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‘An epidemic of hate’: Biden administration officials meet with Jewish leaders to tackle rising antisemitism
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top Biden administration officials launched a roundtable on antisemitism on Wednesday by describing a “rising tide of antisemitism” and likening the atmosphere in the United States to that of Europe, where Jewish worship is held under lock and key.
“Right now, there is an epidemic of hate facing our country,” said Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, who convened and chaired the 90-minute session.
Jewish officials represented at the meeting were impressed by how comprehensive the meeting was, saying it went beyond the white supremacist threat that the Biden administration has focused on in the past to other sources, among them attackers who target the visibly Orthodox and Jewish students on campuses.
The meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, comes on the heels of weeks of antisemitic invective spewed by rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, and the dinner attended last month by West, Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and former President Donald Trump at Trump’s Florida residence. The discussion also follows alarming spikes in antisemitic invective on Twitter and other platforms.
“In my experience, there’s nothing more vicious than what we’re seeing today,” said Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, who described growing up in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
Ten years ago, Rice said, when she was defending Israel against its many enemies as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she did not imagine a threat to Jews domestically. Now she says she hears antisemitic expressions coming from elected officials, public figures and entertainers, calling it an “incredible rising tide.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department envoy to monitor antisemitism, said she no longer has the luxury of her predecessors, who traveled abroad to assess antisemitism in foreign countries. Now, she said, she had to treat the problem as a domestic and a foreign one.
“I can’t go to these countries and say ‘You have a problem,’” she said. “Now I have to say ‘We have a serious problem.’”
After multiple attacks on synagogues stateside in recent years, she said, Jewish places of worship were becoming more visibly fortified than they were for years when security, if it existed, was unobtrusive and synagogues were welcoming.
“For decades, when we traveled in Europe, we used to identify synagogues by gendarmes,” she said. “Now we see police cars, now we lock the doors in the United States.”
The Kanye West episodes evidently helped spur the convening of the meeting. George Selim, the Anti-Defamation League senior vice president who was present, said the meeting came together within a week, unlike similar events which can take months to organize.
“The urgency was clear, the meeting needed to be convened, it needed to be in person,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview.
Representatives of the dozen or so groups that attended were impressed by the level of attention: in addition to Emhoff, Rice and Lipstadt, there were officials from the National Security Council, the Officer of Public Engagement, and the Office of Faith-based Partnerships.
The representatives were impressed by how personal Emhoff, who is married to Vice President Kamala Harris, made the battle. He described how moved he has been by American Jews who are proud of him — the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president. “I’m in pain right now, our community is in pain,” he said.
Emhoff’s unabashed identification with the Jewish community helped elevate the issue of combating antisemitism, said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad).
“He and I might see Jewish ritual and practice a little differently. But one thing Jewish people will remember forever in our history is that when the time came for him to make his decision, he decided to identify unequivocally as a Jew,” Shemtov said.
Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, the group that underwrote successful lawsuits against the neo-Nazis who organized the deadly 2017 march in Charlottesville, Virginia, said the officials closely listened to every presentation. (The media was present for opening remarks by government officials, and was ushered out so the representatives of Jewish groups could speak freely.)
“We were watching them take copious notes, they were genuinely listening,” she told JTA.
The range of invitees and the topics addressed also extended beyond the threat posed to Jews from the extreme right, an area that has until now been the Biden administration’s focus, through a summit on extremism in September and a speech Biden gave in Philadelphia last summer.
Speakers addressed antisemitic attacks on the visibly Orthodox which, particularly in the New York area, are most often not carried out by white supremacists. And there were officials from at least three groups that represent the visibly Orthodox: The Orthodox Union, which is Modern Orthodox, along with Agudath Israel of America and American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), which are haredi Orthodox.
Speakers also were sensitive to the plight of Jewish students on college campuses, who often face hostility from peers whose sharp criticism of Israel can sometimes manifest as antisemitism.
“On college campuses, the supposed bastions of liberal ideas and ideals, many students believe it better to camouflage their Jewish identity,” Lipstadt said. One of the speakers was Julia Jassey, a senior at the University of Chicago who is the CEO of Jewish on Campus, a student group that tracks antisemitism on campuses.
The Jewish participants said they benefited from hearing how others experienced antisemitism. Abba Cohen, Aguda’s Washington director, said he found receptive listeners when he described an increased effort by local councils to limit the building of Orthodox communities. He and Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, also described the threat to the visibly Orthodox.
Their accounts moved others present who do not live the Orthodox lifestyle. “We all have different experiences with antisemitism and clearly for someone who’s Orthodox, it might feel different than for someone who’s not,” said Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women.
Katz said the meeting was a relief because she often has difficulty explaining to her progressive allies why antisemitism persists as a threat.
“I feel like in the last, you know, year, I’ve been saying over and over again, this is getting worse. This is getting amplified, people are emboldened,” she said. “And there are a lot, particularly in the progressive community that would say, ‘No, no, that’s not what’s happening.’”
Some practical proposals were discussed, including a letter this week from a bipartisan slate of lawmakers advocating for a cross-agency “whole of government” task force to combat antisemitism, and an expansion of federal funding that currently underwrites security upgrades for Jewish institutions to include paying for extra police patrols.
The meeting did not result in concrete decisions, but participants said they left with the impression that the federal government was ready to dive deep into finding practicable solutions.
“For me, this is not the end. This is just the beginning of this conversation,” Emhoff said.
Other groups represented included the American Jewish Committee, Hillel International, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Reform and Conservative movements, and Secure Community Network, the security consultancy for the Jewish community.
“It sends a very important message that the sort of rampant antisemitism we’re seeing is unacceptable and that the highest office in the country is doing something about it,” Spitalnick said.
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The post ‘An epidemic of hate’: Biden administration officials meet with Jewish leaders to tackle rising antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The choice in Michigan between El-Sayed and Rogers is one all American Jews have to make
Sometimes the most important part of making a decision is articulating what the decision actually is. What are the choices?
So it is in Michigan, where Jewish Democrats are asked to choose between Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat who is against providing military aid to Israel and who campaigned with leftist streamer Hasan Piker, and Mike Rogers, a Republican and an election denier who would help keep the Senate in the hands of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and who is presenting himself as the choice for Jews offended by El-Sayed. Either Rogers wins; El-Sayed wins without Jewish support; or El-Sayed wins with Jewish support. Those are the only possible outcomes.
Two groups have shown two different ways of dealing with this choice. The first, “Nonnegotiable Michigan,” a group of Jewish Michiganders including rabbis and cantors, has listed five “baseline needs,” or “nonnegotiables,” for their support, which include “Jewish sovereignty in Israel” along with full and safe participation in American life for all Jews including Zionists and a vision for a better Middle East.
The second, Michigan Jews for Democracy, has pledged its support for El-Sayed while noting some reservations and concerns. As one signatory, David Jaffe, put it in a statement released along with Michigan Jews for Democracy’s declaratory letter, “I am a proud Jew. I’m voting for El Sayed despite our disagreements, to support domestic policies that reflect Jewish values. I’m voting against grave threats to the safety of Jews and to American democracy. Rogers unquestioningly supports an authoritarian administration, its arbitrary arrests, its white Christian nationalism, and myriad terrible policies that have never in history been ‘good for the Jews.’”
In other words, one group has said the Democratic candidate cannot count on their support because of their disagreements with him, while the other has said that he has their support despite them. One is trying to get a candidate to say what they want to hear before the election; the other, that they will support him in the election and hope to be a “voice at the table” after.
Jewish groups are, of course, not the only ones who have grappled with such questions (“Nonnegotiable” calls to mind the “Uncommitted” movement to press for a ceasefire in Gaza and to end military aid to Israel from the 2024 presidential election). But to consider these two specific groups together is to consider a choice that an increasing number of Jewish Democrats — which is to say, the vast majority of American Jews — all over the country can expect to be making soon if they haven’t already had to.
Democrats (and younger Republicans) are less supportive of Israel and of US support for it. Candidates will need to speak to their voters and make campaign promises that are aligned with what those voters want to hear. And Jewish Democrats will have to be honest with themselves about the limited options before them and decide for themselves whether they want these candidates to win with or without them.
Per an AP-NORC poll from this summer, about 58% of Democrats think the United States is too supportive of Israel, while roughly half think Israel carried out a genocide in Gaza. Not every candidate who makes it out of a primary and into a general election will say the same, but many will, both because of their own conviction and because they want to win Democratic votes.
For some Jewish Democrats, this presents no tension or contradiction; the same poll said that roughly three in 10 Jewish adults agree that Israel carried out a genocide in Gaza. There are American Jews for whom El-Sayed’s vision for the Middle East is not threatening but comforting and correct. But about half of American Jews rejected the idea that Israel carried out a genocide. And, as JFNA found, the vast majority of American Jews want Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state (though just 37% now identify as Zionist). Many may feel a tug of war between their support for or attachment to Israel and their liberalism.
There will be some who say that American Jews should reject the idea that this is a choice, that there is no contradiction between being a liberal Democrat and supporting Israel. That is all well and good in theory, but, come election day, voters in Michigan will make a choice between these two men. There is El-Sayed, who does not want to send military aid to Israel and who said “hurt people hurt people” after Temple Israel was attacked, referring to the fact that the perpetrator’s family was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Lebanon (El-Sayed has since apologized). And there is Rogers, who says he loves Israel and also denies the results of the 2020 presidential election (and pushed to ban abortion and opposed marriage equality, to take two examples from his record).
While Jewish Democrats can, of course, try to influence where Democratic candidates and voters are on Israel, they do not get to dictate it. They do not, in the Michigan general election, get to choose a candidate who supports democracy and also talks about how much they love and want to support Israel. They get to choose whether they want El-Sayed to win and Mike Rogers to lose and, if so, whether they want to be a part of making it happen regardless of El-Sayed’s views on Israel. Every Jewish Democrat, like every other voter, will have to make that choice, and can withhold their vote for whatever reason. But they should be clear about the reality of what they are choosing between.
There are only so many choices in Michigan. And outside of Michigan, too.
The post The choice in Michigan between El-Sayed and Rogers is one all American Jews have to make appeared first on The Forward.
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Will today’s Netanyahu speech at the UN be his last as Israeli Prime Minister?
Benjamin Netanyahu has stood at the United Nations podium more often than any Israeli leader, using the world stage to warn about the threat from Iran, defend Israel’s policies and make his case with maps and other props.
On Thursday, Netanyahu is set to deliver his 15th address to the General Assembly, where he is expected to tout Israel’s military successes against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, push back against mounting criticism of Israel and lash out at New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has called him a war criminal. His U.N. appearances have served him politically back home. But with Israelis heading to the polls on Oct. 27 and Netanyahu facing another tough reelection fight, the question hanging over his familiar appearance at the green marble podium is: Will he be back next year?
The stakes in Israel’s election
American Jews and Washington insiders have watched Israeli elections closely from afar for decades. But the Oct. 27 Knesset election may feel unusually close to home.
After years of war in Gaza and Iran, and a right-wing government in which far-right cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have wielded significant influence, Israel’s standing in the United States has fallen sharply. Benjamin Netanyahu has become deeply unpopular among Democrats and American Jews, and many find themselves caught between a strong emotional attachment to Israel and growing discomfort with the actions of its government.
That makes this election more than the latest referendum on Netanyahu. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is seeking a seventh term after surviving political crises that repeatedly appeared likely to end his career, most significantly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
The election could help determine Israel’s direction after years of growing divisions over the Palestinians, the power of the religious right and Haredi parties and the future of the country’s democratic institutions. And if Netanyahu loses, a new government could try to repair Israel’s battered image in the United States, rebuild ties with Democrats and reconnect with parts of the American Jewish community — even without bringing nearly as much change in Israeli policy as some might hope.
The candidates and coalitions on the ballot
Six weeks before Israelis vote, at least 10 lists of 38 parties that submitted a slate have a viable chance of crossing the 3.25% threshold to win seats in the 120-member Knesset: The current ruling coalition, the Likud Party; the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism party; and the Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism. Another Party competing for votes on the right is Amcha Yisrael, led by retired general Ofer Winter. The center-left vote is split among three parties: Yashar, headed by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot; Beyachad, the alliance of former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid; and the left-wing Democrats, headed by former IDF major general Yair Golan. There is also Avigdor Lieberman, a headliner whose secular, nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party has been part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc since 2019.
The two Arab lists — the United List, a coalition of three Arab Israeli parties, and Ra’am led by Mansour Abbas — are generally counted outside either bloc. But their seats could determine who governs after the election. Ra’am, which joined the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021, has allied with Yoav Segalovitz, who formerly headed the Israel Police’s Investigations and Intelligence Division, to seek a role in a future government, while the United List has left open the possibility of supporting an opposition-led government.
Polls show neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the parties seeking to replace him have a clear path yet to the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority.
That leaves three possible outcomes for Oct. 27 amid a larger question being asked from Jerusalem to Washington: Will the Netanyahu era finally end? And if it does, how much would Israel actually change?
The most likely scenario: Anti-Netanyahu bloc wins — without a majority
Recent polls point to a familiar problem in Israeli politics — the kind of deadlock that paralyzed the country for nearly two years in 2019 and 2020. The Zionist parties opposed to Netanyahu could win more seats in this election than the bloc that made up the current coalition government of Likud, the religious right and Haredi parties, but still fall short of the 61 seats needed for a majority.
Eisenkot, who has emerged as Netanyahu’s chief rival, has floated a path to a government that does not require a majority in the Knesset.
He could attempt to establish a minority government while Arab lawmakers abstain during the confidence vote rather than formally joining his coalition. Eisenkot has carefully called this a “Zionist minority government,” saying he would make no deals with Arab parties. Netanyahu has made the prospect of an Eisenkot government dependent on the left and Arab parties a central campaign argument. He is betting that after the collapse of the Bennett-Lapid government in 2022 and the trauma of Oct. 7, even voters who want change may be wary of such an arrangement.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported earlier this month that Eisenkot’s campaign is concerned that some candidates on the slate could refuse to support such an arrangement, so he is considering internal measures to ensure that lawmakers who cannot support the government’s formation resign rather than break away.
But getting sworn in could dramatically transform the political landscape. Netanyahu would no longer be prime minister.
Eisenkot could then try to expand his government by attracting parties or members currently aligned with Netanyahu, consider a split-power government with Netanyahu, and if Netanyahu stepped aside after losing power, a new Likud leader might consider joining a government led by Eisenkot, Bennett or Lieberman.
Or the minority government could quickly fall apart, sending Israel to another round of elections. But this time Eisenkot would run as the incumbent prime minister, while Netanyahu would have to decide whether to try to return to power as the opposition.
Probable scenario: Netanyahu does it again
Netanyahu could outperform polls and receive enough seats to either block the opposition from forming a government or win an outright majority.
Netanyahu pulled off a surprise victory in 2015 and made a remarkable comeback in 2022 after losing power. In the last few years he has survived a long-running corruption trial and the failures of Oct. 7, which many predicted would end his political career. Instead, he’s kept his coalition together through a full four-year term.
Netanyahu is still considered the preferred candidate for prime minister by more than a third of the Israeli electorate and is dominating among voters identifying with the center-right.
In what would likely be the final term for the 76-year-old longest-serving Israeli leader, Netanyahu could seek a different legacy by moderating his tone and pursuing a unity government with Eisenkot or Bennett. But that would mean breaking campaign promises and abandoning some of the political partners who helped keep him in power. And his opponents would have to put aside years of deep distrust and disagreements – and justify the move in the name of political stability.
Possible scenario: The end of an era — but who becomes prime minister?
If Netanyahu’s bloc loses and he cannot find a way to stay in power, the election would not automatically make Eisenkot prime minister. Ending the Netanyahu era is one thing for the three opposition leaders. Deciding who replaces him is another.
Bennett and Lieberman come from different backgrounds than Eisenkot, with years of political experience and ambitions of their own. They could offer very different styles of leadership, with a dramatic change in tone and relationships but little change in policy from Netanyahu’s.
Bennett, 54, now polling as the head of the third-largest party, has done this before. After the 2021 election, his party Yamina won only seven seats. Yet the deadlocked political map allowed him to negotiate a rotation agreement with Lapid and become prime minister as head of a diverse coalition that, for the first time in Israeli history, included the participation of an Arab party.
During his short tenure as prime minister, he demonstrated calm and unity, and proved that removing Netanyahu would not automatically be interpreted as Israel moving left. He maintained good relations with former President Joe Biden and speaks fluent English. His stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and backs an aggressive approach toward Hamas — resonates with current Israeli public opinion. He also prioritizes military and civic service for all Israelis, an issue that has strained Netanyahu’s coalition and deepened tensions over exemptions for the growing Haredi population.
Lieberman, 68, may be the longest shot for prime minister, but perhaps the most experienced Israeli politician after Netanyahu. Serving in key government roles — leading the defense, finance and foreign ministries — in the past two decades, Lieberman has long warned about the dangers posed by Hamas and has criticized the government’s strategies in Gaza. In 2018, he resigned as defense minister over a ceasefire in Gaza, which he called “surrendering to terror.” His strong opposition to exemptions and subsidies benefiting the Haredi community has previously positioned him as a spoiler in earlier elections.
Recent polling puts his party at an average of eight or nine seats — enough to give Lieberman leverage in who leads the government.
After so many elections centered on whether Netanyahu could survive, this one may finally answer a different question: What does Israel look like without him?
The post Will today’s Netanyahu speech at the UN be his last as Israeli Prime Minister? appeared first on The Forward.
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One university canceled Hasan Piker. Another has him going to the chapel tonight.
University of Washington canceled him. University of Texas offered limited seating. On Thursday, Cornell University will open the doors of its historic chapel to host Hasan Piker, a controversial left-wing pundit with a history of antisemitic comments.
Three universities, three different receptions for the far-left Twitch streamer who has attracted millions of fans with his raw rhetoric that has veered, on more than one occasion, into antisemitism. Most recently, Piker warned American Jews who “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel,” that someone could eventually “take action against” them.
Universities seem torn about whether – and how – to host him. Jewish campus groups are divided too. Jewish Voice for Peace invited Piker to Cornell, along with other student groups, while Cornellians for Israel opposed his appearance.
A statement released by leaders of Hillel at Cornell University emphasized their commitment to the campus as a place for disagreement, pluralism and debate, but put Piker in a different category.
“Mr. Piker’s views… go against our values as Americans and Jews, and his hateful, antisemitic rhetoric is repulsive,” the statement said.
That outrage has not discouraged campus groups including College Democrats, democratic socialists and pro-Palestinian organizations from booking the rising influencer, who has campaigned with a number of progressive Democratic candidates leading up to the midterm election. They say Piker, 35, is the voice their generation needs to hear to get out the vote.
“This is a guy that has a modern media presence,” one student told the Yale Daily News when Piker appeared there in April. “He reaches to our demographic exactly, people that are our age.”
But Piker, who told students that empathy was the core philosophical underpinnings of his political beliefs, has laughed at the suggestion that campus antisemitism is on the rise. In one livestream, he called a Jewish man a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog,” accusing him of wanting to execute every Palestinian in the street. In another, discussing efforts to compel ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, he described them as “inbred.”
At Northwestern University, where he appeared in March, a student asked Piker how to talk about the Middle East conflict with his Zionist friends without ending the friendship.
“I think you shouldn’t give up on your friends and try to have normal conversations with them about how they probably don’t care about Israel as much as they think they do,” Piker responded, according to The Daily Northwestern, “because if they did, they’d probably live there.”
In his remarks at Yale, Piker called the wars that have cemented America’s imperial roots “an endless series of butcheries, each more perverse and more tragic than the last.”
“What was the point of defeating the Nazis if we went on to dominate so much of the globe as violently as we have?”
‘Heckler’s veto’
Ryan Ansloan, senior program counsel in the policy reform department of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), says those comments are not enough to bar Piker from speaking on campus.
Ansloan warns against canceling or preventing events based on what is known as a “heckler’s veto,” or the possibility that a percentage of the campus community is not going to like it.
“Ultimately it sends a bad message to the campus community that if you complain enough or threaten to disrupt an event you don’t like, you can get your way and prevent that event from even taking place,” he told the Forward. “That has implications that go beyond that single event and can have a chilling effect. As long as that student body remains on campus, that incident is going to stick in their minds.”
Conservatives have long championed free speech on campus, often accusing activists on the left of wielding safety concerns to disinvite alt-right speakers to campuses. Think British far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and his tour a decade ago; or Ann Coulter, who was harassed off the stage coincidentally at Cornell, her alma mater.
But since the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last year, safety has been raised by activists on both sides of the political aisle, Ansloan said. According to FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database, many objections are tied to speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For example, after opposition from the right, the University of Southern Maine in February revoked seven invitations and canceled a one-day conference titled “The Consequence of Palestine.”
Around that same time, the Catholic University of America rejected a request from the campus chapter of the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) to host U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Jewish congressman from Florida, who has drawn public condemnation for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Dany Tirza, a retired IDF colonel and security fence architect to speak on the West Bank barrier.
With Piker, outrage has paled to the demand. At Cornell, tickets for Piker’s appearance in the 600-seat university chapel were claimed within hours of their release. Piker also will be live streaming the event on his Twitch channel.
At the University of Texas, University Democrats planned to host the Sept. 30 event in a 466-seat auditorium, but 2,500 people signed up. Despite suggestions from campus police to find a larger venue, the university has not been willing to provide one with more space.
“This has the potential to be the largest political event in Austin since like 2018,” the group’s president Adit Raha told a local TV station, adding that he hasn’t ruled out shifting the event off campus.
“This event will be happening no matter what. We’re not going to cancel the event.”
But even Democratic politicians in Texas are concerned.
“Free speech allows difficult and controversial views, but it does not require anyone to stay silent when someone has a history of hateful comments about Jewish Americans, 9/11 and Hamas terrorism,” U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) wrote on X. “Jewish students at UT should not be made to feel targeted or unsafe on their own campus.”
Cancellation was the solution at the University of Washington for an upcoming talk in January 2027. While the university insisted in a statement that it’s “dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, including on controversial topics and involving provocative speakers,” it reviewed the process by which the Piker lecture was planned and determined it along with six other events “did not meet the necessary level of rigor for University-hosted events in the Speaker Series.”
A university spokesman clarified that those seven invitations, including Piker’s, did not undergo the committee review. No effort has been made to reschedule Piker and submit the invitation for review.
The statement continued: “Going forward, procedures will be updated to ensure the standards we have for University-hosted events like the Speaker Series are met, particularly so that we can help elevate the level of dialogue on divisive topics during a polarized time in our country.”
The post One university canceled Hasan Piker. Another has him going to the chapel tonight. appeared first on The Forward.
