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With Israel at war, what counts as a worthy Jewish cause?
(JTA) — Moving Traditions is a small Jewish organization with an unusual name and a mission that can be hard to describe on one foot. Working through synagogues, Hebrew schools and its own programs and curricula, it helps Jewish kids navigate their teen years in healthy, safe, appropriate and socially conscious ways.
When the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 threw the Jewish world into crisis, Moving Traditions created curricula to help teachers and teens talk about the conflict. And its CEO, Shuli Karkowsky, ordered up a “worst-case scenario” plan in case some of her reliable funders decided to hold back on their support and direct more money to Israel.
“We need to be humble and realize that we are an organization that serves North American teams. And so I don’t think we can put ourselves out there as the people who are going to be solving the Middle East crisis,” she said earlier this week.
To her relief, at a time when the Jewish philanthropic community is mobilizing around the war, her funders said they are going to “make the pie bigger”— that is, continue supporting groups like hers and expanding their giving in Israel.
As they have during previous crises in Israel, American Jews are pouring dollars into Israel to support people displaced by the war, to bolster nonprofits whose employees are headed to the front and, in a newish twist, to defend both Israel in the court of public opinion and Jews abroad who are seeing an uptick in antisemitism.
Jewish Federations of North America has raised $638 million among its network of local Jewish community chests. UJA-Federation, the largest of these, has so far allocated more than $38 million for work on the ground in Israel. Israel Bonds said it sold more than $200 million worth of bonds in the week following the Hamas attacks.
Jewish nonprofit execs celebrate this outpouring, but are quietly anxious. As priorities shift to the defense of and support for Israel, what will happen to the bottom line of the schools, social services agencies, cultural centers and other Jewish institutions that don’t have an obvious Israel portfolio?
An adjacent question is one of discretion, even tact: With many nonprofits dependent on the end-of-the-year gifts that allow donors to claim tax benefits, should they go ahead with their own fundraising appeals and perhaps attach their “asks” to the current crisis?
“What irks me particularly is an emergency campaign now when they’re not related to the crisis,” said Andres Spokoiny, the president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, speaking generally. “If you’re a school that is not affected by the crisis, just tell the truth that despite the crisis, you need to continue operating, and that having a strong community means that institutions and organizations like yours need to be strong and healthy.”
Spokoiny, whose organization’s “How You Can Help” Israel page lists “trusted agencies and nonprofits,” has been recommending to the private foundations and philanthropists under his organization’s umbrella that they give “above and beyond,” supporting their traditional grantees as well as the emergency campaigns for Israel. “Otherwise,” he said, “you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Hundreds gather for a pro-Israel rally in Philadelphia’s Independence Square, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Oct. 16, 2023. (Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia)
Spokoiny also knows that the pot of funds allocated for Jewish giving is not bottomless. He is hoping the current crisis serves as a “wake-up call to the many Jewish donors that give, you know, token gifts to the Jewish community and huge gifts to their alma mater or to the hospital to give more to Jewish and Israeli causes.”
Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, recommended a similar approach in a recent essay in eJewish Philanthropy. Finestone prefers “yes, and” to “above and beyond,” and he also calls on Jewish donors to divert more of their secular giving to Jewish causes.
“Yes, we absolutely need to support Israel and Israelis. We need to contribute mightily to the multitude of needs Israel has,” he writes. “But unless philanthropy steps up in the U.S. as well, there is a genuine chance that much of the organizational structure we have spent generations building will be stretched to its limits.”
Normally, the San Francisco-based Jim Josephs Foundation funds Jewish education in the United States. (70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company, has been a grantee.) In an interview, Finestone said he wrote the article partly in response to colleagues and friends who called him in recent weeks unclear where to send their donations.
“They ran the risk of being forgotten,” he said of the Jewish organizations that don’t directly serve Israel. “And please God when this is over, and we know there’s going to be a long tail both literally and psychologically, we’re going to turn back to our camps, and to our synagogues, and to our JCCs and we’ve got to make sure that they’re there, or else the fabric of Jewish life that we’ve built over the years has the potential to crumble.”
Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, says the outpouring for Israel has been inspiring, but also worries that the shift toward what he calls, in a Facebook post, “defensive, protective, and supportive” causes will come at the expense of “foundational” and “constructive” philanthropy.
Foundational giving, he said in an interview, is about “keeping the lights on in the synagogues and Jewish institutions that do the core work of Jewish life. Deeply unsexy.”
As an example, he points to the flood of giving that is expected in response to the pro-Palestinian and antisemitic activism on college campuses. “Jewish students feel vulnerable on college campuses, so dollars are going to go to, quote, unquote, fighting antisemitism on campus,” said Kurtzer. “But there’s another set of dollars that Hillels need right now: They have record turnout for students coming to Shabbat dinner over the past month. They’re looking for foundational dollars so they can support [that] or provide counseling services, whatever students need.”
Constructive giving, meanwhile, is about developing new ideas. “What would be the next major play for college students,” asks Kurtzer, “that can help them build resilience and knowledge and relationships and all of the stuff that might grow out of a moment of crisis like this?”
Past crises have shaped Jewish priorities for generations. In response to the Six-Day War in 1967, American Jews donated more than $100 million — close to $1 billion in today’s dollars — in a little over two weeks. Six years later, when the Yom Kippur War punctured Israel’s aura of invulnerability, American Jews contributed $700 million in emergency aid, or $6.4 billion in today’s money. Both wars also cemented Israel as a central component of American Jewish identity, politics and philanthropy.
At the time, however, Israel was still viewed as a developing country, the historian Lila Corwin Berman points out. “For quite a while, Israel has been economically a fairly well-to-do nation and hasn’t needed American Jewish dollars in the same sort of fundamental way,” said Corwin Berman, the chair of American Jewish History at Temple University. As Israel prospered and the military threats against it appeared to recede, donors’ priorities shifted to the American Jewish “intermarriage crisis,” which led to the creation of the Birthright trips for young people and a push for affordable Jewish day schooling.
UJA-Federation of New York led a rally in support of Israel and calling for the release of Israeli hostages, Manhattan, Nov. 6, 2023. (Luke Tress)
Corwin Berman acknowledged that Israelis still have genuine needs — for example, those who lost their homes and loved ones in the Oct. 7 attacks. But she notes that money going into less material needs — like the fight against antisemitism — will ultimately shape Jewish priorities, perhaps in unexpected or unwelcome ways. Some on the Jewish left have already complained that many groups fighting antisemitism have a right-wing agenda, while others worry that too many groups are fighting the same fight.
“The concern that I have about putting lots and lots of money into this fight against antisemitism is that it might develop a very, very blunt set of tools to use,” said Corwin Berman, who has written a critique of what she calls the “American Jewish Philanthropic Complex.” “I would say the tools at this point lag well behind what would be required to deal with an extraordinarily complex phenomenon.”
UJA-Federation, for example, is allocating $600,000 to responding to antisemitism on campus, normally a sizable allocation if only a fraction of the money raised for the emergency campaign. Mark Charendoff, the president of the Maimonides Fund, said the board of his grantmaking organization is also focusing on fighting antisemitism, along with what he calls the “internal refugee crisis” — Israelis displaced and traumatized by the war — and “strategic communications,” or advocating for Israel to politicians and the public.
Charendoff said the Maimonides board does not intend to cut back on any of its current grant-making, which supports education and issues-oriented programs in North America and Israel, like Hadar Institute for Jewish learning, an L.A.-based organization that encourages Jewish filmmaking and the fund’s own journal of ideas, Sapir. But that they do intend to focus on “anything that we can do to respond to the current crisis. We should be looking for those options on both sides of the ocean. And this would be over and above our current budget,” he said.
And yet he knows that pivoting to new priorities can come at a cost in attention to other needs.
“Human beings only have so much bandwidth,” he said. “And on both sides of the ocean, our staff are single-mindedly focused on the current crisis, obviously. Which means that we’re not focused on new opportunities, new ways of engaging in the elements of our portfolio that are not related to or not affected by the war.”
Karkowsky, at Moving Traditions, said her organization doesn’t intend to do significant fundraising around the emergency in Israel, but that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer to a Jewish world in crisis.
“I do think there’s an enormous need for work with North American Jewish teens right now who feel confused and lonely,” she said. “They’re not sure what their political opinions are, or they do and they feel abandoned by their friends, or they do and they disagree really strongly with their parents who are coming back and saying, ‘How do I connect with my kid who’s saying things I really don’t agree with?’ So I do think there’s a small role for us to play as part of the work we would be doing anyway.”
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Yale University Students Abort Anti-Israel Encampment Attempts After Warning From Officials
Illustrative: Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, US, April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
Yalies4Palestine attempted to establish a so-called “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the Beinecke Plaza section of Yale University’s campus on Tuesday evening, prompting a quick disciplinary response from the administration.
The students were told in no uncertain terms that refusing to discontinue the activity by an 11 pm deadline set by administrators would result in disciplinary sanctions, according to a report by the Yale Daily News. Prior to that, they obstructed Jewish students’ right to walk through campus, according to videos posted to social media by a Jewish student at Yale.
Jewish students aren’t allowed to walk through Yale’s campus anymore! pic.twitter.com/ywa8Z7V6KU
— Netanel Crispe (@NetanelCrispe) April 23, 2025
Such action blocking Jews from parts of campus elsewhere has triggered a lawsuit in which the US Justice Department recently filed a statement of interest.
“The group’s activities violated Yale’s time, place, and manner polices,” a university spokesperson told the News when asked about the incident. “University officials clearly articulated Yale’s policies and the consequences of violating them.”
The students eventually left after Yale’s assistant vice president for university life, Pilar Montalvo, walked through the area distributing cards containing a message which implored students to “Please stop your current action immediately. If you do not, you may risk university disciplinary action and/or arrest” and a QR code for a webpage which explains Yale’s policies on expression and free assembly.
The cards triggered a paranoiac fit, the News reported. Upon receiving them, the students became suspicious that the QR code could be used to track and identity those who participated in the unauthorized protest. “Do not scan the QR code!” they began to chant. They left the area soon after, the paper added, clearing the way for public safety officers to photograph and remove the tents they had attempted to pitch.
According to the News, the protest was triggered by an upcoming off-campus event at which Israel’s controversial national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — who has called for annexing the West Bank and the emigration of Gaza’s residents — will be hosted by Shabtai, a student group not formally recognized by the university.
Writing to The Algemeiner in a message titled “Yale Maintains Calm Campus and Takes Disciplinary Action,” the university took credit for preventing a style of protest that could have lasted for weeks and upended the campus during final exams. It also confirmed that disciplinary sanctions have already been meted out to several students who participated in Tuesday’s unauthorized demonstration despite having been punished for committing the same infraction in the past.
“University officials articulated Yale’s policies and the consequences of violating them and actively cleared the area, which has remained clear since that time,” a spokesperson wrote. “During the interaction, staff identified students who had been warned or disciplined in previous incidents that violated university policy. Those students have received written notice today that they are subject to immediate disciplinary action.”
The most severe sanction handed down is the revocation of Yalies4Palestine’s status as a registered student organization, which proscribes their holding events on campus indefinitely. Additionally, the group will no longer enjoy access to funds that subsidize club activities and is deprived entirely of the privilege of assembling on university property. A string of transgressions precipitated the action, Yale said in Wednesday’s statement, noting that the group had been forewarned on Monday that it had exhausted the university’s tolerance for its misconduct.
“Concerns have been raised about disturbing antisemitic conduct at the gathering,” the statement continued. “The university is investigating those concerns, as harassment and discrimination are antithetical to learning and scholarship. Yale condemns antisemitism and will hold those who violate our policies accountable through our disciplinary processes.”
Yale University has ample cause to claim credit for quelling the would-be encampment and punishing those who were involved in it. The Trump administration has been impounding federal funds previously appropriated to universities that allow pro-Hamas demonstrations and promote excessive “wokeness.”
In March, it cancelled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement.
Most recently, the Trump administration cancelled $2.26 billion in federal funding for Harvard University following the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Contained in a letter shared by interim Harvard president Alan Garber, the policies called for included “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [DEI initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implored Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
Harvard is now suing the administration in federal court to halt its sequestering of grants and contracts paid for by the American taxpayer. However, resolving the complaint could take months, and any money confiscated from Yale before a ruling in that case is rendered could cause catastrophic levels of harm that lead to hiring freezes, job cuts, and unsustainable borrowing, a measure to which several universities, including Harvard, have resorted to cover budget shortfalls.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Abbas Calls Hamas ‘Sons of Dogs,’ Pushes for Palestinian Authority Control Over Gaza
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called Hamas “sons of dogs,” while urging the terrorist group to release the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and bring an end to the war.
“The first priority is to stop the war of extermination in Gaza. It must be stopped – hundreds are being killed every day,” Abbas said in a televised speech at the Palestinian Authority’s Central Council on Wednesday.
“We are facing grave danger that could lead to a new catastrophe — a Nakba,” he continued. Many Palestinians and anti-Israel activists use the term “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
During his speech, Abbas pressed Hamas to cede control of the war-torn enclave to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and give up its arms — a demand his ruling Fatah party has reiterated in efforts to reunite Gaza and the West Bank under what it describes as “a single national authority.”
“Hamas must transfer control of Gaza and its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, and transform into a political party,” Abbas said.
However, Hamas has previously rejected calls to disarm — a key condition in ceasefire negotiations with Israel and the United States — dismissing them as “impossible conditions” and a red line the terrorist group insists it will not cross.
“Any truce lacking real guarantees for halting the war, achieving full withdrawal, lifting the blockade, and beginning reconstruction will be a political trap,” Hamas said in a statement last week.
Hamas violently eliminated Fatah, its Palestinian opposition, in a brief conflict in 2007, when the terrorist group took full control of Gaza after winning legislative elections the prior year.
In his speech, Abbas once again denounced Hamas for negotiating with the United States, accusing the group of “undermining Palestinian unity” — a criticism the PA has voiced before.
He also condemned what he described as Israel’s actions to uproot Gaza’s residents from their homes, calling it a “new Nakba.”
“We reject this. It’s an inseparable part of our land — what’s happening in Gaza is also happening in Jenin, everywhere,” Abbas said, seemingly referring to Israeli counterterrorism operations in the West Bank.
Israeli leaders have said they support voluntary emigration from Gaza for those who wish to leave but not forced displacement.
Abbas delivered his speech during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he is expected to announce a successor, addressing international concerns about the PA’s ability to govern the enclave during reconstruction efforts.
“Our vision for achieving peace in the Middle East is based on ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a state,” Abbas said during his remarks.
He added that the PA’s goals are “returning the hostages, lifting the Israeli blockade of Gaza, stopping the displacement of our people in coordination with Arab countries, and defending the ‘Palestinian cause.’”
This is not the first time the PA has attempted to publicly separate itself from Hamas while simultaneously pursuing Palestinian reconciliation talks. However, PA officials have been regularly rationalizing Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and in some cases even denying it took place or falsely claiming Israeli forces carried out the onslaught that started the Gaza war.
The PA, which has been riddled with accusations of corruption, has also long maintained a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis, leading critics to question whether the PA can effectively govern Gaza.
Abbas’s remarks came as Egyptian and Qatari mediators continued working to restore the January ceasefire agreement, which had halted fighting in Gaza before it broke down last month.
The BBC reported this week that mediators from Egypt and Qatar presented a new framework to both parties, which included a five-to-seven-year truce, an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, the release of all remaining Israeli hostages held in the enclave, and the release of an undisclosed number of Palestinian detainees.
The latest round of talks in Cairo last week aimed at salvaging the ceasefire and freeing Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough.
Hamas said it would no longer agree to interim deals, but rather called for a “comprehensive package negotiation” to secure the release of all remaining hostages in its custody in exchange for an end to the Gaza war, the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and the reconstruction of the enclave.
“Netanyahu and his government use partial agreements as a cover for their political agenda, which is based on continuing the war of extermination and starvation, even if the price is sacrificing all his prisoners [hostages],” Khalil Al-Hayya, the terrorist group’s Gaza chief who leads its negotiating team, said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel proposed a 45-day truce in Gaza to facilitate hostage releases and potentially start indirect talks to end the war, but Hamas has already rejected one of its conditions — that it lay down its weapons.
The Palestinian terrorist group released 38 hostages under a ceasefire that began on Jan. 19. In March, Israel’s military resumed its ground and aerial offensive in Gaza, after Hamas rejected proposals to extend the truce without ending the war.
Israeli officials have said that the offensive will continue until the remaining 59 hostages are freed and Gaza is demilitarized. However, Hamas insists it will free hostages only as part of a deal to end the war.
The post Abbas Calls Hamas ‘Sons of Dogs,’ Pushes for Palestinian Authority Control Over Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Global Antisemitic Incidents Decreased in 2024 From Post-Oct. 7 Surge but Remain Alarmingly High, New Study Finds
A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
Antisemitic incidents worldwide decreased in 2024 following the record surge that followed the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but they remain significantly higher than levels recorded prior to the attack, according to a new report published on Wednesday.
Just hours before the start of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday night, Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, in collaboration with the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights, and Justice, released its Annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report, which focuses on anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2024.
“Antisemitism is not just a problem of the past or a fringe issue,” said Professor Uriya Shavit, the report’s editor. “It is a mirror to our societies. And in 2024, that reflection is still deeply troubling.”
The 160-page study revealed that anti-Jewish hatred, which spiked in the wake of the Hamas onslaught, continues to persist across continents a year and a half into the ongoing Gaza conflict.
“Contrary to popular belief, the report’s findings indicate that the wave of antisemitism did not steadily intensify due to the war in Gaza and the humanitarian disaster there,” Shavit said. “The peak was in October-December 2023, and a year later, a sharp decline in the number of incidents was noted almost everywhere.”
“The sad truth is that antisemitism reared its head at the moment when the Jewish state appeared weaker than ever and under existential threat,” he continued.
Australia saw the most significant rise in anti-Jewish incidents, with 1,713 recorded in 2024, compared to 1,200 in 2023 and 490 in 2022.
Despite the sharp surge in anti-Jewish hate following the Oct. 7 attacks, Australia recorded 478 incidents between October and December 2024, a notable drop from the 827 incidents reported during the same period in 2023.
A rise in antisemitism compared to pre-war norms continued into this year. In February, for example, Australia experienced a scandal in which two nurses were caught on video vowing to kill Israeli patients, prompting outrage from authorities. After the video went viral, both nurses were suspended and permanently barred from employment within the New South Wales state health system. They were later charged with crimes.
The United States also saw notable increases in anti-Jewish incidents, especially in cities like Chicago, Denver, and Austin. The Anti-Defamation League released its own report on Tuesday showing that antisemitism in the US surged to break “all previous annual records” in 2024, with the civil rights group recording 9,354 antisemitic incidents last year.
In New York, the city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel, police recorded 344 antisemitic hate crimes in 2024, up from 325 in 2023 and 264 in 2022. Last month, Jews were the targets of more hate crimes than any other group, according to police data.
However, between October and December 2024, New York saw 68 antisemitic incidents, a sharp decline from the 159 incidents recorded in the same months of 2023.
Canada recorded a record-breaking 6,219 anti-Jewish incidents in 2024, up from 5,791 the previous year. Although members of the Jewish community make up less than 1 percent of the country’s population, they were targeted in one-fifth of all hate crimes.
“Around the world, levels of antisemitism remain significantly higher compared to the period before Oct. 7,” Shavit said in a statement.
In Europe, Italy experienced a sharp rise in anti-Jewish hate, with 877 incidents reported in 2024 — nearly double the 454 recorded in 2023.
Switzerland and Spain both saw a rise in antisemitic activity in 2024. For example, nearly 2,000 antisemitic incidents were reported in French-speaking Switzerland last year — an increase of 90 percent from 2023. The German-, Italian-, and Romansh-speaking regions recorded a 43 percent rise compared to 2023 and a staggering 287 percent increase compared to 2022.
One of the most notorious recent cases was the Zurich attempted murder, in which an Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed and left with life-threatening injuries by a Swiss teenager, an Islamic State supporter of Tunisian origin.
On the other hand, France reported an overall decline in antisemitic incidents in 2024, but there was a concerning rise in physical assaults. The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.
Last week, a Jewish man wearing a Star of David pendant was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Villeurbanne, a city in eastern France that is home to the country’s second-largest Jewish community. In another egregious attack that garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a Paris suburb last year. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack.
In the United Kingdom, 3,528 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2024, down from 4,103 in 2023 and 1,662 in 2022. The country also saw a sharp decline in October, with 310 incidents reported in 2024, compared to 1,389 in the same month of 2023.
Despite recording an 18 percent drop in anti-Jewish hate crimes from the previous year’s all-time high, the UK still experienced its second worst year for antisemitism in 2024.
In Germany, 5,177 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2024, down from 5,671 in 2023 and 2,811 in 2022. During the October-December period, 671 incidents were reported in 2024, a significant decrease from 3,163 in the same period of 2023.
In South America, both Argentina and Brazil experienced increased antisemitic activity in 2024. For example, Argentina saw a 44 percent rise in reported anti-Jewish hate crimes compared to the previous year.
The post Global Antisemitic Incidents Decreased in 2024 From Post-Oct. 7 Surge but Remain Alarmingly High, New Study Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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