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Far-right Israeli minister finds enemy in JDC, the mainstream American Jewish aid group
(JTA) — An American Jewish group that has provided aid to Jewish communities in crisis for more than a century has become the target of one of Israel’s newly empowered far-right ministers.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, who serves as national security minister, said on Wednesday that he was shutting down a program dedicated to reducing violence in Arab Israeli towns. His reason: The program is operated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which he called a “leftist organization.”
“JDC is a nonpolitical organization and has been so since our founding in 1914,” Michael Geller, a spokesperson for JDC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Ben-Gvir’s characterization baffled many across the Jewish communal world who know the JDC as a nonpartisan group with an extensive track record of providing humanitarian aid to Jews in distress.
To them, Ben-Gvir’s criticism of the group is the latest sign that the rupture of political norms in Israel extends beyond the judicial reforms advanced by the government, which have drawn unprecedented protests.
“To call the JDC a left-wing organization is a joke. It is not political in any way,” said Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, co-CEO of the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit that works toward an “equal and shared society” for Jewish and Arab Israelis.
Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, who is Jewish, said he anticipated changes by the right-wing government, which was inaugurated in December. But he was surprised by Ben-Gvir’s announcement.
“I could expect revisiting collaboration with organizations that are branded as civil rights or human rights or Israeli-Palestinian organizations,” he added. “But the JDC — it’s very strange.”
Founded in 1914 by the American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff to aid Jews living in Palestine, the “Joint” has distributed billions of dollars in assistance across 70 countries — including, over the last year, to 43,000 Ukrainian Jews amid the war there. It played a central role in aiding Holocaust survivors following World War II, as well as in the resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Among its biggest sources of support are Jewish federations, the nonpartisan umbrella charities found in nearly every major North American Jewish community.
“JDC is an apolitical organization that has worked with every government since the establishment of the State of Israel, providing critical services to the elderly, youth-at-risk, people with disabilities and other underserved populations across all sectors, including Haredim and Arab-Israelis,” the Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement. “JDC’s activities are a living and breathing example of the Jewish values of tikkun olam and tzedakah that guide Jewish Federations’ work every day,” Hebrew phrases that connote the Jewish imperative to repair the world, as well as charity.
JDC staff packing matzahs and haggadahs for online seders in Odessa, Ukraine, April 7, 2022. (JDC)
In Israel, the group funds and operates efforts to help needy populations — including immigrants, the elderly, people with disabilities and people living in poverty. Those efforts often involve working with the government, which in 2007 gave the JDC Israel’s most prestigious prize for its work. This year, according to a spokesman, the group is spending $129 million on Israel initiatives.
The JDC’s government-funded programs include the anti-violence effort that Ben-Gvir is targeting. It was made possible last year due to nearly $1 billion in funding to curb crime in Arab communities by the previous governing coalition, which was centrist. The allocation followed lobbying by Arab and civil society organizations, including the Abraham Initiatives, which is now monitoring how the money is being used as well as its impact.
Arab citizens of Israel make up 84% of crime victims despite comprising just 20% of the population, according to government data released last year that showed a sharp rise in the proportion of Arab Israelis who had experienced violent crime.
Many in Arab communities have called for heightened law enforcement and have charged Israeli police with making inadequate efforts to keep their communities safe. This week, commenting on the shooting death of an Arab Israeli woman, Arab Israeli opposition lawmaker Ahmad Tibi accused Ben-Gvir of being “occupied with other matters,” such as clashes with the attorney general and police officials in Tel Aviv. “Maybe the time has come for senior officials to demonstrate responsibility when it comes to crime organizations and weapons running rampant,” Tibi said.
Other initiatives have aimed to tackle the violence in ways that go beyond policing. The program that Ben-Gvir said he is shutting down is one of them. Called Stop the Bleeding, it involves multiple government ministries as well as local community groups and education efforts and has operated in seven cities with large Arab populations, including a Bedouin town and Lod, a city with significant Arab organized crime networks that also has a large Jewish population.
Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said the program was already starting to bear fruit and had contributed to a slowdown in a multi-year rise in murders. Canceling the program, he said, reflects the current government’s general approach to tackling Israel’s problems.
“It’s not about collaboration. It’s not about hearing the concerns and pain and hopes and needs of the Arab community,” he said. “It’s about doing everything unilaterally, and really without a lot of care for the lives of those people. I think that’s what we are watching.”
MK Ahmad Tibi attends a meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Dec. 6, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
A year ago, around the time when the previous government awarded the Stop the Bleeding contract to the JDC, Bezalel Smotrich, a key Ben-Gvir ally who was then an opposition lawmaker and now serves alongside Ben-Gvir as finance minister, proposed that Israel create a “command center” of “all of the relevant entities” that provide humanitarian assistance to Ukrainian Jewish refugees. Included on his list, alongside the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Red Cross: the JDC.
The JDC is not the first mainstream group to be targeted by far-right members of Israel’s new right-wing government, whose signature legislative effort aims to sap the power and independence of the country’s judiciary. That legislation has given rise to a sweeping protest movement and to grave warnings about Israel’s future from a broad range of public figures — including elder statesmen, foreign governments and religious leaders.
Avi Maoz, the leader of the anti-LGBTQ Noam Party who briefly held a leadership role in Israel’s Education Ministry, compiled a list of American and British groups that he believes are trying to impose their liberal values on Israeli schoolchildren. “We must protect our people and our state from the infiltration of the alien bodies that arrive from foreign countries, foreign bodies, foreign foundations,” Maoz once said. Maoz has since resigned from that role, saying that he did not think he was being sufficiently empowered to fulfill his goals by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
But Be’eri-Sulitzeanu said he remains concerned about civil-society programs, especially those falling under the purview of far-right ministers including Ben-Gvir or those funded by American Jews, whom some on the right perceive as universally liberal.
People who are paying attention to local governance in Israel expect further tensions around initiatives that do not match Ben-Gvir’s attitudes about harsh policing. Ben-Gvir wants officers to have the right to shoot Arabs who throw stones, has called for a crackdown on anti-government protesters and is increasingly clashing with police officials who believe his orders could jeopardize public safety. Multiple former police commissioners have called for his dismissal.
“Ben-Gvir has his own political agenda and he has his own ax to grind, and at the moment, I think he’s not keen on developing services of the Arab population, either in security or juvenile delinquency or education,” said Amos Avgar, who worked for the JDC in Israel, Russia and the United States for 30 years until 2010, including as chief programming officer.
Avgar emphasized that the JDC has always studiously avoided political activity. “If there’s one thing that the JDC is not, it is not political,” he said. “It always shied [away] from anything that had the smell of politics and never dealt with any project by political agenda.”
It’s unclear how quickly Ben-Gvir’s announcement, made during a government meeting and first reported by Israel’s public broadcaster, will ultimately translate into changes. Geller, the JDC spokesman, said the organization had learned about the criticism only from the media, not from Ben-Gvir’s office. Later, amid an outcry, Ben-Gvir’s office said the funding decision had followed a review of contracts that revealed missing documentation from the JDC, a charge that the JDC denied.
Amnon-Sulitzeanu said he didn’t have high hopes for the program’s future.
“I think the first [characterization] is unfortunately going to be the correct one — that he is actually intending to stop it, which is very unfortunate because it is among the more serious programs that are willing to deal with this catastrophe,” he said. “And it shows again that the current minister is not so much interested in saving lives of Arab citizens.”
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Romanians Stabbed Journalist in London at Behest of Iran, UK Court Told
People walk past a mural depicting the late leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the late Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
A team of Romanian men, acting as proxies for the Iranian government, carried out a knife attack on a journalist working for a Persian-language media organization in London, prosecutors told a British court on Monday.
Pouria Zaratifoukolaei, known as Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin who works for Iran International, was stabbed in the leg three times as he was attacked near his home in Wimbledon, southwest London, in March 2024.
At the start of the trial of two of the three men accused of carrying out the stabbing, prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said they had targeted Zeraati, whose Saudi-funded TV employer is critical of Iran‘s government and has been designated a terrorist organization by Tehran.
‘DELIBERATE, PLANNED VIOLENCE’
“This was no robbery, no fight that got out of control, it was deliberate, planned violence to achieve what it did, that is serious injury to its target,” Atkinson told London‘s Woolwich Crown Court.
They had “committed a planned attack preceded by reconnaissance, and which was ordered by a third party acting on behalf of the Iranian state,” the prosecutor said.
Iran has denied any involvement in the incident.
Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, both deny charges of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding. The third man accused of involvement, David Andrei, was arrested in Romania but is not involved in the trial.
Atkinson said Zeraati was an “obvious and readily identifiable target for violence to be inflicted by proxies” acting for Iran. He said posters had been put up in Tehran in November 2022 featuring pictures of journalists including Zeraati, under the heading “Wanted: dead or alive.”
“In recent years, since 2005, the Islamic Republic has turned less to its own operatives and increasingly to use proxies such as criminal gangs to meet their threatened violence on their behalf,” Atkinson said.
“That has included attacks on persons in this country who have become targets of Iranian intimidation and, effectively, terror.”
Atkinson said Zeraati had been subject to “extensive reconnaissance,” and a year before Stana had been arrested in the garden of his apartment with another man, in possession of latex gloves, scissors, and a mask.
On the day of the attack, Badea and Andrei confronted Zeraati as he crossed the street from his home to his car, the prosecutor said. Andrei held him, while Badea stabbed him at the top of his thigh before they fled to a getaway car driven by Stana, the prosecutor added.
The men, who were motivated by money, dumped the car and some clothing, and then took a taxi to Heathrow Airport from where they flew to Geneva, Atkinson said.
The trial, which is expected to last more than two weeks, continues.
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‘Beyond Ironic’: Mamdani’s ‘Nakba’ Video Features Non-Arab Woman Critics Say Has European Roots
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) speaking with the press in the Bronx, New York City, May 18, 2026. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked the Palestinian “Nakba” with an official City Hall video featuring a woman presented as a survivor of Israel’s founding war, but critics quickly identified her family as “European settlers” from Bosnia who left Arab-controlled territory.
The backlash came as leaders of mainstream Jewish groups said they would reject invitations to Mamdani’s “Jewish Heritage” celebration at Gracie Mansion on Monday evening.
The video, posted on Friday, features New York resident Inea Bushnaq, identified as a “Nakba survivor,” recounting her family’s departure from their home because, as she termed it, “the Zionists were coming into Jerusalem.”
Nakba is Arabic for “catastrophe,” a term Palestinians use for Israel’s founding and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for the refugees’ millions of descendants is viewed by many Israelis and Jews as a call that would end Israel’s existence by demographic means. Critics said the video’s assertion that the Nakba “continues to this day” echoed that position.
Text in the video says the Nakba refers to the “expulsion and displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel” and says Israel’s pre-state militaries, “the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi militias, among others, destroyed more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, killing thousands of Palestinians and carrying out dozens of massacres.”
“May 15 is the annual commemoration of the Nakba. For Palestinians, their displacement and the Nakba continue to this day,” the video text reads.
The video makes no mention of Arab attacks on Jews before and during the 1948 war, the invasion by Arab armies after Israel’s declaration of independence meant to eradicate the nascent state, the rejection of the UN partition plan that would have created a Jewish and an Arab state, or the expulsion of Jews from parts of Jerusalem that came under Jordanian control.
Speaking in a British accent in the video, Bushnaq, who is described as Palestinian-American, explains how keys have become a Palestinian symbol of the right to return. “You have the key but not the house,” she says.
Tom Gross, a Middle East expert, noted that the video omitted the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries while relying on what he called a flawed account of Palestinian history.
“Not only does Mamdani’s video fail to mention the numerically greater 850,000 Jews driven out of their homes in the Arab world; he can’t even get his narrative right regarding the so-called Palestinian Nakba,” he told The Algemeiner.
In a post shared widely on social media, Gross cited research by the historian and influencer who posts as J0sh_a to challenge Bushnaq’s portrayal as a Palestinian refugee.
“It turns out that the ‘Nakba Survivor’ who stars in Mayor Mamdani’s official NY City Hall Palestinian propaganda video yesterday, is literally a ‘European settler,’” the post said.
Bushnaq’s grandparents were Muslim Bosnians who left Bosnia for Ottoman Syria in the late 19th century after Austria-Hungary took control of Bosnia. The family later moved to Tulkarem, which came under Jordanian control after 1948, not Israeli control. Bushnaq was born in Jerusalem because of the city’s medical facilities, but her family remained based in Tulkarem, the post said.
Bushnaq’s father worked in England in the 1930s, returned to what was then known as Mandatory Palestine under British administration, and then in 1948 the family chose to go back to England.
“They were not expelled, and no one forced them to move to England. In any case, Tulkarem, and the old city of Jerusalem remained under Jordanian Arab control. No Arabs were forced to leave from Tulkarem in 1948,” Gross wrote.
“So, in summary, this is a European with no strong roots in the land of Israel, whose family made the decision to immigrate back to the continent of their grandparents instead of remaining under Arab control in what was part of Jordan after 1948.”
Critics also pointed to a poster seen on Bushnaq’s wall in the video. The “Visit Palestine” image was not Palestinian nationalist artwork, they said, but a Zionist-era tourism poster designed by Jewish artist Franz Kraus to encourage travel to the Holy Land.
“It is beyond ironic that the only person featured to represent Palestinian Arabs in his video appears to be someone from a recently arrived European settler family – from Bosnia – and not Arab at all,” he told The Algemeiner.
Gross also argued that Bushnaq’s family story pointed to a wider part of the history often left out of Palestinian nationalist accounts, saying many Arab families in the land in 1948 had arrived within a generation or two, drawn by British rule or by economic opportunities created by Jewish development. He cited surnames such as Al-Masri and Masarwa, both linked to Egypt, Fayumi, from Fayum in Egypt, Ismaili, from Ismailia, Al-Horani, from Hauran in Syria, Sidawi, from Sidon in Lebanon, and Al-Hijazi, from the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia.
Jewish groups, leaders and members of Congress slammed the post.
The UJA-Federation of New York accused Mamdani of leaving out critical context, writing on X that “the refugees you post about exist because 22 Arab states launched a war to destroy Israel,” after rejecting the UN plan that also called for a Palestinian state.
Mayor Mamdani: the refugees you post about exist because 22 Arab states launched a war to destroy Israel on May 15, 1948—rejecting the UN plan that also called for a Palestinian state. In its aftermath, 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands. Your post mentions none of this. https://t.co/Fn1aY788Tc
— UJA-Federation of New York (@UJAfedNY) May 15, 2026
Referencing the translation of Nakba, US Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) wrote on X, “The only catastrophe here is a mayor of New York who lets antisemitic mobs run wild to terrorize law-abiding Jewish New Yorkers while he spreads anti-Israel propaganda.”
“Rewriting history to portray the existence of Israel itself as the original sin is not education or remembrance. It is propaganda,” said New York Assemblymember Sam Berger. “This mayor constantly tries to market himself as an ally to the Jewish community while amplifying narratives that fuel hatred against the Jewish people.”
New York State Assembly member Simcha Eisenstein wrote, “Still wondering why hatred against Jews is so high in NYC? We have a mayor who is using government resources to disseminate a narrative and incite hostile propaganda.”
Still wondering why hatred against Jews is so high in NYC? We have a mayor who is using government resources to disseminate a narrative and incite hostile propaganda.
Mr. International Law guy forgot to include the fact that the Arab world rejected the UN’s partition plan to… https://t.co/TFgqRvqLqE
— Simcha Eichenstein (@SEichenstein) May 15, 2026
The post came the same day as anti-Zionist demonstrators gathered in Manhattan for Nakba Day rallies, with footage showing protesters carrying a Hezbollah flag, stepping on Israeli flags, shouting for Israel’s destruction, and confronting police.
The timing also contrasted with Mamdani’s own statement days earlier praising law enforcement for arresting a man accused of planning an Iran-backed attack on a New York synagogue. Mamdani had said the arrest “comes amid an alarming rise in antisemitism across the country.”
“Let me be clear: Antisemitism, violent extremism, and terrorism have no place in our city. This kind of hate is despicable,” he said.
The UJA-Federation later said it would not attend Monday night’s Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at Gracie Mansion because it was being hosted by a mayor who “denies a core pillar of our heritage — the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” according to a statement carried by the New York Post.
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said he would also skip the event. His group organizes the Israel Day Parade at the end of the month, which Mamdani has said he will not attend, breaking with past mayoral practice.
New Yorkers “expect leadership that lowers the temperature, brings people together, and makes every community feel seen, respected, and safe, including Jewish New Yorkers,” Treyger wrote in an X post criticizing Mamdani’s Nakba Day video.
New York is home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. For the overwhelming majority of Jewish New Yorkers, the connection to Israel is not political or social media theater. It is ancestral, spiritual, historic, and deeply personal.
At a moment of rising… https://t.co/UbyOX52Ded
— Mark Treyger
(@MarkTreyger718) May 15, 2026
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Pakistan Sends New Iranian Peace Proposal to US
A woman walks past an anti-US billboard depicting US President Donald Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, in Tehran, Iran, May 17, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran sent a new peace proposal to the United States with terms that appeared similar to offers Washington has previously rejected, although a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday that the US had softened positions on some issues.
A Pakistani source confirmed that Islamabad, which has conveyed messages between the sides in the war in the Middle East since hosting the only round of peace talks last month, had shared the latest proposal with Washington. But the source suggested progress had been difficult.
The sides “keep changing their goalposts,” the Pakistani source said, adding: “We don’t have much time.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed that Tehran’s views had been “conveyed to the American side through Pakistan” but gave no details. Washington did not immediately comment.
The Iranian proposal, as described by the senior Iranian source, appeared similar in many respects to Iran’s previous offer, which US President Donald Trump rejected last week as “garbage.”
It would focus first on securing an end to the war, reopening the Strait of Hormuz – a major oil supply route that Iran has effectively blockaded – and lifting maritime sanctions.
Contentious issues around Iran’s nuclear program and uranium enrichment would be deferred to later rounds of talks, the source said.
However, in an apparent softening of Washington’s stance, the senior Iranian source said the United States had agreed to release a quarter of Iran’s frozen funds – totaling tens of billions of dollars – held in foreign banks. Iran wants all the assets released.
The Iranian source also said Washington had shown more flexibility in agreeing to let Iran continue some peaceful nuclear activity under supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency separately quoted an unidentified source as saying the US had agreed to waive oil sanctions on Iran while negotiations were under way.
Iranian officials did not immediately comment on Tasnim’s report, which a US official, who declined to be named, said was false.
FRAGILE CEASEFIRE
A fragile ceasefire is in place after six weeks of war that followed US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran. But talks mediated by Pakistan have stalled and Trump has said the ceasefire is “on life support.”
Washington has previously demanded Tehran dismantle its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas supply.
Iran has been demanding compensation for war damage, an end to a US blockade of Iranian ports and a halt to fighting on all fronts, including in Lebanon, where Israel is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social at the weekend that “the Clock is Ticking” for Iran, adding that “they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”
Trump is expected to meet top national security advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for resuming military action, Axios reported.
Baghaei said Tehran was prepared for all scenarios.
“As for their threats, rest assured that we are fully aware of how to respond appropriately to even the smallest mistake from the opposing side,” he told a televised weekly press conference.