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Francesca Hong is dishing up a Wisconsin campaign that is about the working class and Israel
(JTA) — Meet Wisconsin’s Mamdani.
Francesca Hong is running for governor of Wisconsin emphasizing affordability and opposition to U.S. support for Israel.
Her message is one the Republican Governor’s Association hopes to boost ahead of the Democratic primary next month: It unveiled an ad on Thursday dubbing her “too liberal” for Wisconsin – set to run in liberal parts of the state.
The calculus appears to be to make her appear appealing to a restive Democratic base that in a number of races countrywide has turned against the party establishment, in hopes of elevating to the nomination an unabashed left-winger who likely would lose in a crucial swing state. Zohran Mamdani may take Manhattan, the thinking goes, but his policies would curdle cheese in Wisconsin.
Hong is a single mom and a former chef whose political recipe for appealing to voters has vaulted her in front of the state’s crowded Democratic primary, bringing another democratic socialist within striking distance of victory.
“I’m State Representative Francesca Hong. I’m a service worker, community organizer, and a mom. I work for a living, always have, still do,” Hong said in a video announcing her candidacy as she wore an apron and strolled through a kitchen she had previously worked in. “Five years ago, my community sent me to the Capitol. The system is rigged. I’m running for governor to fix it.”
Hong’s campaign has centered affordability issues, including housing, education and childcare. It highlights her personal story as the child of South Korean immigrants.
It is her record on Israel and antisemitism that has drawn scrutiny from some Wisconsin Jews. During her campaign, Hong has taken a more sharply critical stance towards Israel while maintaining that support for Palestinian rights should not be conflated with antisemitism. She has also called Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.
Jeremy Tunis, the co-chair of the community relations committee of the Jewish Federation of Madison, said Hong has aligned herself with an ascendant wave of democratic socialist candidates that have gained ground in races across the country, including in New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado.
“In my view she is trying to leverage the current far-left progressive zeitgeist that has swept in certain areas, namely in New York with Zohran Mamdani,” Tunis, who explained that his personal views do not represent those of the federation.
For other Jews in the state, Hong’s bid for the Democratic nomination sparked concern about how she might fare in the November general election against presumptive Republican nominee Tom Tiffany.
“She’s probably the least electable of the candidates running,” Marc Herstand, a 74-year-old Jewish Madison resident, said. “Wisconsin is a purple state, very purple, and democratic socialism is not going to go over well outside of the liberal communities of Madison, Milwaukee, and … in some of the other cities.”
Tunis said Hong’s broader political record, including previous calls to defund the police, could make her a difficult Democratic nominee in a divided state.
“There’s probably an appetite for it in a lot of places, but … I feel strongly that she would be among the weakest general election candidates for a variety of reasons, not just her stances on issues surrounding antisemitism and anti-Zionism,” Tunis said. “She’s taken a lot of fairly controversial positions that for a 50-50 state, I think, would not serve well in the general election.”
The numbers appear to tell a different story. The race’s most recent polling, conducted earlier this month, had Hong leading with 30% of the votes ahead of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, at 28%. Another poll in March had Hong with 14% of votes and Barnes with 11%.
The July poll, conducted by Wedgewood polls, also found that Hong led with 47% of the vote against Tiffany with 44% when tested for the November general election.
Herstand, who is a member of the Jewish Democrats caucus at the Wisconsin Democratic State Convention, said that while he believed Tiffany was “tremendously worse” than Hong, he was concerned how her potential nomination would play out amongst the state’s Jews.
“It’s going to chill Jewish support if she gets the nomination,” Herstand said. “Will they hold their nose and vote for her? Yeah. Will they work actively for her? Probably not. Will she need every Democrat to work actively for her to win? Yep.”
Speaking to fellow progressives at a virtual rally Monday night, Hong framed her campaign as a test of the left’s growing political power.
“Workers are reclaiming our power, and this is an opportunity to ensure that the rest of politics across our country, I believe, can change when we win here in Wisconsin,” Hong said. “Because they say, as goes Wisconsin, as goes the country.” She did not speak about Israel or antisemitism during the rally.
Other candidates took shots at the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, and some attendees at the online rally sent messages in the chat questioning her pro-Palestinian bonafides in light of her silence on the issue. “Is she really a Zionist?,” asked one attendee, while another wrote, “She owns AIPAC.”
Hong has spurned AIPAC support, though the group largely spends in federal elections.
Earlier this month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Hong was now apologizing for a December 2023 call to the Madison police to report a vandalized Israeli flag, out of concern that the incident was “highly antisemitic” and urging that it be investigated as a hate crime.
Earlier this month, asked to explain her calls to police, she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it was an action “I regret deeply.”
“Three years ago, there was a piece of protest art at the encampments in Madison, which was photographed and posted to social media,” Hong said in a statement. “My constituents reported they felt threatened and alerted me to the social post, but the image was cropped and incomplete to misrepresent anti-Zionism as antisemitism – a distinction I take seriously.”
A week after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Hong posted on social media a plea to “prevent further devastation in Gaza; we can not answer war crimes with war crimes.”
“To the Jewish community here and around the world, I love you with my whole being and am praying for your safety,” Hong wrote. “Please know my heart continues to be with the Israeli & Palestinian people through this harrowing time.”
Since then, Hong has introduced legislation that would repeal a 2018 law banning state contracts with businesses that boycott Israel, and criticized outgoing outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. She has highlighted both efforts on her campaign website.
Hong has received endorsements from Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ro Khanna of California, both staunch Israel critics, as well as three Democratic Socialists of America chapters in Wisconsin.
Hong’s campaign drew further scrutiny after she appeared on both Hasan Piker’s show and on a stream hosted by Michael Beyer, an influencer known as “Mike from PA” who came under fire after saying that Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented.”
“If Wisconsin is going to be a state that actually values human rights, then we have to ensure that we’re supporting, we’re fighting for the pro-Palestine movement,” Hong said on Beyer’s show in October.
She also encouraged constituents to fundraise for people on the “front lines in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Hong appeared a second time on Beyer’s show last month, telling the host that “The people deserve leaders who lead with moral courage and moral clarity, and the litmus test is to say explicitly that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.”
Hong raised roughly $35,000 from Beyer’s livestream and $57,000 from Piker’s.
Herstand said that he was “absolutely appalled” by Hong’s decision to sit down with the influencers.
“It’s unconscionable for her to do and fundraise with them,” Herstand said. “She should return the money she made with these antisemitic influencers, and she should denounce the hate that they spread against Jews.”
Hong’s appearances on the podcasts also sparked condemnation from Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“When you decide these are the sort of people you want to hang out with in order to raise $, you have made clear that you either (1) agree with them or (2) can be bought or (3) both. Fran Hong appears to be all 3,” Jacobs, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X. “She is willing to sell out the Jews of Wisconsin for a few bucks.”
Hong’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about her appearance on the podcasts, but in an interview with MS Now earlier this month, Hong defended her engagement.
“It’s important that we get our message out in places where campaigns struggle to reach voters,” Hong said. “Just because I am on a platform certainly does not mean that I endorse everything that has been said by either the hosts or other people who have gone on.”
Hong told MS Now, “I condemn hatred, discrimination, antisemitism and islamophobia, any sort of dehumanizing of communities.”
For Tunis, the community relations co-chair, Hong’s response to criticism of those appearances fell short.
“I think that there’s a lot of questions that she has not provided sufficient answers on, particularly her recent appearance and friendliness with Hassan Piker and Mike from PA,” Tunis said. “I think people are waiting and watching.”
Miryam Rosenzweig, the president and CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, told JTA in a statement that the federation’s “concern extends well beyond any one candidate.”
“Many in Wisconsin’s Jewish community are increasingly concerned by a political environment in which antisemitic rhetoric is too often minimized or excused, where the choices public leaders make about the voices they elevate and the platforms they share shape that environment, and where too few are willing to confront antisemitism consistently, regardless of its source,” Rosenzweig said.
Looking ahead to the crowded Aug. 11 Democratic primary, Tunis and Herstand said many Wisconsin Jews he had spoken with were supportive of Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who was endorsed by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley earlier this month after he exited the race. Rodriguez came in third place in the primary’s latest polling, receiving 19% of the votes.
“I hope that Francesca Hong can tone down her rhetoric, because I do not think that it promotes Jewish community safety, and it can make life difficult,” Tunis said. “I hope that she keeps an open mind as her campaign progresses. I’m not super confident that’s going to be the case.”
If Hong does prevail next month, Herstand said he hoped that she would foster communication with Jewish communities in the state.
“I hope she doesn’t get the nomination, but if she were to do that, I would hope that she would reach out to the Jewish community and actually learn a few things that she’s probably not aware of,” he said.
The post Francesca Hong is dishing up a Wisconsin campaign that is about the working class and Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Lula’s reelection puts the brakes on Latin America’s pro-Israel shift
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Brazilians reelected Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva as president, defeating the center-right senator Flavio Bolsonaro, putting the breaks on a regional shift toward closer ties with Israel.
The current president, a left-wing leader of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party), obtained 51.79% of the valid votes, while Bolsonaro received 48.21%.
Bolsonaro, of the Liberal Party, had pledged a close diplomatic partnership with Israel and cultivated ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Lula has become a critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Bolsonaro said he did not accept the election results, although it is not clear how he could challenge them.
In January 2024, Lula’s government endorsed South Africa’s decision to bring a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. A month later, Lula compared Palestinian suffering in Gaza to Hitler’s murder of the Jews, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Brazil and Israel. Brazil’s Jewish umbrella organization, CONIB, publicly condemned the comparison as a distortion that offended the memory of Holocaust victims and their descendants.
The remarks were also criticized by the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Sen. Bolsonaro promised a big shift toward Israel when he spoke on June 28, 2026, in Buenos Aires in a meeting with Jewish leaders. “In 2027, Brazil will not only once again have an ambassador to Israel, but will also take the step of moving its embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem,” he said.
That night he also lauded the 120,000 Jews in Brazil, saying, “They are men and women who rank among the brightest in Brazilian medicine, industry, science, culture and business.”
After Bolsonaro finished ahead of Lula in the first round on Oct. 4, Netanyahu sent a message the following day on X: “Congratulations @FlavioBolsonaro on yesterday’s vote and good luck in the final. I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil. Best wishes for your great victory, my friend.”
Since 2023, several Latin American countries have strengthened ties with Israel, in some cases reversing policies adopted by their predecessors, among them:
Argentine President Javier Milei elected in 2023, who makes support for Israel central to his foreign policy and meets with families of hostages Hamas abducted in its deadly Oct. 7, 2023, raid on Israel, which launched the current war;
Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz Pereira, elected in 2025, who restored diplomatic relations with Israel severed by his predecessor;
President Nasry Asfura of Honduras, elected in 2025, who immediately formally recognized Israel’s new ambassador, a process his predecessor left in limbo;
Chilean President José Antonio Kast, elected in 2025, who is rebuilding ties with Israel diminished by his predecessor;
and Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella, elected in May, who restored diplomatic ties with Israel severed by his predecessor, sent his foreign minister to inaugurate an embassy in Jerusalem and pulled out of the ICJ genocide case against Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump disparaged Jewish voters who support Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, at a rally in Port Huron on Sunday.
“Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,” Trump told some 4,000 supporters in the city north of Detroit, where he stumped for Republican nominee Mike Rogers. “You should never speak to them again.”
Hundreds of Michigan Jews have pledged to vote for El-Sayed, who polls indicate is narrowly leading Rogers in a race key to determining control of the Senate. Another subset of Jews has pressured El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, to defend “Jewish safety — including for Zionist Jews” and “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” Still others have urged their community members to reject El-Sayed outright and back Rogers.
El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel, saying the country has committed genocide in Gaza and is “not an ally.” Those positions divided the Democratic party during his primary campaign against pro-Israel U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly bested in August. A former public health official, El-Sayed has also emphasized affordability in healthcare, housing and education. He has made a concentrated push to reach undecided Jewish voters in the homestretch before the Nov. 3 midterm election, hiring a Jewish outreach director last week.
Trump has in the past accused Jews who vote for Democrats of being “disloyal to Jewish people” and “disloyal to Israel.”
He said at the Port Huron rally that he is “polling at 99% in Israel,” which will hold national elections on Tuesday.
Trump did not cite evidence for the claim, which is unsupported by publicly available surveys. While he has historically scored high popularity among Israelis, a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute in June found the Israeli public’s trust in him was declining. The poll said that 12% of Israelis reported having a great deal of trust in Trump, down from 21% in May, while the share of Israelis with complete distrust in him rose from 32% to 37%.
Trump joined his comments about Jews and Israel to anti-Muslim rhetoric about El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim in the Senate if he is elected.
Trump baselessly called El-Sayed a “jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member” who was “on the side of the terrorists,” adding that he would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”
He threatened that “if Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”
Trump claimed that El-Sayed’s half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. On the first anniversary of the attack, Abdelhadi posted a video that said, “no matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we’re going through, the horizon of justice is just around the corner,” according to The New York Times. She did not directly mention or celebrate the violence.
Trump also said that El-Sayed’s mother had “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.” A Times investigation reported that El-Sayed’s mother worked as a nurse in Missouri for a Muslim aid group that was later designated by the U.S. government as a supporter of terrorist groups. She was never accused of wrongdoing.
El-Sayed’s campaign has said that he “disagrees” with his sister on “a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy.” He was raised by his father and stepmother and has said that he had little relationship with his biological mother while growing up.
Former President Barack Obama campaigned with El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday, saying the candidate was “fighting for change, real change, that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In anti-Muslim speech, Trump says Jews who support El-Sayed should be ‘ashamed’ appeared first on The Forward.
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CAIR Connecticut urges Greenwich schools to stop using Eisner Camp over Israel ties
(JTA) — GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – Greenwich Public Schools in Connecticut said it would proceed with a planned fall trip for sixth graders at a Jewish camp in Massachusetts as planned this week, despite pressure from a Muslim advocacy organization over the camp’s Israeli symbols and Israel-related programming.
CAIR Connecticut, the state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, objected to the trip, saying that programming at Eisner Camp in Great Barrington “incorporates connections to Israel,” the chapter’s board chair Farhan Memon wrote in a letter to Greenwich Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones dated Oct. 13.
The four-day Greenwich Schools field trip was organized by the Outdoor Classroom project, which works with seven locations in New England, including Eisner. Four of the camps are affiliated with Christian organizations, and two have no religious affiliation. With its clients, Outdoor Classroom coordinates nature-related learning programs for kids.
Memon wrote that some parents in Greenwich had viewed a video and photos of previous school events at Eisner and “identified Israeli flags and yellow ribbons prominently displayed in spaces used during school visits.”
“At the very least, spaces used by Greenwich students on any school trip should be free of national and political displays,” Memon wrote.
Eisner director Paul Isserles said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “We welcome Outdoor Classroom to use our camp facilities. Throughout the year many outside organizations rent our facilities for various programs. URJ Eisner Camp is proud to have an Israeli flag displayed for our camp programs.”
When it comes to visiting groups, “Frankly, we are not regularly asked to do anything to remove those symbols or to cover them,” said Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs in a telephone interview with JTA. “Because to be honest, we wouldn’t.”
Answering Memon’s letter on Oct. 14, Jones wrote in an email that her school district “acknowledges that individuals and families have vastly different views regarding global events” and that it intends to “provide an inclusive and safe educational environment for all Greenwich Public School students, including when they are on field trips under our care.”
She added that she had “made it clear to a few families that we will not take a political or religious stand.” JTA has seen both the CAIR letter and the email response.
CAIR Connecticut did not respond to JTA’s query.
CAIR’s national website says the organization promotes interfaith dialogue and “condemns all acts of violence against civilians by any individual, group or state.”
The Reform movement founded the 600-acre camp in 1958 as the Joseph Eisner Camp Institute for Living Judaism. It is located in the Berkshire Hills south of the town center of Great Barrington.
It is one of more than a dozen of the movement’s overnight camps in the North America. Many of those camps are rented throughout the year by groups that have nothing to do with Judaism, URJ’s Rabbi Jacobs said. “If a group rents the camp, they come up with their own agenda,” he said.
He added, “There are flags and other symbols of Judaism and of Israel in our camps, and we’re proud of that.”
Some parents had raised concerns about the venue as early as March. CAIR urged the district to stop using the camp in the Oct. 14 letter.
Removing decorations from the camp would not be enough, he said, noting that parents were upset after seeing promotional material about Eisner bringing Jewish campers to visit Israeli army bases under the Gadna, an Israeli military youth program.
A July 2019 post on Eisner Camp’s website says a group of participants in its Israel trip chose Gadna, stayed at an army base, practiced drills and learned to shoot at a target.
“URJ Eisner Camp participants who go to Israel have not participated in Gadna since 2023,” camp director Isserles said in a statement provided to JTA. “Our Israel programming at camp and in Israel is focused on Jewish identity, community, education, and connection to Israel.”
What CAIR is saying is that “A Jewish institution can be an unfit place for public-school children because it is visibly Jewish and identifies openly with Israel,” wrote blogger and Eisner alumnus Rabbi Jeff Salkin in his “Unfiltered” Substack on Oct. 19.
“A Jewish institution should not have to hide its Jewish identity to count as a fit place for other people’s children. You would not ask a church camp to remove a cross, or a Muslim camp to take down a crescent. A standard that demands such hiding makes Jewish identity itself the problem,” Salkin wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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