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What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president
(JTA) – In late April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Jerusalem, voicing support for Israeli West Bank settlements, touting a law he had just signed giving families thousands of dollars per year in private school tuition vouchers and signing a bill that increased penalties for antisemitic harassment.
Two weeks later, his education department rejected two new textbooks on the Holocaust as part of a clampdown on what he has called “woke indoctrination.”
Those two developments may anchor the Jewish arguments for and against DeSantis as he stands on the cusp of announcing a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Supporters paint him as a steadfast ally of Israel who speaks to the pocketbook concerns of Jewish families. In the years since he became Florida’s governor in 2019, the state has seen an influx of Orthodox Jews, drawn both by lax pandemic policies and the promise of discounted day school tuition.
But DeSantis’ opponents portray him as a cultural reactionary whose anti-“woke” politics are inhibiting education on the Holocaust and antisemitism — along with teaching about race, gender and sexuality. He has repeatedly condemned George Soros, the progressive megadonor who is an avatar of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surveys show that his near-total restriction of abortion rights is unpopular with Jews nationally.
And hanging over the campaign is the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, who is running for a second term, is leading in the polls — and shares much in common with DeSantis even as he has attacked him.
While DeSantis’ allies have played up some of their differences (such as DeSantis’ youth and military service), when it comes to their respective records on issues of interest to Jewish voters, Trump and DeSantis are less distinct.
Each has sought to cultivate Jewish support by focusing on Israel and erasing church-state separations that, Orthodox Jewish leaders argue, inhibit religious freedoms. And both have attracted white nationalist supporters while leaning into the culture wars.
DeSantis is set to officially announce his campaign in a chat with Elon Musk, who was just condemned by a wide range of Jewish figures (and defended by a handful of others) for tweeting that Soros “hates humanity.”
Here’s what you need to know about DeSantis’s Jewish record:
He has been an outspoken booster of Israel.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Jerusalem Post conference at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on April 27, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
DeSantis, a Catholic, has a visceral affinity for Israel, and has framed his support for the country in religious terms.
“When I took office, I promised to make Florida the most pro-Israel state in the United States, and we have been able to deliver on that promise,” he said this week, addressing evangelical Christians at the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Orlando, The Jerusalem Post reported.
He likes to tell audiences that on his first visit to Israel as a U.S. congressman, his wife Casey scooped up water from the Sea of Galilee into an empty bottle to save for baptisms. The couple had yet to have children.
The water came in handy for the baptisms of their first and second children, but after DeSantis was elected governor, staff at his residence cleared away the unremarkable bottle (which was still half full) after their second child was baptized in 2019. Not long afterward, DeSantis mentioned the minor fiasco in passing at a synagogue in Boca Raton, and before he knew it people were sending him bottles of water from Israel.
The gesture still moves him. “I was sent, all the way from Israel, this beautiful big glass jar filled with water from the Sea of Galilee that sat on my desk in the governor’s office in Tallahassee until our third child was born and baptized, and we used that water to do it,” DeSantis said last month when he visited Israel.
DeSantis made Israel a focus when he was congressman, taking a leading role in advocating for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among a group of lawmakers who toured Jerusalem in March 2017 and was bold enough to pick out what he said would be the likeliest site.
In November of that year, as chairman of the House national security subcommittee, he convened a hearing on what he called the necessity of moving the embassy. The following month, Trump announced the move, and the site the Trump administration chose was the one DeSantis had identified.
In May 2019, just months after becoming governor, DeSantis convened his state cabinet in Jerusalem and gave a definition of antisemitism favored by the pro-Israel community the force of law. The same year, he banned government officials from using Airbnb after the vacation rental broker removed listings in West Bank settlements. DeSantis’ blacklisting of the company was seen was key to Airbnb reversing the decision.
He’s garnered allies — and enemies — among Florida’s Jews.
DeSantis has done much to cultivate support in Florida’s growing Orthodox community, which shares his enthusiasm for bringing faith into government.
In 2021, DeSantis came to a Chabad synagogue in Surfside to sign two bills, one affording state recognition to Hatzalah, the Jewish ambulance service, and the other tasking all Florida public schools with setting aside a daily moment of silence, long a key initiative of the Chabad movement.
In his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, DeSantis campaigned on steering state money to religious day schools. This year he made good on the promise, signing a law that makes $7,800 in scholarship funds available annually to schoolchildren across the state, regardless of income, and to be used at their school of choice.
DeSantis also has plenty of Jewish enemies in a state where the majority of the Jewish community votes for Democrats.
In his first term, he had a contentious relationship with Nikki Fried, a Democrat who, as agriculture commissioner, was one of the four ministers in the Cabinet who had a vote. DeSantis maneuvered to freeze her out of the decision-making process.
Fried, who describes herself as a “good Jewish girl from Miami,” now chairs the state’s Democratic Party. She routinely calls DeSantis a fascist. In April, she was arrested at an abortion rights protest outside Tallahassee’s City Hall.
Under DeSantis, Florida has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That stance has set him up for clashes with other prominent Jews in the state as well. Last year, he suspended Andrew Warren, a Jewish state attorney, because Warren pledged not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue in Boynton Beach, spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban in 2022, citing religious freedom arguments. Daniel Uhlfelder, a Jewish lawyer who drew attention when he dressed as the Grim Reaper to protest DeSantis’s reopening of the beaches during the pandemic, signed on as an attorney for the synagogue.
His “war on woke” has had implications on Holocaust education.
Recently, much of DeSantis’ tenure has been defined by what he calls the “war on woke,” a term originated by Black Americans to describe awareness of racial inequity but now more often functions as shorthand for conservative criticism of progressive values. DeSantis has enacted multiple pieces of legislation restricting what can be taught in schools and has also limited transgender rights, banning gender-affirming medical care for children.
While most of the books challenged under DeSantis’ education laws have focused on race and gender, the study of the Holocaust has been affected as well. In addition to the education department’s rejection of the Holocaust textbooks this month, Florida laws that make teachers liable for teaching inappropriate content to students have led multiple school districts to take Holocaust novels off the shelves, including a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
DeSantis calls claims that he’s chilling Holocaust education “fake narratives.” He and his defenders point to his requiring all Florida public schools to certify that they teach about the Holocaust.
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity has increased under his watch.
A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by emerging white supremacist groups — some of whom have gone to bat for DeSantis in the past.
DeSantis has been dogged by accusations that he caters to the far right. One of the most stinging exchanges in the 2018 election season came when Andrew Gillum, DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in the race, accused DeSantis of not being forceful enough in renouncing the white nationalists who expressed support for him in robocalls.
“First of all, he’s got neo-Nazis helping him out in this state,” Gillum said. “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” DeSantis flinched.
DeSantis eked out a victory a few weeks later, and was soundly reelected last year, but he remains sensitive on the issue. Last year, when neo-Nazis intimidated Orlando’s Jews with signs and shouts at an overpass, politicians in the state reflexively condemned them. A reporter asked DeSantis why he had not done so, and after calling the neo-Nazis “jackasses,” the governor said the question was a “smear” and added, “We’re not playing that game.” (Several months later, the leader of the antisemitic propaganda group Goyim Defense League moved from California to Florida, saying he thought the Sunshine State would be more hospitable to his efforts.)
DeSantis has also called liberal prosecutors “Soros-funded”. It’s not an unusual political gambit — the billionaire Jewish liberal donor does fund progressives running for prosecutor. But Soros has also been the focus of multiple conspiracy theories that antisemitism watchdogs say are antisemitic, casting the Holocaust survivor as a malign influence with excessive power.
Some Jewish donors are already supporting him.
DeSantis appeared last year at a conference in New York of Jewish conservatives, where he talked to a friendly audience about his war against the “woke” and was also conveniently in the room with some of the most generous Republican donors.
He is reportedly working some of those donors, who gave generously to his gubernatorial runs. He was a star last November at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Las Vegas confab, and Axios reported that he met with Miriam Adelson, the widow of GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, as well as other Jewish donors when he was in Jerusalem last month.
A number of them are hanging back, not wanting to alienate Trump while he remains influential in the party. (Adelson has said she does not want to weigh in on the primaries.)
Among the Jewish donors and fundraisers said to be in DeSantis’s camp: Jay Zeidman, a onetime Jewish White House liaison who is now a Houston based businessman; Gabriel Groisman, a lawyer who is the former mayor of Bal Harbor; and Fred Karlinsky, a leading insurance lawyer.
Last week, Jewish conservative political commentator Dave Rubin tweeted that DeSantis would bring “Freedom, sanity and competency” to the country. Groisman shared the tweet with the word “This.”
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The post What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Netherlands Reports 867 Antisemitic Incidents in 2025 as Cases Remain at Alarmingly High Levels
March 29, 2025, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: A pro-Palestinian demonstrator burns a hand-fashioned Israeli flag. Photo: James Petermeier/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism in the Netherlands remained at alarmingly high levels last year, according to newly published figures, as Jews and Israelis across Europe continued to face a persistently hostile environment marked by harassment, vandalism, and targeted attacks.
On Wednesday, Dutch authorities released a new annual antisemitism report showing 867 registered cases in 2025, a figure that remains at deeply troubling levels and virtually unchanged from the 880 antisemitic incidents recorded the previous year.
Even though Jews make up less than 0.3 percent of the Dutch population, anti-Jewish hate crimes account for 26 percent of all discrimination cases.
Eddo Verdoner, the Dutch national coordinator for combating antisemitism (NCAB), said the data reflects a worrying normalization of antisemitic incidents and called for sustained, coordinated action to address them.
“We have been recording hundreds of antisemitic incidents each year for years now. What I fear is that we are slowly getting used to figures that are unacceptable, that hatred is becoming the new normal,” Verdoner said in a statement.
“The figures once again paint a worrying picture, underscoring the need for decisive action in schools, online, and in the courtroom,” he continued.
The newly released report shows a decrease in violent antisemitic incidents, with 34 cases compared to 42 in 2024. However, local police registered an increase in antisemitic threats in 2025, with 93 cases compared to 88 the previous year.
Of the 867 registered incidents, more than 400 involved Jewish individuals or institutions in everyday settings, including residential neighborhoods, public streets, and areas around Jewish buildings and cemeteries.
In light of these figures, Verdoner called on authorities to strengthen enforcement and prevention efforts, prioritizing higher detection rates, expanding Holocaust education, and placing greater emphasis on Jewish life as a way to counter ignorance and prejudice.
“At the moment, Jewish life in the Netherlands can almost only continue thanks to the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the police, and interventions such as cameras and bulletproof glass,” he said.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, the Netherlands has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In one of the most controversial incidents, local authorities opened an investigation last year into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
In another instance, Amsterdam-based Jewish columnist Jonath Weinberger publicly denounced rising antisemitism in health-care settings, saying she was denied medical care by a nurse who refused to remove a pro-Palestinian pin shaped like a fist.
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Israel Names First Ambassador to Somaliland as US Strengthens Ties to Counter Houthi Threat
People hold the flag of Somaliland during the parade in Hargeisa, Somaliland, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced the appointment of its first ambassador to Somaliland on Wednesday, less than four months after Israel became the first country to officially recognize the self-declared Africa republic as an independent and sovereign state.
Michael Lotem, who currently serves as a non-resident economic ambassador to Africa, will now shift to work as a non-resident ambassador to Somaliland, which has sought global support in breaking away from Somalia in the Horn of Africa. He previously served as Israel’s ambassador to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Seychelles, a position he concluded in August.
Somaliland, which has claimed independence for decades in East Africa but remains largely unrecognized, is situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the south and east. It has sought to break off from Somalia since 1991 and utilized its own passports, currency, military, and law enforcement.
Unlike most states in its region, Somaliland has relative security, regular elections, and a degree of political stability.
In December, Israel recognized Somaliland’s independence, becoming the first UN-recognized country in the world to do so — Taiwan did in 2020 — while igniting a diplomatic firestorm in Mogadishu and across dozens of Muslim nations which condemned the decision.
Somalia’s Foreign Ministry has likewise released a statement blasting Lotem’s appointment, calling the move “a direct breach” of the nation’s sovereignty and saying it “categorically rejects” the announcement.
“Such actions risk destabilizing regional progress and emboldening divisive narratives,” the Somali ministry said on Wednesday.
Beyond Israel, the United States has also started strengthening ties with Somaliland. A senior American delegation including US Air Force Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, the commander of US Africa Command, reportedly met with Major General Nimcaan Yusuf Osman, Somaliland’s Chief of the General Staff of the Somaliland Armed Forces, on Tuesday.
After the meeting, Somaliland officials said that “control near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea would significantly change the US approach to dealing with the Houthis and Iran,” according to Israel’s Channel 12.
Last month, Iran threatened to take control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — a key maritime chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden — using the Houthis, its proxy in Yemen and an internationally designated terrorist group. The waterway — an energy highway through which up to 14 percent of the world’s shipping passes, including 30 percent of container shipping — also functions as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
The US has a Red Sea base in Djibouti, but the government there has been less supportive of some of Washington’s policies. A foothold in Somaliland could be a major strategic asset for the US, Israel, and other partners in confronting the Houthis and protecting global shipping lanes, according to experts.
“Djibouti becomes an increasingly reluctant, unwilling ally to the US in helping enforce sanctions on the Houthis. Somaliland, which is almost equally well-placed to address issues on the western and southwestern coasts of Yemen, can help the US, Israel, and the UAE combat the Houthis,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former UK ambassador to Yemen and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in 2023, the Houthis have been routinely attacking Red Sea shipping, forcing shippers to avoid the waterway and thereby raising costs.
The US delegation’s visit this week came after Somaliland’s top diplomat in Washington expressed optimism about the prospects of US recognition.
“From [Capitol] Hill we have very good support,” Bashir Goth, who has represented Somaliland in the US since 2018, told Military.com last week.
In an interview with The Algemeiner in March discussing his legislation to support studying boosting economic ties, US Rep. John Rose (R-TN) said, “We think it’s in the best interest of the United States to develop a stronger relationship and to provide a path forward for what I would ultimately hope might be a full recognition of Somaliland as an independent nation.”
Last week, a spokesperson for the State Department issued a statement to Fox News Digital clarfiying that the US “continues to recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia, which includes the territory of Somaliland.”
In addition to countering the influence of Iran in the region, Goth also pointed out that support for Somaliland would serve to check Chinese interests.
“We sometimes call ourselves the Taiwan of Africa because we are in a similar position in global politics,” Goth said. “Somaliland is the only country in the Horn of Africa that is countering Chinese influence. We are the second country in Africa that has relations with Taiwan.”
In August 2017, China established its only overseas military base in Djibouti, where the communist government has established major influence as a significant creditor for infrastructure projects.
Beyond strategic interests, Somaliland has functioned as a stable democracy for decades, conducting democratic elections since 2003 with delegations from the US and Europe observing the 2017 presidential election. In 2024, Somaliland held one of only five elections in Africa, voting in an opposition party in a peaceful contest.
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At Harvard antisemitism conference, Trump official defends ‘list of Jews’ legal strategy in Penn case
(JTA) — The Trump administration official behind a controversial antisemitism probe at the University of Pennsylvania told an audience of Jewish leaders that her office’s demand for a list of Jews from the university was necessary for her to identify “potential victims.”
“There is no other way to protect victims of harassment or discrimination unless you collect information about them,” Andrea Lucas, chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said at a conference on antisemitism and the law held at Harvard University.
As part of its investigation into antisemitism at Penn, the EEOC has demanded the Ivy League university produce a list of Jewish faculty, staff and students, along with personal identifying information. The school opposed the subpoena, saying the demand “raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns,” but an Obama-appointed judge recently ruled that the Trump administration was within their rights to ask for such a list.
Penn has appealed the case and this week asked for a stay on the court order, which would otherwise require them to produce the list by May 1.
The case has drawn fierce opposition from Penn’s Jewish community, including its Hillel chapter, and beyond. Free-speech groups have also spoken out against the demand, though some Jewish groups have argued it is reasonable.
Lucas, who is not Jewish, said she couldn’t comment specifically on the Penn case due to ongoing litigation. Her representative did not respond to requests for an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency following her talk.
But in broad terms she defended her office’s approach to antisemitism cases, claiming that for class-action employment harassment cases, any eventual payout would be dependent on having specific names of victims.
“At some point, either the government will know information about individuals related to their religion or we will not be able to enforce the laws on their behalf. I understand the sensitivities around this issue,” she told the crowd. “But fundamentally the Jewish community does have to decide: Do you want to have civil rights enforcement in this space?”
The conference was put on by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal group that frequently defends Jewish and pro-Israel college students. It was held at Harvard as part of the terms of a different antisemitism settlement between Harvard and the Brandeis Center, related to the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian activism after Oct. 7.
Attendees were a mix of representatives from umbrella Jewish groups, including Hillel International’s lead counsel; sympathetic Jewish university faculty; and strongly pro-Israel advocacy groups including the Lawfare Project and American Friends of Likud. William Daroff, the head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, also spoke on a panel.
Lucas said she had to obtain information about “somebody’s affiliation with a religious organization” in order to determine potential payouts from any religious discrimination settlement her office might negotiate. She also claimed the list would give her a fuller picture of the victims.
“I have reason to believe there are victims there, but I may not know all of them. So there’s going to be information gathering,” she said, adding that the EEOC would do the same for Black complainants alleging discrimination.
The Brandeis Center’s founder Kenneth Marcus, himself a former Trump official, interviewed the chair onstage and praised her leadership of the office.
“I think that she has been a transformative chair of the EEOC, one of the most consequential civil rights enforcement officials that we have,” Marcus said of Lucas, who was nominated to the commission by Trump in 2020 and appointed as chair in 2025. The EEOC’s Penn case dates back to 2023, prior to Trump’s second term in office.
Not everybody in the audience agreed with Lucas’s arguments. Mark Rotenberg, general counsel of Hillel International, told JTA that Hillel echoed its Penn chapter’s concerns about the list.
“The government has many ways in which to ascertain the scope of the problem of antisemitism in higher education without forcing the universities themselves to create and disclose lists of Jews,” Rotenberg said shortly before appearing on another panel at the conference.
He added, “The idea that this topic, compiling lists of Jews, is just like compiling lists of women or something like that misses the important historical context in which Jews experience horrifying examples of being singled out by the government. And the Jewish experience with that is something that we believe the enforcement officials need to take into account when they choose the tools they use to deal with the terrible problem of campus antisemitism.”
Rotenberg said he wasn’t the only one in the room who differed with the EEOC chair on the issue. “I think people in the room were trying to be courteous to her and didn’t want to engage in an open debate with her on the merits of that,” he said.
Lucas did not directly address broader concerns from Jewish groups that “collection of Jews’ private information carries echoes of the very patterns that made Jewish communities vulnerable for centuries,” as Penn Hillel said earlier this year. Instead, she addressed perceived privacy issues.
“I can assure you, though, that we understand the concerns and we take our confidentiality duties very, very seriously,” she said.
The EEOC is also pursuing an antisemitism probe against the University of California. The agency’s work is separate from other federal campus antisemitism probes at the Department of Education and other agencies.
Under Lucas, the EEOC has been more aggressive in pursuing antisemitic workplace discrimination cases — a cause the chair said she felt compelled to because of her interest in religious liberty.
“For me, religious liberty is a core thing the EEOC needs to be focusing on,” she said. “And combatting antisemitism is, of course, an integral part of defending religious liberty.”
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