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At the BBYO International Convention, Jewish teens demand a seat at the table
(JTA) — Standing before thousands of teens packed into the BBYO International Convention Saturday night in Philadelphia, Leo Coen and Raquel Rogoff unveiled the culmination of days of collaboration with their peers: a resolution meant to shape not just the next year of Jewish advocacy, but who gets to define it.
“People often say that we are the future of the Jewish people, but BBYO has never waited its turn,” said Coen as his voice echoed through the cavernous event hall. “This resolution claims our seat at the table, and through our ideas, our work and our commitment to leading with purpose.”
Tucked away in conference rooms around downtown Philadelphia throughout the week, Coen and Rogoff deliberated with over three dozen teens from more than 15 countries to draft the 2026 Jewish Youth Assembly (JYA) Resolution, an initiative of the World Jewish Congress.
“Our voices will be heard, our ideas will inform policy and our generation will help guide the Jewish future,” said Rogoff, 16, of Cape Town, South Africa. “We stand together, confident, committed and ready. We are not the future of the Jewish people, we are its present, and together, we are forever resilient.”
Amid chanting crowds, buzzing hallways and closed-door deliberations that stretched on for days, BBYO’s Jewish teens were asserting more than enthusiasm. They were pressing for influence, calling on Jewish leaders to take seriously the forces shaping their daily lives — the normalization of online antisemitism, political polarization and a quiet but persistent mental health strain — and to let their realities guide communal priorities. More than slogans, they were asking for a role in shaping the decisions that define Jewish life.
The resolution, which will be sent off to the WJC’s network of global Jewish leaders, featured a litany of recommendations, ranging from improving interfaith dialogue to calling for increased moderation on social media.
“Our communities are navigating rising antisemitism, social division, mental health challenges, and an online environment where misinformation spreads faster than truth,” the opening paragraph of the resolution read. “We reject a future in which Jewish identity fades through assimilation, is misunderstood by others, or is defined solely through crisis.”
The resolution also included seven recommendations on countering antisemitism and misinformation on social media and artificial intelligence platforms.
This year, the teens were presented with the topic “Strengthening Jewish Resilience in a Time of Global Uncertainty,” but many came into the exercise with their own priorities already front of mind.
Going into the week, which drew roughly 3,400 Jewish teens from 52 countries within BBYO’s network, Coen, a 16-year-old BBYO delegate from London, said that he wanted to discuss the “issue of Jews trusting the extremist right-wing.”
“I think the Jews just back figures that support their values, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but I think Jews are blindly following people, especially in Europe right now, who just say that they like Israel,” said Coen, who attends the prestigious Jewish school JFS in London.
Jesse Vaytsman, 16, from Cleveland, Ohio, said that he came into the week with JYA most concerned about “polarization” and a lack of unity within the Jewish community.
“There are instances where we see people criticize something that we care about, you know, Israel, and then we decide that, okay, they don’t care about Israel, they’re not Jewish,” said Vaytsman, who is the teen president of Ohio for Israel. “We’re struggling to see the idea that we’re not all so different.”
While the teens were given autonomy to insert their ideas into the resolution, representatives from the WJC also offered their own input into the draft.
During the teens’ deliberations on Thursday, Yfat Barak-Cheney, the WJC’s director of technology and human rights, vetoed the teen’s suggestion to recommend “community notes” on social media platforms, a new feature she said had been “a disaster.” Barak-Cheney also advised that the teens not use the word “demand” on resolution prompts that make requests of outside groups.
Michal Yeshurun, the digital advocacy and NextGen communication manager for the WJC, said the WJC representatives had tried to “steer the ship,” but that the final say on the resolution’s contents were on the teens.
BBYO, originally the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, is an expansive, pluralistic Jewish teen movement that reaches roughly 70,000 Jewish teens across 750 communities in 65 countries. It is likely the largest Jewish youth movement not affiliated with one of the Jewish denominations.
At last week’s convention, a flagship BBYO event dubbed “the IC,” the teens’ feverish energy was palpable across a packed slate of programming and panels. Ahead of the opening ceremony, where teens later rushed the barrier for a performance by the cast of “Hamilton,” they ran through the convention center’s hall chanting and wearing costumes representing their regions.
But amid the sea of teens mingling throughout the Marriott, the resolution was not the only way young people at the conference sought to assert influence over the direction of Jewish life.
As their peers shuttled between programming and chatted in corners of the sprawling Marriott, the international co-presidents of BBYO, Mercedes Benzaquen, 18, and Logan Reich, 19, were meeting with Jewish institutions to offer a proposition: invite teens into their boardrooms.
The initiative, titled “Seat for the Future,” calls on national Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America, to install teens on their boards.
Thus far, Reich and Benzaquen, who themselves have served on BBYO’s board of directors, said there had been no official commitments to their offer.
“We deserve a seat at the table, because we know that we’re bringing something unique, and we are bringing a voice of a generation that is currently not heard all the time in these spaces,” said Reich, of Asheville, North Carolina.
Reich and Benzaquen, who have spent the past year visiting over 150 BBYO chapters around the world, said that they had seen a “disconnect” between Jewish organizations and what Jewish youth are looking for from leadership. For Reich, the inclusion of Jewish youth within larger organizations had often felt “tokenized.”
“There’s usually not a youth voice or a teen voice, but it’s more people trying to imagine what they want, and so there is this disconnect, because sometimes it feels like it’s two separate things,” said Benzaquen, of Barcelona, Spain.
Perhaps the most recent example of that disconnect on display was the Blue Square Alliance’s Super Bowl ad last week, which drew widespread criticism for its portrayal of antisemitism faced by Jewish teens today.
While Reich said he did not hear much discussion about the ad during the conference, the topic of antisemitism and efforts to combat it loomed large over the convention.
“I know this is a moment sometimes that can feel dark. Understand, you are not victims. You are the ones with the power to make a change in your community,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at the convention’s opening ceremony.
During his travels over the past year, Reich said that the proliferation of antisemitism on social media had been a frequent topic of discussion.
“I remember when the Myron Gaines and Nick Fuentes stuff blew up when they went to that club, and that was shared, that’s very present in my mind,” said Reich, referring to a video of right-wing influencers singing Ye’s song “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub last month.
Reich said that, while it is often difficult to bear witness to the antisemitic rhetoric online, he said his peers “also feel a responsibility as teen leaders to know what is happening.”
“Kanye West has more Instagram followers than there are Jews in the world,” said Reich. “It’s not a thing that we will change. None of us will, alone, have that reach or influence on a global scale. We also live day to day as proud Jews, and we know that if we continue to be educated and understanding of what the world’s sentiments are, then we can continue to shape and build bridges despite that.”
Rogoff said that she had come into the JYA deliberations hoping to focus on countering the spread of antisemitism on social media, a trend she said had been pervasive in her own experience on platforms.
“It’s very, very common, whether it’s adverts or a trend that’s starting to just be antisemitic or something, I think it’s very common, and it shows up a lot, which is obviously not great,” said Rogoff.
During Friday’s deliberations, the teens told Barak-Cheney that the platforms where they had encountered the most antisemitism were TikTok and Instagram, with many lamenting the prevalence of antisemitic comments on Jewish or Israel-related posts.
“I feel like something that has been happening is Nazi ideologies, like, coming back, and it’s being endorsed by public people like Kanye West and celebrities,” said JYA delegate Amy Hornstein, 17, of Buenos Aires, Argentina. “On social media it’s become a normal thing, and it shouldn’t be.”
Sophia Gleizer, a 17-year-old JYA delegate from Buenos Aires, said that she had been most concerned about addressing a mental health crisis she observed within the Jewish community, one she attributed to a growing sense of isolation.
“We definitely see a decline in trust, we just shutter ourselves more, we’re more reserved,” said Gleizer. “We don’t go to community events as much, and that can definitely take a hit, because when you’re not within your community, we tend to just close ourselves in our own minds.”
Gleizer said that she hoped Jewish leaders would take from the resolution a renewed urgency to start “engaging more active events” to renew connectivity within the Jewish community.
“Fighting antisemitism is definitely the biggest part of it all, but at the same time, it’s just like I mentioned, it’s culture, it’s us liberating ourselves and choosing the world that we want to live with,” said Gleizer.
The BBYO International Convention came amid a wider debate within the Jewish community over whether to invest in efforts to combat antisemitism or focus on strengthening Jewish life.
Earlier this month, Bret Stephens, the right-leaning Jewish New York Times columnist, argued during his 92NY’s annual “The State of World Jewry” speech that funds allocated to groups like the Anti-Defamation League should instead go towards bolstering Jewish education and communal infrastructure.
The convention’s opening ceremony on Thursday night also featured an address from Dan Senor, a columnist and host of the podcast “Call Me Back,” who echoed arguments from his own “State of World Jewry” speech last year that rising antisemitism had created the opportunity for a “Jewish renaissance.” Like Stephens, he urged more investment in Jewish education and identity-building.
“I speak a lot about why we should be focused on the fight against those who discriminate against us and harass us and even do violence against us, but that should never come at the cost of building a robust, strong Jewish identity, and you all embody that,” Senor told the crowd. “You are unapologetic, you are together in terms of a community, you are engaged in Jewish life, and you really give us hope and a real sense of vision of what a renaissance of Jewish life and Diaspora could be.”
For Matt Grossman, the CEO of BBYO, the conversation about where best to focus Jewish communal efforts had been exclusive to the adult realm.
“There’s been a lot of Jewish leaders who’ve been talking about those things, and there’s absolutely zero Jewish teens talking about those things,” said Grossman. “I don’t think they look at it as binary. I don’t think, you know, it’s antisemitism or joy, or the way to fight antisemitism is this or that, I think they look at it as how do they live full lives in the world they live in? How do they use their Jewish faith to inspire change, to build community?”
For Reich, the question was not what initiative to focus on, but who was taking part in the conversation.
“There’s so many things going on in the Jewish community, either things that are happening against us or things that we’re building for us, and if there’s one constant theme in all of that, it’s that we want a seat at the table in building these decisions and continuing to shape what Jewish life looks like,” said Reich.
The post At the BBYO International Convention, Jewish teens demand a seat at the table appeared first on The Forward.
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‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded
One week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom caused a stir by using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel, Jewish leaders in the state and beyond — have tried in vain to get him to walk back his statement.
Those seeking answers include allies of the term-limited governor, a likely presidential candidate, who have defended his record and even the comment itself.
Newsom said March 3 on a podcast that Israel had been talked about “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” and suggested that a time may come when the U.S. should reconsider its military aid to Israel.
Some Jewish leaders have said the apartheid comment had been taken out of context, and representatives of Jewish groups who met with the governor’s staff following Newsom’s remark called the conversation constructive. But Newsom has not backtracked in public appearances since then, leaving those leaders split on whether a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination — long seen as a champion of Jewish causes — is plotting a new course on the national stage.
Newsom’s clarification two days later — noting that he was referencing a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times about the direction Israel was headed — offered them little succor.
“It’s out of step,” said David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish California, a group that represents more than 30 Jewish community organizations in the state. “This isn’t the Governor Newsom that we know.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
‘Sort of an apartheid state’
Newsom made the remark in a live taping of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. The duo, who are among the Democratic mainstream’s most vocal Israel critics, asked Newsom whether he thought the time had come to reevaluate American military support for the country.
In an extended response, Newsom brought up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting, because he’s got his own domestic issues,” Newsom said. “He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West—the West Bank. I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately as a sort of an apartheid state.”
As to whether the United States should consider rethinking military support for Israel down the road, Newsom replied, “I don’t think you have a choice but that consideration.”
Newsom’s use of the term and apparent willingness to break from pro-Israel orthodoxy sent heads spinning. Jewish Insider described the interview as a “hard left” shift. A column in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles assailed Newsom for “finger in the wind politics.” And secular outlets like Politico and The Guardian reported that Newsom had likened Israel to an apartheid state.
Even organizations that have historically enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Newsom publicly condemned the remarks. Jewish California, whose member groups include the state’s local Jewish federations, took to Instagram to call them “inflammatory.”
Newsom said in a subsequent live appearance March 5 that he was referencing Friedman’s recent assertion that Israel annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal rights would create an apartheid system.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week, where Tom used that word, ‘apartheid,’ as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” he said. “I’m very angry with what he is doing.”
The clarification wasn’t strong enough for the Jewish California coalition. Bocarsly told The Jewish News of Northern California last week the groups hoped to see a definitive public statement from the governor that he continues to support funding for Israel’s defense and that he “doesn’t believe that a thriving, pluralistic and democratic society, as it is in its current state, is an apartheid state.”
Tye Gregory, chief executive of the JCRC Bay Area — a Jewish California member group — added to the outlet that “we need to hear directly from the governor.”
The coalition left its conversation with Newsom officials believing such a statement was forthcoming, but Bocarsly said his optimism was fading.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped,” Bocarsly said. “And we’re still waiting.”
A loaded word
Some international and Israeli human rights organizations say Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians in the territory already constitutes apartheid.
The term was originally used to describe the system of institutionalized segregation in South Africa that granted the minority white population official higher status, denied nonwhites the right to vote and enforced a range of other forms of economic, political and social domination. Those applying the apartheid term to Israel point to the Israeli citizenship, voting rights, freedom of movement and legal protections granted in the West Bank to Israeli residents but not Palestinians in the territory.
But many Jews say that any charge of apartheid — whether referring to the present or a hypothetical future — oversimplifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is used as a cudgel to delegitimize the Jewish state, where within its boundaries Israeli Arabs can vote and travel freely.
Israel annexing the West Bank — a stated goal of far-right ministers in the Netanyahu coalition like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — would replace the premise of Palestinian sovereignty in the territory, which is officially governed by the Palestinian Authority, and enshrine the two-tier system. Such a step, Friedman wrote in a Feb. 17 column, would amount to apartheid.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped. And we’re still waiting.”
David BocarslyExecutive Director, Jewish California
Bocarsly believed that Newsom’s reference to apartheid had been misinterpreted — even after the governor clarified his views — as describing Israel today, rather than a future scenario.
Nevertheless, he said, by invoking the term “apartheid” at all the governor had played into an effort among Israel’s detractors to make use of terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” to describe the Jewish state’s actions a litmus test for elected leaders.
Only a month earlier, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener — then the co-chair of California Legislative Jewish Caucus — called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, after first declining to during a congressional candidate debate and getting jeers in response.
“For someone as close to our community as Gavin Newsom is, I think it was disappointing and painful for a lot of people to see that he was falling into this test,” Bocarsly said. “We want to know that when it comes down to it, that he is willing to avoid criticizing Israel in that way.”
Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Newsom’s initial comments had been taken out of context, and she was satisfied with his later clarification. Instead, she objected more to Newsom’s suggestion that the U.S. might eventually withhold military aid to Israel. The JDCA rejects withholding or conditioning such aid in its platform.
Still, while the “apartheid” phrase got the most attention, Soifer suggested it was just as revealing when — in the same podcast appearance — Newsom had described Israel’s rightward turn under Netanyahu as “heartbreaking.”
“It’s indicating his emotions are actually in this but also disagreement with the policies of the current Israeli government,” Soifer said. “And that is a view that polling has consistently shown is held by the vast majority of American Jewish voters.”
But she acknowledged that further backtracking would help, noting that she had listened to the section of the podcast multiple times to get a clear idea of his intent.
“I don’t think the average person is doing that,” Soifer said in an interview, “and he shouldn’t assume that either.”
The governor you know
The comments seemed to break with Newsom’s track record of verbal and legislative support for Jewish life both in the state and in Israel.
During his seven years in the governor’s office, he has funded the largest nonprofit security grant program in the nation, signed a landmark bill aimed at addressing antisemitism in public education and poured some $50 million into Holocaust survivor assistance programs. He also visited Israel to meet with Oct. 7 survivors less than two weeks after the attacks.
That made Newsom’s failure to hedge in a more fulsome way all the more confounding for his Jewish allies.
Gregg Solkovits, president of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, a Democratic party club, thought the governor had been intentionally vague — and was intentionally waiting out the Jewish criticism — to “protect his left flank” as a future presidential candidate.
“He knows that in the upcoming election, there will be Bernie-supportive candidates who are going to be running for the nomination, and he will be attacked for being too pro-Israel, which he has been consistently,” Solkovits said. “Would I wish that he had not taken that approach entirely? Of course. I also understand he’s running for president.”
Soifer offered that Newsom might just be waiting for the right opportunity.
“He doesn’t actually legislate on this particular issue, so perhaps he feels he doesn’t need to clarify,” she said. “But I think it would be helpful for him to clarify that, especially if he’s seeking an opportunity at some point in the future to weigh in on such decisions.”
The post ‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded appeared first on The Forward.
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.
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Belgium’s Jewish Community Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism After Liège Synagogue Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Just days after a synagogue in Liège, Belgium was struck in an apparent antisemitic bombing, the local Jewish community is sounding the alarm over a surge in hostility and targeted violence against Jews across the country.
In an interview with the local news outlet La Première on Tuesday, the president of the Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), Yves Oschinsky, called on government authorities to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish sites and institutions if police protection proves insufficient.
Following the attack on a synagogue in Liège, a city in the country’s eastern region, early Monday morning, Oschinsky warned that the Jewish community faces a far greater threat than authorities publicly acknowledge, emphasizing that Jewish institutions remain at heightened risk.
He also slammed the government for failing to appoint a national coordinator to fight antisemitism, while urging political parties and officials to take urgent, concrete action to protect the Jewish community.
Like most countries across the Western world, Belgium has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Belgian Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism and Discrimination (Unia), which tracks antisemitism nationwide, 192 reports of antisemitism and Holocaust denial were filed in 2025, following a record 270 cases in 2024 — marking two consecutive years well previous years.
Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, only 31 antisemitic cases had been reported in Belgium in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Brussels-based Jonathas Institute released a new report warning that antisemitic prejudices remain widespread and deeply entrenched in Belgium.
“The results are clear: the study highlights that the population of Brussels continues to hold many antisemitic stereotypes ‘inherited from the past’ of a religious or political nature,” the institute said in a statement.
The newly released report found that 40 percent of respondents in Brussels agreed with the claim that Jews control the financial and banking sectors, while one in four blamed Jews for various economic crises.
According to the study, these stereotypes are “sometimes expressed as obvious truths” without overt hostility, a pattern the report warns makes them especially prone to being trivialized, particularly online.
More than one in five Belgians believe Jews are “not Belgians like the others,” while 21 percent label Jews an “unassimilable race.”
“The attack on the synagogue in Liège confirms that it is no longer just antisemitic speech that has been unleashed, but antisemitic acts as well. This aggressive antisemitism continues to rise,” the institute said.
The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents believe Jews form a “close-knit or closed community.”
In relation to the war in Gaza, 39 percent of Belgians claim that “Jews are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.” This view is particularly common among 18- to 35-year-olds, who are more likely to compare Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis.
Within far-right circles, 69 percent believe Jews exploit the Holocaust, while 72 percent say Jews use antisemitism for their own interests.
Based on these findings, the Jonathas Institute urged authorities and policymakers to strengthen historical education, improve digital literacy, and remain vigilant against narratives that normalize or justify hostility toward Jews, warning that such discourse can ultimately spark real-world violence.
The institute also calls for formalizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, aiming to better distinguish “legitimate criticism of Israel” from “forms of anti-Zionism that revive antisemitic patterns.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.