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The Workers Circle, progressive Jewish group, leaves Conference of Presidents over disagreements on U.S. and Israel advocacy

(JTA) — The Workers Circle has resigned from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, shrinking the umbrella group’s contingent of progressive groups. 

The Workers Circle — a Jewish progressive activist group that runs a robust program of Yiddish classes, and that more recently has emphasized advocating for democracy — said it is pulling out of the Conference of Presidents over disagreements regarding policies in the United States, discourse on Israel and how to define antisemitism. 

The decision is the latest of a few incidents in recent years that have exposed cracks in the conference, which aims to be a unified voice for dozens of Jewish groups in the United States. The resignation reflects the deep political divisions among American Jews more broadly, and the challenge of trying to unite disparate opinions under one banner in order to preserve a sense of shared Jewish interests in an increasingly polarized climate.

But the Workers Circle decision does not appear to be sparking a trend: Other left-leaning groups in the conference told JTA they would remain in the coalition.

“We believe that the time has come for us to separate,” Ann Toback, CEO of The Workers Circle, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday. “Our focus on democracy is not being reflected by this organization’s representation of us.”

Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff criticized Workers Circle over the resignation, accusing the group of not raising its issues or being an active participant in the conference prior to its resignation. He said that the resignation does not speak to deeper divisions in the coalition. 

This is the first time he knows of when a group has said it is resigning from the conference due to ideological differences.

“It was a complete surprise,” Daroff said. “We had no idea that they had any substantive issues with us, with the conference. They generally have not come to meetings. There are dozens of meetings they could have attended where they could have engaged in these issues.”

He also told JTA that the Workers Circle owed upwards of $15,000 in membership dues to the conference, which vary depending on the size of member groups. Toback disputed that payment was at issue, saying that the group had paid up the invoices it has received and was committed to paying what it owed through the date of its resignation. “It wasn’t about the dues,” she said of the group’s decision.

Founded in 1900 as the Workmen’s Circle, or Arbeter Ring, by Yiddish-speaking immigrants to the United States as a socialist mutual aid society, the Workers Circle has been a member of the conference since the mid-1990s. In 2016, the organization refocused itself on opposing what it sees as the erosion of democracy in the United States. Toback says protecting democracy fits with the group’s mission because it was founded by immigrants fleeing autocratic countries. 

In recent years, the group says, it has hoped that the Conference of Presidents would take more vocal positions on domestic issues like combating voter suppression and gerrymandering that dilutes the voting power of minorities. “The COP’s unwillingness to step in and speak to the erosion of democracy in the United States has been a real issue for us,” she said.

Daroff said the Workers Circle never asked the leadership of the conference to speak out on democratic norms. While Toback acknowledged that she did not raise the issue with conference staff directly, she told JTA, “It its very clear what their positions are and aren’t.” She added later, “Our missions aren’t aligned.”

The conference was founded in the mid-1950s with the aim of more effectively advocating for issues of Jewish concern by speaking in a shared voice. Its roster of 50 groups includes some of the largest Jewish organizations, including the major religious denominations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee. It also includes a number of groups with much smaller staffs and public profiles.

The conference is no stranger to infighting and threats of resignation. Multiple member organizations have called on its leadership over the years to discipline the Zionist Organization of America, whose president, Morton Klein, is a right-wing pro-Israel activist with a history of inflammatory remarks. In 2019, ZOA got a reprimand from the conference for “insults, ad hominem attacks and name-calling.” 

The following year, more than a dozen other liberal member organizations of the conference sent an open letter to Klein condemning his bashing of the Black Lives Matter movement. Other member groups pushed the conference to expel ZOA. Klein responded with his own complaint against the refugee aid group HIAS and the heads of the other groups who had attacked him. Conference leadership attempted to resolve the situation by declining to take action on the complaints.

The Workers Circle decision means the group will now bow out of those internal debates. In a resignation letter sent Wednesday to the conference’s leadership and shared with JTA, Toback and Workers Circle president Zeev Dagan wrote that their breakup “is not a decision that we have made lightly.” 

“We have been a longtime member of the COP and share its concern for the interests of the American and world Jewish communities,” they wrote. Yet the letter, in addition to criticizing the Conference’s “silence” on the domestic issues that have become the focus of Workers Circle, names a host of other reasons for the split, including the Conference’s promotion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism, which some liberal groups say chills free speech on Israel by defining some forms of criticism of the Jewish state as antisemitism.

In his response to the Workers Circle resignation, Daroff singled out in particular their objections to the IHRA definition. He said the chorus of people and groups that oppose the Israeli government’s recent judicial overhaul efforts — which includes members of the conference — shows that criticism of Israeli policy is condoned. (At least one member of the conference, ZOA, supports the overhaul legislation.)

“One need only look at the last six months of vociferous criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, wherein no one is claiming that such criticism is antisemitic, to dispute the preposterous canard that the definition — and the Conference by extension — stifles legitimate criticism of Israel,” he wrote in a statement.

But that debate over the judicial legislation, Toback said, ended up being the final straw for the Workers Circle. After Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a law last week weakening the power of the Supreme Court, prompting mass protests and charges that such laws would endanger Israeli democracy, the Conference issued a statement that expressed “concern” over the reforms and called on Israel’s leaders “to seek compromise and unity,” adding, “Responsible political actors must ease tensions that have run dangerously high.” 

Toback had hoped for a fiercer condemnation of the law. “Watching Israel’s democracy hit this crisis point without calling for real change was the final moment” in the group’s relationship with the Conference, she said.

Progressive groups have floated leaving the coalition before, including in 2014, when the conference declined to extend membership to J Street, the liberal Israel lobby. After that decision — which was made by a secret vote of the conference’s members — Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said one option for his group would be “to simply leave the Conference of Presidents.”

He added at the time, “But this much is certain: We will no longer acquiesce to simply maintaining the facade that the Conference of Presidents represents or reflects the views of all of American Jewry.”

The groups that criticized the Conference of Presidents after the J Street vote are all still members, including URJ. Reached for comment on Workers Circle’s exit, Jacobs acknowledged that it’s “a challenge to be in a large, diverse umbrella organization — sometimes it’s very frustrating.”

But, Jacobs added, the URJ and other liberal groups choose to stay because “to increase the progressive, liberal voice on the Conference platform is important.”

“They don’t make statements like the Supreme Court with a majority and a minority view,” Jacobs said of the Conference. “We don’t, either. The Talmud does, but we don’t.’

Daroff told JTA that the conference’s members “all work together to build consensus on behalf of the agenda of the American Jewish community.”

Left-leaning groups in the conference said they respected the Workers Circle’s decision but that they felt they could do more within the coalition than outside of it. 

“We’ve gone all in with the Conference of Presidents,” said Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, whose president served on the conference’s executive committee. “We’ve found the more we engage, the more opportunity there is.”

But she added, “I deeply respect the decision that Workers Circle is making based on what I know to be true about the impact they want to make. I’ll miss them there.”

Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, said, “We feel it is valuable for us to be there and to be part of the conference, even though it’s not perfect.”

Toback said that the Workers Circle’s decision to leave the Conference is not meant to reflect on the organizations that remain members. 

“This is in no way pointing fingers and saying, ‘By being in the Conference, you’re anti-democracy,’” she said. “I want them to continue to be strong activists in the Conference, and encourage them and others to advocate for strong statements in support of democracy.”

—
The post The Workers Circle, progressive Jewish group, leaves Conference of Presidents over disagreements on U.S. and Israel advocacy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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New MIT Accuser Comes Forward With Harrowing Antisemitism Allegations

Illustrative” A pro-Hamas encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 6, 2024. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being accused by another alleged victim of refusing, as de-facto policy, to quell antisemitic discrimination which violated rights guaranteed by Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act.

The complainant, a male researcher, came forward to join a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed in June, which required its being amended to include him. According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, he endured psychological torment, having been swarmed by “masked” pro-Hamas activists clamoring for the destruction of Israel and students who “interrogated” his Jewish identity, pelting him with slurs and threatening to “prevent” his reproducing to bring “more Jewish children” into the world.

While administrators received formal complaints describing in harrowing detail the severity of the bullying being perpetrated against the student, they allegedly took no action. Left to stand alone, the student resorted to concealing his Jewishness on a campus which purports to be one of the most inclusive in the country.

“Antisemitism continues to persist at MIT, ultimately allowing the abuse to escalate until a promising Israeli researcher was forced from his lab. This not only deeply impacts this individual, but an entire campus and the communities this researcher, and other like them, could help through their work over the course of their careers,” Brandeis center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “MIT has had countless opportunities to stop this harassment and protect their Israeli and Jewish students and faculty. Instead, antisemitism has only worsened at MIT — an outcome made possible by the administration’s continued negligence.”

As previously reported, the other plaintiffs, Lior Alon and William Sussman, allege that MIT became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “resistance is justified when people are colonized.”

The suit added that Alon — who lived through both intifadas, or periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels, as a citizen of Israel and lost his childhood friend to the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre — has personally been victimized by campus antisemites. During anti-Israel encampment protests in spring term 2024, Alon was prohibited from entering the Kresge Lawn section of campus, through which he needed to pass to access his office. The edict allegedly came down from pro-Hamas activists and was enforced by an MIT police officer, who became an accessory to the group’s usurpation of school property.

Later, Alon was allegedly harassed by Michel DeGraff, a tenured linguistics professor. According to the suit, DeGraff posted videos of Alon on social media, replete with his “personal information, including details of his Israeli military services,” as well as spurious accounts of his life which portrayed him as sinister. The productions inspired misfits to approach him in the streets, as they showed up at “the grocery store and his child’s daycare.”

All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, MIT has allegedly ignored dozens of complaints of antisemitic discrimination. Discrimination there has been described in harrowing testimony provided by students at hearings called by the US Congress, in social media posts, and in comments to this publication. Only last year, MIT student Talia Khan told members of Congress that attending the institution “traumatized” her, charging that it has “become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus.”

Khan went on to recount MIT’s efforts to suppress expressions of solidarity with Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, which included ordering Jewish students to remove Israeli flags from public display while allowing Palestinian flags to fly across campus. She described the double standard as a “scandal” alienating Jewish students, staff, and faculty, many of whom resigned from an allegedly farcical committee on antisemitism. Staff were ignored, Khan said, after expressing fear that their lives were at risk, following an incident in which a mob of anti-Zionists amassed in front of the MIT Israel Internship office and attempted to infiltrate it, banging on its doors while “screaming” that Jews are committing genocide.

“These incidents demonstrate what happens when antisemitism is allowed to flourish in the absence of leadership and accountability,” Jonathan Polkes, global co-chair of legal practice White & Case, the law firm partnering with the Brandeis Center to litigate the suit, said on Wednesday. “Through its inaction, MIT allowed a tenured professor to use his position of power to persecute Jews without consequence — breaking both federal and university laws in the process. Our clients are taking a courageous stand against injustice, and we are proud to represent them.”

Commenting on the lawsuit, MIT has previously said, “MIT will defend itself in court regarding the allegations raised in the lawsuit. To be clear, MIT rejects antisemitism. As President Kornbluth has said, ‘Antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.’”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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Charlie Kirk’s Producer Debunks Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories Pushed by Lawmaker, Podcasters, Pro-Iran Propagandist

US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) talks with reporters after a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club, Washington, DC, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA) via Reuters Connect

Last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has animated a wave of anti-Israel conspiracy theories, inspiring voices on both the far right and far left to join together in promoting an assortment of unsubstantiated claims inflected with conventional antisemitic tropes.

On Monday, Kirk’s producer and a billionaire supporter of Israel both rejected the allegations fueled by Max Blumenthal, a fiercely anti-Israel journalist promoted by Iranian state media who carries a long record of smearing the Jewish state.

Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone website, published claims from anonymous sources that Kirk had been pressured at a Hamptons gathering hosted by billionaire Bill Ackman weeks before his death. Kirk was reportedly “hammered” over his views on Israel by Ackman and other pro-Israel advocates, leaving him to feel blackmailed.

The report named Natasha Hausdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel as among those who berated Kirk. Hausdorff confirmed to the New York Post that she attended the meeting but called the accusation “categorically untrue” and added that whoever said it “is absolutely lying.” Ackman also denied the charge, calling the claim “totally false.”

Blumenthal has long written articles sympathetic to Hezbollah, the former Assad regime in Syria, and Hamas. In 2013, he notably published Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which Eric Alterman, media columnist for the leftist flagship magazine The Nation, described as “a propaganda tract” that could “have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed).”

The Grayzone report has since influenced Candace Owens, the podcaster who has been widely accused of antisemitism, and US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), among others, demonstrating a convergence between far-left and far-right figures in promoting antisemitic narratives and anti-Israel conspiracies.

Owens — who previously worked with Kirk before her shift to open, unapologetic opposition to Israel and promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, which resulted in her termination from her job as podcaster at The Daily Wire in March 2024 — claimed during a Monday monologue that pro-Israel forces staged an “intervention” with Kirk involving Ackman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She alleged Kirk, an outspoken supporter of Israel who often called out the dangers of antisemitism, was changing his views and offered “a ton of money” to remain pro-Israel, comparing the meeting to a “re-education camp.” Owens said Kirk refused the offers, warning her followers to be “very wary and suspicious of the people who are already telling us to stop asking questions about the Charlie Kirk assassination.”

The podcaster later clarified that she was not directly accusing Israel of orchestrating the murder but argued Kirk had faced “extreme pressure” over his views. Owens also shared social media posts criticizing Netanyahu, captioning one with “All will be revealed.”

Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, responded on X, saying Owens had “slandered” him by accusing him of staging an intervention and suggesting that he blackmailed Kirk. He denied ever offering Kirk or Turning Point USA, the political advocacy organization he started, any money, pressuring him on Israel, or threatening him. “In short, this was not an ‘intervention’ to ‘blackmail’ Charlie Kirk into adopting certain views on Israel,” Ackman wrote in his statement. He described his interactions with Kirk as cordial and said he admired him.

Ackman said he and Kirk first connected on Zoom in June, then worked together to organize a conference of conservative influencers in Bridgehampton in August. He said about 35 influencers attended, collectively reaching more than 100 million followers, and that discussions included a range of issues such as economics, dating, immigration, and Israel. He added that participants expressed varied views on Israel and US support for the country.

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” corroborated Ackman’s account. In a statement, Kolvet said he had spoken with three Turning Point staffers who were present at the gathering in question and that “Bill never yelled at Charlie, never pressed him on Bibi [Netanyahu], never gave him a list of Charlie’s offenses against Israel.” Kolvet added that Kirk himself had told him he had a “cordial relationship” with Ackman and that the event was “productive.”

Despite those denials, the conspiracy theories gained further traction on the far right. Greene wrote on X that supporters should “believe Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson” over “Bibi Netanyahu (a foreign country’s leader),” before warning: “Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA.” She described Kirk as a “Christian martyr” and suggested Jewish influence threatened his movement.

On July 28, Greene accused Israel of engaging in a genocide in Gaza.

The New York Post reported that Owens’ comments relied in part on Blumenthal’s Grayzone article. In addition, Owens suggested law enforcement had intentionally allowed Kirk’s killer to evade capture, though police have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah with the shooting.

Authorities have not presented any evidence linking Israel or pro-Israel figures to the crime. Rather, the alleged shooter’s animosity toward Kirk’s positions on LGBTQ issues appears to have inspired the attack, according to prosecutors.

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Rising Antisemitism on European Campuses: Italian Professor Assaulted, French Students Excluded From Online Groups

Youths take part in the occupation of a street in front of the building of the Sciences Po University in support of Palestinians in Gaza, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Paris, France, April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

Violence and intimidation against Jewish and Israeli students as well as faculty are on the rise across European campuses, as an Italian professor was assaulted at the University of Pisa and students in France were excluded from online groups over their Jewish identities.

On Tuesday, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed a classroom at the University of Pisa in Tuscany, Italy, and assaulted an Italian professor who has opposed cutting ties with Israeli universities.

According to local reports, protesters burst into the classroom waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slurs, targeting the professor over his opposition to the university’s recent decision to sever ties with two Israeli universities.

A student who tried to intervene was attacked by protesters. When the professor stepped in to protect him, he too was assaulted and later hospitalized with injuries to his head and arms.

On the same day, anti-Israel protesters disrupted a lecture by a visiting Israeli speaker at the Polytechnic University of Turin in northern Italy, shouting antisemitic slogans as they stormed the classroom.

Shortly after the incident, the university announced it was cutting ties with the speaker because he had defended the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the confrontation with the protesters.

Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Israel activity on campuses has intensified, with Jewish and Israeli students facing frequent targeting and isolation in an increasingly hostile environment.

On Monday, a group of first-year economics students at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris created a group chat on Instagram that excluded several students, accusing them of being Zionists based on their Jewish-sounding names or surnames, French media reported.

“If there are any other Zionists in this group besides those I’ve already kicked out, leave now — we don’t want you here,” wrote one of the students who created the group, placing a Palestinian flag in the middle.

This latest antisemitic incident follows a similar episode last month, when a student created a poll in a WhatsApp group chat titled, “For or Against Jews?”

Yossef Murciano, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), denounced the rising wave of anti-Jewish incidents, noting that the group had posted notices across multiple campuses to highlight the latest antisemitic episodes.

“We reported the incident to the university, but so far nothing has been done. We were told that measures would be taken, but we don’t know when or how,” Murciano said.

In a press release, the university strongly condemned such “unacceptable behavior,” expressing its full support for those students affected by the recent antisemitic incidents.

The university also announced that it had submitted “all available evidence to the public prosecutor” regarding these two incidents and plans to initiate “disciplinary proceedings” against each of the perpetrators.

“These two acts, whose antisemitic nature seems clear, deserve a punishment commensurate with their severity,” the statement read.

French Minister of Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste strongly condemned the latest incidents, demanding a zero-tolerance approach.

“I stand with these young people, victims of antisemitism that must be opposed everywhere, including, sadly, in our universities. There is only one possible response: zero tolerance!” Baptiste wrote in a post on X.

Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), also spoke out against the incident, calling it a disturbing example of rising antisemitism on campuses.

“This is not a pro-Palestinian campaign, it is a campaign of antisemitic intimidation,” Arfi said in a post on X.

The incidents occurred weeks after two international Jewish groups and a German watchdog published a report showing that antisemitism on European university campuses following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel has fostered a “climate of fear” for Jewish students.

Then earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) released their own report which found that the vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism.

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