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Visiting Jerusalem, Ron DeSantis tries out his Jewish stump speech
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ron DeSantis may not have declared that he’s running for president yet, but his incipient campaign was on full display Thursday at a conference in Jerusalem, where he ran down a laundry list of issues relevant to Israel and American Jews.
Most of the Florida governor’s remarks reflected what has become Republican orthodoxy in the post-Donald Trump era: He supports Israeli West Bank settlements as well as keeping Jerusalem under full Israeli control. He wants the United States to be more aggressive toward Iran’s nuclear program. He vehemently opposes the movement to boycott Israel.
And he declined to take a position on the Israeli government’s effort to sap the Israeli Supreme Court of much of its power — which President Joe Biden has repeatedly criticized as a danger to Israeli democracy.
“We must also, in America, respect Israel’s right to make its own decisions about its own governance,” he said. “You’re a smart country. You figure it out. It shouldn’t be for us to butt into these important issues.”.
He also pushed back at claims that his legislation has led to the banning of Holocaust books in his state, calling them “fake narratives” (though multiple Holocaust books have been banned). And, at a press conference, he signed a bill that aims to penalize antisemitic harassment. He also touted a new bill that gives vouchers worth thousands of dollars to parents who send their children to private schools.
“We’ve really seen a historic migration of American Jews and Israeli Americans moving to southern Florida,” he said. “It’s really, really boomed, and I think Florida’s policies have really reinforced that.”
DeSantis, who landed in Israel yesterday, was the keynote speaker at a conference on Thursday hosted by the Jerusalem Post at the Museum of Tolerance here. He received multiple standing ovations and cheers throughout the morning. At a press conference after his speech, some of his supporters sat among the journalists and clapped at his responses.
Israel is the latest on a four-stop international trip by DeSantis, who is expected to announce later this year that he will challenge former President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. On the trip, he is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and other officials. His trip also includes stops in Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
“If there’s any announcements, those will come at the appropriate time,” he said in response to a question about his potential candidacy.
In his speech, DeSantis described his past support for Israel, advocating for the 2018 move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and, in 2019, holding a Florida cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He also told the crowd that he baptized his children with water from the Sea of Galilee and said he put a note in the Western Wall asking God to protect Florida from hurricane season.
An affinity for the Bible also played a role in DeSantis’ position on the West Bank, which he called “disputed” rather than “occupied.” He referred to the territory by the term “Judea and Samaria,” which is the Israeli government’s standard term for the area and also emphasizes its place in the Bible. He spoke of visits to the northern West Bank settlement of Ariel, as well as to the City of David, a Jewish neighborhood and archaeological site in eastern Jerusalem.
“We visited the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria,” he said during his speech regarding a previous trip. Later, at the press conference, he said, “Those are the most historic Jewish lands there are, going back thousands and thousands of years.”
He also came out staunchly in favor of continued Israeli control of eastern Jerusalem, claiming that it is the best way to ensure religious freedom in the city. Palestinians aspire for the city’s eastern area to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
“With Israeli sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem, people have the ability to practice their religion freely,” he said. “They have the ability to visit their sites freely. That would just actually not be true if that were in other hands.”
Although his Israel policies dovetail with those of Trump, and even though Trump’s Israel ambassador, David Friedman, was at the conference, DeSantis avoided saying the former president’s name in his speech, instead referring to “the previous administration.” He did say Trump’s name once during the press conference.
Following his speech, DeSantis announced partnerships with Israeli firms to develop tech products, and portrayed his state as an inviting home for Jews. He said the state had invested millions of dollars into synagogue security as well as Holocaust education. And he signed a bill that bans projecting threatening images on buildings without permission, as well as littering with the intent to intimidate.
Florida has seen an uptick recently in white supremacist activity. The Goyim Defense League, a far-right antisemitic group, relocated there last year. In October, several public spaces in Jacksonville displayed messages promoting the antisemitic ideas of rapper Kanye West. Neo-Nazis intimidated attendees at an Orlando-area Chabad center in February, and last week, police arrested a man for a March attack on a different Florida Chabad center.
“This is going to be able to provide more tools to be able to combat antisemitic activity,” DeSantis said. ״If you have a synagogue and someone shines a swastika-like image on that, they have a right to do the image for themselves, but putting it on someone else’s property, they’re defining that in this bill as a trespass.”
The signing of that bill, and DeSantis’ contention that he supports Holocaust education, comes as legislation he signed has enabled parents in the state to pursue bans of Holocaust literature. A South Florida school district library removed a Holocaust-themed novel by Jodi Picoult in March, and this month, a high school in the state removed a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary from its shelves.
Despite those instances and other bans parents are seeking, DeSantis claimed that there was no significant campaign to ban Holocaust books. He called that allegation the “book ban hoax.”
“Those are all fake narratives,” he said. “We’ve provided curriculum transparency for parents, to make sure that the curriculum used in school is transparent and to make sure everything is age appropriate and is not conflicting with Florida standards. And so, what parents have identified unfortunately are pornographic images in books.”
The legislation, which has targeted books about sexuality and gender, is at the center of DeSantis’ campaign to limit or ban discussion of those topics in schools. The law, called the “Parental Rights in Education” bill and dubbed by critics as the “Don’t say gay” bill, also bans discussion of LGBTQ topics between kindergarten and third grade, among other measures. It is one of a series of recent state laws limiting transgender rights.
That law is also at the center of DeSantis’ feud with Disney, the state’s largest employer, which just sued the governor for allegedly punishing the company for its criticism of the law. At the press conference, DeSantis said the suit is about Disney wanting “to be able to control things without proper oversight.”
DeSantis did not refer specifically to the Anne Frank graphic novel in his remarks, and said Florida had “beefed up” Holocaust education in the state. But a Jewish ally of his who accompanied him on the trip, Republican state Rep. Randy Fine, defended banning the book, which he called the “Anne Frank pornography book.”
“I read the diary of Anne Frank many times as a kid and I don’t remember any of that stuff that they put in that graphic novel,” Fine told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And frankly that graphic novel is antisemitic. To sexualize the diary of Anne Frank in that sort of inappropriate way, it is antisemitic.”
When told that the passages, which are authentic and relate to Frank’s attraction to another girl as well as a description of her own genitalia, have been included in the diary for decades, Fine said that the graphic novel was inappropriate regardless because it depicted the passages in an image.
“It wasn’t just that the passages were in the book,” he said. “It was how they were visualized.”
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The post Visiting Jerusalem, Ron DeSantis tries out his Jewish stump speech appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel bars YouTuber Tyler Oliveira from entering country, citing ‘harassment of Jews’ on social media
(JTA) — Israel’s Diaspora affairs minister, Amichai Chikli, confirmed on Monday that right-wing YouTube provocateur Tyler Oliveira had been barred from entering Israel, accusing him of coming to the country with the “aim of spreading hatred.”
Amid reports that Oliveira had been rebuffed at Ben Gurion Airport, Chikli resurrected a weeks-old post from the YouTuber asking, “You guys think Israel will let me into the country?” and replied with a blunt, one-word answer: “No.”
Oliveira has drawn allegations of antisemitism in recent months over videos in which he claimed to expose widespread fraud in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic enclave in upstate New York, and Lakewood, a heavily Orthodox town in New Jersey.
The videos, which each garnered over 9 million views, drew outcry from Jewish leaders who accused Oliveira of trafficking in antisemitic stereotypes and mischaracterizing Jewish communities as hotbeds of corruption.
On Friday, Oliveira sat for an interview with the conservative influencer Tucker Carlson, who himself claimed in February that he had been “detained” after arriving at an Israeli airport to conduct an interview with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Both Huckabee and Israel denied Carlson’s allegation.
In a statement to Israel National News, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said the decision to bar Oliveira stemmed from his activity that “goes beyond legitimate freedom of expression” and includes “inciting statements against Jews and the dissemination of content with antisemitic characteristics.”
The far-right Jewish activist Laura Loomer posted a series of tweets on Monday that she said included comments from Chikli. The Israeli minister retweeted one of them, signaling his endorsement.
“I’m proud to have denied entry to Israel today to an unfortunate YouTuber who is using the harassment of Jews as a way to get clout on social media,” Loomer said Chikli told her. He added, “If you come to Israel with the intent on inciting violence and hatred against Jewish people, you will not be allowed entry into our country.”
Israel has previously banned other foreign activists and public figures from entering the country over their support for the boycott Israel movement, including European Union lawmakers Lynn Boylan and Rima Hassan last year as well as U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in 2019.
The post Israel bars YouTuber Tyler Oliveira from entering country, citing ‘harassment of Jews’ on social media appeared first on The Forward.
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Hochul makes play for Orthodox voters with tuition relief and synagogue buffer zones
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is making an early play for Jewish voters ahead in her reelection bid, coupling a major initiative to help families pay for yeshivas with tough-on-antisemitism legislation.
The moves aid Orthodox Jewish voting blocs — before her Republican challenger, Bruce Blakeman, gains traction.
A recent Siena University poll of 804 voters found Hochul leading Blakeman statewide by 16 points, 49% to 33%. But among the smaller sample of 65 Jewish voters, the race was far tighter, with Hochul leading just 46% to 41%.
Central to Hochul’s outreach was her announcement last week, during a private meeting with Orthodox leaders, that New York will opt into President Donald Trump’s new federal school-choice tax credit program. Known as the Education Freedom Tax Credit, it allows taxpayers to receive up to a $1,700 federal tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, which can then fund tuition assistance and other educational expenses.
A spokesperson for the governor confirmed that Hochul is supportive of the program as part of a broader commitment to helping families afford nonpublic education. Emma Wallner, the spokesperson, added that the administration is reviewing the federal program to ensure there are no “poison pills that could harm New York’s education system.”
For Orthodox voters, tuition relief has long ranked alongside Israel and antisemitism as a political priority. In 2014, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a last-minute effort to court the community by pledging to expand a state tuition assistance program to cover yeshivas as “a matter of justice.” Cuomo ultimately won 70% of the vote in Borough Park, one of the largest Orthodox strongholds. That proposal later failed in the state legislature.
Hochul and her allies remain mindful of the results of the 2022 governor’s race, when former Rep. Lee Zeldin came within five percentage points of defeating her. Zeldin, who is Jewish, was powered by strong Orthodox support.
That memory looms large as Hochul prepares for a likely matchup against Bruce Blakeman, the first Jewish executive of Nassau County, who has positioned himself as a tough-on-crime conservative focused on antisemitism and support for Israel.
Blakeman has so far struggled to gain broader traction statewide and has yet to build deep relationships within the Orthodox political infrastructure in Brooklyn and Rockland County. Orthodox voting blocs, a traditionally Republican-leaning constituency, have repeatedly backed incumbents and even Democrats when communal priorities align.
A spokesperson for the Blakeman campaign did not immediately respond to questions from the Forward about whether the Republican candidate supports the tuition-relief initiative or plans to offer a proposal of his own.
Addressing rising antisemitism
Blakeman, who met with Trump at the White House last week to discuss his candidacy, could further face a challenge presenting himself as a stronger protector of the estimated 1.8 million Jews across the state amid rising antisemitism.
Hochul, who endorsed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last year after remaining neutral during the Democratic primary, has been seen by some in the Jewish community as a counterweight within the Democratic Party to the mayor, whose handling of antisemitism and criticism of Israel has left many Jewish voters uneasy.
The Democratic incumbent has publicly opposed several key Mamdani priorities, like universal free buses and a millionaire tax, and has also distanced herself from Mamdani on Israel and pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
Hochul is moving fast on that front, too.
Last week, she announced a tentative budget deal that includes a measure to create a 25-foot buffer zone to protect houses of worship statewide from protest. “We’ve seen demonstrations targeting faith communities outside synagogues, mosques and churches,” Hochul told reporters. This is not free expression, this is harassment, and it has no place in the state of New York.” The measure would go further than a more limited enactment passed by the New York City Council requiring safety plans for protests near houses of worship, which Mamdani allowed to become law without his signature.
Hochul has also proposed an additional $35 million in security funding for vulnerable institutions, bringing total state spending on such protection to $131 million since she took office.
The legislation remains unresolved in Albany. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters Thursday there was “no deal” yet on the broader state budget package. Some Jewish lawmakers have also criticized the proposed 25-foot buffer zone as too narrow, arguing it should be expanded to at least 100 feet, similar to protections already in place around polling sites.
Blakeman told the Forward last week that he would push to expand the buffer zone if elected governor. “I think 25 feet is too close,” he said.
David Greenfield, a former New York City Council member who introduced Hochul to Orthodox leaders when she became the lieutenant governor candidate in 2014 and boosted her in 2022, said that Hochul is “cementing her status as the best friend the Jewish community has had in Albany in decades” by pushing this agenda. “At a moment when Jewish New Yorkers are looking for leaders who will actually show up for them, Hochul keeps showing up,” said Greenfield, now head of the Met Council charity organization.
Blakeman’s play
Blakeman has also made fighting antisemitism a central theme of his campaign. On Sunday, Blakeman addressed a rally held by Zionist groups in Queens, after swastikas were found spray-painted on synagogues and homes in Forest Hills and Rego Park. “We have to make sure that every antisemite knows that we will not back down, that we will stand up to it,” he said in his remarks. Speaking to the New York Post, Blakeman also called Mamdani “un-American” and “antisemitic.”
Last week, Blakeman held a press conference in Brighton Beach, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a significant Russian-speaking Jewish population, calling for the cancellation of a planned concert by Yulduz Usmonova, an Uzbek singer accused of making antisemitic statements. “Never again will we tolerate antisemitism or attacks on the Jewish people anywhere in the world, and especially here in Brooklyn, with this huge Jewish community of which my wife Segal was a member of,” Blakeman said.
The battle for the Jewish vote traditionally unfolds later in the season, closer to the High Holidays season, when voters pay more attention to the election. But Hochu’s recent moves signal she is not waiting until the fall to lock up support from a swing and reliable voting bloc.
The post Hochul makes play for Orthodox voters with tuition relief and synagogue buffer zones appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Antisemitism Crisis in America’: Swastika Graffiti Again Appears Across New York City Boro
Swastikas graffitied in Forest Park in Queens, New York City over the weekend. Photo: Screenshot.
Antisemitic vandals in Queens, New York City are painting the town Nazi red, having added over the weekend two new incidents of swastika graffiti to a spree of hate crimes targeting Jewish institutions and homes across the borough.
As seen in photographs shared on social media, the unknown suspects graffitied some eleven swastikas at Highland Park and Forest Park for locals to discover on Monday — just one week after perpetrating the same crime at four Jewish owned properties in Rego Park and Forest Hills.
“This is yet another hateful incident meant to intimidate Jewish New Yorkers and divide our city,” New York City Council speaker of the house Julie Menin said in a statement posted on the X social media platform. “We want to be clear: we cannot and will not accept this as normal.”
The vandalism wave came just as the New York City Police Department (NYPD) announced that an ongoing surge in antisemitic hate crimes in the metropolis, which is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, continues unabated.
According to newly released data the agency published on Monday, Jews were targeted in 60 percent of all confirmed hate crimes last month, despite making up just 10 percent of the city’s population.
In April, the police confirmed 30 antisemitic incidents out of 50 total hate crimes in the city. As for all reported/suspected hate crimes, 38 out of the total of 65 targeted Jews.
The NYPD had previously reported suspected, but unconfirmed, hate crime incidents. In February, the police began reporting confirmed incidents instead. And then after receiving scrutiny, the department began reporting both suspected and confirmed hate crimes in March.
Regardless of the methodology, the majority of all hate crimes in New York City this year have targeted Jews, especially the Orthodox community, continuing a surge in antisemitism that has swept the city after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October 2023.
In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November 2024, for example, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery. In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
In November, just days after the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.
The change in New York City’s climate since Mamdani’s election is palpable, Jewish advocacy groups have said. On his first day in office in January, Mamdani voided the city government’s adoption of the IHRA definition, lifted the ban on contracts with companies boycotting Israel, and modified key provisions of an executive order directing law enforcement to monitor anti-Israel protests held near synagogues.
“Mayor Mamdani pledged to build an inclusive New York and combat all forms of hate, including antisemitism,” a coalition of leading Jewish groups said in a statement addressing the changes enacted by the new administration. “But when the new administration hit reset on many of Mayor Adams’ executive orders, it reversed … significant protections against antisemitism.”
Mayor Mamdani has denounced the swastika graffiti as a “deliberate act of antisemitic hatred” and said that he has assigned the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force to investigate it.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.