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Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’: The best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term
(JTA) — My synagogue sent out a cautiously anxious email yesterday about an event coming this Shabbat, a neo-Nazi “Day of Hate.” The email triggered fuzzy memories of one of the strangest episodes that I can remember from my childhood.
Sometime around 1990, in response to local neo-Nazi activity, some Jews from my community decided to “fight back.” I don’t know whether they were members of the militant Jewish Defense League, or perhaps just sympathetic to a JDL-style approach. When our local Jewish newspaper covered the story, it ran on its front cover a full-page photo of a kid from my Orthodox Jewish high school. The photo showed a teenage boy from behind, wearing a kippah and carrying a baseball bat that was leaning threateningly on his shoulder.
As it happens, “Danny” was not a member of the JDL, he was a kid on his way to play baseball. Sometimes, a baseball bat is just a baseball bat. But not for us anxious Jews in America: We want to see ourselves as protagonists taking control of our destiny, responding to antisemites with agency, with power, with a plan. I’m sorry to say that as I look around our community today, it seems to me that we have agency, and we have power — but we certainly don’t seem to have a plan.
The tactics that the American Jewish community uses to fight back against antisemitism are often ineffective on their own and do not constitute a meaningful strategy in the composite. One is that American Jews join in a partisan chorus that erodes our politics and fixates on the antisemitism in the party they don’t vote for. This exacerbates the partisan divide, which weakens democratic culture, and turns the weaponizing of antisemitism into merely a partisan electoral tactic for both sides.
Another tactic comes from a wide set of organizations who have declared themselves the referees on the subject and take to Twitter to name and shame antisemites. This seems to amplify and popularize antisemitism more than it does to suppress it.
A third common tactic is to pour more and more dollars into protecting our institutions with robust security measures, which no one thinks will defeat antisemitism, but at least seeks to protect those inside those institutions from violence, though it does little to protect Jews down the street. Richer Jewish institutions will be safer than poorer ones, but Jews will continue to suffer either way.
A fourth tactic our communal organizations use to fight antisemitism is to try to exact apologies or even fines from antisemites to get them to retract their beliefs and get in line, as the Anti-Defamation League did with Kyrie Irving, an approach that Yair Rosenberg has wisely argued is a no-win proposition. Yet another tactic is the insistence by some that the best way to fight antisemitism is to be proud Jews, which has the perverse effect of making our commitment to Jewishness dependent on antisemitism as a motivator.
And finally, the most perverse tactic is that some on both the right and the left fight antisemitism by attacking the ADL itself. Since it is so hard to defeat our opponents, we have started beating up on those that are trying to protect us. What could go wrong?
Steadily, like a drumbeat, these tactics fail, demonstrating themselves to be not a strategy at all, and the statistics continue to show a rise in antisemitism.
Perhaps we are too fixated on the idea that antisemitism is continuous throughout Jewish history, proving only that there is no effective strategy for combating this most persistent of hatreds.
Instead, we would do well to recall how we responded to a critical moment in American Jewish history in the early 20th century. In the aftermath of the Leo Frank lynching in 1915 – the murder of a Jewish man amid an atmosphere of intense antisemitism — Jewish leaders formed what would become the ADL by building a relationship with law enforcement and the American legal and political establishment. The ADL recognized that the best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term, in ways that would transcend and withstand the political winds of change, was to embed in the police and criminal justice system the idea that antisemitism was their problem to defeat. These Jewish leaders flipped the script of previous diasporic experiences; not only did they become “insiders,” they made antisemitism anathema to America itself. (And yes, it was the Leo Frank incident that inspired “Parade,” the forthcoming Broadway musical that this week attracted white supremacist protesters.)
For Jews, the high-water mark of this strategy came in the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. It was the low point in many ways of the American Jewish experience, the most violent act against Jews on American soil, but it was followed by a mourning process that was shared across the greater Pittsburgh community. The words of the Kaddish appeared above the fold of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That is inconceivable at most other times of Jewish oppression and persecution. It tells the story of when we are successful – when antisemitism is repudiated by the general public. It is the most likely indicator that we will be collectively safe in the long run.
We were lucky that this move to partner with the establishment was successful. I felt this deeply on a recent trip to Montgomery, Alabama. Seeing the memorials to Black Americans persecuted and lynched by and under the very system that should have been protecting them from the worst elements of society is a reminder that not all minorities in America could then — or today — win over the elements of American society that control criminal justice.
Visitors view items left by well-wishers along the fence at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on the first anniversary of the attack there, Oct. 27, 2019. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
A strategic plan to defeat antisemitism that must be collectively embraced by American Jews would build on this earlier success and invest in the infrastructure of American democracy as the framework for Jewish thriving and surviving, and continue the historic relationship-building that changed the Jews’ position in America. It would stop the counterproductive internecine and partisan battle that is undermining the possibility of Jewish collective mobilization.
It means more investment, across partisan divides, in relationships with local governments and law enforcement, using the imperfect “definitions of antisemitism” as they are intended — not for boundary policing, but to inform and help law enforcement to monitor and prevent violent extremism. It means supporting lawsuits and other creative legal strategies, like Integrity First for America’s groundbreaking efforts against the Unite the Right rally organizers, which stymie such movements in legal gridlock and can help bankrupt them.
It means practicing the lost art of consensus Jewish collective politics which recognize that there must be some baseline agreement that antisemitism is a collective threat, even if any “unity” we imagine for the Jewish community is always going to be be instrumental and short-lived.
It means supporting institutions like the ADL, even as they remain imperfect, even as they sometimes get stuck in some of the failed strategies I decried above, because they have the relationships with powerful current and would-be allies in the American political and civic marketplace, and because they are fighting against antisemitism while trying to stay above the partisan fray.
It means real education and relationship-building with other ethnic and faith communities that is neither purely instrumental nor performative — enough public relations visits to Holocaust museums! — so that we have the allies we need when we need them, and so that we can partner for our collective betterment.
And most importantly, it means investing in the plodding, unsexy work of supporting vibrant American democracy — free and fair elections, voting rights, the rule of law, peaceful transitions of power — because stable liberal democracies have been the safest homes for minorities, Jews included.
I doubt we will ever be able to “end” individual antisemitic acts, much less eradicate antisemitic hate. “Shver tzu zayn a Yid” (it’s hard to be a Jew). We join with our fellow Americans who live in fear of the lone wolves and the hatemongers who periodically terrorize us. But we are much more capable than we are currently behaving to fight back against the collective threats against us. Instead, let’s be the smart Americans we once were.
The real work right now is not baseball bats or billboards, it is not Jewish pride banalities or Twitter refereeing: It is quiet and powerful and, if done right, as American Jews demonstrated in the last century, it will serve us for the long term.
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The post Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’: The best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Metropolitan Police investigating abuse of Jewish attendees at London Pride
(JTA) — London’s Metropolitan Police launched an investigation Monday into antisemitic abuse at a Pride parade after videos and pictures circulated on social media showed Jewish participants enduring taunts at Saturday’s event.
The police department said in a statement that officers were “aware of videos circulating online that show antisemitic verbal abuse directed towards attendees” at the parade in central London and that footage was being reviewed to assess whether criminal offenses had been committed. The department added that it “continues to work hard to tackle hate crimes of all types.”
Videos shared online show people carrying rainbow flags incorporating the Star of David being confronted by individuals shouting “Free Palestine.” The harassment escalated with attendees shouting, “Go back to your Zionist homeland,” “You kill Arab children, you kill gay children,” “F*** you, Jew,” and “How many babies did you kill?”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reached out to Pride in London for comment. The group had not replied by press time.
The incident comes amid heightened concern over antisemitism in Britain since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, with a record number of antisemitic incidents reported over the past two years. It also comes as Pride celebrations around the world have been roiled by tensions over Israel and antisemitism.
Pride in London drew tens of thousands of participants and visitors to the Soho neighborhood in the British capital. Some Jewish LGBTQ+ organizations have in recent years chosen not to participate in Pride, citing hostility towards Zionist Jews. But this year, around 150 people marched as part of a Jewish bloc at the event.
Organizers said the return this year followed discussions with Pride in London over Jewish inclusion and commitments that organizers would undertake antisemitism awareness training in partnership with the Community Security Trust, the main security consultant to the Jewish community. Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet UK stated earlier this year that the measures were intended to help ensure Jewish LGBTQ+ participants could march “safely and openly” following concerns raised after Oct. 7.
It was not clear whether the Jewish marchers who endured the abuse were part of the official Jewish bloc – accounts from marchers who stayed with the Jewish bloc were generally positive.
“A few people came and chanted ‘free, free, Palestine,’” Israeli author and LGBTQ+ activist Hen Mazzig told JTA. “They were passing through. And there was another person who was at a cafe and then they came by and they were just staring at us.”
Mazzig shared footage from the event on X, writing, ”My pride is not affected by the opinions of others. I am gay, I am Jewish, and I’m here to stay. Am Yisrael chai.”
Mazzig splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, because his husband is British. He told JTA in a phone interview that Saturday’s incidents “were scary, especially when a Pride parade is supposed to be inclusive.”
Mazzig said that since Oct, 7, circumstances have been exceptionally challenging for the British Jewish community “but specifically for LGBTQ youth that are being forced to choose between their Jewish identity and their queer identity.”
Mazzig claimed that Jewish marchers are not accepted unless they specify that they are anti-Zionist. “Every statement of solidarity with LGBTQ Jews seems to come with a ‘but,’” he said. ‘We support you, but not if you’re physically Jewish, not if you’re supporting Israel. You have to renounce half of your identity first.’ That’s not equality.”
In advance of Saturday’s event, some 650 Met police officers were deployed to enforce “zero tolerance” on hate crimes and to ensure that attendees could “safely and securely” enjoy the parade.
When JTA asked the Metropolitan police why at least two policemen appeared to stand by as Jews were subject to abuse, the Met requested that JTA provide the video in question. After being supplied with the video, the Met later told JTA that it had nothing further to add at this stage but would provide an update if it did.
Mazzig said the Met police should consider the abuse at the parade “shameful and it should alarm everyone.”
He added, “I hope that we stop debating whether or not antisemitism is real and accept it. And that communities that are supposed to be inclusive and pluralistic start taking action.”
The post Metropolitan Police investigating abuse of Jewish attendees at London Pride appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’
(JTA) — Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli compared Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Adolf Hitler and slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a post on X on Monday.
“We all know how narcissistic power-obsessed fanatics like you begin and how they end. The Jewish people have never feared mere flesh and blood, from Pharaoh until today,” Chikli wrote. “You are nothing but a pathetic blood soaked zero who history will soon forget.”
In the post, Chikli accused the Turkish leader of being a “patron of Hamas and ISIS” and described him as a “grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar” alongside an AI image of Erdogan in front of a Nazi flag.
Chikli’s post was in response to an address by Erdogan last month, in which the Turkish leader called Zionism a “genocidal occupying expansionist ideology” and said the “struggle” against Zionism was for the “collective survival of ourselves and our nation.”
Long-standing tensions between Turkey and Israel stoked by the war in Gaza have escalated in recent weeks, amid increasing Israeli concerns over the tight ties between Ankara and Washington and the possible sale of advanced American F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Erdogan, who has consistently voiced support for Hamas, has been one of Israel’s most outspoken international critics.
Chikli’s post followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s blistering attack against Erdogan during an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Fox News Monday. Netanyahu said Turkey was “governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel…and talks openly about conquering Jerusalem.”
The Israeli leader warned against the sale of weaponry to Ankara, portraying Turkey as an aggressive country that didn’t help the U.S. battle Iran. He spoke in advance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Ankara late Tuesday for a two-day summit of NATO.
“For a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America and chants ‘death to America’ from that side of the spectrum, I don’t think they should be given F-35’s or the engines for their fighter jets,” Netanyahu told Fox News.
Such a sale would “upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and … by America’s posture in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said.
Relations between the two regional powers have also been aggravated by the Israeli government’s June 28 decision to recognize the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire during and immediately after World War I.
Turkey has condemned Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. It’s a move so diplomatically controversial that to date, only some 33 countries, aside from Israel, have taken this step, including the U.S. in 2021.
According to Politico, Erdogan said in a public address last week, “We do not give the slightest heed to the slanders about our country from the murder network that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands.”
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, also took aim at Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, during a press conference in Jerusalem Monday, decrying Fidan’s comments to CNN Türk on Friday in which he said that Israel had become a “burden that humanity can no longer bear.”
“The remarks by Turkey’s Foreign Minister are a clear call for genocide,” Saar said. “The Jewish people know all too well what happens when such words are allowed to go unanswered. The first step on the road to genocide is dehumanization.”
The post Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’ appeared first on The Forward.
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A narrowed Michigan Democratic Senate race leaves Jewish voters with a stark choice
(JTA) — When Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign for the U.S. Senate on Sunday, some progressive Jews were bereft.
“I’m still in mourning,” Eve Mokotoff, a public health expert who had been advising McMorrow’s campaign on issues including Jewish ones, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the next day. “You have to understand, I was sobbing yesterday.”
McMorrow, who is married to a Jewish man and raising a Jewish child, had sought to carve a progressive identity in the state while taking on the far left, particularly on Jewish issues and Israel.
Now with her out of the primary, the race is down to two candidates with polar opposite visions of the Democratic party’s future — particularly on Israel policy — battling over a seat that the party must retain if they hope to flip the Senate in November.
The race will inevitably be seen as a bellwether for the party’s larger orientation on Israel.
The sharp reorientation of the party in the recent years to embracing Israel-critical policies will be exacerbated by the specific dynamics of Michigan. A state home to large Jewish and Arab/Muslim populations weathered the attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, outside Detroit, earlier this year and in 2024 saw the rise of the Uncommitted movement that pressured party leaders over Gaza.
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a former county health director who has grassroots momentum in the state, has said the Israeli government is as “evil” as Hamas and made headlines for campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker, an anti-Israel hardliner. His opponent, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, has accepted backing from AIPAC, whose affiliated super PAC has spent over $10 million on the race according to Federal Election Commission disclosures, at a time when the pro-Israel behemoth is historically unpopular among Democrats.
Neither campaign’s representatives responded to JTA requests for comment for this story, though both have issued statements reaching out to McMorrow supporters since she left the field. Mokotoff described the new playing field as “a terrible choice.”
“I don’t trust either of them,” she said. “You either have someone whom I completely don’t trust, or someone who can be completely manipulated by the state of Israel.”
For many of the state’s other estimated 129,000 Jews, the choice is less difficult. While analysts are torn on what McMorrow’s exit from the race will mean for each candidate, Jewish Democratic leaders — and some clergy — in the state are coalescing around Stevens.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish and a close ally of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, endorsed Stevens following McMorrow’s announcement. “Haley cares deeply about the needs of her constituents,” Nessel wrote in her announcement.
The Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus had already endorsed Stevens, as well — but it had been close between her and McMorrow, the group’s chair told JTA.
“The Jews that I know, my sense is that if they were supporting Mallory, they’re going to support Haley at this point,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the caucus’s chair, told JTA.
While Alexander added that she could “still see myself supporting” El-Sayed if he wins the nomination, some Jewish clergy in the state have sounded loud alarms about his candidacy.
“For many Michigan Jews, the Democratic primary race for senator feels like an existential moment,” Rabbi Aaron Starr, of the historic Conservative Congregation Shaarey Zedek in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, told JTA. “We pray that our neighbors and fellow Michigan residents will vote to reject extremism and the kind of rhetoric that leads to violence.”
Along with his fellow Shaarey Zedek clergy, Starr authored a letter to congregants in June urging them to support “the candidate whose record, actions, and rhetoric demonstrate the strongest commitment to protecting Jewish lives by combating antisemitism, seeking federal security funding for American Jewish communities, and supporting Israel’s security and right to exist as a Jewish state.”
“As a clergy team, we agreed that we cannot remain silent if our voice might encourage people to prioritize protecting Jewish lives,” Starr told JTA.
The letter, which invoked the Book of Esther, did not name Stevens or any other candidates. But to JTA, Starr called Stevens “an ongoing friend of the Jewish community” who “personally reached out to me after October 7,” referring to the 2023 Hamas-led massacres in Israel that launched the Gaza war. El-Sayed — whom Starr said he has “heard nothing from” — has publicly expressed doubt that Israel should be a Jewish state.
Now that the race had narrowed, Starr said, “We are hoping that it is now even more likely that the November election will see two candidates who recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, who support Israel’s right to defend itself when under threat, and who will be committed to protecting American Jews in Michigan and around the U.S.” The likely GOP nominee is Mike Rogers, a former congressman known for his pro-Israel outlook.
While El-Sayed often welcomes the Jewish community at his rallies, his comments on local radical behavior affecting Jews have also caused controversy. He angered Jewish leaders, including a rabbi at Temple Israel, when he issued a statement about the attack at that congregation that mentioned Israel’s war in Lebanon.
In recent weeks El-Sayed also suggested that a group of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan, recently arrested by federal authorities and accused of plotting attacks against university officials, were politically targeted.
“It’s a lot more about what you’re advocating for that gets you indicted or not indicted, rather than what you did,” El-Sayed told a rally of supporters about the indictments last month, according to the Detroit News. One of the arrested protesters had briefly worked for El-Sayed’s campaign.
His campaign has amplified the voices of Jewish supporters, including former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, who lost his reelection bid in a redrawn district to Stevens in 2022 after AIPAC backed Stevens.
El-Sayed’s campaign has also launched a Jews For Abdul affinity group. The group’s mission statement says the candidate “correctly recognizes that the Israeli government does not speak for all Jewish people, or even for all Jewish citizens of Israel,” and “has properly characterized Israel’s US-enabled genocide in Gaza to be among the most immoral events of our time.”
An El-Sayed campaign spokesperson did not respond to a JTA inquiry about how big the group is. Alexander, the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus chair, said she believed it was “a very small faction.”
Nationally, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which had endorsed both McMorrow and Stevens, reaffirmed its commitment to Stevens on Monday. Meanwhile, J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby, had backed McMorrow. In a statement Monday to JTA, the group did not endorse a new candidate.
“We are grateful to her for the campaign she ran and the nuance she infused into this race,” Tali deGroot, vice president of political and digital strategy, told JTA. “We hope the next Senator from Michigan will be an advocate for peace and diplomacy in the Middle East and will recognize the need for a new U.S. policy toward Israel.”
A new super PAC formed to counter AIPAC’s influence signalled in a statement on Sunday that it was prepared to get more directly involved in the race on El-Sayed’s behalf. American Priorities PAC told reporters it was “fully committed to seeing Abdul El-Sayed become the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, and we will do what it takes to get there.”
Representatives for El-Sayed and American Priorities PAC did not respond to questions from JTA about whether the candidate, who has said he would reject all PAC funding, would accept American Priorities’ financial support.
The post A narrowed Michigan Democratic Senate race leaves Jewish voters with a stark choice appeared first on The Forward.
