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The End Jew Hatred Movement is spreading across the country — and sparking controversy
(New York Jewish Week) — Last month, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Jewish Democrat, proclaimed April 29 “End Jew Hatred Day,” citing “an urgent need to act against antisemitism in Colorado and across the country.”
Similar proclamations came from New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican, and dozens of other elected officials nationwide.
But in the New York City Council, an identical effort proved controversial. While the overwhelmingly Democratic council approved April 29 as End Jew Hatred Day annually, six council members either abstained from or voted against what organizers had intended to be an unanimous decision.
The initiative behind the proclamations, called the End Jew Hatred Movement, is a relatively new presence based in New York City that is increasingly making its voice known nationally — through rallies, petitions, a relentless press campaign and now in the halls of government. One measure that demonstrates the initiative’s growth is the number of April 29 proclamations. Last year, there were a handful. This year, according to End Jew Hatred, there were 30.
The movement also provided the spark for the unexpected opposition in the New York City Council. Lawmakers who did not support the proclamation said they demurred because the End Jew Hatred Movement, while run by people who say they “set aside politics and ideology,” has been associated with right-wing Jewish activists.
End Jew Hatred doesn’t publicize much about its structure or funding. It is not a registered nonprofit organization, and would not tell the New York Jewish Week its annual budget or how it receives donations.
Its backers call it an unapologetic voice that’s fighting a growing problem, antisemitism, while its critics say it is an attempt to inject hawkish rhetoric into a national effort to combat anti-Jewish persecution. Amid that debate, the movement’s growth, and its successful spearheading of resolutions nationwide, show how an initiative founded by conservative activists has wielded influence in the conversation about antisemitism, even in liberal political spaces.
Here’s what we know about End Jew Hatred, how it’s establishing itself in New York City and beyond, and why its activities are drawing backlash.
A movement founded in the politics of 2020
Founded in New York City near the beginning of the pandemic, End Jew Hatred first drew local attention in October 2020, when it organized a rally in front of the New York Public Library protesting the way its activists said New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo were unfairly targeting Orthodox New Yorkers with public health restrictions.
Haredi New Yorkers and their backers railed against the city’s regulations that year, and claimed that policies limiting group prayer and other religious ceremonies were selectively enforced against their communities.
“Never in my life did I think I would see this type of blatant Jew-hatred from our public officials,” Brooke Goldstein, who founded End Jew Hatred, said at the rally, which drew dozens of protesters. “Singling out New York Jews for blame in the coronavirus spread is unconscionable and discriminatory.”
But while the movement’s first significant action concerned the pandemic, a spokesman for End Jew Hatred said it was inspired by another seismic event that took place in 2020: the racial justice protests and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“How can we replicate this for the Jewish people?” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel for the organization Goldstein directs, the Lawfare Project, describing End Jew Hatred’s genesis. “We saw antisemitism shoot up during the pandemic. So it was kind of the right time to launch this idea.”
Since then, in addition to spearheading the proclamations, the initiative has continued holding rallies, protesting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees, for “promoting Jew hatred”; speaking out against antisemitism in Berlin, Toronto and other cities around the globe; and, earlier this year, opposing a reported plea bargain for the men who assaulted Joseph Borgen while he was en route to a pro-Israel rally in May 2021. It was also a signatory on a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg protesting the plea deal, and members of the movement showed up to the alleged attackers’ court hearing.
Nearly three years after its launch, the movement remains opaque about its structure, declining to share any financial information or elaborate on its relationship to the Lawfare Project, which bills itself as an “international pro-Israel litigation fund.” In a brief statement to the New York Jewish Week, a spokesperson for End Jew Hatred said the organization accepts donations from local community members and support from like-minded nonprofit groups, though he declined to detail how those donations were processed.
“Our network of activists spans the globe, from New York City to Los Angeles, from Toronto to Berlin,” he said. “Also, the movement is supported by people from all walks of life who donate both their time and money to make the movement a success. Activists are encouraged to fundraise within their community, and some actions have been supported by organizations that have taken part in them.”
Roots in pro-Israel and right-wing activism
The Lawfare Project, Goldstein’s group, has represented Jewish students who settled a discrimination lawsuit with San Francisco State University, and the following year, represented an Israeli organization that settled a suit with the National Lawyers’ Guild, after the guild declined to place the group’s ad in its annual dinner journal.
This year, the group is providing legal aid to a Las Vegas-area Jewish teen who had a swastika drawn onto his back. And it sued the mayor of Barcelona over her decision to sever ties with Tel Aviv.
Goldstein also has a history of right-wing activism and controversial statements. She has made appearances on conservative news networks such as Fox News, One America News and Newsmax. She once said that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian person,” and on Election Day in 2016, tweeted, “Can I run the anti-anti-islamophobia department in the Trump administration?”
Goldstein has said she sees Ronald Lauder — the philanthropist, World Jewish Congress president and conservative donor — as an ally. In a virtual conversation between the two hosted by Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Synagogue last year, Goldstein thanked Lauder for his “support and his friendship,” and Lauder called Goldstein “so smart and wonderful.” Lauder was also involved with the movement’s effort to establish End Jew Hatred Day in New York City last year.
Ronald S Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) recorded before a bilateral a conversation with Chancellor Scholz. (Michael Kappeler/Getty Images)
End Jew Hatred has also worked with Dov Hikind, a former Brooklyn Democratic state assemblyman who now runs a group called Americans Against Antisemitism. Hikind’s group has partnered with End Jew Hatred, and he has appeared at its events. Hikind told the New York Jewish Week that his group and End Jew Hatred are “involved in terms of pushing the same agenda.”
Hikind has stirred controversy as well: In 2013, he wore blackface as part of a Purim costume, and in 2005, sponsored a bill that would have allowed police to profile Middle Eastern men on the subway. He was a follower of the late right-wing extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Controversy or consensus?
Even as its right-wing connections have sparked suspicion from progressive activists, End Jew Hatred has garnered support from establishment Jewish groups. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations promoted End Jew Hatred Day on Twitter last week, posting a graphic with the logo of the movement. And the city’s Jewish Community Relations Council also backed the City Council resolution.
“All people, regardless of party affiliation, have a role to play in combating antisemitism and other forms of hatred, and we should not lose sight of that,” a JCRC spokesperson told the New York Jewish Week. “From our perspective, every day should be End Jew Hatred Day.”
Lauder has also advocated the use of the term “Jew hatred” in place of antisemitism in a video published by the World Jewish Congress that has been viewed more than 480,000 times.
“No one is embarrassed anymore when they’re called an antisemite,” he said. “Antisemitism must be called what it really is: Jew hatred.”
That view is not universally shared among antisemitism watchdogs. Holly Huffnagle, the American Jewish Committee’s U.S. director for combating antisemitism, said that the term “Jew hatred” is “jarring” and “makes people stop and think.” But she said the term does not capture the way antisemitism is often expressed via coded conspiratorial language.
“[People] might not know what [the term] antisemitism is, but Jew hatred they know,” she said. “In that sense it can be used to get attention, to help people call it out.”
“On the other hand, the antisemitism we see today, in its primary form, which is conspiratorial, is not captured by the term ‘Jew hatred,’” she added. “I hear from a variety of people that they don’t hate Jews, they’re against Jew hatred, they’re not antisemitic, but they believe that Jews have too much power [or] they control the media.”
And End Jew Hatred’s right-wing ties have also made some progressive activists in its home base of New York City wary of its motives. The lead sponsor of the City Council’s End Jew Hatred Day resolution was Queens Republican Inna Vernikov, a former aide to Hikind who has previously spotlighted antisemitism allegations at the City University of New York.
Her resolution, which passed overwhelmingly, garnered a mix of 14 co-sponsors, including some prominent Jewish Democrats and all six of the council’s Republicans — two of whom have links, respectively, to white supremacists and a person arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Council Member Inna Vernikov introduced a resolution to create an annual “End Jew Hatred” day in the New York City Council on April 27, 2023. (New York City Council Flickr)
Those right-wing connections were part of what led six progressive council members to either abstain from or vote against the resolution. One of the council members who voted no, Brooklyn’s Shahana Hanif, told the New York Jewish Week that she has participated in multiple actions against antisemitism but opposed the resolution because she didn’t want to endorse End Jew Hatred as a movement.
“Antisemitism is real,” Hanif said. “I understand the urgency. I understand the opportunity when there is a resolution or any kind of symbolic gesture that comes along, that every legislator wants to be united in supporting our Jewish colleagues. But in the same breath, it is our responsibility to know who is leading on these efforts.”
City Comptroller Brad Lander, a prominent Jewish progressive politician, vouched for Hanif’s record of standing up to antisemitism and echoed her concerns. He told the New York Jewish Week that End Jew Hatred’s activists are “right-wingers who have a track record of working very closely with people who foment hatred.”
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive group, also opposed the resolution. Rafael Shimunov, a member of the group, said the resolution was “clearly associated with the right,” and noted that at a hearing ahead of the vote, an activist decried bail reform, something right-wing advocates have pushed for years to repeal.
Shimunov also took issue with remarks Vernikov has made about George Soros, the billionaire Jewish liberal megadonor who has become an avatar of right-wing antisemitism, and whom Vernikov called ”an evil man, who happens to be Jewish.” JFREJ activists also noted that also noted that some Republican cosponsors of the bill, such as Vernikov, Vickie Paladino and Joann Ariola, have called for transgender women to be barred from women’s sports at schools and universities. In addition, Paladino has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments. The activists say these views undercut the council members’ calls to oppose hatred directed at Jews.
End Jew Hatred’s supporters dismissed accusations that their cause is right-wing. In a text message, Vernikov told the New York Jewish Week that “this resolution has nothing to do with politics or right-wing extremists.” Hikind also echoed that message.
“Everyone in the Jewish community supported this idea,” Hikind said. “To say it’s just right-wing organizations is dishonest and hypocritical.”
Filliti, the Lawfare counsel, said the aim of the resolution — and End Jew Hatred as a whole — was to send “a unifying message.”
“We’re not looking to make this political,” he said. “We have had so much success with this and we are so happy to see this going forward.”
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Qatar, Turkey’s Expanding Roles in Gaza Could Strengthen Hamas Infrastructure, Experts Warn
Heavy machinery operates at a site where searches for deceased hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct, 7, 2023, attack on Israel are underway amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
As the fragile ceasefire in Gaza appears to hold, experts are warning about the expanding roles of Qatar and Turkey in reconstruction and post-war efforts, amid concerns that their involvement could potentially strengthen Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.
Last week, Qatar’s Minister of International Cooperation, Mariam bint Ali al-Misnad, announced new operations in the Gaza Strip to remove debris and restore infrastructure.
“As part of assistance to Gaza, the State of Qatar has commenced debris removal operations and opening of primary routes,” al-Misnad said in a press conference.
“The goal is to restore hope and return life to its normal course,” the Qatari official continued. “We take pride in belonging to a nation that makes humanity an obligation.”
Joining several world powers, Qatar has welcomed the US-backed peace plan aimed at ending the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, pledging to support reconstruction efforts in the war-torn enclave and to advance the next steps in ceasefire negotiations.
Alongside the United States and regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the two-year conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
Amid Qatar’s ongoing reconstruction efforts in Gaza, experts have warned that the heavy mechanical equipment might do more than clear debris and build roads, potentially aiding Hamas in restoring its terrorist infrastructure.
According to Natalie Ecanow, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, Qatar’s involvement in the ceasefire plan is concerning, largely because of its decades-long relationship with Hamas.
“Qatar has long been a political and financial patron of Hamas and has previously signaled that it’s OK with the terror group surviving to rule another day. That’s incompatible with the Israeli and American position,” Ecanow told The Algemeiner.
As Doha begins debris removal operations in the enclave, Hamas has reportedly requested “specialized equipment” to recover the remains of deceased Israeli hostages, some of whom the Islamist group says cannot be retrieved without such machinery, for transfer to Israel as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
Ecanow also argued that Qatar only intensified its push for reconstruction and ceasefire efforts after Israel’s Sept. 9 strike against Hamas leaders in Doha, which exposed the country’s vulnerability and prompted it to move quickly on the deal.
“The ceasefire is on shaky ground, which isn’t wholly surprising,” Ecanow told The Algemeiner. “At the end of the day, Hamas is a terrorist group that has repeatedly shown little regard for ceasefire deals.”
“It’s also important to remember that the hostage release was only one part of a multi-phase plan for Gaza. There were almost certain to be roadblocks along the way,” she continued.
Meanwhile, Israel is also concerned about Turkey’s potential influence in Gaza after the war, given its role as a major international backer of Hamas and its openly hostile stance toward the Jewish state.
On Monday, Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli rejected any possibility of Turkey playing a role in US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “is a sworn enemy of Israel and the West, a jihadist in a suit,” Chikli said.
“We will not tolerate a Turkish presence, not on our northern border and not on our southern border,” the Israeli official continued, referring to Israel’s borders with the Gaza Strip to the south and Syria to the north.
“May Allah, for the sake of His name… destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.”
This sentence was not uttered by a Hamas or Hezbollah leader, It was said in a public prayer on March 30, 2025, by the President of Turkey @RTErdogan.
Erdogan is a sworn enemy of Israel and the West,… https://t.co/cH5usZWj9Z
— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) October 20, 2025
Last week, Erdogan joined several Arab countries in pledging support for Trump’s Gaza peace plan, vowing to help manage post-war efforts in the enclave.
Among other initiatives, Turkey has committed to deploying search and rescue teams to Gaza to recover the bodies of slain hostages, who are to be returned to Israel as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal, and to support reconstruction across the enclave.
Under Trump’s plan, Turkey is also expected to join a multinational task force responsible for overseeing the ceasefire and training local security forces.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected Turkey’s participation in the International Stabilization Force, calling it a “red line.”
Turkey, a longtime backer of Hamas, has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel on the international stage, even going so far as to threaten an invasion of the Jewish state and calling on the United Nations to use force if Jerusalem failed to halt its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Erdogan has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he describes as Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, while erroneously accusing Israel of committing genocide.
As part of his long history of anti-Israel rhetoric, Erdogan has also falsely accused the Jewish state of running “Nazi” concentration camps and compared Netanyahu to Hitler multiple times before.
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Federal judge allows Northwestern to block enrollment for students who boycotted antisemitism training
A federal judge in Chicago allowed Northwestern University to discipline students who refused to watch an antisemitism training video.
Judge Georgia Alexakis declined Monday to issue a restraining order in a lawsuit filed by Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine and two graduate students. The plaintiffs claimed that an antisemitism training required by the school for enrollment was biased and discriminatory toward Palestinian and Arab students.
“Northwestern University’s Training is not intended to foster a civil and collaborative workplace or remedy discrimination but rather is aimed at suppressing political anti-Zionist speech and speech critical of Israel,” the complaint read.
The “Antisemitism Here/Now” training video, produced by the Jewish United Fund of Chicago, the city’s Jewish federation, did not ask students to agree with its contents. Fewer than three dozen students declined to watch it in protest.
Attorneys for Northwestern said that 16 students currently face enrollment holds for failing to watch the training, though they added that they were unsure if all students affected did so out of protest.
In her ruling, Alexakis acknowledged that the graduate students affected by the holds face “irreparable harm,” but said that the student’s lawyers had failed to prove Northwestern had a discriminatory motive in requiring the video.
“Because the plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden in this threshold inquiry, we do not move on to conduct a balancing of the harms,” Alexakis said in her ruling, according to the school’s student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern. “For that reason, I have to deny the motion.”
The complaint also criticized the school for adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which the complaint said “effectively limits Arab students, and particularly Palestinian students, in their expressions of nationalist aspirations and protest against mistreatment of their ethnic group.”
The antisemitism training was announced by Northwestern in March in an email to the student body that cited President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.”
“The truth is that Northwestern’s antisemitism training discriminates against Jewish students who are anti-Zionist, against Palestinian students, and against all people of good conscience, and it has nothing to do with Jewish safety,” said Jonah Rubin, the manager for campus organizing for Jewish Voice for Peace, at a press conference. “It’s about Northwestern trying to cozy up to an increasingly authoritarian administration.”
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Judge Denies CAIR’s Challenge to Campus Antisemitism Prevention Training
Pro-Hamas activists on the grounds of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, United States, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
A US federal judge on Monday rejected an anti-Israel group’s motion to pause an antisemitism prevention course being held at Northwestern University to prevent further harassment of and discrimination against Jewish students, citing the plaintiff’s failing to provide sufficient evidence that it is harming anyone.
“Because the plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden in this threshold inquiry, we do not move on to conduct a balancing of harms,” Judge Georgia Alexis, an alumnus of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, said in court. “For that reason, I have to deny the motion.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an organization that has been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — sued Northwestern University, arguing that the course in question violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and that it serves as a “pretense” for censoring “expressions of Palestinian identity, culture, and advocacy for self-determination.”
Filed on behalf of the Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine (GW4P) group, the suit arrived in federal dockets with a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the course, which the university mandated as a prerequisite for fall registration, and the rescission of disciplinary measures imposed on nine students who refused to complete it.
The suit primarily takes aim at Northwestern’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and its application to the training course, which, at its conclusion, calls on students to pledge not to be antisemitic.
Used by governments and other entities across the world, the IHRA definition describes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere.
Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
CAIR argues that the definition is anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian, discriminating against both cultures while being hostile to CAIR’s vision of Palestinian self-determination.
“Northwestern requires students to complete a training course elaborating on that definition and requires them to attest that they to abide by conduct policies that incorporate that discriminatory definition,” CAIR’s complaint says. “The training course and attestations discriminate against Arab students whose racial and national origin identities are fundamentally incompatible with this definition.”
Several lawsuits have challenged universities’ quelling of riotous anti-Zionist activity on other grounds, such as Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) unsuccessful lawsuit against Columbia University last year, but none have argued that allowing antisemitism to thrive is inclusive of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian identities and that fighting it is discriminatory.
This is the latest CAIR activity in a long line of initiatives that have prompted a storm of controversy, as previously reported by The Algemeiner. In September, US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) exposed materials which CAIR distributes in its local activism — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — to spread its beliefs. Some of it attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
Additionally, since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CAIR’s chapter in Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians. In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
CAIR’s attempt to undermine antisemitism prevention at Northwestern deflects from its own links to Jihadist groups which suppress freedom and promote hate, according to some experts.
“CAIR itself has a long history of terrorist ties in particular to the Muslim Brotherhood, illustrated by the fact that in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing trial, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator, and evidence showed direct financial interactions between CAIR and the now-defunct Hamas-linked charity,” Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner. “This tactic of trying to turn antisemitism on its head in order to deflect from the nefarious activities of groups who have actual ties to terrorism is part of a larger strategy we see employed by Palestinian groups on campus such as the SJP. All of the above validates why the State Department is considering designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in August that the United States is actively working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, a key ideological backer of Hamas that has been linked to CAIR, as a foreign terrorist organization.
CAIR, which is not a designated terrorist group, has said that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
The Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN), a group founded by concerned parents of Northwestern students, said in a statement on Tuesday that CAIR’s prevailing in court would have “set a harmful precedent, redefining civil rights training itself as discriminatory and weakening the very protections [Title VI of the Civil Rights Act] was designed to uphold. The court made clear that America’s civil rights laws continue to stand guard over the equality and safety of Jewish students.”
CAAN added, “Judge Alexakis questioned how a neutral, campus-wide program could constitute discrimination. The training simply requires students to acknowledge nondiscrimination policies incorporation the IHRA definition of antisemitism — the same international standard recognized by democratic governments and civil rights authorities around the world.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.