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Virginia cultural festival says it won’t hold a menorah lighting due to Israel-Hamas war
(JTA) – When the director of the Chabad-Lubavitch center in Williamsburg, Virginia, pitched a local arts and culture festival last month on the idea of holding a public menorah lighting to celebrate Hanukkah, he thought it made sense.
“We look to bring people together with Jewish pride and unity,” Rabbi Mendy Heber, of Chabad of Williamsburg, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Likewise, Second Sundays, a monthly cultural festival held in historic Colonial Williamsburg that features artisans and musical performances, also has a mission to bring about “peace for all humans everywhere”
So it seemed to Heber a natural fit to hold the menorah lighting as part of the next Second Sunday, which falls on Dec. 10, the fourth night of Hanukkah. In fact, Chabad of Williamsburg already had a months-long relationship with the festival, having sold challah as a vendor at prior installments.
And like the thousands of other Chabad outposts around the world, public menorah lightings are a big part of Heber’s mission; the Chabad Hasidic movement claimed to have staged 15,000 such events worldwide in 2021. When Heber proposed the lighting, he said, he and Second Sundays founder Susan Vermillion had a series of “positive communications” about the event.
Instead, the planned celebration turned into a debacle when Second Sundays leadership decided, on Nov. 16, not to hold the menorah lighting because they feared it would be seen as an endorsement of Israel during its war with Hamas in Gaza. Organizers then suggested that the lighting could go forward only if they could get an Islamic group to participate, or if they could hold it under a banner calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“This hurt,” Heber said. “It was a kick in the gut, not just for the Jewish community here, not just for Jews throughout the United States, but for all decent people who believe in the American dream.”
Since the war began nearly two months ago, a range of American institutions have seen cancellations, protest and heightened rhetoric related to the debate over Israel and Hamas, from college campuses to cultural centers to local governments. But the Williamsburg incident is an example of how expressions of Judaism that are unrelated to Israel — from synagogues to kosher restaurants and, now, Hanukkah celebrations — are being implicated in the debate over the war.
Last week a Maine town removed a Star of David from its holiday lights display after a local resident had complained it was taking sides in the war, though officials insisted to JTA that the complaint was unrelated to the removal.
Unlike in those two incidents, it is clear that Israel was a direct factor in organizers’ decision not to hold the menorah lighting in Williamsburg. Vermillion, a dental hygienist who founded and oversees Second Sundays through her nonprofit LoveLight Placemaking, told Heber directly that she and her board did not want to be perceived as taking sides in the conflict.
The “National Menorah,” erected by Chabad-Lubavitch in front of the White House in Washington, Dec. 2, 2021. (Kerem Yucel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In a series of messages, portions of which were read to JTA and whose exact wording was confirmed by Heber and another local rabbi who received them, Vermillion wrote that the event wouldn’t happen “unless we can get an Islamic group to participate at essentially the same time,” adding, “We don’t want to make it seem we’re choosing a side.”
Vermillion went on to state that she wanted to avoid “letting a specific church or religion seeming to be supported” by her organization, and that “timing isn’t good or appropriate at this time.”
Heber insisted the event would have nothing to do with Israel or Zionism (Chabad is not an explicitly Zionist movement, though many of its adherents are Zionist and many of its chapters host pro-Israel programming) and would consist only of a few prayers. Vermillion wrote back, “Our board members said they’d be OK with proceeding if you do it under a ceasefire banner. Bombing and killing thousands of people isn’t spreading love and light, and we aren’t going to openly support any religious/cultural holidays/celebrations.”
“I’m really not sure why you guys are making it such a big deal,” Vermillion continued. “This is my event. My nonprofit. You guys are more than welcome to do whatever you want to do on your own.”
After Vermillion informed Heber that the menorah lighting would not move forward, the rabbi looped in the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula, a local communal organization that provides services to around 2,000 Jews between the communities of Williamsburg, Newport News and Hampton. (Williamsburg itself has only one Jewish congregation, apart from the Chabad and a Hillel that serves a few hundred students at the College of William & Mary.)
Vermillion did not respond to subsequent attempts by UJCVP to arrange a sit-down, leading the organization to make good on a threat that it would go public with the exchange on Sunday. In a statement, UJCVP asserted that it “is shocked and alarmed” by LoveLight Placemaking’s decision.
“We should be very clear: it is antisemitic to hold Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s policies and actions, and to require a political litmus test for Jews’ participation in community events that have nothing to do with Israel,” the statement read.
A Chabad menorah, distinguished by the diagonal—rather than curved—arms. (Mindy Schauer/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
In text messages with JTA, Vermillion said, “It’s sad that the most inclusive organization and event in Williamsburg is being targeted for trying to stay neutral.”
In Vermillion’s telling, the menorah lighting “was proposed but was not consistent with the purpose of this non-religious, community art and music festival, and the proposal was denied.”
She continued, “It feels very wrong to label anyone associated with this as an antisemite when the rejection of this religious programming was entirely consistent with our decision to keep our gathering focused on music and art, rather than religious ceremonies.” She added that she has received “some threats” over the matter and would be reporting them to the local police.
Speaking to other media outlets, Vermillion seemed to reaffirm that she and the board viewed a menorah lighting as akin to making a political statement on Israel. In an interview with a local newspaper, Vermillion said that the event “seemed very inappropriate” given the situation in Gaza, and added, “The concern is of folks feeling like we are siding with a group over the other.”
As of Monday, a posted online schedule for the Dec. 10 Second Sundays made no mention of a menorah lighting. Videos for the event, posted to the Second Sundays Facebook page, include montages of Christmas tree ornaments, wreaths and other Christmas-related paraphernalia, and are set to the songs “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “Deck the Halls.”
UJCVP’s executive director, Eric Maurer, did not return JTA requests for comment. But another UJCVP member said he was troubled by the incident.
“It came across to me as ignorant, in the most literal sense of the word: just not understanding what this was about,” Rabbi David Katz, who leads Temple Beth El in Williamsburg, told JTA.
Katz, whose unaffiliated congregation uses a Reconstructionist prayer book, was not involved in Heber’s efforts to hold the menorah lighting — and was out of town for a bar mitzvah as the weekend’s controversy was unfolding. He told JTA that he lives close enough to the Second Sundays festivities that “there’s a decent chance I might have walked over there this Sunday.”
But as a member of UJCVP, he read and relayed the text and email exchanges to JTA and says that, in a small community with few Jews, an incident like this can travel and is most likely born out of “a lack of knowing, of being connected to Jews.”
“This form of underlying antisemitism is in so many places where a lot of us wouldn’t expect,” Katz said. “If you want to protest the IDF, that’s not the same thing as protesting Jews lighting the menorah.”
Heber, who has been in Williamsburg for two years, agrees. “Giving American Jews a political litmus test is just discriminatory, ugly and un-American,” he said. “And doing it with Hanukkah, which symbolizes liberty, is just ironic, especially during these times when Jews are facing tremendous amounts of antisemitism.”
The controversy seemed poised to continue to snowball Monday, as Heber said he has been in communication with the Virginia attorney general’s office and its antisemitism task force. This summer the state commissioned the task force, unique among state attorneys general offices, which includes representatives of groups including the Anti-Defamation League, regional Federations, and Hillel International. The task force’s establishment followed a lengthy report on antisemitism in the state commissioned by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin last year. The attorney general’s office did not return requests for comment.
Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick, who is working with UJCVP on its response to the incident, said it was “such a clear cut example of antisemitism.”
“We were horrified by the festival’s decision to cancel the menorah lighting — so clearly seeking to collectively blame the Jewish people for Israel’s actions and create poltical litmus tests for events that have nothing to do with Israel,” she told JTA in a text message.
Another public menorah lighting is still on the table in Williamsburg, as the Chabad will also be holding one Thursday on the William & Mary campus. Scheduled before the Second Sundays controversy and primarily intended for Jewish students, Heber said Thursday’s lighting would now become a much larger communal event. He has also received words of sympathy from some non-Jews who have said they will now light menorahs in their own windows in solidarity.
“We’re going to make this Hanukkah bigger and brighter than ever,” he said. “That is how we respond to darkness.”
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The post Virginia cultural festival says it won’t hold a menorah lighting due to Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
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MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
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