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‘We’re listening,’ Israel’s new Diaspora minister says in first public comments in the US
AUSTIN, Texas (JTA) — The new Israeli government is listening to the concerns of more liberal Jews, Israel’s new minister of Diaspora affairs said on Thursday.
But Amichai Chikli said that while some proposed changes that worry Americans — including an overhaul to the country’s Law of Return — would happen slowly, any criticism is largely misplaced.
“There is a large alarm on the left, it’s obvious, and it affects dramatically most of the Jews who live here in America,” Chikli said at the summit of the Israeli American Council, which aims to keep Israelis in America connected to Israel, often through business.
“We had an election. The result was crystal clear. We were very honest with our agenda, and it is our responsibility to form this agenda,” he said. “And it does not mean that we are not listening. We do listen, and I spent hours today, yesterday, to listen to Jewish leaders and what they have to say about the Law of Return, about the judicial changes, and everything. We’re listening to the criticism. We’re listening to the concerns. We care about it.”
Chikli was making his first public comments outside of Israel since being appointed minister of Diaspora affairs late last month in Israel’s new right-wing government, helmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s decision to ally with extremist parties, including ones that advocate for curbing rights to Arab Israelis, LGBTQ Israelis and non-Orthodox Jews, has drawn concern from across the Diaspora, as has the government’s effort to weaken Israel’s judiciary, which historically has acted to protect the country’s minorities.
Diaspora Jewish leaders have raised particular concern about the coalition’s agreement to amend Israel’s hallmark Law of Return, which permits anyone with a Jewish grandparent to claim citizenship. The eligibility rules were crafted to reflect the Nazis’ criteria for whom to kill during the Holocaust, but Israel’s religious parties say that has left the door open to immigrants who are not invested in building a strong Jewish state.
Speaking in a live interview with Israeli journalist and TV presenter Miri Michaeli, Chikli said he believed it was a problem for Israel’s identity that a decreasing percentage of immigrants from the former Soviet Union are connected to Judaism and many of them don’t stay in Israel for very long.
But the new minister said any changes to Israel’s Law of Return would happen slowly and through a process that includes consultation with others.
“No one, no one is going to cancel the Law of Return, which is fundamental for the state of Israel,” Chikli said.
“We’re not saying we’re about to cancel Chapter Four tomorrow morning,” he said, referring to a technical name for the law. “That’s not what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is there’s going to be a committee to determine how can we deal with this serious challenge. And as you see when you go into the details, that’s a challenge. We need Israel to be a strong Jewish state, and we need to tackle this challenge, and we’re going to do it slow. We’re going to do it by listening to all.”
Chikli, who has previously made disparaging remarks about Reform Judaism and who has said the LGBTQ Pride flag is an antisemitic symbol, grew up and lives on a kibbutz founded by the Conservative movement of Judaism where three-quarters of voters backed left-wing parties in the most recent election. He said his government’s critics would do well to change how they form their opinions about the government.
“I think that maybe one tip is less Haaretz and New York Times, and more common sense and tachlis, what the government is actually doing,” Chikli said, referring to newspapers perceived as liberal and using the Hebrew word meaning details. “That’s it. We are proud to be Zionists. Me, myself, I’m proud to represent this government.”
Nearly 3,000 people, many of them Israelis living in America, are expected to attend the IAC’s summit in Austin this week. Chikli’s comments came during the opening day, when Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke to the summit via video message and acknowledged concerns around the new administration.
“It’s no secret that, since Israel’s most recent election, questions were raised by many of our friends around the world and in the United States,” Herzog said. “Our friends want to know that Israel will continue to carry the rich, ethical heritage on which our country was founded, that it will continue to stand for those values of democracy, liberty and equality, which are the animating force behind the United States and Israel alliance. So allow me to reassure you that Israeli democracy is strong.”
Many of the events during the conference’s first day did not address the month-old government, its turmoil or the concern ricocheting across the world, including among many of Israel’s allies.
Ofer Krichman, an Israeli expat who works in finance and lives in New Jersey, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had expected the new Israeli administration to be a bigger topic of conversation.
Instead, he said, he had conversations about “ideology, but based not on politics, based on Jews all around the world, antisemitism, how to cope with that, which is not business, but that’s a valid topic to discuss, and it’s a concerning topic.”
One of Chikli’s first acts was to extend his title to include a mandate to fight antisemitism. He says the movement to boycott Israel, known as BDS, is of particular concern to him. Noa Tishby, Israel’s first special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel, also spoke during the summit’s first day.
The turmoil was on the minds of some attendees. Grinstein, the founder of the Reut Group, a nonpartisan Israeli policy think tank, told JTA that the relationship between Israel and world Jewry is at a pivotal moment.
“The new government represents a massive challenge to world Jewry on a number of counts,” Grinstein said. “First of all, the government handed responsibility over key touchpoints to world Jewry in Israel to the most radical factions of the government. … These things really make it structurally challenging for world Jewry to be as involved in Israel as they used to be.”
Those concerns offered an undercurrent during the first day of the conference. But the dominant vibe was simply on making business connections and meeting people.
Shani Gil, who works in real estate in the Los Angeles area, said she spent her first day at the conference going through the booths, mingling and handing out business cards.
“It’s an electric vibe in the air,” she said. “Everyone’s very excited.”
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The post ‘We’re listening,’ Israel’s new Diaspora minister says in first public comments in the US appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brad Lander launches run for Congress against pro-Israel Jewish incumbent Dan Goldman
(JTA) — It’s official: Brad Lander is running for Congress — and he says he won’t be “doing AIPAC’s bidding” in representing his district if he’s elected.
The line from Lander’s campaign launch video was a dig at Rep. Dan Goldman, who has represented the 10th Congressional District since 2023, that underscores the degree to which Israel is likely to play a role in the battle for the seat.
Lander’s announcement tees up a showdown between a Jewish progressive challenger and an incumbent Jewish centrist. He enters the race with support from Zohran Mamdani, following weeks of speculation over whether he or Alexa Aviles — a member of Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America who was also weighing a run against Goldman — would get the mayor-elect’s high-profile endorsement.
“I’m running for Congress because we need leaders who will fight, not fold,” Lander wrote on X. (Lander’s X account was subsequently hacked and made temporarily private.)
Lander, the outgoing city comptroller, has day-one endorsements from major progressive names including Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as well as the city’s Working Families Party.
Lander shared a video that touted his ability to fight back against Donald Trump, which featured footage of his ICE arrest. The video took on a gentle tone, with Lander referring to himself as “Dad Lander” and quoting the TV personality Mister Rogers. He talked about his roots in the district, which includes central Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Park Slope, where he served as a three-term City Council member.
But the video also previewed how Israel will play a role as Lander, a self-described liberal Zionist who now calls Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and stumped for the anti-Zionist Mamdani, takes aim at Goldman. The incumbent has been endorsed and received funding from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC; he also refused to endorse Mamdani because of Mamdani’s stances on Israel.
Goldman has become one of the primary targets of progressives looking to replace moderate Democrats with candidates more aligned with their politics in the wake of Mamdani’s victory. Challengers are also emerging against the vocally pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres, with his AIPAC donations being a point of emphasis of his opponents.
Lander did not name Goldman but referred to his AIPAC ties in the video, saying the “challenges we face” can’t be solved by “doing AIPAC’s bidding in a district that knows our safety, our freedom, our thriving is bound up together.” Two photos of Lander holding signs at Gaza war ceasefire rallies appeared on-screen — one in Hebrew, the other in English.
The 10th Congressional District covers Lower Manhattan, as well as parts of western and central Brooklyn, which Lander represented on the City Council. While Lower Manhattan was more split in the mayoral general election, most of the district’s Brooklyn neighborhoods voted overwhelmingly for Mamdani. The district also includes part of Borough Park, a neighborhood with a large Orthodox Jewish population that strongly supported the centrist mayoral candidate, Andrew Cuomo.
In the video, Lander alluded to Goldman’s refusal to endorse Mamdani, saying that if he beats Goldman, “Our mayor can have an ally in Washington instead of an adversary in his own backyard.”
Mamdani told the New York Times on Wednesday that Lander is a “true leader” who has “unwavering principles, deep knowledge and sincere empathy.”
Lander has been Mamdani’s most prominent local Jewish ally since the pair cross-endorsed each other before the Democratic primary.
Critics said Lander’s efforts, including bringing Mamdani to his synagogue and reinforcing his commitment to the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, merely “kosherized” antisemitism at a time when fierce reaction to the war in Gaza led to Jews feeling unsafe and isolated, and anti-Jewish attacks rose.
Following Mamdani’s general election victory, reports emerged that Lander, who’d been angling for a top position in the new administration, was being left out in the cold without a role. Rumors suggested that Lander might have Mamdani’s support if he pivoted to a congressional run against Goldman. But that support was complicated by the presence of Aviles — Mamdani’s fellow DSA member — who was entertaining a run herself.
All that was put to rest Wednesday, when Lander officially entered the race with the support of Mamdani — who went against the DSA’s endorsement of Aviles, to the chagrin of some of the DSA’s rank-and-file — and Aviles released a statement announcing that she would not be running.
“A split field runs too great a risk of allowing him another damaging term,” she wrote about Goldman, who won his first election in 2022 by two points against a crowded field that split votes between progressive candidates.
Before running for office, Goldman, a millionaire and Levi Strauss heir, drew praise from the left when he served as lead majority counsel on the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump in 2019. He has co-sponsored progressive legislation like the Medicare for All Act and the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, as well as a recent bill that would protect immigrants’ right to appear in immigration court.
But progressives have soured on Goldman, who calls himself a “proud Zionist and steadfast supporter of Israel,” and is criticized for receiving funding from AIPAC — a group whose brand has become increasingly toxic in American politics.
Goldman also faced criticism after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted about a friendly interaction between the two in the Bahamas, following Trump’s Israel-Gaza peace deal.
“Thank you Congressman @danielsgoldman for your kind words today when you saw me, about the incredible job my father did delivering historic peace to the Middle East and bringing the hostages home,” the president’s son tweeted. “Safe travels back from the Bahamas.”
Speculation of a potential Lander challenge had been building since September, when a poll by Data for Progress surveyed voters in the 10th congressional district; in a two-man race between Goldman and Lander, the poll found that Lander would win 52-33.
Democratic strategist Trip Yang advised pumping the brakes in a November interview, pointing out that polls taken so far in advance of an election “don’t matter as much” and that incumbents bring an advantage.
In addition to big names like Mamdani, Sanders and Warren, local politicians have begun throwing their support behind Lander including Assemblymember Robert Carroll — who was an early endorser of Goldman in the 2022 election — and State Sen. Andrew Gounardes.
The post Brad Lander launches run for Congress against pro-Israel Jewish incumbent Dan Goldman appeared first on The Forward.
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‘America Last’: Report Reveals Suspicious Foreign Support Amplifying Nick Fuentes Online
Nick Fuentes during an interview in December 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Amid ongoing debates about the rise of antisemitic voices on the US political right, recent investigations into social media activity suggest the potential involvement of inauthentic amplification by anonymous actors in India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
On Monday, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) released new research showing the techniques used by overseas operatives to promote the authoritarian ideologies of antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.
Titled “America Last: How Fuentes’s Coordinated Raids and Foreign Fake-Speech Networks Inflate His Influence,” the 23-page report dissects how the 27-year-old influencer “consistently amasses far more retweets than any comparable figure, including Elon Musk, despite having a fraction (<1%) of the follower count.”
The report was co-drafted with the support of the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab. Previous research collaborations between NCRI and Rutgers have also explored how far-right influencers hijacked the religious phrase “Christ is King” to advance their ideology and how Tik-Tok content promotes the Chinese Communist Party’s international objectives.
The researchers reviewed Fuentes and compared him with other prominent accounts. They discovered that “within the critical first 30 minutes, Fuentes routinely outperformed accounts with 10-100× more followers.” The report explains that “in a sample of 20 recent posts, 61% of Fuentes’s first-30-minute retweets came from accounts that retweeted multiple of these 20 posts within that same ultra-short window – behavior highly suggestive of coordination or automation.”
The accounts are characterized as entirely anonymous and seemingly single-purpose for promoting Fuentes.
While Fuentes has grown most well-known for his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denial, and pre-Vatican II, Catholic-reactionary antisemitism, the report highlights the podcaster’s endorsements of terrorism and enthusiasm for sexual violence. He has stated that he seeks a 16-year-old wife, desiring an underage woman “when the milk is fresh.” This aligns with his support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, a nation which has now seen the return of child marriage. Fuentes also claims that rape within marriage is impossible, since he believes that a wife’s body belongs to her husband.
Fuentes also “praised Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, expressed support for China taking Taiwan, and described the Taliban’s victory over US forces as a positive development.”
The researchers in their analysis seek not to explain Fuentes’s views but rather to “assess how synthetic engagement, real-world events, and media incentives converged to elevate a fringe figure into a central subject of national attention.”
Looking into Fuentes’s history and disclosures from former insiders within his organization support the suggestion of artificial engagement.
“Additional evidence shows that Fuentes has a prior history of coordinated digital manipulation. In 2022, two former associates described internal group chats where Fuentes directed interns and loyalists to carry out online tasks on his behalf, and a former technical aide alleged that viewer counts on his streaming platform were artificially inflated using a built-in multiplier,” the report states.
The researchers explain that “Fuentes did not deny the inflation itself. These documented practices demonstrate a willingness to orchestrate controlled teams and manipulate digital metrics — behavior entirely consistent with the coordinated amplification patterns observed on X.”
The report features images of “America First” Fuentes appearing on different foreign TV networks including the Iranian regime’s Press TV and Russia Today (RT). On the former he sided with Iran during an American attack in support of Israel, and on the latter, he claimed that support for Ukraine was based on “Russophobia.” He also reportedly stated that he would “fight on the side of China against America.”
Another picture shows Fuentes in 2022 at the America First Political Action Conference, where he stated in his introduction to US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): “And now they’re going on about Russia and Vladimir Putin, saying he’s Hitler – they say that’s not a good thing. Can we get a round of applause for Russia?”
The analysts describe how “Fuentes’s defense of authoritarian adversaries — Russia, Iran, China — is not a minor contradiction. It represents a coherent pattern in which his anti-American worldview aligns more closely with America’s enemies than with its interests. His self-proclaimed patriotism crumbles in the face of performative contrarianism, where any regime that resists liberal democracy becomes, in his eyes, preferable to the current United States.”
According to NCRI, the Russian and Iranian media’s approval of Fuentes “underscores the broader point: the figure elevated by algorithmic manipulation and mainstream media grooming as a voice of nationalist revival is, in reality, one of the most reliable public defenders of America’s geopolitical foes.”
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Israel Restores Relations With Bolivia, Signs Free Trade Deal With Costa Rica as Latin American Ties Strengthen
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar (left) and Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo (right) sign a Joint Communiqué in Washington, DC on Dec. 9, 2025, formally restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries. Photo: Screenshot
Israel is further expanding its diplomatic and economic presence in Latin America, formally restoring relations with Bolivia and signing a free trade agreement with Costa Rica as the Isaac Accords begin to take shape.
On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo signed a Joint Communiqué in Washington, DC, formally restoring diplomatic relations between their countries after two years of severed relations amid the war in Gaza.
“Today, we are ending the long, unnecessary chapter of separation between our two nations,” the top Israeli diplomat said during a speech at the signing ceremony.
“Following the election of [Bolivian] President Rodrigo Paz, I am pleased to announce that Israel and Bolivia are renewing diplomatic relations,” he continued.
Israel and Bolivia: We renewed our diplomatic relations!
We’re continuing to work. pic.twitter.com/oUtcXyyaHa— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) December 10, 2025
During their meeting, both leaders committed to fully restoring diplomatic relations, appointing ambassadors, and fostering collaboration between government and private-sector representatives.
They also pledged ongoing dialogue and broader cooperation in areas including agriculture, security, health, innovation, and their shared fight against organized crime and narco-terrorism.
“Bolivia, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel share a long history of true friendship,” Saar said during his speech. “Bolivia opened its doors to Jewish refugees during the Second World War when much of the world closed its gates.”
“Bolivia supported the establishment of the State of Israel in the historic 1947 UN vote,” he continued. “For many decades, our two nations enjoyed warm diplomatic relations. The renewal of our ties is an important and welcome step.”
Bolivia has also announced it will lift visa requirements for Israelis entering the country, a move the top Israeli diplomat praised as helping to “strengthen the human bridge between our peoples.”
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei last week, Israel has been working to expand its diplomatic and security ties across Latin America, with the new effort designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as the framework seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
On Monday, Israel and Costa Rica signed a free trade agreement covering goods, services, and investments, advancing their bilateral relations during Costa Rican Minister of Foreign Trade Manuel Tovar Rivera’s visit to Jerusalem.
Rivera also announced that Costa Rica will open an office for trade and investment innovation in Jerusalem next year.
The newly signed agreement will eliminate over 90 percent of tariffs, providing broad access for Israeli industrial and agricultural products to the Costa Rican market, while also reducing import costs on a wide range of goods, from food and medical equipment to industrial tools.
“This agreement opens significant new avenues for both Costa Rica and Israel,” Rivera said during a speech at the signing ceremony.
“It enhances access to high-quality Costa Rican goods and services while creating a mutually beneficial platform for collaboration in high-technology industries, premium agribusiness and specialized services,” he continued.
Building on the renewed momentum in diplomatic engagement across Latin America, Israel is expanding and strengthening its bilateral relations with several countries in the region.
Argentina announced plans to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem next spring, fulfilling a promise made last year as the two countries continue to deepen their ties.
Last week, Ecuador opened an additional diplomatic mission in Jerusalem, a move that Saar hailed as a “milestone” in strengthening their bilateral relations.
Paraguay, Guatemala, and Honduras, all of which have previously relocated their embassies to Jerusalem, have reaffirmed their support for Israel and signaled intentions to deepen future cooperation.