Thousands of Jews gather for a mass prayer for the hostages in Gaza at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Jan. 10, 2024. Photo: Yaacov Cohen

Amid increasing uncertainty over the future of the US-Israel relationship, a Jerusalem-based organization committed to safeguarding Israel’s capital city has decamped to Washington, DC in an attempt to make inroads with federal lawmakers in the US.

The Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy (JCAP), a research and policy center, aims to help protect and bolster the security, sovereignty, economy, and international standing of “Israel’s indivisible capital” in the face of “existential challenges,” according to its website.

To expand its mission, JCAP has opened a new office in Washington, DC, where some its principals are currently touring to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

As part of its work, JCAP seeks to mitigate potential threats from terrorist groups and their sponsors and has adopted the goal of spreading awareness about Islamist propaganda campaigns targeting the West, arguing that malevolent entities are trying to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies and corrode them from within. 

Chaim Silverstein, founder and chairman of JCAP, told The Algemeiner in an interview in Washington, DC this week that protecting Jerusalem is critical to preserving the security and existence of Israel from terrorists. He described Jerusalem as “the heart of Israel,” arguing that adversarial entities understand that “if they harm the head” of the Jewish state, “the rest of the body will implode.”

Silverstein added that Jerusalem is particularly vulnerable because it is home to Israel’s largest Arab population, explaining that countries such as Turkey and Iran have been effectively radicalizing Arab citizens of Israel with the hope of turning them against their home and “Islamicizing” Jerusalem. 

“Radical Islamic enemies are trying to destroy Jerusalem,” he said, stressing that they want to “liberate it for Islam.”

Thus, according to Silverstein, JCAP “formulates policy initiatives” to protect Jerusalem from looming threats. The organization maintains a “unique approach” to combatting Islamic extremism, he argued, touting its extensive efforts to monitor and track the Muslim Brotherhood’s global Islamist network. JCAP aims to share the organization’s findings and methodologies with US lawmakers, equipping them with the ability to thwart extremism in their own borders, Silverstein said.

JCAP aims to enhance “Jerusalem’s international standing through proactive diplomacy while countering the influence of hostile international agitators,” its website states, adding that the goal is “advancing strategic partnerships and advocacy to reinforce Jerusalem’s role as Israel’s united and sovereign capital.”

In addition to information about terrorist cells, JCAP also wants to spread awareness about the pervasive influence campaign waged by Qatar against Israel and Western countries. According to Silverstein, Qatar has attempted to soften its image through elevating its prominence in sports, entertainment, and academia while simultaneously spreading misinformation regarding Israel’s domestic policies and military campaign in Gaza. Moreover, he argued that this influence campaign aims to spark chaos within the borders of Western countries such as Canada, Australia, and the US. 

US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned in 2024 that actors tied to adversarial governments such as Iran have encouraged and provided financial support to rampant protests opposing Israel’s defensive military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

Meanwhile, analysts have revealed in recent reports that Qatar, a longtime supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood’s global network more broadly, has spent tens of billions of dollars to influence US policy making and public opinion in Doha’s favor. At the same time, the country has provided the Hamas-run government in Gaza with an estimated $1.8 billion and allows the terrorist group to host an office in Doha.

JCAP acknowledged that the popularity of Israel has declined precipitously in the US, complicating efforts to forge strong ties with certain American lawmakers. Nonetheless, the organization said it believes that US policymakers will understand that their national security interests are intertwined with Israel’s. The organization suggested that despite the souring reputation of the Jewish state among younger US voters, the American military and defense industry still recognize that Israel is a valuable asset. Moreover, the group claimed that their mission — focusing more on Jerusalem rather than Israel writ large — helps to emphasize the shared Christian-Jewish Biblical heritage of the land rather than politics. 

Amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, many recent polls have shown a precipitous decline in support of Israel among Democrats and, increasingly, even Republicans, especially younger voters.

Though JCAP claims to stay neutral on domestic US issues, it explicitly identifies as “pro-Trump,” praising US President Donald Trump’s policies toward Israel. The group hopes to form inroads with the Trump administration and Republicans to help guide policies on Israel.

Irish-Australian singer Johnny Logan sings during a rehearsal for the first semi-final in the supporting program of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2024. Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa via Reuters Connect

Ireland’s three-time Eurovision winner Johnny Logan said he supports the country’s national broadcaster in its decision to pull out of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest after organizers said Israel will be allowed to participate.

Johnny Logan said he was “proud” of RTÉ’s decision and thinks the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the competition, should have Israel “removed” from next year’s Eurovision contest, set to take place in May in Vienna, Austria. “I really feel that in this case, RTÉ definitely made the right decision,” he said on RTÉ’s radio news program “This Week.”

“I don’t think that Israel should be allowed to hide under the umbrella of the Eurovision … make it look as though, everything’s OK, business as usual, because it’s not. I think most people in Ireland would agree with that,” Logan added. “I think that the EBU should have made a decision regarding Israel, a decision removing them from the show and taking that decision away from individual countries. But being as it is. I really think that what Ireland, what RTÉ, have done is exactly the right thing to do. I support them 100 percent.”

The EBU ruled last week that Israel can compete in next year’s contest, despite backlash over Israel’s participation because of its military campaign against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Following the EBU’s decision, the national broadcasters of Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Slovenia confirmed their withdrawal from the competition. Logan called on the national broadcasters of other countries to also boycott the 2026 Eurovision because of Israel’s involvement.

“And it’s not about the Israeli people, it’s about the people in charge of Israel, the governments that have been making these decisions,” he added. Logan said he believes Israel being allowed to participate “adds a kind of respectability to the way they’ve behaved.”

Logan noted that the Eurovision Song Contest has turned political in the past, and cited as an example Russia being removed from the competition following its invasion of Ukraine. “They did it with Russia in the Eurovision. They say that the Eurovision is nonpolitical but the reality of it is when it is necessary it becomes political,” Logan said.  “The Eurovision has been really good to me, but I do feel very strongly about it.”

“The challenging thing about any film, for me, is you’re trying to build these worlds, so you’ve got to find the elements,” said Jack Fisk, production designer for Marty Supreme, and regular collaborator with big names including Terrence Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch and Brian De Palma.

“We’re trying to piece together bits of reality to tell our story, and that look right for the period,” Fisk said in a Zoom conversation, the day Marty Supreme got a Best Picture, Musical or Comedy, nomination from the Golden Globes. “So the challenge is to find them, that you can get to them reasonably and within the day, and that will fit in your budget.”

Often the on-the-ground reality of the filming location inspires the scene, but sometimes it gets in the way and forces the art department to get creative. Both were the case in a blink-and-you’ll miss it moment in Josh Safdie’s epic of a schvitzer table tennis champ.

While shooting a scene on location at Seward Park on the Lower East Side, the original Forward Building, with its historic preserved façade, loomed in the background. It fit the film’s early 1950s setting, and the biography of Marty Reisman, the real ping-pong pro whose 1974 book The Money Player inspired the film, and who grew up on East Broadway and learned the game at the Education Alliance in the neighborhood.

“Josh told me that, you know, ‘That’s this Jewish newspaper, it’s been here forever’” said Fisk.

It was more than a bit of trivia from a lifelong New Yorker. It was a fix to a problem: modern street signs opposite the park, which were decidedly out of place but which the city wouldn’t bother  removing for a one-day shoot.

So Fisk and his team, drawing inspiration from the locale, built a Forward delivery truck to block out the signs. He even recalls printing up some papers. The graphic artists relied on reference photos to reproduce the font — painting the cargo bed immediately after a period-appropriate truck arrived. Fisk thinks it may have still been wet on shooting day.

Every time Fisk entered a neighborhood for this New York shoot — his first since 1974’s Phantom of the Paradise, directed by De Palma — he looked for traces of the past to take advantage of. (In the case of Phantom, Fisk opted to use the Brooklyn building of the Pressman Toy Corporation— a Jewish-owned outfit known for manufacturing Chinese Checkers and the family firm of Hollywood producer Edward R. Pressman — as a prison instead of filming in a real jail; Fisk said all the ones he scouted looked “too nice.”)

Recreating the lost world of Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet, posed its own challenges.

Central to the film, if only briefly seen in the final cut, is Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Club on 55th St. The building was demolished, but Fisk, together with producer Sara Rossein (who is also Safdie’s wife), was able to get hold of blueprints and black-and-white photos through tax records, government archives and a magazine feature. Rossein’s discovery of a 16mm piece of film clued Fisk in on the color palette.

Fisk got his start in film working for B-movie maven Roger Corman (“Every other page there was a bare breast or something,” he recalled of the scripts) so he is no stranger to improvising on a shoestring. In fact, he relishes it. On Marty Supreme, as maximalist a picture as Safdie has ever made, the budget — despite being reportedly the most-expensive A24 production yet at around $60-70 million — often creaked, calling for some creative problem solving.

There’s a scene where Marty volleys an apple into a bowl in a building across from his hotel room. There wasn’t money to retrofit the room in the window, so the period stove viewers see is an image printed from a plotter — a massive printer — pasted to the wall. Norkin’s Shoe Shop, where Marty works, was an actual location on Orchard Street, but the crew built modular units of the storefront so they could move the shots away from a modern-looking hotel recently built nearby.

While Marty Supreme is largely rooted in New York, with some detours to New Jersey, London and Tokyo, there’s a memorable sequence set at Auschwitz, as former world champion tennis pro Bela Kletzki (Géza Röhrig) recounts his life in the camp.

“It’s kind of horrible and challenging at the same time,” Fisk said of recreating a part of the death camp. “Everybody’s knowledge of Auschwitz and concentration camps really helped make the set.”

The dimly lit barracks were built inside a house that doubled as the set for a farm in New Jersey where Marty tries to retrieve a lost German shepherd.

Fisk said Röhrig, who starred in the Auschwitz-set film Son of Saul and converted to Orthodox Judaism after a visit to the camp, was excited for the scene. (Fisk noted that Röhrig is part of his longtime collaborator Terrence Malick’s upcoming film, The Way of the Wind, where the actor will play Jesus, possibly the first Orthodox Jew to embody that role on the big screen.)

Fisk’s work on Marty Supreme has been noted in nearly every review — even the rare pan in Time singled out his production as “the best thing about the movie” — but it’s technically not his only film this year.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere shows the Boss watching Malick’s Badlands on his home television; the crime drama was the inspiration for the singer’s album Nebraska, the making of which is the crux of the biopic. Fisk is grateful Badlands is still resonating, as it marked the beginning not only of his most prolific collaboration, but was the set where he met his wife, Sissy Spacek.

While Fisk is a sought-after talent for the ambitious auteurs looking to wind back the clock —  his most recent credit is Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, for which he was nominated for his third Oscar — his most personal connection was with David Lynch, his friend since high school.

Lynch died in January, during the production of Marty Supreme. Fisk was in Japan working on one of the last scenes soon after his passing, and was gratified to see people hosting film festivals in diners in Lynch’s honor.

Marty Supreme is the first film Fisk has done with Safdie, and while it is a relatively early work (Safdie is just 41, though this film is his seventh feature, and his second without his brother, Benny), the veteran production designer was impressed by his enthusiasm and his attention to detail.

“I always tried to prepare myself so I have a little bit more detail than he asked, which is very hard to do,” Fisk said.

It’s that eye for minutiae — and the need to block out the blight of modernity — that paved the way for the Forward’s brief cameo. Fisk, for his part, likes the look of the Yiddish.

“It’s so graphic and beautiful and you can move it around,” Fisk said of the truck. “The camera’s gonna miss it, you can just back it up five feet to see it.”

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