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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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Fifty Years After ‘Zionism Is Racism’ Resolution, UN Committees Still Push Anti-Israel Agenda, Experts Warn
The United Nations headquarters building is pictured though a window with the UN logo in the foreground in the Manhattan borough of New York, Aug. 15, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Fifty years after the United Nations labeled Zionism as a form of racism, experts warn that the organization’s operations and committees continue to reflect the same entrenched anti-Israel mindset.
“There’s been a long-standing demonization of Israel and an entrenched anti-Zionist infrastructure within the UN,” Ben Cohen, a senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, told The Algemeiner.
“In some UN bodies, Israel continues to be portrayed as a colonial and racist entity,” he said. “This isn’t about Israel’s policies or actions, but about a broader narrative and institutional bias.”
In November 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism — the national movement of the Jewish people to reestablish a state in their ancient homeland — with “racism,” reflecting long-standing antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Israel agendas.
In a new FDD report released last month, Cohen argues that the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), established under the 1975 resolution, remains one of the clearest examples of the UN’s institutional bias against Israel.
Even though that resolution was ultimately overturned in 1991, the study shows how CEIRPP has continued to promote the same anti-Israel ideology.
According to Cohen, Resolution 3379 was an attack on Israel’s right to exist, empowering UN committees and agencies to adopt its anti-Zionist themes in their work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“All these tropes are key components of the global legal and political assault on Israel, unprecedented in scale, that unfolded after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023,” the report says, referring to the global hostility toward Israel that followed the Palestinian terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israeli communities.
“For the past half-century, [CEIRPP] has worked to delegitimize the State of Israel by amplifying Palestinian efforts to depict the Jewish state as a ‘colonial’ and ‘apartheid’ regime,” it continues.
The newly released study also argues that the UN has violated the principle of sovereign equality of all its members for years, giving Palestinians a dedicated platform while Israel is the only member state to face such a relentless campaign.
“The UN has long acted as a willing partner with the Arab world in keeping Palestinian refugees in that status for generations,” Cohen told The Algemeiner.
As one of the UN’s main anti-Israel bodies, CEIRPP receives $3.1 million annually to support its programs and operations, according to a 2024 UN report.
Gil Kapen, executive director of the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI), explained that the UN provides little clarity on the activities of certain departments or how their funding is allocated, pointing to a troubling lack of transparency.
“In many ways, these offices are even more egregious — they are nothing more than pure propaganda, promoting the most extreme version of the Palestinian narrative: that Israel has no right to exist,” Kapen told The Algemeiner.
“We don’t believe Israel should be immune from criticism, but creating an entire institution solely to target Israel — something that doesn’t exist for any other country — is both problematic and destructive,” he continued, noting that such efforts undermine international attempts to uphold the current ceasefire with Hamas and bring a lasting end to the war in Gaza.
FDD’s study argues the committee should be dismantled, calling on Washington to lead the effort, encourage member states to withdraw, and prevent additional funds from being allocated to its work.
“As the largest donor to the United Nations by far, the United States possesses tremendous leverage, especially at a time when the [UN] faces a massive financial crisis due to the pause in US contributions,” the report says.
“By insisting on a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for one-sided and unique anti-Israel institutions, Washington can absolutely refuse to grant consensus for any budget that includes funding for these bodies,” it continues
Officially, CEIRPP operates across five main areas: promoting Palestinian self-determination, advocating for an “immediate end” to Israel’s control of territories captured in the 1967 war, mobilizing international support, coordinating with UN bodies on the Palestinian question, and engaging civil society organizations and parliamentarians to advance the Palestinian cause.
“While the committee does not directly impact the foreign policy of member states, it influences policy discussions and provides anti-Zionist NGOs with access to UN diplomats, staff, and financial resources,” FDD’s report says.
In practice, CEIRPP “promotes the Palestinian narrative and uses UN funds to act as another pro-Palestinian UN body.”
For example, the committee designated Nov. 29 — the anniversary of the 1947 UN vote to partition what was then British-administered territory into one Arab and one Jewish state — as the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
“But this day has grown each year into an increasingly prominent platform for anti-Israel rhetoric, featuring speakers who compare Israel to Nazi Germany or call for a ‘Free Palestine from the river to the sea,’” the study explains.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” is a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Editor’s note: Ben Cohen previously worked as a seniro correspondent for The Algemeiner, covering international affairs and issues concerning the Jewish diaspora.
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Resignations Continue From Heritage Foundation’s Antisemitism Task Force Amid Carlson-Fuentes Controversy
Tucker Carlson speaks at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 21, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The Heritage Foundation, a prominent think tank that has been at the center of US conservative politics for decades, is continuing to receive intense backlash over President Kevin Roberts’ refusal to condemn his friend and right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi commentator Nick Fuentes in a recent two-hour long interview.
Two members of the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism resigned this week while one suspended its participation.
Ian Speir, an attorney at Covenant Law and fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, announced Tuesday on X that he had resigned from the group.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the executive vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, made the same decision, sharing a letter announcing the choice with the Washington Free Beacon.
Arie Lipnick, a member of the Board of Governors for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), sent a letter to Roberts suspending further participation with Heritage pending a meeting with him.
“I cannot in good conscience stand with Heritage or continue on the task force under its current auspices,” Speir said in his resignation letter, which he shared on social media. “I have great respect for all of you, and I consider many of you personal friends. And at the urging of the co-chairs, I was prepared to defer this decision at least until we could get important questions answered about the future of Heritage and the conservative movement. But then Roberts made his statement at Hillsdale last night.”
On Monday, Roberts stated in a speech at Hillsdale College that he had made a “mistake.”
“Sometimes you can make a mistake with the best of intentions,” Roberts said, adding that “my mistake was not saying that we’re not going to participate in cancel culture — we’re not. My mistake was letting that, which we will never backtrack from, override the central motivation that I had in doing that.”
In his resignation letter, Speir described Roberts’ remarks as “strategic non-apology that doubles down on ‘loyalty’ to Tucker Carlson, muses about welcoming groypers and the groyper-curious into the movement, and continues to gaslight everyone about ‘cancelation’ when that clearly isn’t the issue.”
Groypers are part of a loose network of white nationalists and internet trolls who adhere to the racist and antisemitic views of Fuentes, who claims he seeks to preserve the white, European identity and culture of the US.
“It is the elevation of blind loyalty and a thirst for power above principle — the very opposite of historical American conservatism,” Speir wrote. “I cannot tread this path with you. The stakes for our country and for our Jewish friends are simply too high, too existential. I welcome efforts, already underway, to reconstitute some part of this auspicious group and continue the important work of stewarding our American freedoms, combating antisemitism, and renewing the great Judeo-Christian spirit of our civilization.”
Menken’s letter began in anguish: “It is with pain and regret that I tender the resignation of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) from the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (NTFCA). We cannot grant legitimacy to an effort to combat antisemitism operated by the Heritage Foundation while Heritage is validating antisemitism and giving it a platform.”
CJV explained the incompatibility of Carlson’s anti-Israel rhetoric and promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories with the goals of the task force.
“When Carlson welcomes guests and reposts content calling Israel’s effort to subdue Hamas and rescue hostages a ‘genocide,’ he makes himself an integral part of the Hamas Support Network that Project Esther aims to fight,” Menken said. “So, it is not that we are leaving the NTFCA as much as that Mr. Roberts has declared that Heritage itself threatens to scuttle the NTFCA’s efforts.”
In CAM’s letter to Roberts, Lipnick wrote that the group “requests an immediate meeting with you to discuss our ongoing relationship with the Heritage Foundation. Until such time, CAM is suspending our participation as a member of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a project of the Heritage Foundation.”
Lipnick noted that CAM defended Carlson’s constitutionally protected right to feature Fuentes on his X podcast, and that “indeed, Mr. Carlson has the right to practice antisemitism himself — a right he appears to have greedily exercised in recent years.”
Lipnick described how CAM likewise possesses “the right to criticize Mr. Carlson for eagerly nodding along with comments that channel the literature of the Third Reich, for challenging the First Amendment rights of Christian Americans to practice their faith and for labeling them ‘heretics,’ and not least for allowing his show to become a welcome home for America’s adversaries.”
CAM saw Roberts’ Hillsdale speech as failing to correct the damage done from his previous advocacy of Carlson.
“Given the opportunity to apologize and retract your comments criticizing ‘a venomous coalition of globalists,’ ‘the globalist class,’ and ‘their mouthpieces in Washington,’ comments that feed into the very antisemitic tropes you claim to ‘abhor,’ your speech at Hillsdale College yesterday fell well short of the mark,” Lipnick wrote. “Taken together with your defense of Mr. Carlson’s decision to treat Holocaust denial as legitimate political discourse begs the question of whether Holocaust survivors, their families, and the American Jewish community at large have a home at Heritage.”
The letter from CAM to Roberts concluded, “Frankly, your comments leave us skeptical of whether the Heritage Foundation has the necessary moral leadership to house the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.”
CJV ended its correspondence with the terms for its continued collaboration with Heritage.
“CJV cannot, in good conscience, remain affiliated with an institution that normalizes or excuses antisemitism under the guise of political commentary or free speech. The moral clarity required to fight Jew-hatred cannot coexist with public expressions of support for those who amplify it,” Menken wrote. “Until such time as there is a complete reversal of Mr. Roberts’ position, or, alternatively, his resignation is accepted by the Heritage Board of Directors, CJV cannot be part of a program, event, or effort claiming to combat antisemitism in which the Heritage Foundation is a sponsoring partner.”
The resignations began last week. On Sunday, Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and an Orthodox rabbi, posted his own letter of resignation on X.
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Yesh Atid quits World Zionist Organization, citing corruption and political cronyism
In an unprecedented rebuke, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid announced Wednesday that his centrist Yesh Atid party is withdrawing from the World Zionist Organization, accusing the 127-year-old quasi-governmental institution of being mired in corruption and political patronage.
Saying that corruption was pushing Diaspora Jews away from Israel, he also said he would push to nationalize Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael–Jewish National Fund, which controls over 13% of Israel’s land.
The move derailed weeks of delicate coalition talks at the World Zionist Congress, a global gathering in Jerusalem that happens once every five years, where delegates from around the world had been negotiating a power-sharing deal between Israel’s political parties and major Diaspora Jewish groups.
Under a draft agreement, Yesh Atid lawmaker Meir Cohen was expected to chair the KKL-JNF, but those plans collapsed after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair, was reportedly offered a senior position at the WZO — a step that Lapid blasted as emblematic of nepotism and “a system to arrange jobs for the Netanyahu family.”
Lapid said his party would refuse all positions and funding tied to the Zionist institutions.
“We wanted to clean the National Institutions of the culture of corruption and political appointments — but it’s not possible. There’s no way to do it, and no one to do it with,” he said in a video statement.
Instead, Yesh Atid will introduce legislation to bring the KKL-JNF under state control, subjecting it to public audit and transparency laws.
A Yesh Atid spokesperson told eJewishPhilanthropy that the decision followed growing frustration over patronage and waste. “Every stone you pick up and look under, there’s more budgets, more jobs, more things you can’t explain,” the spokesperson said. “It’s all ridiculous.”
The World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, KKL-JNF, and Keren Hayesod together oversee billions in assets and programs in Israel and abroad. Though nominally nonpartisan, they have long operated through political coalitions reflecting the Knesset. Lapid’s withdrawal throws the current round of appointments into turmoil, with no clear path to new leadership.
Lapid insisted his criticism was directed at institutional corruption, not the Diaspora Jews represented within them.
“They understand exactly what’s going on in these institutions. It pushes them even further away from the State of Israel and from Zionism,” he said. “We will fight it, not join it.”
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