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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.”
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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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‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Compares Jan. 6 US Capitol Riot to the Holocaust
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin. Photo: Screenshot
Sunny Hostin, co-host of the long-running ABC talk show “The View,” on Monday compared the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, prompting widespread backlash for making the comparison.
While discussing the significance of the Jan. 6 anniversary, Hostin argued that Americans need to “find moral clarity,” asserting that they should “never forget” the breach of the US Capitol and claiming that the riot should be remembered as a keystone moment in world history, akin to chattel slavery and the Holocaust.
“You had [former US Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, I believe, on this very show, saying, ‘You know, we need to move on from Jan. 6.’ I say, no. You don’t move on, because Jan. 6 was an atrocity. It was one of the worst moments in American history,” Hostin said. “And, when you think about the worst moments in American history, like World War II, like the Holocaust, chattel slavery, we need to never forget, because [the] past becomes prologue if you forget and erase.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of rioters, convinced that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, stormed the US Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The mob swarmed through the halls of the Capitol building, vandalizing and breaking into private offices. Trump was widely criticized for not doing more to condemn those who breached the Capitol and for fueling the false notion that he lost the election due to widespread fraud.
Hostin’s words set off a firestorm of criticism on social media, with many observers taking offense to her comparison of Jan. 6 to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
“It is disgusting to compare Jan. 6 to the Holocaust,” wrote Samuel Stern, rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kansas.
“This Holocaust minimization by [Hostin] is so mind-blowingly offensive it’s hard to believe these fools still have a platform,” wrote Chaskel Bennett, a 9/11 first responder and grandchild of Holocaust survivors.
“Look how stupid everything has become,” tweeted Omri Ceren, national security adviser to US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TEX).
“What an insult to every Jewish person on the planet, past and present. Breathtaking minimizing of one of the worst things to happen in human history,” wrote conservative CNN analyst Scott Jennings.
The post ‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Compares Jan. 6 US Capitol Riot to the Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Houthi Leader Warns Israelis: ‘Those Who Want to Sleep’ Comfortably Should Leave Country
Houthi policemen ride on the back of a patrol pick-up truck during the funeral of Houthi terrorists killed by recent US-led strikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
A senior leader of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group in Yemen has warned Israelis that they should flee to Cyprus or “return to their original country” if they want to sleep comfortably at night.
“Those who want to sleep should go to sleep in Cyprus or return to their original country,” Hazam al-Assad, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, posted on X/Twitter on Sunday in a Hebrew-language message directed at Israelis.
The post came one day after al-Assad vowed that the Houthis will continue to attack Israel in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
“We won’t stop … You must watch the sky, you must not sleep, you must not enjoy life as long as the children of Gaza die from bombs, hunger and cold. We will not abandon Gaza,” he posted.
On Monday, al-Assad celebrated after the Houthis claimed they arrested spies trained and equipped by British and Saudi intelligence services, arguing it was a victory in the Yemeni rebel group’s “holy jihad” and the alleged spies were supporting Israel.
“With the support of God Almighty, the Yemeni security services achieve a new victory in the battle of the holy jihad and the promised victory and in the path of support and victory for our people in Gaza, arresting the British spy cell affiliated with MI6 and Saudi Arabia supporting the Israeli enemy entity,” he wrote.
The Algemeiner could not immediately confirm the veracity of the Houthis’ claim about busting a foreign spy operation.
The Houthis have ramped up their military action against Israel in recent weeks, repeatedly firing missiles from Yemen at Israel. While Israel has intercepted many of the missiles, some have penetrated Israeli air defenses.
Last month, a ballistic missile launched by the Iran-backed group struck a playground in Tel Aviv, injuring at least 16 people and causing damage to nearby homes — the second attack in as many days — after several interception attempts by Israel’s air defense systems failed.
The strike came shortly after the Houthis launched another missile toward the center of Israel, and this time the projectile was only partially intercepted. The warhead crashed into a school in the city of Ramat Gan, outside Tel Aviv, causing one building to collapse and severe damage to another. Children were due to arrive at the school hours after the missile hit.
In response to the attack, the Israeli Air Force conducted retaliatory strikes targeting Houthi positions in Yemen, including strategic locations such as the port of Hodeidah and the capital city, Sana’a. US forces also conducted multiple airstrikes against Houthi positions with the aim of degrading the Houthis’ offensive capabilities and ensuring the security of vital maritime routes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the time that Israel would take forceful action against the Houthis as it had done with Hezbollah, another Iran-backed terrorist organization, in Lebanon.
“Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arms of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis,” he said. “We will act with strength, determination and sophistication. I tell you that even if it takes time, the result will be the same.”
Days later, on Dec. 26, the Israeli Air Force conducted additional strikes on the western coast of and deep inside Yemen, including at Sana’a International Airport in the Houthi-controlled capital.
“These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials. This is a further example of the Houthis’ exploitation of civilian infrastructure for military purposes,” the Israeli military said.
Netanyahu again vowed “to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil” and to “persist in this until we complete the task.”
Amid the constant attacks, Israel has instructed its diplomatic missions in Europe to push for countries to designate the Houthi as a terrorist organization.
“The Houthis pose a threat not only to Israel but to the region and the entire world,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in a statement. “The direct threat to freedom of navigation in one of the busiest maritime routes globally is a challenge to the international community and the world order. The most basic and fundamental step is to designate them as a terrorist organization.”
Several countries — including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.
Sa’ar’s directive followed repeated attacks by the Houthis against Israel since October 2023, including the launch of over 200 missiles and 170 attack drones.
The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.
The Yemeni terrorist group began disrupting global trade in a major way with their attacks on shipping in the busy Red Sea corridor after the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, arguing their aggression was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Houthi rebels — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have said they will target all ships heading to Israeli ports, even if they do not pass through the Red Sea.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, which launched the ongoing war in Gaza, Houthi terrorists in Yemen have also routinely launched missiles toward Israel.
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a report in July revealing how Iran has been “smuggling weapons and weapons components to the Houthis.” The report noted that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to conduct over 100 land attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and within Yemen, as well as dozens of attacks on merchant shipping.
While the Houthis have increasingly targeted Israeli soil in recent months, they have primarily attacked ships in the Red Sea, a key trade route, raising the cost of shipping and insurance. Shipping firms have been forced in many cases to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa to avoid passing near Yemen, having a major global economic impact.
In September, the Houthis’ so-called “defense minister,” Mohamed al-Atifi, said that the Yemeni rebels were prepared for a “long war” against Israel and its allies.
“The Yemeni Army holds the key to victory, and is prepared for a long war of attrition against the usurping Zionist regime, its sponsors, and allies,” he was quoted as saying by Iranian state-owned media
“Our struggle against the Nazi Zionist entity is deeply rooted in our beliefs. We are well aware of the fact that this campaign is a sacred and religious duty that requires tremendous sacrifices,” added Atifi, who has been sanctioned by the US government.
Beyond Israeli targets, the Houthis have threatened and in some cases actually attacked US and British ships, leading the two Western allies to launch retaliatory strikes multiple times against Houthi targets in Yemen.
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‘I Grew Up Hating Israel, Jews’: Former Antisemite-Turned-Zionist Takes on World’s Oldest Hatred in New Doc
Norwegian student Marie Andersen carries an antisemitic sign at an Oct. 21, 2023, pro-Hamas demonstration in Warsaw, Poland. Photo: Screenshot
In a world grappling with a resurgence of antisemitism, a new documentary seeks to confront the issue head-on, positing an unsettling take on the motivations behind the world’s oldest hatred through the insights of Rawan Osman, a Syrian-Lebanese antisemite-turned-Zionist.
“Tragic Awakening: A New Look at the Oldest Hatred,” directed by Canadian-Israeli filmmaker Raphael Shore, interweaves historical analysis with contemporary events through the voices of clerics, historians, sociologists, and cultural commentators, including the late British Chief Rabbi Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, author Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel’s antisemitism envoy Michal Cotler-Wunsh, and journalists Bari Weiss and Douglas Murray. It argues that antisemitism stems not from a perception of Jewish inferiority, but rather from resentment of Jewish excellence and moral leadership.
Osman — who founded “Arabs Ask,” a forum designed to challenge preconceived notions about Judaism and Israel among Arabs, and who describes herself as an Arab Zionist — narrates the movie.
Born in Damascus, Syria, she was raised in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley and later lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar before eventually settling in Germany. Her first encounter with a Jewish person was when she moved to Strasbourg, France in her twenties. In her words, the encounter prompted her “first and last panic attack.”
But a long process of exploration, including studying Modern Hebrew and Jewish history at a German university, led her to challenge the antisemitic beliefs she had absorbed growing up in the Middle East and ultimately change her perspective.
“Life is strange. I grew up hating Israel and the Jews, just like many Lebanese and Syrians,” Osman told The Algemeiner.
“Living in Europe, especially the decade I spent in Germany, made me one of the most vocal supporters of the Jewish state. Who would have thought?”
After reexamining her beliefs, Osman dedicated herself to soft diplomacy, educating the Arab world about Jewish history and the Holocaust. However, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, she adopted a more direct and assertive approach, despite the personal risks tied to openly supporting Israel. Reflecting on a conversation with her son, she recalled him asking, “Why are you doing this to me?” to which she responded, “I am doing this for you.”
Osman, who has expressed a desire to convert to Judaism and move to Jerusalem, teamed up with Shore and Rabbi Shalom Schwartz, the film’s executive producer and founder of Aseret, an organization dedicated to promoting the universal values of the Ten Commandments.
“I found myself on a quest to try and understand antisemitism. The Jews are blamed for all ills of the world. Why? Antisemitism requires a different type of explanation,” Osman says in the film.
Shore, who released the film alongside his new book Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew?, argued that while religious, social, and political reasons may trigger antisemitism, they fail to explain its deeper motives, leaving efforts to combat it ineffective.
“Today, more than ever before since the Nazis were defeated, we are forced to discover ways of finding greater tolerance in our world. We are completely delusional if we think that hatred of the Jews will end with the Jews. We are always the canary in the coal mine — a harbinger of what is to come for the entire civilized world,” Shore told The Algemeiner.
“If we are ever to effectively combat antisemitism, we need to better understand its roots with moral and spiritual courage, which demands unwavering pride in our common Jewish identities,” he continued. “Combating antisemitism requires pushing back at our enemies with clarity, unity, and an appreciation that our traditions and history are what have allowed us to overcome our enemies.”
Osman says at one point in the movie: “Hitler didn’t want to kill the Jews because they were bad; he wanted to kill them because they were good.”
Shore explains that for Hitler, the Jews represented “a spiritual and moral threat” because the ethical foundations of Western civilization — at their core, Jewish ideas — are the antithesis of his Darwinian outlook.
“Hitler believed that there was one great conflict that drives human history, and that was the idea of survival of the fittest,” Shore said. “Hitler believed that if the ideas of humanitarianism, love, equality, democracy were to succeed, that would be the end of humanity.”
After a screening of the movie in Tel Aviv last week, Osman shared her thoughts on the downfall of Iran’s regional axis of proxies, culminating with the recent fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Osman said that the reaction of some Israelis’ apprehension at Assad’s demise “literally broke my heart,” she said.
“I invited my Israeli friends to reach out to the Syrians and congratulate them” on the fall of Assad, who was the “monster of the century,” she said.
“Some of them misunderstood — they thought I’m endorsing Islamists,” she said, referencing the rebels led by a former member of ISIS and al Qaeda, Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani.
Still, she noted, these groups achieved what the world, including the US and Israel, could not, emphasizing that the removal of Assad had to come from within Syria, as an external force taking him down would have turned him into a martyr.
Though Osman approached the recent changes with caution regarding their impact on Israel’s relations with its neighbors, she remained hopeful. “While I watch myself together with Rav Shalom Shwartz and Rav Shore on the big screen, I feel that peace between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria might come in my lifetime after all,” she told The Algemeiner.
The post ‘I Grew Up Hating Israel, Jews’: Former Antisemite-Turned-Zionist Takes on World’s Oldest Hatred in New Doc first appeared on Algemeiner.com.