RSS
Texas GOP leaders reject proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers
(Texas Tribune via JTA) — Two months after a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser was caught hosting white supremacist Nick Fuentes, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas have voted against barring the party from associating with known Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers.
In a 32-29 vote on Saturday, members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee stripped a pro-Israel resolution of a clause that would have included the ban. In a separate move that stunned some members, roughly half of the board also tried to prevent a record of their vote from being kept.
In rejecting the proposed ban, the executive committee’s majority delivered a serious blow to a faction of members that has called for the party to confront its ties to groups that have recently employed or associated with outspoken white supremacists and extremists.
Fuentes came to prominence through his participation in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and last year made national headlines when he dined with Ye, the musician who had recently made a string of antisemitic comments, and former President Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat.
In October, The Texas Tribune published photos of Fuentes, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler who has called for a “holy war” against Jews, entering and leaving the offices of Pale Horse Strategies, a consulting firm for far-right candidates and movements.
Pale Horse Strategies is owned by Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative and at the time the leader of a political action committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund right-wing movements, candidates and politicians in the state — including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Texas GOP, was also seen entering the Pale Horse offices while Fuentes was inside for nearly seven hours. He denied participating, however, saying he was visiting with someone else at the time and didn’t know Fuentes was there.
Nick Fuentes (middle) is seen exiting the offices of Pale Horse strategies with Chris Russo, founder and president of Texans for Strong Borders (right) in Fort Worth on Oct. 6, 2023. (Courtesy The Texas Tribune)
Defend Texas Liberty has not publicly commented on the scandal, save for a two-sentence statement condemning those who’ve tried to connect the PAC to Fuentes’ “incendiary” views. Nor has the group clarified Stickland’s current role at Defend Texas Liberty, which quietly updated its website in October to reflect that he is no longer its president. Tim Dunn, one of the two West Texas oil billionaires who primarily fund Defend Texas Liberty, confirmed the meeting between Fuentes and Stickland and called it a “serious blunder,” according to a statement from Patrick.
In response to the scandal — as well as subsequent reporting from the Texas Tribune that detailed other links between Defend Texas Liberty and white supremacists — nearly half of the Texas GOP’s executive committee had called for the party to cut ties with Defend Texas Liberty and its auxiliary groups until Stickland was removed from any position of power, and a full explanation for the Fuentes meeting was given.
But those proposed demands were significantly watered down ahead of the party’s quarterly meeting this weekend. Rather than calling for a break from Defend Texas Liberty, the faction proposed general language that would have barred associations with individuals or groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.”
Even that general statement was too much for the majority of the executive committee. In at-times tense debate on Saturday, members argued that words like “tolerate” or “antisemitism” were too vague or subjective. The ban, some argued, was akin to “Marxist” and “leftist” tactics, and would create guilt by association that could be problematic for the party, its leaders and candidates.
“It could put you on a slippery slope,” said committee member Dan Tully.
Rinaldi abstained from voting on the ban but briefly argued that antisemitism is not a serious problem on the right before questioning what it would mean to “tolerate” those who espouse it. “I don’t see any antisemitic, pro-Nazi or Holocaust denial movement on the right that has any significant traction whatsoever,” he said.
White nationalist leader Nick Fuentes addresses his livestream audience on the day Roe v. Wade is struck down to attack Jews on the Supreme Court, June 24, 2022. (Screenshot)
Supporters of the ban disagreed. They noted that the language was already a compromise, didn’t specifically name any group or individual and would lend credence to resolutions in which the Texas GOP has generally condemned antisemitism and restated its support for Israel.
“To take it out sends a very disturbing message,” said Rolando Garcia, a Houston-based committee member who drafted the language. “We’re not specifying any individual or association. This is simply a statement of principle.”
Other committee members questioned how their colleagues could find words like “antisemitism” too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents.
“I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham said after the vote.
House Speaker Dade Phelan similarly condemned the vote Saturday evening, calling it “despicable.”
The Texas GOP executive committee “can’t even bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers or cut ties with their top donor who brought them to the dance,” Phelan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There is a moral, anti-Semitic rot festering within the fringes of BOTH parties that must be stopped.”
For two months, Phelan and his staff have routinely and publicly sparred with some in the party – namely Rinaldi, a longtime political foe – over how to address the Fuentes scandal and extremism more broadly. After the Texas Tribune first reported on the Fuentes meeting, Phelan called on fellow Republicans to redirect money from Defend Texas Liberty to pro-Israel charities, a request that quickly drew the ire of Patrick and others who accused Phelan of politicizing antisemitism and demanded he resign.
After subsequent reporting on Defend Texas Liberty’s ties to white supremacists and other extreme figures, Patrick said he was “appalled” and that antisemitism is “not welcome in our party.” He then announced that the he had invested the $3 million he recently received from Defend Texas Liberty in Israel bonds.
Patrick reiterated that stance late Saturday night, calling the executive committee’s vote “totally unacceptable” and saying that he is “confident” the board will reconsider the ban at its February meeting.
“This language should have been adopted – because I know that is our position as a Party,” Patrick wrote on X. “I, and the overwhelming majority of Republicans in Texas, do not tolerate antisemites, and those who deny the Holocaust, praise Hitler or the Nazi regime.”
Saturday’s vote is the latest sign of major disunity among the Texas GOP, which for years has dealt with simmering tensions between its far-right and more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wings. Defend Texas Liberty and its billionaire backers have been key players in that fight, funding primary challenges to incumbent Republicans who they deem insufficiently conservative, and bankrolling a sprawling network of institutions, media websites and political groups that they’ve used to incrementally pull Texas further to the right.
The party’s internecine conflict has exploded into all-out war since the impeachment and acquittal of Paxton, a crucial Defend Texas Liberty ally whose political life has been subsidized by the PAC’s billionaire funders.
After Paxton’s acquittal, Defend Texas Liberty vowed scorched-earth campaigns against those who supported the attorney general’s removal, and promised massive spending ahead of next year’s primary elections. (Before the Saturday vote, executive committee members separately approved a censure of outgoing an outgoing state representative over his lead role in the investigation and impeachment of Paxton.)
News of the Fuentes meeting has only complicated Defend Texas Liberty’s retribution plans, as infighting intensifies and some Republicans question whether the group and its billionaire funders should have so much sway over the state party.
Meanwhile, Defend Texas Liberty’s allies and beneficiaries have tried to downplay the scandals and discredit the Tribune’s reporting, claiming the Fuentes meeting was a one-off mistake or attacking critics as RINOs, in bed with Democrats to suppress true conservatives.
Ahead of Saturday’s vote, two Defend Texas Liberty-backed representatives briefly spoke to the executive committee. The day prior, State Sen. Bob Hall — who has received $50,000 from Defend Texas Liberty — was also at the Austin hotel where executive committee members were meeting, and in a speech condemned attempts to cut ties with the group based on what he called “hearsay,” “fuzzy photographs” and “narratives.”
“If you want to pass a resolution, I would make it positive,” Hall said to executive committee members on Friday. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”
Hall reiterated that stance in an interview, calling the Fuentes meeting a “mistake” but claiming that there was “no evidence” that Stickland or Defend Texas Liberty are antisemitic. “I’ve had meetings with transgenders, gays and lesbians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a transgender, gay or a lesbian?”
Asked if he was comparing gay people to white supremacists or Hitler admirers like Fuentes, Hall responded: “I’m talking about people who are political hot potatoes.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization about Texas, and is reprinted with permission.
—
The post Texas GOP leaders reject proposed ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Antisemitism Continues to Skyrocket in France, With Over 1,500 Incidents Recorded in 2024, New Report Finds
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a new bombshell report.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, on Wednesday released its annual report on antisemitism, which was compiled by the Jewish Community Protection Service using data jointly recorded with the Ministry of the Interior.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
One such incident occurred in late June, when an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”
In another egregious attack that garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.
Comme chaque année, le Crif publie le rapport annuel sur les chiffres de l’antisémitisme en France établi par le Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive (@SPCJFRANCE) sur la base des chiffres recensés conjointement entre le SPCJ et le ministère de l’Intérieur.
Pour la… pic.twitter.com/VuPwVXvq0f
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) January 22, 2025
Antisemitism skyrocketed in France following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. According to CRIF’s report, the surge continued unabated last year, with over 30 percent of antisemitic incidents, or 43 out of an average of 130 per month, making direct reference to “Palestine.”
In November, for example, a monument honoring victims of the Nazis located in eastern France was vandalized with graffiti reading “Nique Israël,” or “F—k Israel” in English.
On the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, three men brutally attacked a Jewish woman at the entrance to her home in Paris. The victim stated that the assailants threatened her with a box knife, made antisemitic threats, and mentioned the events of last Oct. 7.
In September, a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near the eastern city of Lyon, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”
CRIF’s latest data also showed that 192 antisemitic acts were committed in schools, which accounted for 12.2 percent of all such incidents recorded last year.
Synagogues were targeted as well. In August, for example, French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.
France is one of several countries that has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes and demonstrations since Hamas’s invasion of Israel.
According to a report from the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, there has been a staggering 340 percent increase in antisemitic acts worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022.
The report showed a sharp rise in antisemitic outrages in North America and Europe, with the US up 288 percent, Canada increasing by 562 percent, and Britain seeing a 450 percent spike, with nearly 2,000 incidents recorded in the first half of 2024 in the UK.
The post Antisemitism Continues to Skyrocket in France, With Over 1,500 Incidents Recorded in 2024, New Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Cornell University Statue Vandalized by Anti-Zionist Activists
Cornell University workers begin the work of cleaning anti-Zionist graffiti off a statue of the school’s co-founder on January 21, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell University kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which defamed Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.”
“Divest from death,” the students, who have not yet been identified, graffitied on a statue of Cornell co-founder Andrew Dickson White that is located on the Arts Quad section of campus — as first reported by The Cornell Daily Sun on Tuesday. “Occupation=death.”
Speaking anonymously to The Sun, the university’s official campus newspaper, the students provided an account of their grievances, which addressed what in their view is the insufficiency of the recently negotiated ceasefire between Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group, and Israel. In so doing, they put forth the view that all of Israel must be surrendered to the Palestinians, whose leaders have serially rejected viable two-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since the United Nations voted in 1947, via Resolution 181, to partition what was then known as British Mandatory Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.
“We demand that Cornell divests from the weapons manufacturers that make genocide possible,” they said. “A ceasefire will save lives, and we hope it will be permanent. But a ceasefire is not a free Palestine, and we will organize until we see a liberated Palestine free from genocide, occupation, and apartheid.”
Anonymous collectives of anti-Zionists have vandalized Cornell University property before, and the school as a whole has seen some of the most disturbing incidents of campus antisemitism since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In August, a group vandalized the Day Hall administrative building, graffitiing “Israel bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” on it and shattering the glazings of its front doors. They justified their actions.
“We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration really cares about: property,” the students told The Sun. “With the start of this new academic year, the Cornell administration is trying desperately to upkeep a facade of normalcy knowing that, since last semester, they have been working tirelessly to uphold Cornell’s function as a fascist, classist, imperial machine.”
Anti-Zionists convulsed Cornell University’s campus during the 2023-2024 academic year, engaging in activities that are without precedent in the school’s 159-year history. Three weeks after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to perpetrate heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
By the end of the year, Pollack announced her resignation as president of the university, which followed the installment of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the campus in which pro-Hamas students had lived and protested the university’s investments in companies linked to Israel.
Cornell now has a new interim president, Michael Kotlikoff, and his administration has vowed to punish and deter criminal behavior undertaken in the name of anti-Zionist activism.
“Acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” he said in August. “We will enforce these policies consistently, for every group or activity, on any issue or subject …We urge all members of the community to express their views in a manner that respects the rights of others. One voice may never stifle another. There is a time, place, and manner for all to speak and all to be heard.”
So far, Kotlikoff’s administration has executed its zero-tolerance policy, pursuing criminal investigations against protesters who break the law, as happened on Sept. 24 when a mass of students disrupted a career fair because it was attended by Boeing and L3Harris, an American defense contractor. The incident resulted in three arrests, and, later, severe disciplinary sanctions, including classifying five students as “persona non grata,” which, Cornell says, bans from campus “a person who has exhibited behavior which has been deemed detrimental to the university community.” However, the university did downgrade sanctions levied against a doctoral student after his supporters decried that dis-enrolling him as a student would lead inexorably to his deportation from the US.
Regarding this latest incident, Cornell has vowed to bring the vandals to justice.
“Vandalism violates our code of conduct and the law,” the Cornell University Police Department (CUPD) told The Sun. “Graffiti is property damage, which is a crime. We are committed to identifying the perpetrators responsible.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Cornell University Statue Vandalized by Anti-Zionist Activists first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Fires Head of Terrorist-Linked World Central Kitchen From President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, Nutrition
World Central Kitchen (WCK) barge loaded with food arrives off the Gaza coast, in this handout image released March 15, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the firing of celebrity chef Jose Andres, founder of the controversial World Central Kitchen (WCK), from the president’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, claiming that the restaurateur and humanitarian is “not aligned with” the current White House’s mission.
Trump shared the news of Andres’s departure in an “Official Notice of Dismissal” on social media. The statement explained that his administration is currently in the process of “identifying and removing over a thousand presidential appointees from the previous administration, who are not aligned with our vision to Make America Great Again.”
Over the past year, Andres has found himself embroiled in controversy regarding the alleged conduct of WCK employees in Gaza. WCK, a US-based NGO founded by Andres to help feed needy people caught in disasters or conflict zones, has been operating with roughly 500 employees in Gaza since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023. The charity has often engaged in heated public disputes with the Jewish state, accusing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of purposefully targeting its workers with airstrikes — allegations that Jerusalem has adamantly rejected.
In April 2024, the IDF came under fire after it conducted airstrikes on a WCK vehicle convoy, killing seven employees of the charity. Israel acknowledged responsibility for the incident and insisted that the airstrikes violated internal protocol, subsequently dismissing two senior officers over the botched military operation.
Israel has accused WCK of insufficiently vetting its workforce and employing terrorist members within its ranks.
Last month, WCK fired at least 62 of its staff members in Gaza after Israel said they had “affiliations and direct connections” with terrorist groups. Israel conducted an investigation into the backgrounds of the charity’s employees after the Jewish state discovered that a WCK employee named Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Nov. 30. At the time, WCK said it had no knowledge of an employee involved in the Oct. 7 onslaught, in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped over 250 hostages during their rampage in southern Israel.
Israel has long insisted that Hamas and similar terrorist groups have infiltrated humanitarian organizations in Gaza. In August 2024, the United Nations admitted that nine employees of UNRWA, the controversial United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, were fired over their alleged involvement in the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel.
Andres responded to Trump’s statement on X/Twitter, claiming that he had already resigned.
“I submitted my resignation last week … my 2 year term was already up,” Andres wrote.
“I was honored to serve as co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. My fellow council members — unpaid volunteers like me — were hardworking, talented people who inspired me every day. I’m proud of what we accomplished on behalf of the American people,” he added.
The post Trump Fires Head of Terrorist-Linked World Central Kitchen From President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, Nutrition first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login