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These NY Jewish teens are aiding young refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — On a Sunday afternoon in February, a group of teens met for the first time at the JCC Mid-Westchester in Scarsdale, New York to make friendship bracelets and connections. Teens and tweens huddled together over a plastic folding table, some laughing and others deeply focused on beading plastic and elastic friendship bracelets.
These girls — six from New York’s Westchester County and eight Ukrainian refugees — gathered as part of the Westchester Jewish Coalition for Immigration. Partly organized by teen leaders, sophomores Jackie Kershner and Kate Douglass, the group gathered to create a safe space for the refugees and ease their struggles in acclimating to a new environment.
“It’s important to try and let these kids have as normal a life as possible and to let us have an influence on their life,” said Kershner, who has Russian and Ukrainian backgrounds and has recently started learning Russian. Outside of co-leading this group she tutors an Ukrainian girl from Ternopil, Ukraine through ENGin, a program that matches native English speakers with Ukrainian students who want to learn English.
Over the past year 271,000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to the United States with about 14,000 relocating in New York. The refugee organization HIAS reports that close to 200 refugees have resettled in Westchester County. More than half of them arrived in six months beginning in September 2021. With $21 million being invested by the federal government to support Ukrainian refugees in New York, a portion of this is being used by Jewish nonprofits that are incorporating Jewish American teens into their efforts to ease the transition for refugees.
Kershner’s co-leader, Douglass, empathizes with the recently displaced teens and tweens. “When I think of moving to a new school that can be so anxiety producing, so for what they are going through I can imagine that they just need an extra friend,” she said.
The experience is welcomed by Ukrainian teens. Valentyna Zabialo, who fled the country recently, is grateful for the opportunity.
“Finally I can speak with somebody else about our similar stories about school and friends, how I’ve fled to America, how I have moved countries, ” agreed Renata Uhlinsky, who fled from Odessa last July.
Ukrainian teens and American teen volunteers at the JCC Mid-Westchester. (Lydia Ettinger)
Holly Fink, the CEO of Westchester Jewish Coalition for Immigration, sees the firsthand benefits from implementing bonding programs that teens and tweens like Uhlinsky engage in. “I know from my work from Ukrainians that everyone who fled from the war has experienced an immense amount of trauma, so I have created programs like this one to help them bond with others,” she said. “They are meeting teens who I see as the future of immigration work.”
It’s important for teens to be part of the process, said Caroline Wolinsky, the volunteer coordinator at HIAS. The refugee assistance organization began as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 1902. “Teens bring not just energy but a knowledge of how the world works now, how to bring people together, and how to think creatively about problems,” said Wolinksy.
In the past year she has engaged with about 50 active teen volunteers in places ranging from El Paso, Texas to Washington D.C. They mostly engage in more traditional hands-on work such as assembling “dignity kits” to provide refugees with essential hygiene products, but bring their own skills to refugee work.
“A lot of modern organizing and change-making happens online and on social media and so I think using the tools which now have become a really intuitive part of how young people have grown up,” said Wolinsky. “It’s so hugely important to be able to use word processing documents and Google drive and things like that that may not come as naturally to older people, but do come very naturally to teens and really make a huge difference.”
Lyla Souccar, 16, feels a connection to refugee work through her family’s history: Her grandfather fled Egypt in the 1940s because of Jewish persecution and relocated to Brazil. From his stories, she took an interest in aiding those in similar situations.
“Jews are refugees in so many places because we are constantly getting hate, and in the Holocaust there were so many refugees after that [who] needed to move to so many different places,” said Soucar.
Souccar volunteers with Hearts and Homes, a New York nonprofit service organization that helps Afghan refugees resettle in partnership with HIAS. In 2021, 2.4 million Afghan refugees were registered worldwide — 41% women and 40% children. New York State has 7,500 Afghan refugees.
Through Hearts and Homes, Souccar created a club with her friend Keren Jacobowitz at The Leffell School, a Jewish day school in Westchester. The club fundraises, runs toiletry drives and spreads awareness about the plight of Afghan refugees. Later this school year, she has planned for an adult Afghan refugee to speak to the school. Beyond the classroom, she started working with two families through the organization as an intern this past summer, and has continued the work by helping the kids in those families with English and math homework.
“They were a little scared to get close to people, I remember the kids used to hide a little bit the first few weeks of me coming in, but now when I come in they run to the door,” Souccar said. “I definitely feel more connected to them, I’ve shared meals with them, I’ve watched TV with them, I just feel a lot more part of their life.”
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Britain to Legislate to Tackle Threats From Hostile State Proxies After Wave of Antisemitic Attacks
Orthodox Jews stand by a police cordon, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Britain will legislate to strengthen its ability to deal with proxies for malign state actors, taking powers to make it possible to ban them in light of increased activity in Britain and a rise in antisemitic attacks.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the government has to “deal with malign state actors” in the wake of a series of attacks on Britain‘s Jewish community.
In a speech outlining the government’s agenda, King Charles said it would “introduce legislation to tackle the growing threat from foreign state entities and their proxies,” and would also take urgent action to tackle antisemitism.
POSSIBLE BAN ON THE IRGC?
Several British lawmakers have called for the proscription of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC is an elite military force whose purpose is to protect Shi’ite Muslim clerical rule in Iran. It controls large parts of Iran’s economy.
While Starmer has not publicly named the IRGC as being the target of the legislation, in an introduction to the King’s Speech, he said that Britain would tackle extremism “including where it is sponsored by foreign powers that are hostile to the UK, such as Iran.”
The move comes after a spate of arson attacks on sites in London linked to the Jewish community and the targeting of Iranian dissidents, with police saying they were examining possible Iran links.
Britain‘s security chiefs have for years warned about threats from “hostile“ states such as Iran, Russia, and China, with a number of convictions of people who had been accused of carrying out spying or other offences on their behalf.
The new law would allow the government to specify state-backed organizations that threaten national security through espionage, sabotage, interference, or other means. A review last year found that Britain‘s existing framework had a legal difficulty in proscribing state entities.
There will be new offenses created for belonging to such organizations or raising support for them, and the government said that collectively the measures would create a “tougher operating environment for foreign intelligence services and their proxies.”
The king’s speech also promised a new National Security Bill which would address those who were fixated on violence and planning mass killings, but were not obviously inspired by a particular ideology.
The new law would aim to criminalize the creation and sharing of the most harmful online material.
As part of an approach to align countering state threats with addressing terrorism risks, the bill would add “polygraph testing as an available license condition for state threat offenders,” the government said.
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‘Shame on Hollywood’: Cannes Jury Member Defends Actors ‘Backlisted’ for Anti-Israel Activism Over Gaza War
Workers set up a giant canvas of the official poster featuring actors Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon from Ridley Scott’s road movie “Thelma & Louise” on the facade of the Festival palace before the start of the 79th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 10, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/ Marko Djurica
A jury member of the 79th Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday condemned the Hollywood film industry for “blacklisting” actors who have spoken out against Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip during the country’s war against Hamas terrorists controlling the enclave.
At the festival’s jury press conference, Cannes award-winning Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty mentioned Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, and Mark Ruffalo, all three of whom have been outspoken in criticizing Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Sarandon’s character in “Thelma & Louise” is on the official 2026 Cannes poster.
“The Cannes Film Festival [and] the wonderful poster they have,” Laverty said at the end of the press conference on Tuesday, held before the opening of the film festival in France. “Absolutely iconic. Brilliant. And isn’t it fascinating to see some of them like Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo blacklisted because of their views in opposing the murder of women and children in Gaza? Shame on Hollywood people who do that. My respect and total solidarity to them. They’re the best of us, and good luck to them.”
“I just hope we don’t get bombed now, because we’ve got this poster in Cannes,” the BAFTA winner added in conclusion.
Sarandon was dropped by her talent agency for castigating Israel while participating in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York City in November 2023. At the protest, the Oscar winner accused Israel of war crimes, encouraged others to have the “courage to speak out” in support of Palestinians, and compared the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel just weeks earlier to hardships Palestinians endure in Gaza.
She talked about the fallout with her agency during an interview in 2024, saying: “I was dropped by my agency, my projects were pulled. I’ve been used as an example of what not to do if you want to continue to work.” Earlier this year, Sarandon further spoke about being shunned in Hollywood for her views about the Israel-Hamas war.
“I was fired by my agency, specifically for marching and speaking out about Gaza, for asking for a ceasefire. And it became impossible for me to even be on television,” she said at a press conference in February before receiving a career achievement honor at the 40th Goya Awards in Spain. “I don’t know lately if it’s changed, but I couldn’t do any major film, anything connected with Hollywood. I found agents ultimately in England and in Italy, and I work there … I know this Italian director that just hired me — he was told not to hire me, so that’s still recently. He didn’t listen, but they had that conversation. Right now, I kind of specialize in tiny films with directors who have never directed, in independent films.”
At the Cannes jury press conference on Tuesday, Laverty further talked about Gaza in remarks about this year’s film festival.
“You see so much violence, genocide in Gaza and all these terrible things,” he said. “The idea of coming to a festival – which is a celebration of diversity, imagination, tenderness — when there’s such vulgar, vicious, systematic violence. The idea of attending to a festival where there’ll be contradiction and nuance and beauty and inspiration. It knocked me out, to be honest.”
Before the start of the Cannes Film Festival last year, more than 350 members of the film industry — including Bardem, Sarandon, Ruffalo, and Richard Gere — signed an open letter condemning the festival’s “silence” over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza targeting Hamas terrorists.
Emmy-winning actress Hannah Einbinder recently criticized Hollywood’s silence about the Israel-Hamas war during a guest appearance on an episode of Zeteo’s “Beyond Israelism” podcast that was released in full on Tuesday.
“It pisses me off,” said the “Hacks” actress. “Because I’m sitting here with [Algerian-Palestinian activist] Mahmoud [Khalil], who has so much to risk and who has risked so much who has sacrificed so much … And I look at these people who have absolutely every privilege imaginable to mankind and they cannot utter a single word. I guess it makes me naive, but I cannot understand it. I really can’t understand it. And I hear people say that they don’t know enough and I — I don’t, it’s like, OK, so what do you do all day?”
“People in Hollywood, unfortunately, need these issues to affect a white person for them to see it as relating to them,” she stated. “Like, they see Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air suddenly, they see Stephen Colbert’s show being canceled by CBS, which is owned by the Ellisons, and they go, ‘How could this possibly happen?’ And it’s like, we know how because we saw students and professors and journalists and authors and Palestinian folks be silenced and fired and expelled and imprisoned … it took it happening to these white men for people to be like, ‘Oh my God.’”
In her acceptance speech at the Emmys last year, Einbinder declared “Free Palestine.”
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Netanyahu Held Secret Meeting With Emirati President in the UAE During Iran War, PM’s Office Says
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a ceremony commemorating Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers, or Yom HaZikaron, at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, April 21, 2026. Photo: ILIA YEFIMOVICH/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United Arab Emirates and met the Emirati president during the war with Iran, the Prime Minister’s Office said on Wednesday in what would be their first confirmed meeting.
According to the statement, the meeting resulted in an “historic breakthrough” in relations between Israel and the UAE.
A source familiar with the meeting said Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) met in Al-Ain, an oasis city by the Oman border, on March 26 and that their meeting lasted several hours.
The source said that Mossad Chief Dedi Barnea made at least two visits to the UAE during the war with Iran to coordinate military actions. The intelligence chief’s visit was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Especially after coming under attack during the Iran war, the UAE has strengthened its relationships with the United States and Israel, with which it opened ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords. It views the relationship with Israel as a lever for regional influence and a unique channel to Washington.
Israel sent batteries for its Iron Dome interception system and personnel to operate them to the UAE during the war, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Tuesday.
The UAE is a regional business and financial hub and one of Washington’s most important allies. It has pursued an assertive foreign policy and carved its own sphere of influence across the Middle East and Africa.
Iran‘s strikes on Gulf states in response to the US-Israeli attacks targeted the UAE more than its neighbors, hitting civilian infrastructure and energy facilities.
Unlike several Gulf peers, the UAE has a pipeline that allows it to divert some oil exports around the blockaded Strait of Hormuz, making it more able to withstand prolonged disruption. But the war risks severely damaging its role as a global economic center that offers security and ease in the region.