(New York Jewish Week) — Alex Bores, who’s running to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler in Congress, is threading a very delicate needle.

On the one hand, Bores, a two-term New York State Assembly member from the Upper East Side, has garnered support from a number of Jewish leaders and political moderates who tout his support for Israel. He marches annually in the city’s Israel Day Parade and has resisted growing calls for Democratic politicians to support conditioning military aid to Israel.

At the same time, he’s being backed by a number of the left-wing groups and individuals calling for those very conditions.

Those two camps seldom coexist on a single candidate’s list of endorsements, especially as Israel has become a major wedge issue this midterm election cycle. But Bores, who has put a promise to regulate artificial intelligence at the center of his campaign for New York’s 12th Congressional District, has managed to maintain the coalition.

“You could make a sitcom,” said Cameron Kasky, a former candidate in the race who’s now backing Bores, referring to what he called the “Boalition.” “If you put 12 Alex Bores endorsers in a mansion together and showed up with a reality TV crew, you could make the most must-watch television in the entire world.”

Scroll through the “Endorsements” page on Bores’ campaign website and you’ll find Chi Osse, the democratic socialist City Council member who’s called for divesting city pension funds from Israel bonds, just a couple rows down from Carolyn Maloney, the former Upper East Side representative who was a staunch supporter of Israel in Congress.

Progressive groups such as Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution and PSC-CUNY, the City University of New York’s staff-faculty union, are backing the same candidate who drew the support of ActJew, which supports more centrist candidates and calls itself “a response to a political and social landscape that normalizes antisemitic and anti-Israel activity and rhetoric.” (ActJew endorsed both Bores and Micah Lasher in the race.)

Bores’ endorsers include some of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political allies, such as failed City Council candidate Lindsey Boylan, and vocal critics of the mayor including Fabien Levy, a Jewish spokesperson for Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.

“I can’t imagine the Bores campaign hasn’t occasionally looked at each other and been like, ‘What is happening right now?’” Kasky said.

So how is Bores pulling it off?

For progressive groups, the answer lies, at least in part, in Bores’ work on AI.

“He put forward the country’s strongest regulation of the AI industry to protect Americans from those who want no rules and only care about unfettered power and profit,” wrote Our Revolution’s executive director, Joseph Geevarghese, in an endorsement announcement. Geevarghese was referring to the RAISE Act, a state law that Bores introduced to impart transparency and safety regulations on AI models.

As an elected official, Bores is no political outsider, though the 35-year-old’s background in the tech industry differentiates him from fellow frontrunner Lasher, who’s spent decades working for politicians such as Nadler, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor.

Bores’ resume includes a nearly five-year stint at the tech company Palantir, starting as a data scientist in 2014 and working his way up to become the U.S. government lead. That gig has complicated how some progressives see Bores, given Palantir’s work with ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that Bores himself has called to abolish. He has repeatedly said that he quit Palantir over its contract with ICE back in 2019, and that he chose “principle over my career and millions of dollars.”

Pundits such as center-left commentator Matthew Yglesias — who has also joined the Bores coalition — say there is a “unique value” to him winning because of his promise to enforce AI regulations and the message that it would send to the anti-regulation PACs that have been spending against him. Yglesias added that Lasher, too, would be “an above-average House member.”

But in a race with little daylight between the two frontrunners — particularly regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship — Bores’ AI focus is setting him apart. And rather than sit out the race due to differences on Israel, a number of progressive groups are backing him anyways.

“I think progressives see something in Alex that is a testament to a resolve he’s going to bring,” said Kasky, who has advocated for policies such as an arms embargo on Israel. “And I think that that is enough for progressive groups to cede ground on the issue of Israel-Palestine, and frankly the issue of Israel and the Middle East region as a whole, which is getting increasingly severe.”

The makeup of the district itself plays a role as well: As one of the country’s most heavily Jewish districts, NY-12 is seen as less hospitable than other deep-blue districts for a “Squad”-type insurgent candidate. John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg is the only major candidate who calls for conditioning aid and blocking weapons sales to Israel, but he has dropped in recent polls as he’s faced questions over his lack of experience.

Bores, Lasher and Schlossberg are all listed as “primary approved” candidates by J Street, the liberal pro-Israel organization.

Bores has confirmed that Our Revolution asked him about Israel and gave him its endorsement despite not being aligned on the issue. During a candidate forum in May, he said that “we need to make it acceptable for there to be people in progressive spaces that still believe in the right of Israel to exist and to defend itself.”

Michael Miller, who was CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York for 36 years, is endorsing Bores and wrote in a Facebook post that Bores is a “steadfast supporter of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

In an interview, Miller — whom Bores named in a recent Temple Emanu-El forum as a Jewish American that he admires — said he felt assured that Bores’ support from groups such as Our Revolution had mostly to do with his AI work.

“The fact that he’s receiving support from a coalition that includes decidedly left-wing supporters doesn’t trouble me for as long as the issues of central concern to me — antisemitism and support for Israel — are those issues where he has given his support, and with which he has identified,” Miller said.

Miller added that he believes Bores’ Jewish family — his wife, Darya (who recently appeared in a campaign ad), and son, Charlie, are both Jewish — plays a “large role in how he thinks about matters of concern to the Jewish community.”

A number of Jewish celebrities in the district have embraced Bores. The Oscar-winning songwriter Benj Pasek and Jewish cookbook author Jake Cohen posted photos on social media showing them at a Bores event in a private home that included a conversation with journalist Laurie Segall about AI.

On the same day, Miller and more than 20 other local Jewish leaders and elected officials signed a letter endorsing Bores. The letter emphasized his record of combating antisemitism, pointing to measures such as securing funds for Holocaust survivor programs, funding security for synagogues and Jewish institutions, and organizing trips for students to Jewish museums.

But for some Jewish groups, Bores’ support from left-wing groups critical of Israel has given them pause.

Moshe Spern, a board member of the group ActJew, called on Bores to drop his PSC-CUNY endorsement back in March, saying the union is “consistently calling for divestments from Israel” and has “downplayed and ignored Jewish students/faculty experiences since 10/7.” PSC-CUNY revoked a pro-BDS resolution against Israel in February 2025, after its initial passage sparked backlash, including from Hochul and CUNY itself. Spern told JTA he pushed for the group to rescind its endorsement, but was outvoted.

Bores replied to Spern’s tweet, writing that “every major candidate pursued” PSC-CUNY’s endorsement, and that his endorsement interview focused on funding public education and regulating AI. Bores added that he has “spoken out against antisemitic incidents on campuses (including CUNY specifically) and will continue to do so.”

Meanwhile, some progressive groups have refrained from endorsing Bores because of his pro-Israel politics.

“It’s pretty much a non-starter for us to endorse someone who wouldn’t sign on to the Block the Bombs,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of communications of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, referring to the Block the Bombs to Israel Act that would prohibit certain weapons sales to the country. She added that Bores also voted for a statewide “buffer zone” bill meant to curb protests outside houses of worship, which Lasher introduced, and which JFREJ has vehemently opposed throughout the year.

According to the latest polling data, despite Bores’ greater support from the left, there’s been little difference in the number of voters who are responding to each candidate.

“You go into any Jewish WhatsApp chat — I see this as an Upper East Side resident myself — and there’s no consensus,” said Michael Harris, ActJew’s CEO. “The consensus is Bores or Lasher.”

The post Alex Bores’ supporters disagree on Israel. They agree on him. appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Organizers of the Great Israeli Real Estate Event held in London on Sunday have apologized amid revelations that the event showcased offerings in the West Bank, contradicting their assurances that it would not.

The owner of a real estate agency that had a booth at the event, meanwhile, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she had obscured the name of a city in the West Bank from a poster but also passed “two flyers under the table” to attendees who expressed interest in properties in contested areas of Jerusalem.

Ahead of the event, the organizers along with the synagogue that hosted the event and the Board of Deputies of British Jews publicly rejected claims by pro-Palestinian activists that properties beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders would be promoted.

They had faced sharp pressure over the claims from dozens of British lawmakers and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and had to find a new space after the venue that was initially set to host the event pulled out abruptly.

Following a protest outside the synagogue where the event took place, the Board of Deputies’ acting president, Adam Cohen, said the event organizers had “publicly refuted claims that it was marketing real estate over the Green Line” separating Israel from the West Bank and alleged that the claims were being used to justify antisemitism.

The “false pretenses seem to be little more than an excuse to harass and intimidate members of the Jewish community,” he said.

The Board of Deputies declined to comment on the subsequent revelations that West Bank properties were advertised at the event.

But the organizers, who have staged similar events in the United States, issued a statement to the U.K.’s Jewish News that both apologized for mentions of East Jerusalem settlements in a brochure distributed at the event and rejected the idea that British Jews should face constraints in where they are offered property.

“We would like to re-emphasise that the venue made it clear to us that we were not in any way to promote the sale of Israeli real estate over the Green Line, and all participating vendors agreed to abide by that requirement,” the statement said. “At the same time, we believe it is outrageous that in this day and age, anyone would seek to deny British Jews the right to purchase property anywhere in the world, whether in Paris, New York, or Israel.”

The statement also described social media claims that “stolen Palestinian land” was being sold at the event. “These allegations are simply untrue. No one at the event promoted or spoke about properties in the ‘disputed territories’, such as Givat Zeev or Kfar Eldad,” two East Jerusalem settlements, the statement continued. “Their mention in the event brochure was made in error for which we apologise.”

The revelations came after attendees photographed flyers promoting West Bank settlements and posted them on social media.

The Guardian reported that it had obtained brochures from the event advertising properties not just in Givat Ze’ev and Kfar Eldad but also in Ma’ale Adumim and Teneh Omarim in the West Bank and Ramat Eshkol and Givat Hamatos in East Jerusalem.

Guy Zilberman, a member of the pro-Palestinian group Jewish Anti-Zionist Action, posted a video showing footage from inside the event where he received brochures from companies selling homes in several of those locations. He said a salesman “directly offered us properties in ‘Judea and Samaria,’” the Israeli term for the West Bank.

The footage showed Zilberman then revealing himself in a conference room and denouncing the event while exhorting attendees in Hebrew not to steal, before being removed by security.

REVEALED: Jewish activists @JAZA_UK have shown us material from inside an Israeli property event in London yesterday, which shows that illegal settlements on Palestinian land were on sale in the UK.

Activists gained access to the event, spoke to numerous developers about the… pic.twitter.com/WsJ1hC1GlZ

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) June 16, 2026

An unnamed member of Jewish Anti-Zionist Action told Sky News, “I visited Tivuch Shelly’s stall and was given a leaflet advertising properties in Ma’ale Adumim, which is an illegal West Bank settlement.”

The locations cited highlight the complexity of Israel’s geography — and the pressures facing those trying to sell property in the region.

The U.K. considers expansions of Israeli settlements as a violation of international law, posing potential legal challenges to efforts to sell homes there. The United States does not consider the settlements illegal, making real estate events there less vulnerable to legal scrutiny even as they have drawn fierce protests.

Settlements that are part of the municipality of Jerusalem, such as Ramat Eshkol and Givat Hamatos, pose another wrinkle. While Israel recognizes that the West Bank is disputed territory, it does not consider any part of Jerusalem as such. East Jerusalem was incorporated into the State in1980, and under Israeli law both West and East Jerusalem form the state’s complete and undivided capital.

Ma’ale Adumim, meanwhile, is a city of approximately 40,000 that is located in the West Bank and has long been seen as likely to remain under Israeli control if a Palestinian state is created through negotiations in the future.

Tivuch Shelly’s owner and founder, Shelly Levine, told JTA in a phone interview that her company never actively promoted properties in Ma’ale Adumim at the event. She said the words “Ma’ale Adumim” were covered up with tape on their booth.

But she said they gave out “two flyers under the table” with Ma’ale Adumim properties because the company had received emails in advance of the event from people who said they were specifically looking for properties in that area. She said she did not recall the names of the people but said she had handed over the brochures “in a bag and we told them they were not allowed to take them out or look at them in this building because we are not selling Ma’ale Adumim at this event.”

Levine said she now believes those emails were “a setup” to trick her into sharing incriminating material that could be handed to the media.

Unless people went to Tivuch Shelly’s website, Levine said, “Nobody would know that we advertise in Ma’ale Adumim. We did not break our word to the event organizers; we posted no brochures, put nothing out on our tables.”

Even before the revelations, the lead-up to the event had been fraught for weeks, with the original venue pulling out of hosting less than 48 hours before Edgware Synagogue agreed to host it. And while the venue remained secret until less than 24 hours before the event, almost 1,000 demonstrators showed up outside the synagogue — from both the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel camps.

Despite police being deployed to the scene to keep the groups separate, 14 people were arrested, including seven pro-Israel and six pro-Palestinian supporters, for offenses including ncluding violent disorder, assault and public-order offenses.

More than 100 members of parliament and peers wrote to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper ahead of the event, calling on her to halt the event because selling properties in the West Bank is a violation of international law.

On Tuesday, Cooper told members of Parliament that the government had asked a national regulator to look into complaints connected to both the advertising of the event and promotional material.

“We have asked the authority to urgently look into the matter and reassure us that, if there is any evidence of the advertising or promotion of property in illegal settlements at that event or any others, it will uphold the law, regulations and guidance that apply,” Cooper said in response to a question from a local lawmaker about why the government had allowed the Great Israeli Real Estate Event to go on.

“It is extremely important that those standards are met in the UK, and that is exactly why we have raised the matter so seriously with the Advertising Standards Authority,” she continued.

That was not enough for Zack Polanski, the anti-Zionist Jewish leader of the Green Party, who sent a letter later on Tuesday to Khan demanding action, including from London’s police force.

“This needs to be escalated to the Metropolitan Police Service immediately,” Polanski wrote. “Anything less fails to reflect the seriousness of the situation.”

The post Organizers of London Israeli real estate fair apologize after West Bank properties surface despite denials appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — A far-right extremist YouTuber who has said he wants to see “another Hitler” has raised more than $19,000 for a Cornell University student who told a potential employer that he was “not interested in working for a jew.”

The message was written by 19-year-old Austin Franco, a member of Cornell’s class of 2028, during his application process for an internship at a software company owned by two Jewish brothers, Gabe and Aiden Einhorn. The message, which Franco sent via the job application platform Handshake, went viral last week after Gabe Einhorn posted it on X.

“This kid applied to our job on handshake, we accepted him, and then he responded this,” Einhorn tweeted. “He probably knows nothing about Jews accept [sic] for what they tell him in college and on social media. Sad world.”

Einhorn’s tweet initially included a screenshot showing Franco’s name, but a minute after posting, he edited his tweet to obscure the name. (X allows users to view prior versions of edited posts.)

Franco drew more attention to himself the next day when he responded to Einhorn to explain his comment.

“I was stating why I was not interested after you had asked to interview 3 times,” Franco replied. “I found out you were Jewish after the fact. My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I havent had positive experiences, but on the aggregate that is not the case.”

Alluding to the criticism that he had received, he continued, “The reactions by your community only serves to further prove my point.” Efforts by JTA to reach Franco were unsuccessful.

Franco’s comments have triggered a bias investigation by Cornell. They have also been widely condemned by antisemitism watchdogs, the university and government officials — some of whom suggested that his comments should prevent him from being hired anywhere.

Leo Terrell, chair of the Department of Justice’s task force to combat antisemitism, posted dozens of times about the incident from his personal account, including one post urging the public to make Franco “permanently unemployable.”

But in antisemitic corners of the internet, Franco is emerging as a heroic figure, someone seen as willing to speak truth to power and say publicly what many believe about Jews.

“They’re treating him like a hero,” Gabe Einhorn told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview. “There’s these main players with millions of followers across their accounts that their job, literally all they do, is post about antisemitic stuff,” he added. “They’re kind of leading the charge there, so they’re just picking him up and dragging him along with him.”

The support Franco has elicited includes the crowdfunding page created by Miles Routledge, the far-right English YouTuber known as “Lord Miles” who last year said he hoped to see “another Hitler” by 2039. Routledge has also encouraged his followers to leave negative reviews on the Einhorns’ parents’ business page.

“jews are doxxing this man and trying to ruin his career,” Routledge wrote in the post sharing the fundraiser. (Doxxing is the intentional publication of personal or identifying information about a person on the internet.) He added, “I cannot let that happen.”

Comments on the donation page, which had raised more than $19,000 against a goal of $100,000 as of Wednesday morning range from “keep up the good work” to “We must separate ourselves from the Jew and his deceitfulness and every other disgusting trait they are born with, and forge a destiny decided by US without THEM.”

In another tweet about the fundraiser, Routledge wrote, “I just raised $10k for antisemitism.”

GiveSendGo is a Christian crowdfunding website that the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism says has collected funds “operated by or for extremists and their causes.”

The company said in a statement to JTA that it opposes antisemitism but had determined the Franco campaign was permissible under its rules.

“At GiveSendGo, we do not condone antisemitism, racism, discrimination, hate speech, or violence of any kind,” a spokesperson for the platform said in a written comment to JTA. “While we understand the concerns that have been raised regarding the fundraiser you referenced, the fundraiser itself does not violate our Terms of Service, which focus on activity and behavior within our platform.”

The spokesperson added, “GiveSendGo is not a place of judgment but a place of generosity, where people can choose how they wish to respond.”

The frenzy around the situation embroiled a different Austin Franco, a Dallas attorney who tweeted that he had received criticism aimed at the Cornell student. “To make matters worse, the undergraduate looks just enough like me to be confusing,” he said in a statement on X, which was accompanied by a video.

“My social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and law firm email address are being blown up by people understandably angry at this other Austin Franco. None of the posts cross any legal lines, but unfortunately there have been comments and emails talking about me, my firm, my parents, etc,” the attorney tweeted. In the video, he said, “We do not condone or support any of the views this Austin Franco holds.”

Meanwhile, at Cornell, where classes have ended for the summer, a formal investigation into the Handshake incident is in the works, the university told its student newspaper on Saturday. The incident was referred to the university’s Office of Civil Rights, where it will be investigated according to university policy, a spokesperson for Cornell University told JTA in a statement on Monday.

“Cornell condemns antisemitism and all forms of hatred and discrimination in the strongest possible terms,” the spokesperson said. “The university is steadfastly committed to fostering a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment for every member of our community.”

Franco told the Cornell Daily Sun he learned that the Einhorn brothers were Jewish based on their “first and last name, LinkedIn, and physiognomy.” Physiognomy is the pseudoscience of determining certain behaviors or traits about a person due to their facial characteristics and is largely considered to be a form of scientific racism.

“Unfortunately it’s his First Amendment right to be bigoted,” said Menachem Rosensaft, an attorney and adjunct law professor at Cornell who has advocated against antisemitism there, about Franco. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find him on Tucker Carlson or a similar program, and being made a hero of the antisemitic far right.”

Indeed, Franco has also drawn support beyond Routledge, including from figures who argued that he was facing outsized approbation because he targeted Jews.

The Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll shared his story and repeated his sentiments about Jews.

And the journalist and Israel critic Glenn Greenwald suggested that he believed Franco’s comments were relatively tame. “As I said, people with powerful platforms say things — right here on X — infinitely worse than what this 19-year-old said in that email,” he wrote. “Yet they face no consequences — let alone DOJ threats of retributions — because their target was different.”

Gabe Einhorn said he also believed Franco’s case was being handled differently from how it would have been had Franco made a bigoted comment to someone from another group — but to a different effect.

“Somehow when it comes to Jewish people, it’s become a trend that if you hate Jews, you get rewarded, you get paid,” he told JTA. “People support you and got your back for you hating Jews.”

In an interview with Fox News Monday, Aiden Einhorn said it was his first instance of antisemitism in the workplace.

“But as a college student, I’ve seen it on campus, in the classroom,” he said. “So it wasn’t such a surprise to me. But in our work experience, yeah, it was the first time.”

The post Far-right YouTuber raises nearly $20K for Cornell student who said he was ‘not interested in working for a jew’ appeared first on The Forward.