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Alleging exclusion, Jewish faculty boycott James Madison University’s Holocaust commemoration event
(JTA) — An event that took place at a Virginia university Thursday night to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day was scheduled to feature lectures about the legacies of Auschwitz and the intersection between white supremacy and antisemitism. There was also a planned recitation of a poem and a musical performance.
Not on the docket at James Madison University: support for the event from the school’s Jewish faculty and staff.
Dozens of them announced in an open letter that they would boycott the event, titled “An Evening Conversation on the History and Legacy of the Holocaust,” citing concerns about its appropriateness. Of particular concern, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, was a planned performance by the university’s provost, a pianist, during a segment titled “Music as Refuge in the Holocaust.”
“There was no refuge for those targeted by the ‘Final Solution,’” said the open letter, which was unsigned but said it had the support of “24 of Jewish JMU Faculty, Faculty Emeriti, and Staff.”
The letter, which the school’s student newspaper The Breeze published Thursday morning, said the planning of the Holocaust event had “disrespected and disparaged Jewish individuals, dismissed Jewish participation and failed to reflect the inclusive values that JMU purports to foster.” The letter criticized the university’s decision to invite keynote speakers from other universities and the rabbi of a neighboring community to give a community address, rather than centering James Madison personnel or the local rabbi.
That rabbi, Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner of Beth El Congregation of Harrisonburg, said the event had been planned with little to no input from Jews, and that three Jews who were added to the planning committee late in the process later resigned en masse.
In an interview, Kurtz-Lendner compared the event to “a Martin Luther King observance planned by an entire committee of white people.” He said he was joining the boycott and not encouraging his congregants, who include James Madison professors, to attend. He said the rabbi listed on the original program, from a Reform synagogue about 30 miles away in Staunton, would not attend, either.
“The program looks wholly insensitive,” he said. “Instead of being a commemoration of the Holocaust, it looks like it’s turning into an opportunity for celebration.”
That idea appeared to be rooted in the inclusion of music during the event. Maura Hametz, the Jewish chair of the university’s history department, said she had successfully argued against including instrumental music during last year’s commemoration, citing prohibitions in Jewish tradition against instrumental music in times of mourning.
“Biblically we don’t use instrumental music, as Jews,” to commemorate the Holocaust, she said. “If you use the instruments, it’s a celebration.” The proposal to include a musical interlude, she said, also had a history in “medieval church music, so that doesn’t track with what is good for us.”
The belief that Holocaust commemorations cannot include music is not universally held; some commemorations have featured music written by Jewish composers as acts of resistance or remembrance. International Holocaust Remembrance Day was created by the United Nations in 2005 as a way to mourn all victims of the Holocaust, distinct from Yom HaShoah, the Jewish holiday that takes place in April and was established by the Israeli government to commemorate specifically Jewish Holocaust victims.
Still, Hametz had made the case against music last year, so when she saw that this year’s event was again scheduled to include musical selections, she said, “It did surprise me.” She ultimately decided to boycott the event and sign the open letter.
The boycott was supported by one of the university centers sponsoring the event, the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence. Its director, Taimi Castle, issued a statement to the student newspaper saying the center would “spend time reflecting on how we can support the Jewish community at JMU in addressing the harm caused by these actions.”
A James Madison University spokesperson said Thursday that the event itself was still scheduled to proceed as intended that evening. The university said it had reached out to “a spokesperson for this group” of critics and planned to hold a meeting “to gain further understanding and collectively work on a path forward.”
The episode comes amid broad questions about the role of Jews in efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in universities and workplaces. Jewish critics of the emerging field of diversity, equity and inclusion have charged that antisemitism is not always treated as similarly offensive to racism or homophobia, despite also being rooted in hatred based on identity. The Jewish open letter signers also cited a recent statewide report on antisemitism in Virginia as reason to take their concerns about Jewish representation at the university seriously.
James Madison’s Holocaust Remembrance Day event was sponsored in part by the university’s equity and inclusion office, and the associate provost for inclusive strategies and equity initiatives was scheduled to deliver opening remarks and also moderate a question-and-answer session at the event’s end.
“This event is to create an opportunity for people to learn about the lived experiences of others and honor the Holocaust Remembrance Day through educational and solemn means,” Malika Carter-Hoyt, the school’s vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, said in a statement provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The statement did not mention Jews or antisemitism.
Carter-Hoyt said she hadn’t received “any notice about these concerns” prior to the letter.
“I acknowledge the letter and express compassion toward the concerns outlined by faculty,” Carter-Hoyt said. But she also defended the planning and suggested that having Jews on the planning committee had not been a specific university priority.
“Committee members were selected based on substantive expertise and commitment to the creation of an event that properly marks the occasion,” she wrote. “No one was included or excluded explicitly based on a particular protected characteristic.”
James Madison University, located in Harrisonburg, is a public college with about 21,000 students. About 1,200 of them are Jewish, according to Hillel International, which offers some services on campus but does not have a building or rabbi there. Efforts to reach anyone affiliated with JMU Hillel were unsuccessful. The chapter’s vice president was listed as a participant on the evening’s program, scheduled to read a poem by Primo Levi, an Italian Holocaust survivor.
The school also does not have a Jewish studies department, despite what Hametz said had been extensive lobbying by faculty members to establish one. Alan Berger, who launched Jewish studies departments at Syracuse and Florida Atlantic universities, was billed as a keynote speaker at the event Thursday.
James Madison’s provost Heather Coltman, who was scheduled to play piano at the Holocaust memorial event and also previously worked at Florida Atlantic University, has an uneasy relationship with the school’s faculty. This week the faculty senate sought to condemn her for reportedly retaliating against the authors of a report on transparency at the school.
While there are courses taught on Jewish topics, the lack of a separate department means that Jewish representation on campus is limited, Hametz said.
“There is no spokesperson here for the Jewish community,” she said. “There’s no central voice to say, ‘Hey, why is this happening? How is it possible that you go ahead with a Holocaust event with no Jewish people on the committee?’”
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The post Alleging exclusion, Jewish faculty boycott James Madison University’s Holocaust commemoration event appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel didn’t play in this World Cup. It has dominated the games anyway.
Sunday’s World Cup final has been billed as a contest between soccer powerhouses, colonizer versus colonized, and soccer’s past against its future. But the matchup of Spain and Argentina also represent two sides of today’s polarized global politics on Israel.
Under the leadership of President Javier Milei, Argentina has become one of Israel’s most steadfast supporters; the national team’s captain, Lionel Messi, a practicing Catholic, has made multiple trips to Israel.
Spain, on the other hand, styles itself as Israel’s most fervent Western adversary. It was among the first European countries to recognize a State of Palestine. There, too, politics have extended to the playing pitch: Spanish soccer prodigy Lamine Yamal — widely touted as Messi’s heir apparent — waved a Palestinian flag in May after his club team won the Spanish championship.
Their meeting in the final dovetails with a World Cup during which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often felt unavoidable — even as neither of those teams appeared.
Throughout the six-week tournament, fans, players and national sporting bodies have used the World Cup as a platform to criticize Israel, highlight the suffering of Palestinians and call for Israel’s expulsion by FIFA, the soccer federation that organizes international competition. Marketed as a symbol of and catalyst for international unity, the 2026 World Cup also offered a reminder of Israel’s unique power to divide — and demonstrated that the wars raging in the Middle East remain fixed in the global popular imagination.
Much of the attention on Israel could be attributed to the Egyptian team, whose coach, Hossam Hassan, repeatedly foregrounded the Palestinian cause during his press conferences as the team forged into the tournament’s knockout rounds.
After Hassan in an interview dedicated Egypt’s victory to the Palestinian people, he said, “May God grant them victory, and may God have mercy on their martyrs.”
His comments decrying the situation in Gaza made him a hero in the enclave, where a mural depicting Hassan was painted on the rubble of a destroyed building. After Egypt’s ouster by Argentina, the coach confronted a fan who seemed to be taunting him with an Israeli flag; the referee of that game faced antisemitic smears afterward.
It was one of several incidents involving flags, as the stands became proxy battlegrounds for the conflict. One man waving an Israeli flag at an Iran game in Los Angeles had it confiscated, seemingly for provocation; the only official explanation reportedly provided was “security reasons.” with no mention of Israel’s war with Iran. Palestinian flags have flown in the terraces no matter who was playing, but especially at games involving first-time contestant Jordan.
There were larger protest actions, too: Thousands of Bosnian fans chanted “Palestina” in the streets of Toronto on their way to a game against Canada; Morocco fans broke out into “Free Palestine” chants in Houston. (There was a rumor that Morocco’s pro-Israel king, Mohammed VI, had a top player pulled from the team for waving a Palestinian flag on the pitch earlier this year.)
As the drama played out on fields across North America and in the concourses, a campaign to get Israel banned over the war from international soccer competition, which dates to 2024, continued apace. The national soccer federation of Norway, which became a tournament darling during the country’s first-ever run to the quarterfinals, joined several Middle Eastern nations in calls for Israel’s ouster from World Cup organizer FIFA and European soccer federation UEFA, citing those groups’ ejection of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
It was only logical that the relentless focus on Israel would culminate in Sunday’s final, where arguably the two biggest stars in the sport, Messi and Yamal, have played into the theme.
Messi’s appearances in Israel over the years on Barcelona and Argentina team trips — including a 2013 visit when he was photographed wearing a kippah at the Western Wall — have long made him a lightning rod for criticism and occasionally antisemitic slander from Arab leaders. Social media platforms filled with anti-Messi political sentiment in the last weeks as that photo recirculated.
The Argentine’s perceived Zionism — and if Yamal’s flag-waving is any indication, the apparent pro-Palestinian stance of Messi’s 19-year-old Spanish foil — mirrors the respective positions of the nations they play for. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called to end arms sales to Israel and for travel bans on “anyone who has participated in the genocide.” Spain was also the site of the most successful anti-Israel protest in sports last year, when protesters repeatedly ground the Spanish Vuelta to a halt over the presence of an Israeli team.
On the other hand, breaking with its longstanding support for Palestinians, Argentina opposed their bid for statehood last September at the United Nations. Milei, who has described himself as the “most Zionist president in the world,” has proposed renaming Palestine Street in Buenos Aires to “Bibas Family Street” after the murdered Israeli hostages.
This simple but potent dichotomy has determined Sunday’s rooting interest for many neutral fans, and plenty non-neutral ones. Pro-Palestinian social media activists have built the case for Spain by pitting Messi against Yamal. Israelis — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have cited Milei’s support of Israel as a reason why they are rooting for Argentina. (To be sure, a lot of Israelis also just love the 39-year-old Messi because of what he can do with a soccer ball.)
The persistence of the conflict at the World Cup reflects the snowballing animus toward Israel in global cultural discourse. From Eurovision to literary societies to soccer, it’s all Israel all the time — an obsession that will feel disproportionate to the country’s supporters, but less so for Palestinians themselves. Saleem Al-Ashqar, a Palestinian goalkeeper, was shot dead by Israeli forces in Gaza last month; he is one of hundreds of Palestinian athletes who have been killed in the war that followed Oct. 7, 2023, according to Palestinian officials.
The international fixation on Israel at events like the World Cup is showing no signs of abating. The only thing that might dim the fervor is organizing bodies bowing to pressure to remove Israel — or the country itself altering course.
The post Israel didn’t play in this World Cup. It has dominated the games anyway. appeared first on The Forward.
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The real outrage of Rep. Ro Khanna’s West Bank visit
The settler violence that Rep. Ro Khanna experienced on his recent visit to the West Bank has made headlines. But what was most important about this trip wasn’t what his delegation — of which I was a part — went through, but rather the people we met in the West Bank and the truths they told.
It’s the daily humiliations and abuse they suffer at the hands of Israeli settlers. It’s the dehumanization they feel, and the silence they encounter when they try to tell their stories to the world.
I’m an Israeli-American, and I’ve known Khanna for a decade. During that time, we’ve often agonized together over how best to leverage United States foreign policy to achieve a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My family lived in Jerusalem for six generations; I emigrated to the U.S. 50 years ago. I am a peace activist who has spent the last two decades as a student of the conflict through my work with, among others, J Street and Combatants for Peace.
After years of deep engagement on these issues — including meetings with the families of multiple Israeli hostages and participation in several diplomatic trips to Israel — Khanna told me that he wanted to go see a part of the region that had been off limits with past delegations, and to truly understand the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. As the stories of settlement expansion, movement restrictions, settler terrorism and home demolitions in the West Bank have grown louder and more intense in recent months, Khanna wanted to hear about life under occupation from people on the ground.
He especially wanted to meet members of marginalized Palestinian Christian communities, as well as Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank. He didn’t want a tour where someone else controlled the agenda. He wanted to see and hear the occupation for himself.
As we discussed this plan, it was clear that it was essential that the trip be Palestinian-led — a low-profile personal trip, not a diplomatic entourage. Many Palestinians will not meet with tours led by pro-Israel organizations. (Khanna’s staff was in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem around the personal visit, despite Ambassador Mike Huckabee alleging otherwise.) Even a liberal Jewish organization like J Street, whose congressional delegations I’ve had the privilege of accompanying, is not welcome in many places in the West Bank.
The itinerary involved visits to three areas that would show life in distinct sections of the West Bank. We began by visiting Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala and meeting with their mayors. These are Christian communities with tourism economies. We heard about the water shortages with which they must contend, because Israel restricts the water supply to Palestinians. We heard about the Israeli settlement of Yatziv seizing Beit Sahour’s only remaining open land for its own construction. We heard about the difficulty of being a Christian minority in a place that is holy to all three religions.
From there we moved to Hebron and the South Hebron Hills. In Hebron, we visited streets that are open to Israeli Jews and tourists but closed to local Palestinians. We saw markets where violent Israeli settlers have thrown refuse, urine and sometimes even acid on Palestinians.
South of Hebron, we visited the village of Umm al-Khair, where we met Eid Suleiman, a Palestinian peace activist deported from San Francisco while on a humanitarian mission in 2025. His travel companion, his cousin Awdah Hathaleen, was shot and killed by Israeli settler Yinon Levi — who was filmed at the scene and never charged — in the summer of 2025.
We mourned Hathaleen. And we saw the sheer terror that continues to be inflicted on this village by the neighboring Israeli settlements — the daily violence, harassment, destruction of property and land confiscation.
On the last day, we visited Turmus Ayya in the north.
It is an amazing place, populated mainly by Palestinian Americans. These families have kept their homes and their land for generations. We spent hours with Palestinian Americans who live 11 months of the year in the U.S. and spend one month tending to their homes and land in the West Bank. In the U.S., they are police officers, doctors, psychologists — equal participants in a pluralistic democracy. When they return to their homeland, their rights are stripped away within minutes of landing in Tel Aviv.
They told us how they undergo intense interrogations and delays at Ben Gurion Airport. How, at checkpoints, many endure abuse for not speaking Hebrew. They told us how their towns and homes have been damaged and their cars burned by mobs of marauding settlers. They told us they feel human in the U.S., but subhuman in Palestine.
These are the important points of this trip. These are the things we should be talking about. The finger-pointing and accusations that have followed Khanna’s accurate account of having our road blocked by settlers are a distraction.
The life stories we heard from Palestinians over three days were jarring. These truths will reverberate in my mind for years, long after the finger-pointing is over.
The post The real outrage of Rep. Ro Khanna’s West Bank visit appeared first on The Forward.
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More Democrats than ever are voting against aid to Israel. That could actually be good for Israel
Israel is losing Democratic support in the same way a character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises went bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.”
When 103 House Democrats voted for a resolution that would eliminate United States aid to Israel yesterday — that was the “suddenly.” Even though the resolution didn’t pass, what seemed unimaginable on a few years ago now, after a period of gradual change, looks inevitable. When the current $38-billion weapons aid agreement between the U.S. and Israel winds down in 2028, the next one will involve what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called “a major reset” in the relationship.
And you know what? It’s long overdue. This shocking, historic vote is an opportunity to redefine the U.S.-Israel relationship in a way that benefits the U.S., Israel, Palestinians and the region.
Proponents have always framed U.S. aid to Israel as a win-win. We give them money — most of which has to be spent on American-made weapons — and in exchange Israel serves as a kind of land-based battleship in the Middle East. It looks out for American interests in a volatile region.
But increasingly, Americans are failing to see the value in that bargain. A recent poll found that 48% of Americans feel the U.S. is too supportive of Israel. At least among young people, this antipathy doesn’t just exist on the left: 53% of Republicans under age 45 oppose renewing the current aid agreement.
The fact of Israel’s booming economy, driven by the high tech and weapons industries that make it a valuable U.S. partner, has fueled that opposition. Why, a growing number of Americans ask, should our tax dollars fund a country that ranks 24th in median adult wealth according to a newly released USB survey — while the U.S. itself ranks 28th?
But what opponents mostly object to is Israeli government policy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has cashed American checks and carried on with policies in Gaza and the West Bank that most Americans — including most American Jews — reject. What defenders have long asserted is a mutually beneficial arrangement increasingly feels more like a teenager with a credit card and a bad attitude.
A better approach, the “reset” Jeffries speaks of, would adjust the relationship from one of parent and child to one of peers and partners.
Ensuring Israel’s long term security would continue to be a key goal of that partnership. The U.S. might stop funding Israeli weapons purchases, but it could still sell Israel defensive systems.
But the security of Palestinians and other Israeli neighbors would also be key. The U.S. ought to consider defense guarantees to Israel and certain neighbors, including the Gulf States and even, perhaps, a reformed Syria. Those guarantees should come with sanctions if any government misuses American-made weapons. Security also means funding humanitarian aid that is attached to rooting out extremism and promoting freedom and self-determination.
Such a reset could make Israel itself stronger: less reliant on the whims of U.S. foreign and domestic policy; better able to diversify its sourcing and sale of weapons; and a key player in a regional peace, which includes the Palestinians. All of those changes could help bring true security.
These outcomes may seem aspirational. But it’s not like the old and now defunct patterns of aid were bringing Israelis the security they need. Democrats and Republicans, by listening to changing public opinion, have a chance to establish a new relationship rooted in a new vision.
Make no mistake, this vision will not satisfy the hardcore anti-Israel crowd on either side of the aisle. They want no aid and no partnership. They want to boycott Israeli products, artists and academics and arrest Israeli leaders. Their solution is the dissolution of the Israeli state.
Some of the Democrats who voted for the resolution no doubt belong in this category — among them the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who was the sole House member to vote “nay” on a Nov. 2023 resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist.
But many Democrats who voted for the Wednesday resolution said they did so despite their ongoing support for Israel, as a way to lodge their dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s policies.
“We simply cannot continue to condone Netanyahu’s actions that are against our moral conscience and our own national security interests by perpetuating the status quo,” said Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who has a long record of support for Israel.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, also of Massachusetts, voted for the bill, but said it “should not impair the state of Israel’s right to defend itself against the atrocities of the terrorist regimes that threaten it.”
Both Auchincloss and Moulton pointed out the bill’s flaws, among them that it would deny Israel purely defensive weapons systems, as well as humanitarian aid that also serves Palestinians.
But if Israel’s sensible supporters can, once the current agreement expires, put one in place that allows for defensive weapons and humanitarian aid, they’ll be on the way to promoting a more effective partnership than that we have now. Doing so could dampen the extremes both here and in Israel. It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The post More Democrats than ever are voting against aid to Israel. That could actually be good for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
