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As Orthodox Union and other Jewish groups condemn settler rampage, many avoid mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As American Jewish organizations responded to Sunday’s settler riot in the West Bank, most began with statements of condemnation.
One began with a question: “How can such a thing happen?”
“How could it come to this, that Jewish young men should ransack and burn homes and cars?” continued the statement from Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, who added that “we cannot understand or accept this.”
He concluded with a note of desperation: “What happened yesterday must never, ever happen again.”
Hauer’s anguish was all the more notable because it came from a group whose constituency, American Orthodox Jews, has historically sympathized with the movement to create Jewish settlements in the West Bank. And Hauer’s statement did something else that many other groups did not: It appeared to question the leadership of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Attacking a village does not deserve to be called ‘taking the law into your own hands,’” Hauer’s statement said. “This is not the law; this is undisciplined and random fury. Actions like these demonstrate the critical need for clear and strong leadership.”
While Hauer didn’t mention Netanyahu by name (and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment) the implication was clear: On Sunday, in response to the riot in the town of Huwara, Netanyahu said, “I ask – even when the blood is boiling – not to take the law into one’s hands.”
The Orthodox Union has for years criticized U.S. pressure on Israel to accept a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians or to share Jerusalem. In 2007 it stood out among Jewish groups leading criticism of the then Israeli government for contemplating a Palestinian role in Jerusalem.
Beyond the O.U, Jewish groups decried the actions of the settlers but mostly avoided mentioning the Israeli government or its leader. Instead, some looked to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial but who has sought to broker compromise amid the current contentious government. He had issued a “forceful condemnation” of the rioting on Sunday, saying that security forces, not civilians “committing violence against innocents,” should respond to terrorism.
Affirming and quoting the Israeli prime minister was once a reflex for legacy groups when commenting on crises in Israel. But times have changed. Israel’s government includes far-right parties and ministers who are themselves settlers and have long advocated harsher measures in response to Palestinian terror.
One official, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was once convicted of incitement to violence. And some coalition members have sympathized with the rioters in the wake of the rampage. Against that backdrop, Netanyahu did not feature in many American Jewish organizations’ statements. Others condemned the prime minister for his links to the far right or what they saw as his government’s tepid response.
“Though some Israeli leaders, including the prime minister, called for restraint, the government failed to prevent or quickly curtail this unacceptable violence,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said in an emailed statement. “Those responsible must be held accountable and safety and security for Jews and Palestinians alike must prevail.”
The Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee both cited Herzog’s statement, and declared, respectively, their “outrage” and condemnation of “this violence in the strongest terms.”
The AJC declined further comment, and the ADL, asked to elaborate on its statement, condemned lawmakers who incite violence, while avoiding mentioning the fact that they are members of Israel’s governing coalition.
“There is also no excuse for the incitement to violence we heard from a few political leaders, including some Israeli Knesset Members,” a spokesman said in an email. “We join Israeli President Herzog’s call for a de-escalation of violence, and urge Israeli law enforcement to ensure that those involved in the Huwara violence are held accountable.”
Asked for a statement, William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, did not mention the government or Netanyahu. “I condemn without reservation the riots and violence in Hawara,” he said in an interview. “There is no excuse for lawless vigilantism.”
In a statement later, Daroff suggested that if Israeli politicians fail to condemn the settler violence, there could be consequences for the relationship with Jews overseas.
“These criminal acts of violence and vandalism harm Jewish sovereignty and Israel’s relationship with the global Jewish diaspora,” he said. “We urge Knesset members to speak out against these attacks while pursuing a peaceful resolution.”
The Jewish organizations approached for this story did not reply when asked what they planned to do if Netanyahu fails to take action. A number of regional Jewish organizations and rabbis have previously called for boycotts of far-right coalition members if and when they tour the United States.
Israeli authorities arrested a number of the rioters, and then let them go. No plans for prosecution have been reported yet.
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly stood out for extending its condolences to both Jewish and Arab victims of violence on Sunday — an equivalence that is extremely rare in Jewish groups’ statements. The group’s message, written in English and Hebrew, mentions both the family of the two Israelis who were shot while driving through Huwara, and the family of the Palestinian who reportedly was shot dead while pleading with settlers to leave his village alone.
“We are in pain and join the condolences to the families of those killed, among them the Yaniv family and the Al-Aqtash family and wish a speedy and full recovery to all who were injured,” the group said, referring to the Israeli and Palestinian victims, respectively. “We expect our government, the IDF, and the police, to act to prevent harm to people and to property, and to try any person who has chosen to harm another person.”
Americans for Peace Now and J Street both called on the Biden administration to use its leverage to get Netanyahu to take action.
“Netanyahu’s extremist coalition is demonstrating that it will not be stopped by polite protestations or vague agreements,” J Street said. “Only by setting clear redlines and tangible consequences can the US hope to deter this government.”
Americans for Peace Now similarly called on Biden to “hold the government of Israel accountable for both its unrestrained settlement activity and its enabling of settler violence,” while the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah said the Israeli government “has fueled the incitement that led to this attack.”
The Israel Policy Forum, a group that backs a two-state outcome, decried the lack of accountability for the rioters for the attacks on the Hawara residents. “Their only crimes were being Palestinians living in proximity to a spot where a different Palestinian committed a terrorist attack, and the settlers who rampaged through their homes and streets unimpeded, without any real consequences, represent the daily injustice that Palestinians face as non-citizens on their land with no recourse to any responsible higher authority,” it said in a statement.
Some organizations praised Netanyahu’s government for speaking out against the riot. The Jewish Federations of North America commended “the Government of Israel for speaking out quickly to lower tensions.” And the American Israel Public Affairs Committee appeared to tie the settlers’ vigilantism to Palestinian terrorism.
“As Israel’s Prime Minister and President clearly indicated, vigilante action cannot be tolerated,” its spokesman said. “Terrorism will not decline as long as the Palestinian leadership continues incitement, rewards terrorism with payments to terrorists and their families, and encourages the public celebration of Israeli fatalities.”
At least one organizational leader echoed the sentiments of Israeli officials who sympathized with the rioters. Morton Klein, CEO of the Zionist Organization of America, said in an interview that he condemned the rioters, but also understood what drove them.
“I don’t believe that civilians should be taking the law into their own hands,” he said. “I oppose civilians taking on their own hands, that’s for sure, but you know, after constant murder of people, you know, people lose control.”
Klein said Israel needed to “put enormous pressure in every way you can” on Palestinians in order to quell violence in the West Bank. Asked whether Israel also deserved pressure to bring the settler rioters to justice, Klein said that was not a concern of his.
“Arabs care more about Arabs than they do about non-Arabs and Jews care more about Jews than they do about non-Jews,” said Klein, who met in person with Ben-Gvir last week in Israel. “It’s a natural human trait.”
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The post As Orthodox Union and other Jewish groups condemn settler rampage, many avoid mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Illinois voters pass proposals objecting to state anti-BDS law
(JTA) — Voters in eight municipalities in Illinois approved ballot measures last week registering formal objections to the state’s law barring state pension investments in companies that boycott Israel.
The ballot measures will have no effect on state policy. But pro-Palestinian groups are celebrating the wins as demonstrations of shifting public opinion against the law, first signed in 2015 to oppose the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
The village of Oak Park and the townships of Champaign, Cunningham, DuPage, Kickapoo, Medina, Normal and Peoria all approved similarly worded ballot measures that urge the state to repeal its anti-BDS law or support specific state legislation that would do so. According to unofficial tallies, 65% of voters in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb whose local Jewish population mounted a sustained objection to the referendum, approved the measure there.
Jewish groups including the Jewish United Fund, Chicago’s federation arm, had campaigned against the ballot measure. The Illinois law, championed by JUF when it was first passed, was the first of what has become dozens of state anti-BDS laws in the country. First Amendment groups have challenged the laws.
“We would have much preferred a victory,” Dan Goldwin, chief public affairs officer for JUF, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Monday. Yet Goldwin pointed out that Oak Park voters had approved the measure by smaller margins than their votes for top Democratic candidates including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
“Once people began to be exposed to the meaning of what the referendum was about, they moved against it. We just didn’t have enough time,” he said.
Some members of the Oak Park opposition had engaged in a drawn-out fight over the eligibility of the signatures the ballot measure activists had gathered. That time, Goldwin theorized, “was probably time better spent convincing people to vote against it.”
Separately, voters in Bloomington Township approved a measure stating that the federal government should “ban the transfer of weapons to any country that is a dictatorship, apartheid state or major violator of human rights.” The ballot language did not mention Israel, but pro-Palestinian activists have long maintained that Israel commits apartheid and that the U.S. should halt weapons sales to the country.
Local Jewish figures have said the campaign troubled them.
“It felt like it was a local chapter of a global movement to destroy the world’s only Jewish state, and I felt it personally and acutely,” Rabbi Adir Glick of Conservative Temple Har Zion in River Forest, which borders Oak Park, told the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest about the campaign. “I know people who lost friendships in the last few months, and difficult moments with neighbors and colleagues, but it also galvanized our Jewish community.”
Goldwin said the measures’ passage wouldn’t change JUF’s own strategy opposing the repeal of the anti-BDS law at the state level. He noted that ballot measure activists, with the exception of Oak Park, largely didn’t target municipalities with large Jewish communities. In his view, those seeking the repeal of the law “are still a significant minority.”
The BDS movement had a more significant policy victory on election night with the passage of a binding ballot referendum in Providence, Rhode Island, to divest that city from “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.” Proponents and opponents of the measure alike have said they believe the language and parameters of the question will include Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Illinois voters pass proposals objecting to state anti-BDS law appeared first on The Forward.
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Blinken, Pompeo: Strong U.S.-Israel ties, assistance to continue despite Trump call to end aid
(JTA) — Former secretaries of state Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo both downplayed the potential end of American military aid to Israel on Sunday, insisting such a development would not harm U.S.-Israel ties during a joint appearance in Washington.
Speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly, both men also defended Israel’s security and its need to defend itself in the wake of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, condemning voices who try to equate Israel’s actions with those of Hamas and accuse it of committing genocide.
But Blinken, who was secretary of state in the Biden administration at the time, also didn’t spare Jerusalem from criticism over its conduct of the war.
Following Oct. 7, “the Israelis did, for the most part, the bare minimum of what they felt they needed to do for people who were stuck in the middle of this crossfire in Gaza,” he said. “There was a certain amount of disregard, a certain amount of disdain for the well-being of the Palestinian civilians.”
He added that “that is vastly different, vastly different from an intent to do them harm, from an intent to eliminate them. The target was Hamas, and horrifically, too many people were caught in the middle of that and suffered terribly as a consequence.”
Still, he said, it is important to “recognize that we’re at an inflection point” when it comes to American attitudes toward Israel. Blinken recalled discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the Gaza war was raging in which he warned that Israel was “not only losing the Democratic Party — and that may be fine from your perspective — you’re going to be losing young Republicans, young evangelicals.”
On Election Day last week, following campaigns in which many candidates called for reducing support for Israel, President Donald Trump declared that the money “gets cut off at the end of the year.”
Pompeo, who served as CIA director and secretary of state during the first Trump administration, said that while he did not “know exactly how this administration will follow through on that,” there had been conversations between Jerusalem and Washington “about what’s the appropriate level of assistance and what [is] the right model” for cooperation.
Calls to change the nature of U.S. military aid have become “bipartisan,” he noted.
Stating that he is “very optimistic,” the former Republican congressman asserted that “whether we provide the $4 billion a year — which … mostly goes to buy U.S. weapons systems from Lockheed and Raytheon and big defense contractors — is much less material than the nature of the relationship between the United States and Israel.”
“And so whether we provide that particular money, there will still be deep connectivity. There’ll still be lots of assistance, and there will be a partnership that is historically important, not just for Israel, but for the United States of America as well … we couldn’t do the intelligence work we need to do without them.”
“They save American lives all the time,” he continued. “I still have a death threat on me from the Iranians. The Israeli intelligence has been very helpful at making sure that I’m where I need to be and I’m not where I ought not be.”
Israel’s 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the United States, which currently pledges Israel $3.8 billion annually for the fiscal years 2019-2028 subject to congressional appropriations, has proven a political liability for Trump. Last week he questioned why his administration should have to deal with criticism from Democrats over the issue. Following the GOP’s loss in the midterms, Vice President JD Vance explicitly called to put America first and “change our relationship to Israel.”
Blinken responded similarly to his Republican counterpart on the question of U.S. aid to Israel.
“I think you’re seeing a recognition on the part of the Israeli government that this thing is not going to last forever, and an attempt to make it clear in the body politic in Israel that, no, we can pay for our own stuff. We don’t need the kind of assistance that we’re getting from the United States in terms of paying for what we’re acquiring,” Blinken stated, adding that “it doesn’t change anything … about the inherent value of the relationship and the partnership.”
But while Pompeo and Blinken appeared largely on the same page regarding military aid to Israel, the two differed significantly regarding the conflict with Iran and a future resolution to the long-running conflict with the Palestinians.
Asked how to negotiate a settlement with Iran, Pompeo replied that “I just I simply don’t think that it’s possible with the regime” even as he admitted the United States cannot currently curtail Iran’s ambitions through military means.
Pompeo called to “continue to apply pressure there” through the current economic blockade and by “going after further assets inside of Iran” because “they still have the capability to muck up the Gulf region and to threaten Israel [while] we have the capacity to, if not eliminate it, mitigate that materially.”
As for offering concessions to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and maintain the flow of oil, Pompeo insisted that “we should never give the Iranians a damn thing.”
Blinken, on the other hand, stated that Trump needs to acknowledge that the war against Tehran “might not be a loss” but it “wasn’t a real win.”
But while concessions, possibly including sanctions relief, may be needed to bring the Iranians back to the table, “I think what you have to do is exert sustained, systematic pressure on them economically … for purposes of getting to negotiate,” he added.
The lesson learned from the 2015 Iran deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Blinken said, is that it can take time to get Iran to the point where it is ready to negotiate.
Blinken added, “Same thing with the Iran-Iraq war. There wasn’t a capitulation. There was a negotiation. I think at this point that’s in our interest.”
Turning to the Palestinian issue, Blinken argued that part of why Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 was to preempt the further expansion of the Abraham Accords and that “for that vision to be fully realized, it requires a resolution of the Palestinian question.”
“I believe to the bottom of my heart, as I have throughout, that the only way forward, and again, this is very unpopular these days, is through a secure Israel and a sovereign Palestine,” Blinken said.
He drew pushback from Pompeo, who argued that “one of the keys to success of the Abraham Accords was not letting the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis get in the way of what the Gulf Arab states actually know needs to happen.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Blinken, Pompeo: Strong U.S.-Israel ties, assistance to continue despite Trump call to end aid appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal?
Sap Sua, a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, was one of Emily Lanigan’s favorite restaurants. She even celebrated her 44th birthday there in June. So Lanigan was stunned when the restaurant posted this since-deleted message on Instagram in September: “Jews are welcome, Zionists are not.”
Lanigan, a former synagogue president, identifies as a Zionist, which she defines as the Jewish right of self-determination. Was she really no longer welcome at the place where she had received a complimentary dessert just months before?
She wondered if the restaurant had a different definition of Zionism, she said, and thought maybe reaching out and offering to have an in-person discussion could clear things up.
“Being a Zionist does not mean I do not also believe in the freedom and autonomy of Palestinians,” Lanigan said she commented on Instagram. “You and I are not so far apart.”
But Sap Sua’s owner, Anthony “Ni” Nguyen, doubled down: “As you clearly saw, the full statement was ‘Jews are welcome. Zionists are not.’ Jews are a protected class, and all Jews are welcome,” Nguyen wrote in messages to Lanigan reviewed by the Forward. “Zionism is a political ideology, like Nazism.”
Nguyen’s response to Lanigan implied the law was on his side. He could ban “Zionists,” it seemed, so long as he let in Jews who shared his views about Israel.
Legally speaking, Nguyen was partially correct. Neither federal civil rights law nor Colorado law prohibits businesses from refusing service based on customers’ political beliefs — meaning turning someone away based solely on their political support for Israel could be allowed.
But the line gets murkier when “Zionist” is used as a stand-in for Jewish or Israeli identity, which can violate laws prohibiting discrimination based on religion or national origin.
The distinction matters not only for Sap Sua, as spaces from coffee shops to book festivals to concert venues make disavowing Israel a condition of entry or participation. The troubling practice raises a thorny question: How should the law distinguish between excluding someone because of their political beliefs and excluding them because of who they are?
The right to exclude?
Sap Sua was not the first business to declare itself off-limits to Zionists with no legal consequences. In Utah, after a bar called Weathered Waves declared “no Zionists allowed” in 2024, the attorney general found no evidence of legal wrongdoing. (Weathered Waves later closed over a dispute with its landlord.)
But that doesn’t mean “Zionist” bans are always legal. According to Richard Katskee, a professor of law at Duke University with expertise in public accommodation law, the legality depends on how the ban is enforced.
Does the business ask only Jewish or Israeli customers to disclose their views? Does it make assumptions about the politics of customers wearing kippahs? If Jewish customers are being singled out, Katskee said, that would make a finding of illegal discrimination more likely.
Omer Wiczyk, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, told the Forward that two cases he’s currently litigating cross that line. At a coffee shop in Oakland, California, a customer wearing a Star of David baseball cap was asked on video if he was a Zionist and told to leave. At an eyebrow salon in Northern Virginia, a customer was kicked out after disclosing she was Israeli-American.
Businesses “cannot turn a customer’s identity into objectionable politics, and then invoke that to justify their exclusion,” Wiczyk told the Forward. “Being Israeli is not a political issue. Being a Jew is not a political issue. It’s who you are.”
But if a business required every customer, regardless of their identity, to affirm a particular political position on Israel before receiving service, that could be legal, Katskee said — though enforcing such a policy fairly would inevitably prove difficult in practice.
“It might be legal, like putting up a sign saying ‘Republicans only’ or ‘Democrats only,’” Katskee said.
Jenin Younes, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, argues that businesses have some latitude to refuse service based on customers’ politics. The ADC is currently making that case on behalf of Poetica Coffee, which is fighting a Department of Justice investigation into its decision to publicly bar Rep. Dan Goldman over his support for Israel.
In Goldman’s case, Younes said, his public profile and easily searchable voting record help support the idea that the coffee shop targeted him for his political views.
“It’s harder to make the argument that ‘No, this was really about just not letting Jewish people in’ — because he’s a public figure,” Younes said. “He’s said what he thinks on these issues.”
Even Goldman himself said that the coffee shop incident did not warrant a civil rights investigation because of his status as a public figure.
Younes argues that the same principle applies to situations unrelated to Israel and Zionism.
In 2018, for example, the owner of a Virginia restaurant kicked out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders citing the Trump administration’s “inhumane and unethical” policies. The restaurant faced social backlash, but no legal consequences.
And last year, a Martha’s Vineyard farmers’ market stand refused to sell lawyer Alan Dershowitz pierogi, citing his legal defense of Jeffrey Epstein and other men accused of sexual assault. Dershowitz threatened legal action, but it appears he never actually filed suit.
“In my opinion, businesses should have the right to exclude people whose views it doesn’t like,” Younes said. “And by the way, I would apply this in the other context: If there’s a pro-Israel coffee shop owner and they wanted to say, ‘We don’t want anyone wearing a pro-Palestine pin in here,’ I think they have that right.”
The law’s limits
Whether businesses have the legal right to exclude certain customers is a different question than whether they should.
Such bans can end up holding ordinary Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government — with the misguided idea that denying them a meal or a cup of coffee will somehow advance the Palestinian cause.
And since “Zionist” means different things to different people, using the label as a litmus test will almost inevitably lead to erroneous assumptions about peoples’ views.
In cases where the law is not a remedy, the free market may be. Businesses that turn away “Zionists” must be so committed to their beliefs that they are willing to refuse a paying customer, risking boycotts and reputational damage.
At the same time, some businesses may believe the publicity will draw in new clientele. Karimi Brows, which turned away the Israeli-American customer, boasted that it gained 40,000 TikTok followers in the month after the incident.
For its part, Sap Sua appeared to backtrack amid intense public pressure, posting to Instagram that it would welcome “every guest who walks through our doors.” (Sap Sua did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.)
But for Lanigan, the damage was done.
“It was one of my favorite restaurants,” Lanigan told the Forward. “But I will never set foot in that place again.”
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