Trump said on Tuesday that families of hostages have approached him in tears, desperately begging for a deal to secure their loved ones’ release from captivity.
The president-elect emphasized the importance of dispatching a “great negotiator” to broker a ceasefire deal to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and free the remaining hostages, gesturing to Witkoff. Trump added that although he does “not want to hurt the negotiations,” he believes that reiterating his threats to unleash “hell” across the Middle East will incentivize Hamas to reach a deal in the upcoming weeks.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to take aggressive action to secure the return of the remaining hostages. He has previously promised that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if the terrorist group does not release those still held captive in the Gaza Strip.
“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East – But i’’s all talk, and no action!” Trump posted last month on the social media platform Truth Social. “Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity.”
“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!” he added.
The post Trump Vows ‘Hell Will Break Out in the Middle East’ if Gaza Hostages Not Released by His Inauguration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Lawmaker Says Washington Funding Taliban, Pens Letter Urging Trump to Halt Aid
US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) on Dec. 5, 2024. Photo: Mattie Neretin / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) recently penned a letter to President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Washington is “funneling” money to the Taliban government in Afghanistan and calling on his incoming administration to stop such foreign aid, citing the Taliban’s extensive history of supporting Islamist terrorism.
“I write to express my strong concerns with foreign aid being funneled to the Taliban and my desire to work with your administration to stop tax dollars from going to terrorists,” Burchett wrote in the letter dated Jan. 2. “It was brought to my attention the US State Department, under the Biden administration, was funneling money to the Taliban.”
Burchett claimed that after questioning US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the top American diplomat “admitted that non-governmental organizations paid nearly $10 million of foreign aid to the Taliban in taxes.”
The lawmaker said that sending foreign aid to the Taliban undermines US national security, arguing that American government agencies are incapable of tracking how the Islamist movement spends US dollars.
“The larger issue, which Secretary Blinken failed to acknowledge, is the shipments of cash payments in United States dollars to Afghanistan’s central bank,” Burchett wrote. “These cash shipments are auctioned off and after that, they are nearly impossible to track. This is how the Taliban is being funded and plans to fund terrorism around the world.”
We have got to quit funding the Taliban under @realDonaldTrump. $40 million a week to our enemies is a slap in the face to those who served. pic.twitter.com/MVgMnSo1Gn
— Rep. Tim Burchett (@RepTimBurchett) January 6, 2025
The lawmaker did not provide any direct evidence in the letter to support his claims, although the US has provided extensive aid to Afghanistan. According to an October 2023 report from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US has provided nearly $2 billion in humanitarian assistance for Afghans since mid-August 2021, making Washington the largest humanitarian donor in Afghanistan. It is unclear how much of that money has ended up in the hands of the Taliban, which the US and other countries have designated as a terrorist group.
“The United States of America should not fund its enemies abroad. I implore you to take action to put an end to wasteful foreign aid spending and to support efforts in Congress to put Americans first,” Burchett wrote. “I look forward to working with you during your second term as president.”
Burchett added that he plans on reintroducing legislation that would require the State Department to “discourage foreign countries from providing financial or material support to the Taliban, and to report on direct-cash assistance programs and Taliban influence over Afghanistan’s central bank.”
He claimed that while the bill — first introduced in 2023 — passed the US House “unanimously,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
Following the release of Burchett’s letter, billionaire and X/Twitter owner Elon Musk, who will serve in the Trump administration as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, sparked a debate online regarding the allegations.
“Are we really sending US taxpayer money to the Taliban?” Musk wrote on X on Monday.
The distribution of American taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan has emerged as a hot-button issue for Republicans in recent months. In December, US Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) blasted Blinken over the transfer of US dollars to the country.
“There’s an American citizen out there, literally woke up this morning losing 30% of their paycheck. And a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban or other programs abroad,” Mast said. “And this is something that we all need to think about, and we will be thinking about deeply for the next two years. There’s a joke that’s made often out there about kids going to college to learn basket weaving, and what a joke that would be. But the United States right now is literally sending tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban. 14.9 million, to be exact, to teach Afghans how to do carpet weaving.”
“Even worse, by the numbers, we spent $9 billion to resettle 90,000 roughly Afghan refugees here since the fall of Afghanistan. My simple Army math tells me that’s about $100,000 a person. That’s absurd. So my question for you. We do not even have an embassy in Afghanistan. We have no diplomats there. What are we doing giving them $1?” Mast continued.
The Taliban infamously provided a safe haven for al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks and was accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group afterward. A US-led military coalition subsequently removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001.
In 2021, however, the Taliban once again seized power in Afghanistan, amid US President Joe Biden’s military withdrawal from the country.
The post US Lawmaker Says Washington Funding Taliban, Pens Letter Urging Trump to Halt Aid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.