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Rep. Dan Goldman: Holocaust education should celebrate Jewish life, too
(New York Jewish Week) — Nearly three months ago, Rep. Dan Goldman was one of dozens of cosponsors of a bipartisan bill to monitor Holocaust education across the country. Now, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day — and in the wake of a report showing antisemitism rising in the United States — Goldman says Holocaust education needs to celebrate Jewish life in addition to combating hate.
“We are learning from experts around the world about different ways, not only of preventing antisemitism but promoting knowledge, education about Jewish life, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and personalizing Jews who have obviously, traditionally borne the brunt of persecution but also who are leaders in so many different aspects of society,” Goldman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a phone interview Friday.
On Sunday, Goldman is set to speak at the Annual Gathering of Remembrance at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a Holocaust museum in his district in downtown Manhattan. The event will take place a day before Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Monday night.
Goldman is a member of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism and was a cosponsor of the Holocaust Education and Antisemitism Lessons (HEAL) Act, which directs the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to determine which states require Holocaust education, and what standards they use.
His speech at the event on Sunday — where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield will also speak — comes after a report by the Anti-Defamation League showed a spike in antisemitism in the United States last year. The report found that nearly half of the 111 assaults tallied across the United States took place in Brooklyn alone. Goldman, whose district includes the heavily Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park, called the assaults “unacceptable.”
“They bear the disproportionate brunt of anti-Semitic attacks because of their appearance,” Goldman said of visibly Orthodox Jews. “We need to be doing a lot more in making it clear that it’s unacceptable, holding people who do commit hate crimes to account and also, in my view, adding sentencing enhancements for those who do commit hate crimes.”
Goldman said he has experienced antisemitism while in public life. Social media users, he said, have called him a “Jew” as a slur and said he has a big nose. During Trump’s first impeachment hearings, in which Goldman served as lead counsel, he recalled being referred to as a “New York lawyer” by Republicans, which some consider an antisemitic trope.
“This is something that Jewish public officials deal with all the time,” Goldman said. “I’ve gained some pretty thick skin about it.”
He said former President Donald Trump’s dinner last year with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes — as well as Kanye West, the rapper who made a series of antisemitic comments — illustrates the importance of Holocaust education. He also called out Republican officials for rhetoric attributing Trump’s recent indictment to George Soros, the progressive megadonor at the center of a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“The urgency of continuing to educate the public about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust specifically has taken on greater meaning when the former president dines with a Holocaust denier,” Goldman said. “We cannot accept continuing to allow for antisemitic tropes, such as George Soros backing prosecutors, which have just very clearly become a euphemism for an antisemitic trope.”
Goldman, 47, is not descended from Holocaust survivors, though he recalled a family story about his maternal grandmother needing to keep quiet as a baby while his ancestors fled persecution in Russia a century ago. But he said Holocaust remembrance is an imperative that links Jews more broadly.
“We are all connected through anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews throughout history,” he said. “And there’s an undying bond among Jews because of our shared history. And so when we do commemorate the Holocaust, I do think we are commemorating all those who have suffered from persecution resulting from antisemitism around the world.”
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The post Rep. Dan Goldman: Holocaust education should celebrate Jewish life, too appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Qatari PM Meets Iran’s Larijani in Tehran, Discusses Easing Regional Tensions
Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani speaks after a meeting with the Lebanese president at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Emilie Madi
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani met with top Iranian security official Ali Larijani in Tehran and reviewed efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Saturday in a statement.
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Tesla Receives Approval to Test Autonomous Driving in Israel
March 12, 2025, Seattle, Washington, USA: A row of brand-new Tesla Cybertrucks stands in a Tesla Motors Logistics Drop Zone in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Wed., March 12, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
i24 News – The Ministry of Transport announced on Sunday that it has granted Tesla official approval to conduct trials of its autonomous driving system on Israel’s roads. The move comes as part of an effort to examine how the car manufacturer’s advanced technology can be integrated into the local driving environment, with full support from the ministry.
The trials will focus on Tesla’s Fully Self-Driving (FSD) system, a supervised autonomous driving platform. Under the terms of the approval, a driver must remain present in the vehicle at all times to supervise the system, despite its autonomous capabilities. This ensures safety while allowing the technology to be tested in real-world conditions.
The Ministry of Transport described the approval as a significant step toward advancing vehicle regulation in Israel. Officials said the initiative aims to create a regulatory framework that will allow for the routine, supervised use of autonomous driving systems in the future, safely and efficiently.
Tesla will use the trials to assess how the FSD system interacts with Israel’s road infrastructure, traffic patterns, and local driving behaviors. Data collected during the experiment will help refine the system and inform potential regulatory updates to accommodate autonomous vehicles.
The ministry emphasized that the pilot program is limited in scope and strictly monitored. It noted that all necessary safety protocols are in place and that public safety remains the top priority throughout the testing period.
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Reopening of Gaza’s Rafah Crossing Expected Monday, Officials Say
An aid truck moves on a road after entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Gaza’s main border crossing in Rafah will reopen for Palestinians on Monday, Israel said, with preparations underway at the war-ravaged enclave’s main gateway that has been largely shut for almost two years.
Before the war, the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was the only direct exit point for most Gazans to reach the outside world as well as a key entry point for aid into the territory. It has been largely shut since May 2024 and under Israeli military control on the Gazan side.
COGAT, the Israeli military unit that oversees humanitarian coordination, said the crossing will reopen in both directions for Gaza residents on foot only and its operation will be coordinated with Egypt and the European Union.
“Today, a pilot is underway to test and assess the operation of the crossing. The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow,” COGAT said in a statement.
A Palestinian official and a European source close to the EU mission confirmed the details. The Egyptian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
STRICT SECURITY CHECKS
Israel has said the crossing would open under stringent security checks only for Palestinians who wish to leave the war-ravaged enclave and for those who fled the fighting in the first months of the war to return.
Many of those expected to leave are sick and wounded Gazans in need of medical care abroad. The Palestinian health ministry has said that there are 20,000 patients waiting to leave Gaza.
An Israeli defense official said that the crossing can hold between 150-200 people altogether in both directions. There will be more people leaving than returning because patients leave together with escorts, the official added.
“(The Rafah crossing) is the lifeline for us, the patients. We don’t have the resources to be treated in Gaza,” said Moustafa Abdel Hadi, a kidney patient in a central Gaza hospital, awaiting a transplant abroad.
“If the war impacted a healthy person by 1 percent, it has impacted us 200 percent,” he said, sitting as he received dialysis treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. His travel request, he said, has been approved.
Two Egyptian officials said that at least 50 Palestinian patients will be processed on Sunday to cross Rafah into Egypt for treatment. In the first few days around 200 people, patients and their family members, will cross daily into Egypt, the officials said, with 50 people returning to Gaza per day.
Lists of Gazans set to pass through the crossing have been submitted by Egypt and approved by Israel, the official said.
NEXT PHASE OF TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN
Reopening the border crossing was a key requirement of the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.
But the ceasefire, which came into effect in October after two years of fighting, has been repeatedly shaken by rounds of violence.
On Saturday, Israel launched some of its most intense airstrikes since the ceasefire, killing at least 30 people, in what it said was a response to a Hamas violation of the truce on Friday when militants emerged from a tunnel in Rafah.
The next phases of Trump’s plan for Gaza foresee governance being handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas laying down its weapons and Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory while an international force keeps the peace and Gaza is rebuilt.
Hamas has so far rejected disarmament and Israel has repeatedly indicated that if the Islamist terrorist group is not disarmed peacefully, it will use force to make it do so.