The Chicago skyline seen from Lake Michigan. Photo: Mr.TinDC/Flickr

Jewish groups and Chicago officials are demanding the resignation of the city’s new president of public schools, citing his lengthy history of making what critics described as antisemitic comments about Jews and Israel.

Twenty-six aldermen in Chicago issued a letter on Wednesday stating that they were “deeply troubled” by Chicago Public School Board President Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson’s “antisemitic and pro-Hamas comments.”

“The thousands of Jewish families who send their kids to Chicago Public Schools deserve representation who values them and does not express hate towards the Jewish community. We call on Rev. Johnson to apologize and step down from his position immediately,” the letter continued. “This situation is a failure of leadership and judgment on the part of Mayor [Brandon] Johnson and his executive team. Earlier this month, Mayor Johnson told reporters his appointees would be thoroughly vetted before they were sworn in. It is clear that did not take place.”

The aldermen went on to argue that in the months following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Johnson “crossed major red lines” by peddling antisemitic and incendiary rhetoric on social media. The aldermen condemned Johnson for “his explicit support for Hamas” and “collectively blaming all Jews for Israel’s military decisions.”

Johnson’s defense of the Oct. 7 slaughter as an “absolute right” is “disqualifying from public service,” according to the letter, which slammed the new school board chief for weaponizing the war in Gaza against Jewish city officials by writing, “My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment.”

Johnson came under fire after Jewish Insider reported on his vocal support for Hamas on social media, where he also compared Jews to Nazis. 

“The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” Johnson wrote in February.

“The Israeli government offers a renewal of Nazi language once directed toward European Jews, ‘savages, dogs, vermin,’” he  later posted in March. 

Defending Hamas’s Oct. 7 murder spree, he wrote, “I have been saying this since October 2023. People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!”

Johnson also shared a video by anti-Israel writer Miko Peled which voiced support for the Oct. 7 attacks. He encouraged his “Jewish friends” to react to the video 

“The single most direct video that has crossed my feed,” Johnson wrote. “I invite my once Jewish friends to respond to this video with honesty, integrity, and morality.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said the appointment of Johnson was “offensive and insulting to a Jewish community reeling from the attacks of this weekend and increased antisemitism over the past several months.”

The American Jewish Committee’s branch in Chicago also called for Johnson’s resignation, as did other Jewish groups.

Meanwhile,the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest said of Johnson: “It is incomprehensible that someone with these antisemitic views was appointed to lead the Chicago Public School system, designed to promote education, coexistence, and inclusion.”

Johnson said he would not resign but on Wednesday apologized, saying he was “deeply sorry for not being more precise and deliberate in my comments” and acknowledging that some of the social media posts that he shared “could be construed as antisemitic.”

“Let me start by apologizing to the Jewish community for the remarks I posted, which were clearly reactive and insensitive,” Johnson told the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ in an interview. “Since that time, I have asked for and received feedback from my Jewish friends and colleagues who helped me be more thoughtful as I addressed these sensitive matters.”

The push to oust Johnson came amid ongoing controversy over the city of Chicago’s response to the shooting of an Orthodox Jewish man in the city last Saturday.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who sparked outrage among the Jewish community earlier this year when he referred to Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza as “genocidal,” released a statement on the shooting that made no mention of the victim being Jewish. In the statement, Johnson said that “our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the victim and his loved ones from this weekend’s shooting incident that took place in Rogers Park.”

The victim, 39, was shot by a 22-year-old gunman, Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, in an area of Chicago home to many Orthodox Jews, according to police. The attacker reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” during a gunfight after being confronted by law enforcement.

Abdallahi was charged with six counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm toward a police officer or firefighter, and one count of aggravated battery with a firearm.

Community leaders expressed outrage over Abdallahi not being charged with a hate crime among the other felony charges. Many took particular aim at Johnson for his response.

“The victim was a Jewish man, who was wearing traditional Jewish garb, walking to a Jewish place of worship on the Jewish day of rest,” said Chicago’s 50th Ward Alderman Debra Silverstein in response to Johnson’s statement. “Don’t erase his identity and don’t try to minimize the fear and anxiety my community feels after this attack. We’re scared and we need to know that our mayor has our back.”

The Chicago Jewish Relations Community Council similarly slammed Johnson for his statement, saying that the mayor “failed to identify that the victim was a Jewish man, in a densely populated Jewish neighborhood, going to synagogue for Shabbat morning prayers.”

“What will it take for you to acknowledge the Jewish community?” the organization added.

The post Calls Mount for Chicago Public School Board President to Resign for Antisemitic Comments first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Aviv Geffen, right, with the sign he held at the David Gilmore concert on Oct. 30, 2024. Photo: Screenshot

Israeli rock musician Aviv Geffen was escorted out of a David Gilmour concert in Los Angeles on Wednesday night and detained by security for holding a sign that called for the return of the hostages abducted from Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists last Oct. 7, Ynet reported.

Geffen shared on his Instagram Story photos and videos of him attending a concert of the British guitarist and Pink Floyd band member at the Hollywood Bowl and helping to hold a large sign that read, “Wish they were here,” a nod to a classic Pink Floyd song of the same name. The sign also featured an image of a yellow ribbon, which has became the symbol of hope for the release and safe return of the hostages kidnapped by terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, during their deadly rampage across southern Israel.

In a video that Geffen posted on Instagram Story, a security guard is seen stopping the Israeli singer and telling him that he cannot hold the sign during the concert. Security “asked me why I was holding it up, and I explained that I’m from Israel and it;s for the hostages,” Geffen later said of the incident, as reported by Ynet. “They asked me to put it down, and I refused.”

Geffen, who is currently on a US tour, said he was then escorted outside the venue, briefly detained by security, and released shortly afterward. The Hollywood Bowl has not commented on the matter.

The Israeli singer also wrote in an Instagram Story that after the concert, he went backstage and gave Gilmour a yellow ribbon pin in honor of the hostages.

The post Israeli Singer Aviv Geffen Detained, Escorted Out by Security for Holding Hostages Sign at David Gilmour Concert in LA first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Writer, director, and executive producer David Mamet takes part in a panel discussion of HBO’s “Phil Spector” during the Winter Press Tour for the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, California. Photo: Reuters

More than 1,000 pro-Israel figures in the literary and entertainment industries — including authors, publishers, writers, and journalists — signed an open letter criticizing the thousands of authors who recently vowed to boycott Israeli publishers and institutions in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

On Monday, the Palestine Festival of Literature published an open letter in which initially more than 1,000 authors pledged to not work with Israeli institutions — including publishers, festivals, literary agencies, and publications — that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights,” operating “discriminatory policies and practices,” or “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid, or genocide.” Signatories included Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy, and Rachel Kushner. All three have been outspoken critics of Israel and in 2021, Rooney refused to sell the Hebrew translation rights of her third novel, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” to an Israeli publisher in support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The anti-Israel signatories of the open letter claimed Israeli cultural institutions “have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising, and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.” They said Israeli cultural institutions that have never publicly recognized the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted. Among the signatories were winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award. As of Tuesday, over 5,000 authors and professionals in the publishing world have signed the open letter.

In response, the nonprofit and pro-Israel entertainment industry organization Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) published its own open letter on Tuesday that was signed by more than 1,000 members of the literary and entertainment industries. The open letter described boycotts against authors and those who work with them as “illiberal and dangerous.” It further explained that regardless of ones personal views about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in Gaza, “boycotts of creatives and creative institutions simply create more divisiveness and foment further hatred.” The signatories also included winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, and Pulitzer Prize — such as David Mamet, Herta Müller, and Howard Jacobson — as well as entertainment figures including actresses Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing, and Julianna Margulies and musicians Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons.

“We continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracize their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” CCFP’s open letter stated, referring to Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7. “The instincts and motivations behind cultural boycotts, in practice and throughout history, are directly in opposition to the liberal values most writers hold sacred.”

“In fact, we believe that writers, authors, and books — along with the festivals that showcase them — bring people together, transcend boundaries, broaden awareness, open dialogue, and can affect positive change,” the letter additionally noted. “We believe that anyone who works to subvert this spirit merely adds yet another roadblock to freedom, justice, equality, and peace that we all desperately desire … We call on our friends and colleagues worldwide to join us in expressing their support for Israeli and Jewish publishers, authors, and all book festivals, publishers, and literary agencies that refuse to capitulate to censorship based on identity or litmus tests.”

Jacobson, a Booker Prize-winning author, said that art is “the antithesis to a political party.” He explained: “It is a meeting place, not an echo chamber. Art explores, discovers, differs, questions, and surprises. Precisely where a door should be forever open, the boycotters slam it closed.”

Lee Child, who is the author of the “Jack Reacher” novel series, believes “politically targeting” members of the literary industry because of their nationality “is misguided.”

“At a time when dialogue is paramount and when compromise can lead to peace, castigation and blanket boycotts are counterproductive,” he added. “The written word, and the dissemination of it, must always be protected, especially in times of heightened tension. And to achieve peace, we must humanize one another and build bridges across communities through the open exchange of ideas. Literature allows for that. Boycotts hinder it.”

Philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Lévy, who also signed the CCFP open letter, noted that while he has always been supportive of a “debate, clash of opinions, even the confrontation of convictions,” efforts to boycott Israeli literary figures and institutions is “pure antisemitism, anti-democratic, and dangerous.”

“The goal of this boycott is the delegitimization of the only Jewish state in the world — Israel. It is a moral obscenity and must be firmly condemned by all free-thinking and democratic citizens of the world,” he said.

Author and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore added, “The resort to witch hunt is always dangerous and ugly especially when the inquisitors are writers. History is full of examples of self-righteous cadres of self-appointed judges who tried to enforce their version of purity by excluding people. Whatever one thinks of this tragic Middle Eastern war, who judges who is good, who bad? Once started where would it stop? Who is pure enough?”

The post Over 1,000 Literary Industry Figures Reject Efforts to Boycott Jewish, Israeli Authors first appeared on Algemeiner.com.