Uncategorized
Can this LGBTQ+ Jewish organization navigate these turbulent times?
Nonprofit Keshet has been a leading advocate for Jewish LGBTQ+ rights for nearly three decades.
This year, however, longtime CEO Idit Klein stepped down, while at about the same time, the Trump administration was ramping up its policy assault on the LGBTQ+ community. (It recently mandated that U.S. passports for transgender people must now reflect the sex on their original birth certificate, reversing a decades-old policy.)
The question was not whether Keshet would plot a path through this challenging period, though. It was how.
The organization’s latest educational offering, the Shivyon Project, offers a window into its evolving priorities, as it contends with this less-than-agreeable federal administration and, in select pockets of the country, a recrudescence of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.
Shivyon, as it’s known, provides Jewish organizations — JCCs and synagogues are Keshet’s most frequent clients — with an “action plan” aimed at improving an institution’s LGBTQ+ policies. It’s a collaborative and customizable endeavor, so the specifics can vary. “This is not one size fits all,” said Rabbi Micah Buck, Keshet’s Director of Education and Training. Once a blueprint is agreed upon, Keshet’s trained professionals provide coaching and guidance over the course of a year, by the end of which — all having gone smoothly — the plan has become reality.
Thoughtful and soft-spoken, Buck acknowledged that this was hardly a straightforward moment for the organization. “We are living in a time in which LGBTQ+ identities, especially transgender and non-binary and gender expansive identities, have become inappropriately politicized,” he told me.
Demand for Keshet’s services in general, and for Shivyon in particular, has duly shot up. “For so many LGBTQ+Jews, safety and belonging in our Jewish communities feels more urgent and needed than ever before,” said Buck.
Though Shivyon grew out of the ‘Leadership Project,’ Keshet’s first foray into general community education more than a decade ago, it is “drastically different” from any of the organization’s previous cohort-based programs, Buck said. After all, Shivyon has been rolled out against a somewhat unusual split backdrop: On the one hand, recent political turbulence; and on the other, a sustained effort by the mainstream Jewish community to embrace LGBTQ+ Jews.
“Organized segments of Jewish life have made tremendous progress celebrating LGBTQ+ identity,” Buck said. “And we are seeing greater and greater numbers of the LGBTQ+ community in positions of leadership and influence.” The non-orthodox rabbinate, for example, is often cited as both an incubator for and testament to the improving integration into mainstream Jewish life of the LGBTQ+ community; the sheer number of LGBTQ+ students attending rabbinical school has, in fact, become something of a phenomenon in its own right.
With Shivyon, then, Keshet had to strike a fine balance: gesturing sufficiently at the dangers of the current political moment, while also recognizing and incorporating into its curricula the advances of LGBTQ+ Jews during the previous decade.
One solution, Buck told me, was to talk about belonging rather than inclusion, a shift in emphasis that has shown up in ways both grand and unassuming.
Take Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Dallas, and one of Shivyon’s participating congregations. It recently became the first Conservative synagogue to march in the Dallas Pride Parade — a milestone made possible, said its executive director Katie Babin, by Shivyon’s success in making Beth Shalom’s “queer community feel fully included and embraced.”
Yet no less significant were the “small but intentional changes” Beth Shalom instituted, Babin told me over email — most notably updating the language on its membership applications. This kind of attention to the fine print is an integral part of Shivyon, too, the substance to go along with the symbolism.
Textual analysis has been Shivyon’s other calling card, Buck told me, an excellent source of community and common interest. “We can find clear indications of LGBTQ+ Jewish presence forever,” said Buck. “For so many people in our community, one of the moments that can be really beautiful is encountering that sense of: My ancestors have always been here.”
As for the present political challenges, Keshet has opted to double down on its values-based approach. “For all the weaponization of people’s identities,” Buck said, “the basics of access, dignity and celebration are not fundamentally sites of division within the Jewish community.”
The post Can this LGBTQ+ Jewish organization navigate these turbulent times? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel, Australia Probe Iran’s Suspected Role in Sydney Attack as Tehran Issues Conflicting Statements
Police officers stand guard following the attack on a Jewish holiday celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
Israeli and Australian authorities have launched an investigation into whether Iran was behind the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday that killed 15 people who attended the Jewish gathering and wounded at least 40 others.
As Australian authorities continued their probe into the weekend massacre at Bondi Beach in southeastern New South Wales, new evidence revealed that the deadly shooting was planned to include explosive devices that were successfully defused.
According to the British outlet The Telegraph, Israeli officials believe Iran orchestrated the attack, probing potential links to the regime’s terrorist proxies.
“We believe Iran is behind the attack. We are also investigating a connection with Hezbollah, Hamas, and a Pakistani terrorist organization,” an Israeli official told the paper, listing some of the Islamist groups backed by Tehran.
Israel had previously warned Australia about Iranian plots amid rising threats against Jews and Israelis abroad, and Israeli officials are now investigating whether Iran was the mastermind behind the mass shooting targeting Sydney’s Jewish community, Israeli media reported.
“In recent months, Iran has increased its activity to orchestrate attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world,” a senior Israeli security official told Israel Hayom.
“There is no doubt that the direction and infrastructure for the [Bondi Beach] attack originated in Tehran,” he continued.
Israeli officials have accused the Australian government of ignoring earlier warnings and intelligence from this year that flagged potential terrorist attacks and rising threats, saying authorities failed to take sufficient action to protect the local Jewish community and prevent a massacre before what transpired in Sydney over the weekend.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of pouring “fuel on the antisemitic fire” and ignoring Israeli warnings, as tensions rise over Canberra’s anti-Israel stance and its failure to address a sharp rise in antisemitic attacks.
The Australian government’s policies, particularly its recognition of a Palestinian state in September, “pour fuel on the antisemitic fire, reward Hamas terror, embolden those who menace Australian Jews, and encourage the Jew hatred now stalking your streets,” the Israeli leader said.
“Antisemitism is a cancer. It spreads when leaders stay silent. You must replace weakness with action,” he continued.
Albanese rejected such accusations, saying his priority was to unite the nation and prevent terrorists from sowing division or turning Australians against each other.
“Now more than ever, we must support the Jewish community during this incredibly difficult time — not just those grieving the loss of loved ones and friends, but all members of the Jewish community throughout Australia,” Albanese said.
According to Australian news outlet ABC, Naveed Akram, one of the terrorists allegedly behind the Sydney attack, was previously on the radar of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), which had been monitoring him for six years due to his links with an Islamic State (ISIS) cell in the country.
Amid already tense relations with Iran, Australia has not dismissed the possibility of Iranian involvement in the attack, with authorities reportedly working alongside Israeli intelligence agencies in their investigation.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei publicly condemned the “violent attack” in Syndey, though his statement was vague and made no mention of antisemitism, the local Jewish community, or any specific target.
“Terror violence and mass killing shall be condemned, wherever they’re committed,” he said in a post on X.
However, Iranian state and semi-official media pushed a starkly different narrative, spreading conspiracy theories that framed the attack as a plot orchestrated by Israel. Other outlets expressed support for the attack, even praising it, claiming that the rabbi who was killed during the massacre, Eli Shlanger, was a “staunch advocate of genocide in Gaza.”
The Iranian news agency Mehr openly called “the Zionist regime” as the main suspect, portraying the attack as a “false flag” operation allegedly designed to serve Israeli interests.
Tensions between Australia and Iran have escalated sharply this year, after Canberra severed diplomatic relations with Tehran and expelled the Iranian ambassador in August, citing the regime’s role in threats and terrorist attacks against the local Jewish community.
The government identified the Islamist regime in Tehran as the mastermind behind at least two major antisemitic arson attacks in Australia, saying it was likely responsible for additional incidents.
In November, Australia officially designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a state-sponsored terrorist organization.
Uncategorized
Israel Slams ICC decision to Continue Gaza War Investigation as ‘Politics in the Guise of International Law’
A general view of the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, March 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay
Israel lambasted a decision by appeals judges at the International Criminal Court on Monday to reject one in a series of legal challenges brought by Jerusalem against the court’s probe into its conduct of the Gaza war.
On appeal, judges refused to overturn a lower court decision that the prosecution’s investigation into alleged crimes under its jurisdiction could include events following the deadly attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
The ruling means the investigation continues and the arrest warrants issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant remain in place.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the ruling an example of the ICC‘s disregard for the sovereign rights of countries who are not members of the court, in a post on social media platform X.
“Israel rejects the ICC Appeals Chamber’s decision, by a narrow majority, to deny Israel’s right to receive advance notice, as demanded by the principle of complementarity particularly with regard to a democratic state with an independent and robust judicial system,” the ministry posted.
“This is yet another example of the ongoing politicization of the ICC and its blatant disregard for the sovereign rights of non-party states, as well as its own obligations under the Rome Statute,” it continued, adding: “This is what politics in the guise of ‘international law’ looks like.”
The ICC was founded in 2002 under a treaty giving it jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that were either committed by a citizen of a member state or had taken place on a member state’s territory.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
Israel has adamantly denied war crimes in Gaza, where it has waged a military campaign to eliminate Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
A ceasefire agreement in the conflict took effect on Oct. 10, but the war destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure.
This ruling focuses on only one of several Israeli legal challenges against the ICC investigations and the arrest warrants for its officials. There is no timeline for the court to rule on the various other challenges to its jurisdiction in this case.
Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Khan initially made his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation reportedly infuriated US and British leaders, as the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the allegations.
However, the ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave during the war.
Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
US and Israeli officials have issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, which launched the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 atrocities.
Uncategorized
Israeli Tech Sector Annual Deals, Listings Jump to $59 Billion, PwC Says
Yoni Assia, CEO of eToro, speaks before ringing the opening bell to celebrate the company’s IPO on Nasdaq, in New York City, US, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Appetite for Israeli technology innovation has remained undiminished this year, with a surge in acquisitions and IPOs led by Alphabet’s $32 billion purchase of Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz, PwC Israel said on Monday.
The consultancy said in a report that such deals jumped by 340% to nearly $59 billion, from $13.4 billion in 2024. Excluding the Wiz deal, the value of transactions doubled to $32 billion.
There were seven IPOs with a combined valuation of $14.6 billion, up from the $781 million total achieved with six listings in 2024, demonstrating strong investor demand despite Israel’s two-year war against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
PwC noted a decline in medium-sized deals between $100 million and $500 million, but more small and larger deals.
There were six acquisitions above $1 billion this year, including fintech firms Next Insurance (bought for $2.6 billion) and Melio ($2.5 billion), with Nasdaq listings for Navan and eToro at valuations of $6.2 billion and $4.4 billion respectively.
Yaron Weizenbluth, a partner and head of audit in PwC Israel, said that while more tech entrepreneurs and managers have relocated operations overseas, many companies still rely on the “unique talent in Israel.”
“The Israeli market has demonstrated an incredible ability to adapt and close gaps in the past; the potential for value creation is immense,” he said.