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Rabbi Art Green, prominent scholar of Hasidic Judaism, is barred from Hebrew College following sexual misconduct allegation

(JTA) — The founding dean of Hebrew College’s rabbinical school has been barred from its campus over the fallout from allegations of sexual misconduct brought by a faculty member who was previously his student.

Rabbi Arthur Green, a prominent scholar of Jewish mysticism, retired in May 2022 after two decades at the non-denominational Boston-area seminary. In separate email announcements on the same day, both Green and the college said a private matter concerning another member of the college’s community contributed to the timing.

Last week, however, Hebrew College’s leadership informed the community that the matter cited in 2022 involved “a report by a community member of an unwanted and distressing sexual advance” by Green, and that Green is no longer allowed to set foot on campus at all.

In an email to Green informing him of the ban last week, Hebrew College’s leadership mentioned “conduct by you in a recent interaction with an individual in Israel” that it called “concerningly similar” to the previous report of sexual misconduct. It also accuses Green of breaking a confidentiality agreement he made with the college.

In an interview with JTA, Green said he inappropriately kissed the faculty member but rejected the school’s claims that a second inappropriate incident had occurred or that he had violated his agreement with the school. Green also said that following the initial incident, he carried out several steps required by the school, but stopped short of taking part in a public “ceremony” that he said had been requested.

The ban, which was announced last week in an email to the Hebrew College community hours after Green was informed about it, marks an ignominious coda to a storied career for a rabbi who is widely considered a leader in neo-Hasidism or Renewal Judaism. The author of more than a dozen books, Green served as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College before founding Hebrew College’s pioneering rabbinical seminary near Boston in 2003. As a teacher and administrator there, Green oversaw the seminary as it grew and contributed to a widespread disruption of the denominational rabbinical school model.

“Rabbi Art Green is no longer employed at Hebrew College nor welcome in the Hebrew College community because he engaged in sexual misconduct that caused significant emotional harm to a member of our community and was a serious violation of our institutional policies and our communal values,” the college’s president, Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

She added, “Rabbi Green’s conduct and communication since the reported incident have not reflected a genuine understanding of the harm he has caused, nor has he undertaken a good faith process of teshuva,” Hebrew for repentance.

Green insists that he has not crossed a line since striking a retirement agreement with Hebrew College. Anisfeld did not describe the incident in Israel, or when it occurred. A source affiliated with Hebrew College said the college did not take steps to verify the incident.

Green does acknowledge acting inappropriately with a male faculty member who was previously his student, and expressed regret about it.

“I did something wrong,” he told JTA. “So I’m aware of that. I take responsibility for that.”

He also said he believed the incidents did not merit his ouster and questioned whether the allegations were used as a pretense to eject him from the school he shaped.

Green detailed the allegations against him and the events leading to his being barred from campus in a draft email he shared with JTA on Friday and said he intended to send to his contacts. He sent an abbreviated version of the same email on Sunday afternoon.

In the email he sent, he wrote, “I am, and have always been, a bisexual man” and had “made the difficult decision to keep this private while still a rabbinical student nearly sixty years ago” in order to build a career in the Jewish world.

In the draft email, he had written that he had been looking for companionship after the 2017 death of his wife of 49 years.

“My admittedly inappropriate loss of control was an expression of affection by a lonely old guy, not an assertion of power to demand or force sex,” Green wrote in the draft.

He also said that he believed he had been wronged by Hebrew College’s handling of the incident.

“I consider myself a victim of the extreme ‘Me-tooism’ that has come to plague our society,” he wrote in the draft, referring to the movement to hold perpetrators accountable for sexual misconduct. He added that the faculty member “reported to Sharon he had ‘felt some sexual tension’ between us on prior occasions. I would just call it closeness.”

In the sent email, he acknowledged “another unwanted kiss by me” more than 30 years ago with a different person who he said was not a student.

“I take full responsibility for these encounters, my misjudgment of the situations, and the unintentional harm I caused to people for whom I cared,” he wrote. “I have communicated with them and sought to repair the harm. I am committed to ongoing awareness about this matter and exercising extreme caution in the future.”

Through representatives, the junior faculty member declined to speak about his experience. (JTA has spoken to two people with whom he shared his account.) He has retained attorneys, including Debra S. Katz, who is known for representing alleged victims of sexual assault such as Christine Blasey Ford, who accused now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

The attorneys said in a statement that the faculty member had “participated in a restorative justice process with Rabbi Art Green. As part of that process, our client and Rabbi Green agreed they would alert the other party before making any public statements. We are disappointed that Rabbi Green has failed to adhere to that commitment, forcing our client to hear through the grapevine of the narrative Rabbi Green is advancing.”

The first public sign of allegations against Green came in May 2022, when he and Anisfeld sent separate messages to the Hebrew College community announcing his retirement.

In Green’s email, sent first, he mentioned “a private matter concerning an incident that occurred some time ago, which involved an act on my part that deeply impacted a colleague in our community.” He added, “I feel badly about that situation, and that too has contributed to my decision to retire this year.”

Anisfeld’s email, arriving a little less than an hour afterwards, also referenced “a private personnel matter that deeply impacted another valued member of our Hebrew College community” as part of a “combination of factors” influencing the timing of Green’s retirement. But the email also lauded Green and his contributions to Hebrew College. “I know we will continue to be blessed by Art’s lasting influence as a teacher, mentor, scholar, and friend,” she wrote.

Neither email provided any details about the “personnel matter”; both emails said Green and another party were involved in a “restorative process” with the community member and had requested privacy.

The emails were referring to the faculty member who had previously been Green’s student. Green wrote in his email draft that he and the faculty member were “quite close” from the faculty member’s student days. He said he chose the student to be a research assistant on a large project and characterized his relationship with the then-student as a “growing friendship.”

In the fall of 2019, after the student had been ordained as a rabbi and joined Hebrew College’s faculty, Green allegedly made the first unwanted sexual advance, according to the two people with whom the faculty member shared his account. Green and the faculty member were among a group that had traveled to Uman, a city in Ukraine that is the burial place of the turn-of-the-19th century Hasidic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and is a major pilgrimage site for his followers. Green’s “Tormented Master,” published in 1979, is considered a definitive biography of Rabbi Nachman.

According to the friends with whom he shared his account, the faculty member — once the group had arrived at their hotel — found himself in a room alone with Green, who proceeded to make an unwanted sexual advance on him. One of the friends, a former classmate, told JTA, “They were there, and Art made a sexual advance toward my friend physically.”

The classmate added, “My friend stopped him and then has spent the next many years of his life trying to put it back together again.”

Green denies that he crossed any boundaries in Uman and said any accusation that he committed sexual misconduct on that trip is “absolute nonsense.” He said people in the group were pairing off to share hotel rooms, and that he had offered to split a room with the faculty member. Once it became clear that there was no need for the two to share a room, he claimed, they slept in separate places. He did not reference the Uman incident in either version of his Sunday email.

“Since this person … is an out gay man, I thought other people might be uncomfortable sharing a room with him,” Green told JTA. “So I said that I would. It then turned out there was an extra room and we did not share a room. That’s the end of the story. Nothing happened.”

The second incident occurred that December and, according to Green’s email draft, is the allegation that prompted Hebrew College to initiate disciplinary action against him.

Green acknowledged, in his email draft and to JTA, that he kissed the faculty member “in a way I shouldn’t have” while the two were in Green’s Boston-area home.

Green attributed his behavior to having smoked marijuana with the faculty member. He said the faculty member had given him the drug, which felt particularly strong.

He wrote in his email, “What began as an expression of genuine affection was completely inappropriate and out-of-bounds to our relationship.  I accept responsibility for my behavior and regret it deeply.”

But he added in the draft that had the faculty member felt any discomfort, Green expected him to resolve the situation privately. “I figured that if he was upset, he would let me know, but he didn’t,” Green wrote in the email draft.

Subsequently, Hebrew College administrators informed Green that he had been accused of misconduct.

According to Green, the college and the faculty member’s attorneys, the college attempted to resolve the issue through a private mediation and reconciliation process between Green and the faculty member. In the email she sent to the Hebrew College community this month, Anisfeld described the allegation as an “unwanted and distressing sexual advance, which was viewed as a breach of personal and professional boundaries.”

After learning of the alleged misconduct, Green said Anisfeld imposed several penalties, including suspending him from faculty meetings, asking him to engage in a guided conversation with the faculty member, and requiring that he sign a statement saying he would not be alone in a room with a student with the door closed. Green said he acceded to all of the penalties.

Then, at the end of 2021, Green says Anisfeld called him into her office and informed him that he was to retire in the coming year.

“I was, of course, close to retirement anyway, but I did not like this feeling of being pushed out of a program that I had created,” Green wrote in the draft. “Eventually, however, I agreed, frankly because dealing with this matter had become so painful and distressing.”

To JTA, Green said he had questions about the motivations behind his ouster. He said he had been distressed when a demand that he not attend faculty meetings in December 2021 was extended to the winter term in January 2022, when the Hebrew College community convened for a series of conversations about whether to change a policy that barred students with non-Jewish partners from attending the rabbinical school.

“I said to myself, ‘How far does this ‘He’s uncomfortable with my presence’ go?’” Green told JTA. “But then I thought, well, Sharon and I have different views on this intermarriage issue. She was very much for the change in policy, and she knew I was quite strongly against it. So, she might have found this was a convenient way to exclude me from that conversation.”

He added, “I can’t prove that. But she told me no, I could not participate in that Zoom conversation because [the faculty member] would be unhappy with my presence. And I think that was bullshit, shall we say.”

Anisfeld flatly rejected the allegation. “The intermarriage policy process is completely irrelevant and unrelated to this matter,” she told JTA by email. The school removed the ban on interfaith relationships in January 2023.

Green said Anisfeld and Hebrew College officials had escalated penalties against him over time. He said he had been barred from the two most recent Hebrew College graduations and had been kicked off a school listserv.

He also said Anisfeld had asked him to participate in a “public ceremony of confession,” but he declined.

“My generation doesn’t play that game and doesn’t do that kind of thing,” he told JTA. “I just found it distasteful.”

In recent years, a reckoning over sexual misconduct allegations has changed the norms and expectations for how institutions should respond to them, with a broad move toward greater transparency and increased understanding that misconduct can harm people beyond the direct victims. In a 2018 eJewishPhilanthropy essay, two advocates for “restorative justice” — a process for institutions to address sexual harassment allegations — described a “conference or circle with survivors, offenders, and their support people” as one possible avenue.

“Ideally, the person who has been harmed asks for restorative justice but, at times, offenders or people from the community inquire about convening a process,” Alissa Ackerman and Guila Benchimol wrote in the essay. “Inclusivity and collaboration are central because restorative justice recognizes that people belong to communities and that the harm they have caused or endured impacts wide networks.”

Anisfeld did not respond to a question about a public ceremony. In their email announcing Green’s campus ban, Anisfeld and the current and former chairs of Hebrew College’s Board of Trustees blamed his unwillingness to complete all that was asked of him.

“As an institution committed to the value — and the possibility — of teshuva, we have repeatedly asked Rabbi Green to engage in a communal process regarding this matter,” they wrote. “Rabbi Green has declined, and he therefore has been prohibited from visiting campus, or attending Hebrew College programs and communal activities.”

Last week’s email from the college leadership raised questions among some of those who received it. “One of the things that was curious to me is: Why do we need to know this?” said Shaul Magid, a Jewish studies professor at Dartmouth College who counts Green as a friend and teacher and also said he holds Anisfeld in high regard. “All the letter can do is really tarnish Art’s reputation at this point. He’s already retired.”

Green said in his email that relations between him and Hebrew College had become strained in the years since the initial allegation against him. “Although I agreed to all conditions as stipulated by Hebrew College I was surprised to find additional demands and restrictions that felt, and continue to feel, vindictive and unnecessary,” he wrote in the Sunday email.

In the email, he also said Anisfeld sent the letter announcing his ban following “an alleged additional incident that occurred recently in Israel, thus supposedly justifying publicity on Hebrew College’s part.”

In the letter from the Hebrew College leadership to Green last week, they wrote, “The College has also become aware of a report of conduct by you in a recent interaction with an individual in Israel that, as described to us, is concerningly similar to your admitted conduct during the Incident.”

Anisfeld did not offer details about that incident. Green and the two other men involved in what Green believes is the incident say it took place on Purim last year and involved an encounter at Green’s home following a party celebrating the holiday. Green said he was “very drunk” when he and another man began “touching each other, holding each other, not sexually, not genitally.” Both he and that man told JTA that their encounter was consensual.

A third man in the room, who was then an acolyte of Green’s, became alarmed. Through a representative, he told JTA that he felt violated when Green “revealed his physical desire for me and my friend’s bodies.” Previously, he had seen earlier requests for him to stay at Green’s home “as service to a holy rabbi, a kabbalist and theologian.” He said he soon left but experienced the night as “a soul-shattering crisis” because of the nature of his relationship to Green.

“I served him as one would serve Rabbi Nachman or the Baal Shem Tov,” two 18th-century Hasidic sages, the man said. He added, “Not once did warning bells ring in my head.”

Green has written about rabbis who have been accused of abuse. In 2004, when Marc Gafni, a prominent rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement, was accused of a wide range of sexual offenses, including having sex with underage girls, Green vociferously defended him in a letter to the editor of the New York Jewish Week.

Praising Gafni as “a creative teacher of Torah,” he said that Gafni’s misdeeds were long in the past and that Gafni had been “been relentlessly persecuted for those deeds by a small band of fanatically committed rodfim,” a term that in traditional Jewish texts refers to a would-be murderer who himself must be murdered.

Two years later, multiple women in Israel said Gafni had lured them into sexual relationships using his power as a spiritual leader. Green, like other U.S. rabbis who had initially stood by Gafni, dropped his defense.

“The stories were from long ago, and he had rejected and outgrown that side of himself,” Green told the Forward at the time. “These are now new cases and new investigations.”

Green had also warned about the dangers inherent in relationships between spiritual teachers and students. In a 2010 book outlining neo-Hasidic theology by reinterpreting traditional Jewish edicts, including the Seventh Commandment prohibiting adultery, Green wrote that spiritual teachers “always need to be aware of human weakness, their own before that of all others.”

The book included a reminder for teachers: “Sexual energies are always there when we flesh-and-blood humans interact with one another, anywhere this side of Eden,” he wrote.  “Check yourself always. Be aware; know your boundaries. Precisely because good teaching is an act of love, the teacher is always in danger.”

He concluded, “Make sure that all your giving is for the sake of those who seek to receive it, not just fulfilling your own unspoken needs, sexual and other.”


The post Rabbi Art Green, prominent scholar of Hasidic Judaism, is barred from Hebrew College following sexual misconduct allegation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, SJP at Ohio State University Targets Jews

University Hall at Ohio State University. Photo: OZinOH/Flickr

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which happens on January 27 every year, is a time when the world commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and reflects on how pure hatred and antisemitism led to this atrocity. It is a time for moments of silence, thoughtful discussions, and a meaningful look at history.

But over at Ohio State University, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — a group whose nationwide members have glorified Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel — decided that it was once again time to protest outside of a Jewish institution. At the off-campus Chabad House, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, about 60 SJP members and their collaborators chanted for “liberation from the Zionist occupation.” They yelled that, “There are war criminals in this building,” referring to the fact that Chabad was hosting two IDF soldiers who were nearly murdered on October 7.

On OSU SJP’s Instagram was a flyer with the names and photos of the IDF soldiers from the Givati Brigade, as well as a blood-splattered IDF logo. Of course, the flyer was filled with egregious lies like, “The Givati Brigade has been a key component of the Zionist occupation since the Nakba of 1948 … Over the years, the Givati Brigade has been involved in repeated invasions of Gaza and the Lebanese border, and since 2000, they have relentlessly targeted and killed Palestinians in Gaza … Tomorrow, these war criminals, directly complicit in the ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestine, will be on campus.”

In reality, the Chabad event was held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day because the two IDF soldiers were the ones who were targeted on October 7 — and narrowly survived the attack. The soldiers fittingly told their heartbreaking stories of October 7, which was the worst massacre of the Jews since the Holocaust.

Hamas wanted them dead simply because they are Jewish — just like the Nazis did.

One of the soldiers at the event, Maya Desiatnik, was a lookout at the Nahal Oz military base, which oversaw the Israel-Gaza border. When the attack started, she hid in the war room for six hours, while her entire unit suffered a worse fate: Fifteen of her colleagues were murdered and seven were kidnapped. Maya told Ynet News about her terrifying experience: “We could hear terrorists talking, going up to the war room roof, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They shot at the war room from outside and threw grenades in. When they realized they couldn’t get in, they set it on fire, with all of us inside.”

The other soldier, Saar Arie, was treating a family that had suffered a Hamas ambush. The terrorists burned their home while they were inside.

Maya and Saar are not only survivors — they are heroes. In a disgusting twist of facts, SJP called them war criminals, further victimizing the victims… on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, nonetheless. Showing up to a Jewish family’s home off campus wearing keffiyehs and shouting hateful chants into megaphones on what is supposed to be a solemn day in honor of victims of antisemitism is a new low.

This is not about free speech or peaceful protesting. If it was, then why did SJP at OSU post tips on covering your face and not getting arrested, along with what to do if the police did show up? Their flyer stated, “Do not speak to the cops. That’s what our police liaisons are for,” and “If you are placed under arrest, do not panic! Resisting and running from police can add charges.”

If they were there to peacefully protest, why would they need to publicize these tips?

Sadly, OSU has been a hotbed of antisemitism in the aftermath of October 7. In November of 2023, two Jewish students were verbally and physically assaulted, and in December of that year, people hurled objects at a Jewish fraternity and yelled antisemitic phrases. The genocidal phrase to eradicate Israel, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” has appeared on campus, and the university’s Hillel was vandalized.

None of this has been done to help Palestinians. It is about targeting Jews on campus, and delegitimizing the fact that Israel is, indeed, a Jewish state. Antisemitic individuals and groups may use the word “Zionist,” but it’s interchangeable with the word “Jew.” Otherwise, why would they go after the Hillel and Chabad?

While the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a Title VI investigation into OSU last year following all the reports of antisemitism, it’s time to take it a step further: OSU should ban SJP on campus altogether after their stunt last week.

Being hateful towards Jews at OSU is egregious anytime. But doing so after a horrendous massacre of the Jewish people — and then targeting them on International Holocaust Remembrance Day — is even more shocking.

It’s time for OSU to grow a backbone and stamp out Jew hatred on its campus once and for all. When we say, “never again,” it means never again anywhere — not in Israel, not in the US, and certainly not on the OSU campus.  

Lizzy Savetsky works with numerous non-profit and philanthropic movements as an outspoken advocate for Israel and the Jewish people. You can find her on Instagram @lizzysavetsky.

The post On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, SJP at Ohio State University Targets Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Iran May Be on the Verge of a Nuclear Weapon; Will Israel and the United States Act?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attend a ceremony to sign an agreement of comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 17, 2025. Photo: Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu just met in Washington — and not a moment too soon. A team of scientists in Iran is reportedly working to short-cut Tehran’s route to nuclear weapons in case the Iranian leadership orders their complete construction.

Trump and Netanyahu have a narrow window to stop Iran if it opts to build those weapons. The US and Israel must urgently review and revamp their intelligence gathering and sabotage capabilities, while preparing military options to jointly destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities should it sprint for atomic weapons.

According to current and former US officials who spoke to The New York Times on February 3, during the waning months of Joe Biden’s administration, unnamed countries — likely the United States and Israel — gathered intelligence indicating “a secret team of [Iranian] scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran’s leadership decides to race for a bomb.”

These findings track with an Axios report from November quoting a US official who said that Iran had been “conduct[ing] scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.” 

What is this so-called “crude” nuclear device that Iran might seek in a hurry, compared to a regular nuclear weapon?

Such a device, built more quickly, may lack the functionality assurances provided by a lengthier nuclear-weapon assembly time. This assembly process, known as “weaponization,” entails key scientific and engineering work that enables the production of a functioning nuclear bomb that integrates a uranium fissile core, a triggering mechanism, and explosives.

To short-cut its way to nuclear weapons, Tehran may even fuel a crude weapon with highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in lieu of the preferred weapons-grade uranium. While this would make Iran’s nuclear weapons larger and heavier, it would serve the purpose of establishing Tehran as nuclear-armed.

At last count, Iran had enough HEU for almost five nuclear weapons, and enough enriched uranium overall, if enriched further, for at least 16 weapons.

How fast could Iran weaponize its nuclear material?

Tehran could likely construct a crude device within six months of starting, only moving its enriched uranium stocks to a secret site for subsequent enrichment and/or weaponization around the four-month mark. Relocating those stocks would trigger international alarm bells, since the material remains under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Yet unless the United States and Israel detect Tehran near day one of a six-month breakout to the bomb, they may just have weeks to stop Iran after the fuel goes missing.

To target Iran’s nuclear plants militarily, Washington and Jerusalem require exact intelligence about where Iran might be constructing nuclear weapons. A facility located deep underground raises additional obstacles, even for bunker-busting bombs.

If the United States and Israel were unable to stop Tehran, Iran could quickly declare itself a nuclear power, possibly issuing photos to the world and only later conducting a demonstration test.

What’s more, Iran knows well how to build nuclear weapons, having spent nearly three decades — from 1985 on — acquiring and then mastering the technology.

Under Tehran’s late 1990s to mid-2003 nuclear weapons program known as the Amad Plan, the regime set out to construct an initial five nuclear bombs and ready the capability to test them.

However, in 2002, opposition groups and non-governmental organizations detected Iran’s covert nuclear facilities. The possibility that the United States, under the George W. Bush administration, might invade Iran based on Tehran’s efforts to seek weapons of mass destruction — as America had done in neighboring Iraq — likely caused the regime to downsize the Amad Plan’s weaponization activities. 

However, Iran planned to continue progressing some weaponization activities for a rainy day, while openly progressing its production of fuel.

Today, the IAEA has never been able to issue an all-clear that Tehran’s nuclear program is devoted to peaceful uses, as Iran obfuscates and maintains secrecy over past and ongoing activities.

Signs have periodically emerged of an ongoing weaponization effort, but the US intelligence community assessed, until at least July 2024, that Tehran maintained the Amad Plan’s halt. In early 2024, Israel and the United States reportedly acquired intelligence pointing to new Iranian weaponization-related activities.

During an October 2024 strike on Iran in retaliation for a missile attack, Israel destroyed a site known as Taleghan 2, where some of these alleged activities were taking place.

Facing Israel’s decimation of its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, lacking the means to defend its air space, and confronting an inability to quickly build new missiles since Jerusalem’s strike, the regime in Iran knows it is more vulnerable than ever — and is likely eager to have a plan to quickly acquire a nuclear deterrent.

Trump and Netanyahu have a historic chance to stop Iran once and for all.

They should immediately evaluate and enhance intelligence gathering and related operations aimed at detecting Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons. They should ready sabotage operations to stop these efforts. Both countries have used sabotage in the past — namely cyber-attacks, supply chain disruption, and explosives — to successfully disrupt and deter Tehran’s nuclear progress at key facilities.

In addition, the two countries should hold a new round of Juniper Oak military exercises, the last of which were held more than two years ago. These exercises showcase their ability to jointly destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and could help deter a breakout by the regime before it starts. 

Washington and Jerusalem should also enhance the interoperability of such a mission. In particular, the United States should allow Israel to practice refueling its fighter jets using American KC-46 refueling aircraft while Israel awaits US deliveries of KC-46 refueling aircraft to replace Jerusalem’s aging fleet.

Tehran may be desperate and poised to acquire the ultimate deterrent — a move that successive administrations in Washington and Jerusalem have said they will never tolerate.

 Trump and Netanyahu may soon have to enforce that threat.

Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow her on X @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

The post Iran May Be on the Verge of a Nuclear Weapon; Will Israel and the United States Act? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Australia Cracks Down on Antisemitism Amid Unrelenting Surge in Hate Crimes Targeting Jewish Community

Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot

The government of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) has introduced a proposal to criminalize specific protests outside places of worship in response to a recent wave of hate crimes targeting Jews in Australia.

“We have seen disgusting acts of racial hatred and antisemitism,” the NSW premier Chris Minns said in a statement outlining the proposed laws. “These are strong new laws, and they need to be because these attacks have to stop.”

Part of a broader set of measures, the reforms aim to address a recent wave of arson attacks and antisemitic vandalism across Australia over the past two months.

“These laws have been drafted in response to the horrifying antisemitic violence in our community, but it’s important to note that they will apply to anyone, preying on any person, of any religion,” Minns said.

The legislation also followed Israel’s call for the Australian government to take stronger measures against the “epidemic of antisemitism” that has swept across the country. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has maintained that his government is doing everything possible to combat attacks, including acts of domestic terrorism.

On Sunday, the NSW Jewish Board said that in three weeks they had seen 10 publicly reported antisemitic incidents, primarily in the Sydney area, which included arson and vandalism — including property defaced with messages reading “f—k Jews.” The group said that number “doesn’t include the graffiti appearing in our streets on a daily basis or the abuse and harassment that goes unreported.”

Last month, Australian police said they foiled a potential mass-casualty antisemitic terrorist attack after discovering a caravan in a suburb of Sydney filled with explosives and material containing details about Jewish targets.

Under the new proposed laws, it would be an offense to block access to places of worship or harass, intimidate, or threaten people there, with a maximum penalty of two years in prison. The legislation gives the police heightened powers to enforce he law.

It would also become a crime to display a Nazi symbol near a synagogue, with a maximum two-year prison sentence, and the Graffiti Control Act would be amended to make graffiti on places of worship an aggravated offence.

These potential changes would come after two synagogues in Sydney were vandalized last month with swastikas, and an attempt was made to set one on fire.

Under the new legislation, sentencing could take into account whether an offense was “wholly” or “partially” driven by hatred or prejudice.

“The entire community will be safer as a direct result of these changes. The proposed changes will mean that divisive and hateful behaviors will not succeed in dividing our community,” said Michael Daley, the attorney general.

As authorities work to counter the alarming surge in anti-Jewish incidents, law enforcement has made several arrests across Australia.

On Wednesday, two 27-year-old men were arrested and charged for spray-painting antisemitic symbols and words on walls, bus stops, and signs in several Perth neighborhoods in western Australia.

“The Western Australia Police Force will not allow vile acts of hatred and racism to go unchecked,” a WA Police spokesperson said in a statement. “This swift outcome should send a clear message to anyone engaging in this kind of behavior. We will find you and you will be put before the courts to face the consequences of your actions.”

In Melbourne, a 68-year-old man has been charged with criminal damage, unlawful assault, and offensive graffiti after allegedly vandalizing a family home in a Jewish community and throwing bacon at a passerby who tried to intervene.

In Sydney, a woman was found guilty of sending a threatening message to a Jewish school just 11 days after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. However, she has escaped conviction.

In the letter, the 21-year-old wrote: “You are the children of Satan … get cancer and die a slow, painful death.”

“Praise Hitler. If only he was here to continue the mass destruction of your bloodline,” the message continued.

Many observers have expressed outrage over the woman escaping conviction. The verdict came as Jewish students were reported to be hiding their school uniform logos and avoiding public transport, in the wake of rising antisemitic attacks on Jewish schools, daycare centers, and synagogues.

Last month, the NSW government also proposed a new law making it a criminal offense to intentionally incite racial hatred, with a maximum two-year prison sentence.

In their efforts to combat hate speech, this change would make inciting racial hatred a criminal offense, rather than just a civil one under the Anti-Discrimination Act.

The state government also announced an increase of $525,000 in funding for the NSW police engagement and hate crime unit, along with a $500,000 boost to a grants program for social cohesion.

The post Australia Cracks Down on Antisemitism Amid Unrelenting Surge in Hate Crimes Targeting Jewish Community first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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