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Orthodox activist Heshy Tischler makes peace with the Jewish reporter who was caught in his riot
(New York Jewish Week) — Not quite two years ago, the Orthodox provocateur Heshy Tischler pled guilty to riling up rioters against the Jewish journalist Jacob Kornbluh during protests against pandemic restrictions in Brooklyn. On Wednesday night, the duo were locked in a more genial altercation — on Tishler’s radio show, where Kornbluh was a guest.
For more than an hour, Kornbluh, senior political reporter at the Forward, batted down a litany of far-right talking points offered up by Tischler and his co-hosts: about election denial and supporting the Jan. 6 insurrection, questioning vaccines and warning against sex education in schools.
In one representative exchange, Tischler praised the ex-president he wishes still occupied the White House: “We all think Trump did a good job,” he said.
Kornbluh responded quickly: “Yeah, he also dined with antisemites and Holocaust deniers,” referring to Trump’s recent dinner with Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes that drew widespread condemnation, including a resolution by the Republican National Committee this week.
In the course of their conversation, both men offered apologies.
“I apologize if I didn’t satisfy everyone on this radio show, but the opinions that I expressed are not necessarily my own opinions,” said Kornbluh, one of the few haredi Orthodox journalists to cover the community for a non-Orthodox news outlet. “It’s backed by facts.”
Tischler’s expression of regret was more personal. “As a fellow brother and a fellow Jew, I’m going to fight with you,” he told Kornbluh. “We are allowed to fight with each other. We are allowed to disagree. Maybe sometimes we go a little overboard. I’m sorry about that, but both of us do it.”
It was a notable public detente for two men whose conflict came to represent a moment of painful polarization in the Brooklyn Orthodox community they share. Back in 2020, Tischler burst into public view after he agitated against pandemic restrictions, cutting the locks on a closed playground and organizing protests against required masking and other public health measures.
Kornbluh, who then worked at Jewish Insider, was reporting on how the Orthodox community bucked the rules and continued to hold large gatherings. The pair clashed.
Their conflict came to a head in October 2020 during a pro-Trump, anti-mask rally that Tischler organized in Borough Park. There, dozens of Orthodox men surrounded Kornbluh after Tischler directed the crowd to attack the journalist. Kornbluh said he was punched and kicked.
Tischler was arrested and charged with incitement. After his arrest, dozens of his supporters waving Trump flags gathered outside of Kornbluh’s home. As part of his plea agreement, Tischler had to perform 10 days of community service.
Nearly two and a half years later, Tischler says that painful moment is in the past.
“Our wounds have been healed,” he told the New York Jewish Week. About Kornbluh, he said, “He’s very knowledgeable and he was a very good and interesting guest.”
Tischler added that while “everybody in the Orthodox community has seen that we have made peace,” the radio show appearance was the first time the two were seen talking publicly in the media.
“We bumped into each other many times in the last year, at synagogues, kiddushes, and weddings,” Tischler said.
Kornbluh declined to comment about his appearance on Tischler’s show, which the host opened by alluding to their past tension.
Their community “went through a tough time during Covid,” Tischler told Kornbluh.
“Maybe both of us didn’t really understand what was going on,” he added. “Maybe now we understand.”
Tischler has sought to springboard into politics now that he is a household name in his community. He ran for City Council in 2021 and last year sought a state senate seat — losing soundly each time. (He had also lost a City Council race in 2017.) But he plans to run City Council again this year — and said in an interview that he is working on himself in preparation.
“I’d like to be able to make better judgments in the future on how to control myself,” Tischler said. “I’ll make sure to control and keep myself intact and make sure that I never ever create something where my words incite anybody ever. I’m going to try to do better.”
Amber Adler, a Brooklyn Orthodox activist who ran against Tischler in the 2021 City Council Race, told the New York Jewish Week that if Tischler’s apology is sincere and Kornbluh is accepting of it, then “that’s a unique milestone.”
“What I hope it is for the community is an example of two people trying to work something out and come into some type of agreement to move past it in a productive matter,” Adler said, who is also running for City Council again this year. “I really do genuinely hope that it inspires people to apologize to those people that they’ve hurt.”
Adler also said that a public apology — just as much a public conflict — fits into the antics that have made Tischler famous in his community and beyond.
“With Heshy, you never know what you’re going to get,” she said. “That’s why he’s very watched in general. People listen to what he says, but I think everyone is just hoping for the best with the apology that just happened.”
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Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff
(JTA) — Sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia won the Democratic nomination Tuesday in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, defeating opponent Maureen Galindo following a race shaped by scrutiny over Galindo’s antisemitic rhetoric.
The runoff in the San Antonio race drew national attention after Galindo, a local housing activist and therapist, came under scrutiny for comments that included vows to turn a local immigrant detention center “into a prison for American Zionists” and claims that it was her “perception that Zionist billionaires run the world.”
Following Galindo’s surprise first-place finish in the march primary, national Democratic leaders and Jewish organizations condemned her rhetoric and urged voters to reject her candidacy, including Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who revealed to JTA earlier this month that he would not back or campaign with Galindo.
The district, which stretches between San Antonio and Austin, was heavily affected by Republican redistricting this year, one of several factors that local political observers and Democratic Party leaders said contributed to Galindo’s earlier win.
The race also attracted outside spending, with Lead Left PAC, a newly launched super PAC apparently tied to a Republican donation platform, pouring over $900,000 on ads and mailers promoting Galindo. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a $35,000 ad buy against Galindo, an unusual step for the DCCC to take against a Democratic candidate.
“Republicans just spent weeks and almost a million dollars propping up an antisemite, and they should be ashamed and embarrassed — it was a disgrace,” the president of the Democratic Majority For Israel PAC, Brian Romick, told JTA in a statement. “Tonight is a victory for the voters of TX-35, for the Democratic Party, and for every Democrat who believes that antisemitism has no home in our coalition.”
Romick told JTA Tuesday night that he believed the results of the runoff signaled that Democratic primary voters “aren’t going to elect antisemitic candidates, and in the districts that we need to win, pro-Israel candidates are our best bet.”
Garcia will now face Republican nominee Carlos De La Cruz, who defeated opponent John Lujan, in the Nov. 3 general election.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Candidate who vowed to imprison ‘American Zionists’ loses in Texas runoff appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.