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Holocaust Scholars Are ‘Part of the Genocide Problem,’ Says Anti-Israel Group Under Fire for Using Lemkin Name
Raphael Lemkin being interviewed on Feb. 13, 1949. Photo: Screenshot
The head of a stridently anti-Israel group has attacked dozens of prominent Holocaust scholars who called out the US-based nonprofit for “exploiting” the name of Raphael Lemkin — the Polish-born Jewish lawyer who survived the Holocaust and subsequently coined the term “genocide” — to “falsely accuse” Israel of genocide.
Following the attack, multiple members of the Lemkin family expressed to The Algemeiner their firm opposition to the organization’s using their relative’s name to pursue a campaign of anti-Israel activism.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, co-founder and executive director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, denounced more than 100 distinguished scholars, including two former leaders of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for supporting Joseph Lemkin. Lemkin — a relative of Raphael Lemkin, who helped draft the Genocide Convention after World War II and after whom the institute is named — is fighting to disassociate his cousin from the anti-Israel institution.
The Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, established in 2021, began accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza just days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, where Palestinian terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
The institute accused the Jewish state of genocide even before the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched its ground offensive in Gaza weeks later. It further promoted the position that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court for war crimes. In September 2024, the group expressed skepticism about whether Hamas terrorists raped Israeli victims, despite widely available evidence showing rampant sexual violence, and it has since continued criticizing Israel.
“In recent months,” the institute “has veered into strident anti-Israel political advocacy, supporting anti-Israel campus protests and reaching millions of viewers with social media posts that falsely accuse Israel of genocide,” The Algemeiner reported on Nov. 13, 2024, first exposing the group’s activity and the Lemkin family’s opposition to it doing so under their name.
“Joseph Lemkin, a New Jersey lawyer who is related to Raphael Lemkin, said he was unfamiliar with the institute until being informed of it by The Algemeiner,” the report said.
That was when Joseph Lemkin became determined to remove his family name from the institute.
Most recently, more than 100 distinguished scholars, led by Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, based in Washington, DC, penned a letter to Lemkin, expressing support for his effort.
“As scholars who have written about the Holocaust or other genocides, we share your family’s concern about extremists exploiting Raphael Lemkin’s name to attack Israel,” said the letter, which was dated Jan. 25 but not publicized until Jan. 30. “We support your efforts to reclaim the legacy of Raphael Lemkin from those who are besmirching his ideals and goals.”
Days later, in response, von Joeden-Forgey discussed the “ridiculous letter” in a LinkedIn post. “It is always a pity to realize how much ugliness they [the letters’ cosigners] hid behind their ‘Holocaust & Genocide Studies’ façade,” she wrote on Feb. 2, adding that she was “disgusted” by them.
Raising six points, von Joeden-Forgey claimed:
1) The idea that Raphael Lemkin would support Israel’s actions is ridiculous and itself constitutes a disparagement of his work and memory.
2) There are family members who support our work, so Joseph Lemkin — the only family member we have heard of who does not — does not represent “the family” or “the name.”
3) There has never been a good faith effort on Joseph Lemkin’s part to reach out to us to discuss his concerns. This has been a political hit job from the beginning. We have offered to discuss the issue twice. He instead decided to pursue a possible legal action and, when he realized he had no legal standing, he resorted to defaming us to US elected officials, government agencies, and the right-wing press.
4) I would like to ask these “scholars” to let us all know what they have been doing to reduce Palestinian deaths from Israel’s “war” and, more broadly, to prevent genocide in our world, since they find our work so egregious.
5) These “scholars” should be truly ashamed for calling our institute “extremist” in a political environment where they well know the impact that word can and probably will have on the freedoms of the US-based members of this institute. I consider these “scholars” to be supporting the US government’s assault on constitutional rights, particularly the First Amendment. They are, in other words, part of the genocide problem not the solution. But, of course, they must know that, considering that they should have read all about how these things work.
6) Blind support for Israel’s actions is genocide denial.
‘A Complete Lie’
Joseph Lemkin told The Algemeiner that the family is supportive of his stand — “except for one lone wolf. He used to live in the United States, and now he criticizes the US and criticizes Israel and has sent me some nasty emails, but he has never come out in public on the issue as far as I know.”
“To the contrary,” he continued. “My brother, Benjamin, has spoken out publicly; my sister, Rachel Memeles, and all of our children as well as my mother, who was married to my father, Daniel Lemkin — Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin. They were born in the same town.”
“My father was a Holocaust survivor. His parents and three brothers were all killed in the Holocaust. Raphael had no descendants; he didn’t have children of his own.”
Raphael Lemkin’s grave, Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, New York. Photo: Oberezny, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Joseph also adamantly rejected the claim that he never reached out to the institute to discuss his concerns.
“Beyond being a complete lie, we have reached out through our counsel,” he said. “In actuality, they had suggested, through their attorney, that they would consider changing the name from the Lemkin Institute.”
According to the attorneys’ letter, sent on behalf of Joseph Lemkin and the European Jewish Association and obtained by The Algemeiner, the institute may face legal action if it does not accept a name change voluntarily.
“We are prepared to move forward to compel the Lemkin Institute to cease using Raphael Lemkin’s name and likeness,” it said. “We have recently read in one of your press releases, however, that you would consider dropping the Lemkin and simply call yourself The Institute for Genocide Prevention, Inc. If that is indeed the case, our issue with you is resolved. We certainly prefer to amicably resolve this matter. Please advise.”
“So, our attorneys reached out to them, but we never heard back,” Joseph Lemkin told The Algemeiner.
“The one thing that stands out,” he continued, “is that if you go on their website, you’ll see they sell Palestinian flags and mugs. This is an activist organization — not a principled organization looking to identify genocide. They have an agenda, and they’re trying to push it. That’s my concern. It doesn’t seem that they’re starting on a balanced playing field.”
“We reached out directly, through our counsel, at least twice — most recently in October and got no response,” he added.
‘A Terrible Thing They’ve Done to the Lemkin Name’
Joseph’s brother, Benjamin Lemkin, similarly told The Algemeiner that he opposes the institute’s use of his family name.
“It’s completely obvious that Raphael Lemkin would not have been accusing Israel of genocide in any fashion,” he said. “By all objective standards, Israel has done more to protect civilians than any other country fighting wars — even when those countries are not fighting wars of an existential nature. In this case, however, Israel is fighting a war of an existential nature. If anything, perhaps Raphael Lemkin, who was a Zionist and a strong advocate of Jewish survival, would have felt that Israel possibly is not doing enough to defend itself.”
He continued, “Given the fact that Raphael Lemkin was motivated in part by the scourge of antisemitism, he would have immediately identified all of these malicious genocide accusations as constituting an antisemitic blood libel.”
“I am very proud to be part of this effort against the Lemkin Institute, and I have never heard of any family member supporting the institute,” he said, noting that he was quoted in November 2025 by The National Post, a Canadian newspaper, expressing his agreement with his brother’s initiative.
“If Raphael, who died in 1959, were alive today, he definitely would have been outraged,” he told the Post. “It is an abuse of his work … This is a terrible thing they’ve done to the Lemkin name.”
Medoff, the Holocaust scholar who spearheaded the letter in support of Joseph Lemkin, lamented how the institute attacked his colleagues.
“It’s sad that the Lemkin Institute’s president would stoop to questioning the scholarly credentials of some of the most prominent academics in the world of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, including authors of major texts in the field, chairs of university departments and Holocaust centers, and editors of leading publications,” Medoff told The Algemeiner, noting that in her LinkedIn post, von Joeden-Forgey put the word “scholars” in quotes. “She seems to be saying that you don’t even qualify as a scholar unless you agree with her anti-Israel views. What a remarkable position to take.”
The Algemeiner reached out to von Joeden-Forgey for comment but did not receive a response.
Atara Nurenberger Beck made aliyah in 2011 from Toronto, where she had many years of journalistic experience. She is currently a freelance writer and editor.
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Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew
This morning, when I woke up, it was the first time in my entire life that my spiritual leader, my rabbi and my friend, was gone. People are born and die every day, and we live totally oblivious to that fact, but I feel the absence of this one human being almost on a cellular level. And the very person I would call to help me make sense of a time like this is the one who is gone.
Rabbi Capers Funnye wasn’t your typical rabbi. How could he be, though? After all, his congregation was full of Black folks and people of color. There were also some white congregants, but for the most part, his temple was a place created for people like me to have somewhere to go and practice Judaism freely without suspicion or judgment. Beth Shalom was established over one hundred years ago by Black Jews who knew at that time that they could actually be arrested here in America, in Chicago, for daring to say out loud that they were Jewish. I know that sounds unthinkable, but it’s a historical fact: It used to be illegal in Chicago for Blacks to claim that they were Jewish.
Rabbi Funnye dedicated his life to ensuring that Black Jews wouldn’t have their Jewishness questioned.
White Jews love to reminisce about the Civil Rights Movement and their close relationship to the Black community, and this coalition brought about monumental changes to American society. But those same white Jews who marched in Selma and rode buses to Mississippi had little to no interaction with Black Jews. We were nonexistent. A myth, if you will. Some people had heard that there were Black people who called themselves Jews, but no one had actually ever seen one or met one.
We were there, but just as other Jews had hidden before, we were hiding too. We worshipped in basements, living rooms, and the backs of storefronts. We were in the shadows until Rabbi Funnye came along. He was born to leave the world a better place than he found it, and that’s exactly what he did.
Rabbi Funnye was supposed to be an AME pastor, but the church didn’t need him. The synagogue, the Jewish people, did.
I used to joke with him that I’d known him so long I could remember when he had a full head of black hair. And I did. I can remember going to services and seeing him on the bimah on Shabbat. Even as a little kid, I recognized he was different. He had a voice that could command the attention even of a pew full of antsy five-year-olds. But he also had a smile so warm that we never felt scolded. When he spoke, people couldn’t help but listen, and eventually he started saying what people wanted and needed to hear.
I watched him rise from assistant rabbi to leader.He could teach Torah in a way that held the congregation’s interest, imparting important lessons while adding levity with razor-sharp wit and perfectly timed humor.
If I’d been born male, I probably would’ve wanted to be a rabbi my whole life. I wanted to be like him. But I was a girl, and that was unthinkable.
But he made me believe I could do things.
I can remember when he started to integrate the Chicago Jewish community. When we’d go to events like Shabbat dinners or Black and Jewish seders, he was unfazed by the whispers and stares when he’d ask where the tables were for those who were both Black and Jewish. While this made the rest of us uncomfortable and, for some, unwilling to ever go back into any room where we were treated as oddities, he was undeterred.
He went back, over and over again. He would not allow the existence of Black Jews to go unacknowledged any longer. And many of us went with him. I was one. I saw how he was treated at times by white rabbis and even just by people who were white and Jewish and still felt that somehow they were better than him. It would infuriate me, but not him. He’d smile, tell a joke or one of his signature stories that would completely disarm them.
And while the behavior of some of my white co-religionists would thoroughly anger me, Rabbi Funnye understood how to deal with bigotry and hate in other ways. He grew up in it. He knew how to rise above it. Another lesson learned. He never met hate with hate or derision with derision. He met it with love.
He knew that was the only way he could move us from the shadows and out of the margins, into the mainstream. And it was also the only way that he could show white Jews we were nothing to fear or exclude.
At times, his message wasn’t popular with Black Jews who wanted nothing to do with white Jews or with white Jews who weren’t ready to accept the fact that G-d made Black Jews too.
None of that changed the fact that it was the right one.
Chief Rabbi Funnye wasn’t a Black Jew. He was a good Jew. And that is the lesson that I, and hopefully all who knew him, will learn from his life.
The post Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew appeared first on The Forward.
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All Jewish eyes are on Michigan as heated El-Sayed-Rogers Senate campaign draws to a close
(JTA) — DETROIT – The U.S. Senate race in Michigan, a deeply contentious contest that has strained Jewish relationships with the Democratic Party, drew to a bitter close Tuesday as voters headed to the polls in a race that could shape which party controls the chamber.
At its center is Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director and Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare For All candidacy has become a rallying cry for the national progressive movement.
His uncompromising stances on Israel have also made him a target among pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, which has spent heavily against him in both the primary and general election. AIPAC’s rare entry into a general election race came to support El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers.
One of El-Sayed’s positions on Israel — to end all U.S. military aid — was once thought a far-left pipe dream. But that has changed. On Election Day morning, Trump announced that, under his watch, nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel would wind down by the end of the year. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in agreement with the need to end aid and deny Democratic critics a point of attack.
In his announcement of the plan, Trump cited El-Sayed.
“Why should we suffer the slings like lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump said on Fox News, referring to Israel’s financial strength.
Representatives for the El-Sayed and Rogers campaigns, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, did not immediately return requests for comment on Trump’s new pledge. It is unclear whether it will be straightforward for the White House to halt the funding by the end of 2026, given that the existing memorandum of understanding that governs it extends to 2028.
El-Sayed’s campaign has galvanized young voters and a range of other constituencies, and he pulled ahead in the polls in the race’s final stretch. But his questioning of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and whether it or Iran posed a greater threat to the United States, as well as his prior associations with figures such as Hasan Piker, the streamer who has spread extreme rhetoric about American Jews, have sparked concern among Jewish Michiganders.
So, too, did comments the candidate made following the March terror attack on Temple Israel, a major synagogue in the state, in which El-Sayed appeared to link the attack to Israel’s war in Lebanon after reports that the attacker lost family in an Israeli strike. Hostile behavior from some of El-Sayed’s supporters toward pro-Israel Democrats, most prominently on display at the state party’s spring convention, have also alarmed Jews. El-Sayed has pledged to stand up to antisemitism.
Some Jews who had long considered themselves Democrats, including several local Jewish leaders, have cited such controversies in pledging to vote for Rogers. In some Michigan Jewish neighborhoods, yard signs proclaim that a vote for Rogers is a vote “against antisemitism.”
Accordingly, Rogers has made a play for the Jewish vote. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October that his opponent is “anti-Jew,” while running ads that played up El-Sayed’s tenuous family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Top Republicans have seized on the narrative, with President Donald Trump calling Jews “crazy” if they back El-Sayed, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calling him a national security threat. A Trump administration event to address antisemitism was held at a Michigan synagogue weeks before the election, though El-Sayed’s name was not mentioned there.
Jewish Democrats who had broken with El-Sayed found major validation in the race’s dramatic closing days. Democrat Haley Stevens, a strongly pro-Israel congresswoman who had narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, flipped sides to endorse Rogers days after her Jewish fiancé, a Democratic megadonor, did the same.
The surprise move, which Jewish Democratic leaders joined many other prominent Democrats in criticizing, came after days of back-and-forth between Stevens and El-Sayed as she sought to publicly pressure him to condemn a PAC ad that had linked rising grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel.
Meanwhile, some prominent Jewish Democrats in the state either avoided endorsing El-Sayed or did so with heavy reservations. Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, whose leadership has been deeply divided on El-Sayed, issued a statement Monday declaring the caucus would never vote for a Republican.
“Our commitment to the Democratic ticket remains resolute as we work to build a more inclusive coalition,” the caucus stated.
Throughout the campaign, El-Sayed has sought to reassure Jewish voters. He apologized for his Temple Israel comments; distanced himself from Piker; hired a Jewish outreach director; said in a recent “60 Minutes” interview that Israel has a right to exist; and sent mailers to Jewish households stating, “I am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice.” He told JTA in August that “the prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me.”
More than 1,000 Michigan Jews have signed an open letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed, compared to 560 who have done the same for Rogers. Progressive Jewish figures of note have held salons throughout the state in a bid to convince on-the-fence Jews to back him.
Yet El-Sayed also has continued to stake out positions many Jews find alienating. He asserted in the campaign’s closing weeks that Israel was “not actually our friend” and declined during a debate to say whether Israel or Iran was the bigger danger to the U.S. His campaign also released an ad, designed to appeal to conservatives, that featured a brief clip of Tucker Carlson, the right-wing pundit who has promoted conspiracy theories about Israel. In addition, El-Sayed’s careful sidestepping of objectionable material about Jews and Israel from his ostensible allies, such as Piker and his uncle, left-wing anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, has continued up to Election Day.
Ahead of Election Day, some liberal-leaning Zionist Jews tried to put pressure on El-Sayed to speak more directly to their concerns. A group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders launched Nonnegotiable Michigan in a bid to have him affirm what they called five core principles of Jewish participation in the Democratic Party, including “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” After silence from the campaign, some of Nonnegotiable’s figureheads urged their followers to write in the 19th-century Jewish poet “Emma Lazarus” instead of voting for either candidate.
Michigan’s already small Jewish population, which numbers around 105,000 adults, has further splintered over El-Sayed’s candidacy. But it could prove pivotal to the outcome of a race that may determine control of the chamber. In 2024, the state’s Senate race was decided by fewer than 20,000 votes.
Either way, the race has crystallized the Democratic Party’s shifting fault lines over Israel — and many Jews’ growing uneasiness with their place in the liberal coalition.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Trump says US aid to Israel will stop at end of year
(JTA) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning said that the United States would halt billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel by the end of 2026, potentially ending decades of military support for one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East.
“We were giving them $4 billion. We are. But it gets cut off at the end of the year,” Trump declared during a call-in appearance on the “Fox & Friends” morning program on Fox News. Israel’s 10-year memorandum of understanding with the United States, which currently gives Israel $3.8 billion annually, runs through 2028 so it’s unclear how easy it would be for the White House to stop the funding this year.
Referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in January that he wanted to taper off aid to zero at some point in the future, Trump questioned why Republicans should have to deal with criticism from hardline pro-Palestinian Democrats like Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed when “we give them more than anybody else and they no longer need it.”
“It’s a bad talking point,” he added. His comments came as Americans across the country are voting Tuesday in midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate.
“We reached an agreement on that” and Netanyahu “brought it up,” Trump continued. “He said: ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”
A growing number of Democratic congressional candidates across the United States have campaigned on a platform of reducing or halting military aid to Israel during the run-up to today’s midterm elections. This April, dozens of senators — almost all of them Democrats — voted in favor of a failed motion to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel.
Yair Golan, chairman of Israel’s liberal Democrats party, slammed Netanyahu in the wake of Trump’s statement, tweeting that “precisely at a time when Israel’s defense spending has reached enormous proportions, when Israel needs to replenish its offensive weapons stockpiles, and after air defense capabilities have been depleted following such a long war—Netanyahu logs another massive failure under his name.”
“The cessation of U.S. aid is heavy damage to Israel’s security” and “a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase American aid, not eliminate it,” added Golan, whose party opposes Netanyahu’s and is trying to form a coalition to oust Netanyahu from power following Israel’s own elections last Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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