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‘Very much a family thing’: US Jewish summer camps mourn Israeli alumni killed in Hamas war
(JTA) — As news broke of Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, David Weinstein shared the grief and fear of many in the American Jewish community. But as the director of Camp Tel Yehudah, a Jewish summer camp in New York, the violence soon hit very close to home.
“Like everybody else, we were horrified and worried and scared and concerned about our people in Israel,” Weinstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But it became very personal very quickly.”
Weinstein received a call that first morning that a former staff member, Gili Adar, was missing. He would later learn that Adar, 24, who worked at Tel Yehudah in 2019 and 2022 as part of its Israeli scouts program, was one of the more than 250 people killed at the Tribe of Nova music festival.
The devastating news didn’t end there. Three other Tel Yehudah community members were also killed: Yuval Halivni, who was a member of the camp’s Israeli scout delegation in 2012; Reem Betito, a camper in 2018 who served in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Golani unit; and Laor Abromov, 20, who was a camper in 2019 and was also killed at the music festival.
“Much of that week, again, while keeping an eye on all of the bigger situation, and our concern for everybody, was really, really about the loss of part of our family,” Weinstein said.
Located in Barryville, New York, Tel Yehudah is the teen leadership camp of the Young Judaea network, a group of camps and youth programs specially designed to build connections between young Jews and Israel — including by having Israeli staff and campers at camp each summer.
As more details began to trickle out about the extent of the violence and loss in Israel, the wider Tel Yehudah community gathered, in person and online, to grieve and process together.
A Young Judaea virtual Havdalah service on Oct. 14 attracted around 700 people, Weinstein said, with breakout rooms that lasted for hours afterward. Staff and alumni also came together for a 20s and 30s Shabbat in New York City, as well as other informal gatherings.
“We have so many people over the years who went to Tel Yehudah who have moved to Israel, and are involved in so many important organizations and movements in Israel that people are very much in touch with,” Weinstein said. “Part of the Tel Yehudah family lives in Israel, and part of the Tel Yehudah family lives here. So it’s very much a family thing.”
Tel Yehudah was far from the only American Jewish summer camp to experience the deaths of past campers or staff on Oct. 7 in Israel, though it appears to have been the hardest hit. They may even have been especially vulnerable to loss because of their unique role as supercharged sites of interchange between U.S. and Israeli young adults.
“Israelis coming to camp has been a part of the American Jewish camping enterprise since the founding of the state,” said Sandra Fox, author of “The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America” and herself a Tel Yehudah alum.
Love for Israel is part of the program at Camp Tel Yehudah and other U.S. Jewish summer camps. (Courtesy Tel Yehudah)
Fox said the number of Israelis working at American Jewish camps increased after World War II and particularly in the 1960s and 70s, when air travel became more accessible and affordable. Fox said Tel Yehudah had Israeli staff as early as 1949.
While many synagogues and Jewish communities have Israeli emissaries — “shlichim” in Hebrew — through the Jewish Agency for Israel, Fox said the camp experience can be unique because it’s often younger Israelis, some who work at camp before their army service.
“This is an opportunity to meet more Israelis and create connections, with both campers and staff depending on which camp, and younger ones, so they can connect to people that are closer to their age,” Fox said. “The shlichim that come to the communities are usually young families. But a counselor could be pre-army or post-army, and if you’re a preteen or teenage camper, they’re a lot more relatable. So I think that that has a strong impact on the degree of connection they can make.”
A number of other Jewish camps around the United States are also mourning the loss of former staff and campers. The Ramah camping network has a page devoted to Israel on its website that lists two alumni who are among the more than 200 hostages being held by Hamas — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who has also participated in programming with Camp Tel Noar in New Hampshire, and Omer Neutra, who also attended Young Judaea’s Sprout Lake camp before moving to Israel after high school.
The page also lists two family members of Ramah alumni who have been killed in the violence: Israeli swimmer Eden Nimri, 22, whose sister Hadar worked at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires in 2016 and 2017, and Adi Vital Kaploun, 33, whose mother is an alum of Camp Ramah in Canada.
Pinemere Camp in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, shared on Oct. 10 that 2022 staff member Ilay Nachman was killed. “His infectious laugh, caring nature, and love of Israel made him a pleasure to be around, and the type of role model both campers and staff could look up to,” the camp wrote in a Facebook post.
Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin, shared that alum Netta Epstein, 21, was killed by Hamas in his home. Epstein attended Herzl from 2014 to 2016 and 2018, and his sister Rona also spent three summers there.
Yannai Kaminka, 20, who was reportedly among the first Israeli Defense Force soldiers killed in the attacks, had attended the Union for Reform Judaism’s Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 2016 as part of a program with the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism that brought Israeli teens to American Jewish summer camps.
Ruben Arquilevich, who oversees the URJ’s 14 camps, said the movement has around 350 Israeli staff across its camps each summer, adding that the relationships Israelis build with campers are long-lasting and “transformational.”
According to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, some camps have launched initiatives to support Israeli community members, including through letter-writing campaigns, sending care packages and offering virtual programming for children in Israel.
Weinstein also noted that Young Judaea’s gap year program currently has 75 teens, many of them Tel Yehudah alumni, living at Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israeli, which Young Judaea established in 1973 in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. The participants are supporting Israelis in the south who have been displaced by the current war.
“Now we’ve got these new kids, the same age as the kids who established the kibbutz 50 years ago, who are down on the kibbutz, and helping once again after a war to rebuild,” Weinstein said.
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The post ‘Very much a family thing’: US Jewish summer camps mourn Israeli alumni killed in Hamas war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
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Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
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Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
The post Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt first appeared on Algemeiner.com.