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How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council
(JTA) – When Brother John Muhammad emerged this fall as the leading candidate for a vacant city council seat in St. Petersburg, Florida, local Jews were distressed.
Muhammad is well known in the city as the president of a local neighborhood association and as a frequent advocate for minority groups. But Jewish leaders learned that he was also a follower of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a long history of antisemitism, and that he had made comments dismissing concerns about Farrakhan’s record.
Jewish leaders tried to stave off Muhammad’s appointment, pushing for more extensive vetting of the seven candidates and, in the case of the local Holocaust museum, actively lobbying against him. But the council confirmed him in a 4-3 vote, leaving local Jews frustrated — before they considered ways to make the situation a learning experience for their city.
“When I see a situation like this, it screams ‘opportunity’ to me,” Michael Igel, chair of the Florida Holocaust Museum, located in St. Petersburg, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The saga playing out in St. Petersburg, Florida’s fifth-largest city, unfolded during the same period that a handful of Black celebrities, including Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, first became enmeshed in controversy over their own antisemitic comments and social media posts. The coincidence meant a dicey environment for broaching a conversation about the antisemitism of the Nation of Islam, whose rhetoric disparaging Jews overlaps with that of Hebrew Israelites, the ideology that Irving promoted by sharing a link to an antisemitic film.
It also turned St. Petersburg into a window for understanding how ties forged between Jewish groups and others can be tested.
Local Jewish leaders initially sought to stop Muhammad from gaining the city council seat, which was vacated after its previous holder resigned following redistricting and accusations she no longer lived in her district. They learned about Muhammad’s city council application only a week before the council’s vote, leaving them with little time to mobilize. The information came from a political rival of Muhammad, former mayoral candidate Vince Nowicki, who shared information about Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation with local Jewish groups.
Nowicki also shared a comment Muhammad had made about Jews in a 2016 video in which Muhammad interviewed local Black LGBTQ activists. In the video titled “A Conversation About Growing Up Black And LGBT,” which JTA viewed, Muhammad said, “Minister Farrakhan got accused of being antisemitic for a long time because he pointed out and made some corrections about the activity of Jews. And anybody who says anything critical of the Jewish community is labeled as being antisemitic. Good, bad, right or wrong, it doesn’t matter what you say. If you criticize them that’s what you are.”
He continued, saying, “And I’m finding that it happens when you are critical of the gay community, when you say anything critical or anything that doesn’t align with that ideology, now all of a sudden you’re homophobic.” Muhammad’s comments about gay people received some light but friendly pushback from his interview guests.
Muhammad did not reply to multiple requests for comment by JTA, including to questions emailed to him at his request. He said during a public meeting ahead of the council vote that he thought scrutiny of him by Jewish groups had been unfair.
To Jewish leaders, the comments in the video coupled with Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation were clear signs that he should not be appointed to the city council.
“I would sure hope that being antisemitic would be a red line, that you could not be a candidate,” said Rabbi Philip Weintraub of Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the city.
Jewish leaders began to take action, issuing statements and launching a letter-writing campaign to the council. They felt so much urgency that some even conducted business on Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday when Jewish organizations typically pause their activities in accordance with Jewish law.
As a nonprofit, the local federation was constrained in how it could weigh in. Since it could not endorse or oppose specific candidates, it instead pushed for every candidate to be “properly vetted” and informed council members about Muhammad’s affiliations and past comments, according to Maxine Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Florida’s Gulf Coast. She said the efforts did not have their intended effect.
“I don’t think anybody said, ‘Well, who is this Farrakhan, what does he stand for?’” Kaufman said. “I don’t think enough was done, personally.”
The entrance to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Nov. 27, 2016. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Florida Holocaust Museum took another approach, circulating information about Muhammad to the wider community, along with a statement opposing the candidacy of anyone who would support Farrakhan’s antisemitism. Their goal, Igel said, was to educate the community about the severity of these views.
“There’s nothing else to talk about when somebody is supporting Louis Farrakhan,” Igel told JTA. “Particularly when you are seeking a position representative of a city, particularly one like St. Petersburg that is so known for its inclusivity and its openness.”
Igel praised some members of the city council who asked Muhammad pointed questions about his views at the vote, giving him the opportunity to refute Farrakhan’s comments about Jews. One council member who voted against Muhammad, Lisset Hanewicz, said her stepfather is Jewish and read Farrakhan’s past antisemitic statements into the record, saying, “I think people need to understand why a certain part of this community is upset.”
Igel acknowledged that getting involved in a city council appointment was an unusual move for a Holocaust museum. He said museum leaders had held a meeting beforehand to determine how to proceed but made a decision fairly quickly to weigh in.
“In this case, we don’t consider this to be a matter of politics,” Igel said. “This is a matter of morality. And this is what we teach.” If the candidate had been a white supremacist, Igel said, “that person would have been disqualified out of the gate.”
The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, two hate watchdogs, define the Nation of Islam as a group that propagates antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, not a religion. Founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad, the Black nationalist group is not the same as traditional Islam and is rejected by most Muslim clerics; it entered mainstream prominence in the 1960s after civil rights leader Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali publicly joined the movement. (Both later left the group, with Malcolm X publicly denouncing its leadership; he was assassinated shortly after, and two Nation of Islam members who were wrongfully convicted of his murder recently received a large settlement from New York City.)
The Nation of Islam entered its current era after Farrakhan took over the group in 1977. Now 89, he has used his platform to issue a steady stream of antisemitism, including calling Jews “wicked” and the “synagogue of Satan,” saying they have “wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government,” and calling Hitler “a very great man.” Only a few years ago, the Women’s March progressive activist collective was nearly derailed over some of its founders’ associations with Farrakhan.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for public officials to have current or former associations with the Nation of Islam. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a practicing Muslim, was dogged by accusations that he had formerly been a member of the group when he first ran for Congress in 2006; he apologized for his past associations with the group. Trayon White, a Washington, D.C. council member and onetime mayoral candidate who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, has donated to the group in the past. Former President George W. Bush once praised the group, and a photograph showing Barack Obama in the same room as Farrakhan was fodder for Obama’s critics during his presidential run.
Muhammad, who is referred to on the city council website as John Muhammad and whose legal name is John C. Malone, declined to condemn Farrakhan at the city council meeting.
“I am not willing to denounce the leader of my faith no more than a Catholic would be willing to denounce their pope,” he said.
Muhammad’s reaction to questions about Farrakhan particularly concerned the federation and other local Jewish groups. Kaufman told JTA she didn’t know whether Muhammad himself is antisemitic, but she said his refusal to disavow Farrakhan was alarming.
“I do have issue with his reverence of someone who is blatantly antisemitic, and he won’t disavow him, he won’t reject him,” she said, echoing the the federation’s official statement on the vote.
At the meeting, Muhammad did say that he had reached out to the Florida Holocaust Museum but had not heard back — and that he thought the museum’s criticism of him was unfair.
“What I found when we reached out to have dialogue with the Holocaust Museum director, they did not want to talk to me,” he said. “They wanted to evaluate and disqualify me based on the association that I have as an individual. I don’t think that that’s just.”
Muhammad also defended his record with Jews by claiming that they were among the “diversity of those who support me.” He added, “And if you look at those who oppose me, they’re coming from one particular group.”
Since the vote, a local Black newspaper condemned the scrutiny on Muhammad, calling it a “perusal into his faith practice.”
Igel said the museum had no record that Muhammad had reached out but encouraged him to come and learn more about the Holocaust and the nature of antisemitism. Stuart Berger, head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council, acknowledged at the city council meeting that Muhammad “has made himself available to us” at the federation, but that none of the federation staff “had been in direct contact with him.”
The federation’s involvement in Muhammad’s case became its own issue at the council vote, when the candidate referenced an email Berger had written to the county commissioner. In the email, Berger wrote that Muhammad’s vetting process had been “good enough for me!”
While Muhammad took the email as proof that the federation believed him to be fit for office, Berger and Kaufman maintain that it meant nothing of the sort. Berger had not been speaking on behalf of the federation, they say, and had not intended for his email to be shared publicly.
Now that Muhammad is on the council, attention has turned to building relationships with him. Kaufman has been meeting with individual city council members, and hopes to eventually meet with Muhammad himself. She also aims to have the federation make a presentation to the council about the dangers of antisemitism and push them to make a statement about it.
She doesn’t think it’s complicated. “I think hate’s hate,” she said. “Many different colors.”
Weintraub’s congregation is celebrating its 100th anniversary in March, and one of its congregants, Eric Lynn, is also involved in politics: he was the Democratic nominee for Florida’s 13th Congressional district in the midterms but lost his race to Republican Anna Paulina Luna, who said she was raised as a Messianic Jew and campaigned with far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Weintraub himself is a member of an interfaith ministerial dialogue group with Black churches and says he’s “a professional optimist” when it comes to managing conflict between different communities. He sent JTA an episode of the public radio podcast “Hidden Brain” about how to keep conflict from spiraling, saying it “describes what I’ve tried to do.”
Since Muhammad was appointed, Weintraub has met with him; the pair had what Weintraub described as “a pleasant conversation.” The two talked about parenting and “shared traumas,” he said. They did not discuss Muhammad’s comments supporting Farrakhan, but the rabbi couldn’t help but think about him.
“I thought I was a termite, according to Farrakhan,” Weintraub said. In contrast, Muhammad “said I was a person, so that was nice.”
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The post How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Former Edmonton journalist admits to vandalizing monuments of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
(JTA) —
EDMONTON, Canada – Duncan Kinney, a former journalist with the left-wing website Progress Report, pleaded guilty to criminal mischief on Monday, four years after he was arrested for vandalizing monuments to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in Edmonton, Alberta.
Monday’s guilty plea was an anticlimactic not-quite-end to a case that appeared to be run-of-the-mill vandalism but was so culturally charged that it drew the attention of everyone from the Premier of Alberta to Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto.
In 2021, Kinney broke the news story that someone had spray-painted “Actual Nazi” on a bust erected to honor WWII military commander and Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych and then painted “Nazi Monument” and “14th Waffen SS” on a memorial to the SS Galizien, a Ukrainian military unit that was part of the Nazi Party’s military wing.
According to court documents, Kinney was caught on a security camera spray-painting the Shukhevych monument shortly after midnight on Aug. 10, 2021, and caught again eight hours later photographing his handiwork. He then sent an email to the staff of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, where the monument was located, explaining that Progress Report had received photos of the defaced monument. The brief email concluded with “Do you have any statement or information on this matter? Was Roman Shukhevych a Nazi or Nazi collaborator? Our deadline is 3:15 pm. Thank you.”
Kinney initially pleaded not guilty to one count each of criminal mischief and mischief relating to a war memorial. He suggested he’d been targeted because he was critical of the Edmonton Police Service and alleged that they were trying to silence him.
He is due to be sentenced Jan. 25, 2027, at which time the crown prosecutor is expected to drop the more serious charge of defacing a war memorial, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Neither Kinney nor his defense attorney, Tom Engel, would comment after the court appearance. However, the board of Progress Report issued a statement decrying its former employee’s actions, calling committing a crime and reporting that somebody else did it “a cardinal breach of journalistic ethics and not acceptable behavior within any media organization. Mr. Kinney has always maintained his innocence in this matter and we trusted him; today’s news was an unpleasant surprise for us.”
Ultimately, the case exposed deep divisions in the Ukrainian diaspora about the role that Ukraine played in the Holocaust.
Shukhevych was a leader in both the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed force, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). He was also an officer in a Third Reich auxiliary battalion. During World War II, he commanded troops that murdered Jews, Polish civilians, other national minorities, communists and his countrymen from Ukraine. And he helped marshal the fight for Ukrainian independence from the Soviets.
The monument to the SS Galizien is located at St. Michael’s Cemetery, less than two miles from the complex housing the Shukhevych bust. Among the unit’s members was Yaroslav Hunka, who, at age 98, received two standing ovations for his service in WWII and fighting for Ukrainian independence when he appeared in the House of Commons alongside visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in September 2023.
Nobody in Parliament, it seemed, was aware of Hunka’s Nazi past. When the news became public, the incident became a national embarrassment. At least temporarily, the country was forced to examine how it dealt with WWII war criminals.
In Edmonton, however, the blunder appeared to have no impact on Kinney’s case. For his alleged vandalism to the SS Galizien monument, he had been charged not with simple mischief, but with vandalizing a war monument.
“We do not consider a statue honoring a Nazi to be a war monument,” says Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto. “When we talk about veterans’ monuments, we are talking about Canada’s veterans. We are not talking about Nazi veterans.”
Kirzner-Roberts’ organization, B’nai Brith Canada and the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, as well as local politicians and academics, have been asking for years for the monuments to be removed.
“I think that in the case of the Shukhevych monument, you shouldn’t put up monuments to people responsible for mass murder,” says John-Paul Himka, a University of Alberta professor emeritus of history, whose 2021 book “Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust” examines the role that the OUN and UPA had in destroying Ukraine’s Jewish population during WWII.
“As for the Waffen-SS memorial, Austria has also been trying to get rid of their Waffen-SS memorials and it’s an issue around the world, really, how much you want to put up memorials to SS men or to people who collaborated with the Nazi state.”
Less than six months after the Hunka debacle in Parliament, the monument to the SS Galizien at the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario, was permanently removed. Himka doesn’t see anything like that happening in Edmonton, a city with the largest population of people with Ukrainian descent in a country with one of the largest populations of people with Ukrainian descent outside of Ukraine.
“The diaspora community doesn’t want to hear about this,” he says. “They don’t want to confront the history, and nobody is telling them otherwise really.”
The courtroom, though, did host one such confrontation. At the conclusion of Kinney’s appearance, two women who appeared to be in their 40s and who had spent the half-hour proceedings knitting, engaged in a conversation with two men who appeared to be at least twice their age and were sitting across the aisle.
The discussion started innocently enough, with inquiries as to what brought each of them to the courtroom. When the women said that Shukhevych was a Nazi who had killed thousands of innocent people, the temperature heated up.
When the women insisted, the men all but rolled their eyes. “That’s Russian propaganda,” they scoffed, then got up and marched together out of the courtroom.
The post Former Edmonton journalist admits to vandalizing monuments of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators appeared first on The Forward.
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Mike Rogers says his opponent is ‘anti-Jew.’ Do Michigan’s Jews believe him?
(JTA) —
WHITE LAKE, Mich. – Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers did not have to go very far back in time to find a new example of how, in his view, his opponent is a danger to the Jewish community. Twelve hours would do.
Rogers recalled an interview that had aired the previous night on ABC. “He basically said that Israel now is just not an ally — matter of fact may be the enemy — of the United States of America,” the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday morning.
The “he” in question was, of course, Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director and polarizing Democratic nominee for the state’s open Senate seat. The night before, El-Sayed had told ABC that Israel was “not actually our friend.” He also recently told MS NOW that “the government of Israel has done nothing but use us.”
Rogers, by contrast, told JTA that Israel is “the best ally we have in the Middle East. They have Western values baked into their political system.” He proudly noted that far-right commentator Tucker Carlson has attacked him for his pro-Israel views.
Remarks like the ones El-Sayed recently made, Rogers continued, clarify his view of his opponent: “There’s so much evidence. It’s pretty hard to say that this guy is anything but anti-Jew.”
For Rogers and the Republican Party writ large, El-Sayed’s hardline criticism of Israel has thrown them an unexpected gift in a tough race that could help determine who controls the Senate after the November midterms.
That opportunity runs through Michigan’s Jewish community. At a recent rally in the state, Vice President JD Vance echoed that criticism, accusing El-Sayed of being “obsessed” with Israel.
“He’s 10 times more interested in what’s happening in Palestine than in Port Huron,” Vance, whose own views on Israel have concerned many conservative Jews, told the crowd. “He’s way more interested in what’s happening in Gaza than he is in what’s happening in Grand Rapids.”
Another recent Trump administration event, held at a Michigan synagogue, mostly discussed antisemitism. Neither Senate candidate’s name was mentioned from the stage. But Jews who attended the event told JTA they were scared of the prospect of a Senator El-Sayed. “I pray he does not get in,” one attendee, Sharon Matlen, said.
Rogers, a former congressman who lost the 2024 Senate race to Elissa Slotkin, a Jewish Democrat, by fewer than 20,000 votes, hopes to convince enough of the state’s estimated 100,000 Jewish adults and other traditionally Democratic blocs to vote for him in the election in two weeks’ time. He’s confident of his chances.
“I think the alternative is so bad, and they looked at us and said, ‘He’s not that bad,’” the candidate said. “And trust me, I think that’s a good place for us to be.”
Rogers positions himself as a common-sense Republican, one whose chief concerns are improving child literacy, rebuilding manufacturing jobs and lowering utility rates. Drawing on his military background, he insists he doesn’t have a problem with the fact that El-Sayed is Muslim: “I wore the uniform of the United States so you can pray any way you want.”
Local rabbi Asher Lopatin, who briefly went on leave from his role directing Jewish communal relations in Ann Arbor to stump for Rogers, has called him “a caring, sensitive man.”
Rogers is also trying to make inroads with Black communities, as well as other ethnic and faith-based groups. At a Tim Hortons in this tony Detroit suburb, an Iraqi Christian couple came out from behind the counter to take selfies and profess their support.
But among his potential new voters, it’s the Jewish community Rogers has made the most overt appeals to. His outreach has included meeting with various Jewish clergy and community leaders and hosting a meet-and-greet Sunday night in a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, catered by a kosher BBQ joint. And he and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will be appearing together in Detroit next week for an event spearheaded by the Republican Jewish Coalition titled, “Who Will Keep Us Safe?”
Hundreds of Jews, including several prominent community leaders and lifelong Democrats, have already signed a pledge to vote for Rogers. El-Sayed’s association with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker and linking of the spring attack on Temple Israel to Israel’s war in Lebanon have troubled some Jewish voters.
(L-r) Michigan Jewish Democratic activist Alicia Chandler, Illinois congressional candidate Daniel Biss and former Michigan Rep. Andy Levin make a progressive Jewish case for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to a small audience of conflicted Jews in Detroit, Michigan, Oct. 19, 2026. (Andrew Lapin/JTA)
But others, even those deeply worried about El-Sayed and his movement, still can’t bring themselves to support the current Republican platform. A new progressive canvassing campaign is targeting Jews in the Detroit suburbs to persuade them not to vote for the GOP candidate.
“We’ve been doing a lot of listening to people’s concerns and anxieties,” said Amanda Berger, a progressive Jewish activist from California who is leading Seed the Vote’s Jewish canvassing efforts for El-Sayed in Michigan.
But the volunteers’ goals, Berger told JTA, are then “to pivot to the question of, what will it mean to you, or what will it mean to the Jewish community, or what will it mean to your neighbors, if Mike Rogers is elected and Trump is unchecked for another two years.”
Elaine Driker, a prominent Detroit Jewish community leader, was no fan of El-Sayed. Yet after seeing so many of her peers sign the pro-Rogers letter, Driker signed a Jewish letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed.
She then went a step further, hosting Daniel Biss, a progressive Jewish congressional candidate from Illinois, and 50 Jews at her house Monday night for a dialogue about El-Sayed. One in attendance, Susan Ruttenberg, admitted that though she had already cast her vote for the Democrat, “I’m uncomfortable with him.”
Biss holds Israeli citizenship and told the group he believes “that the Jewish people have a legitimate claim to the land where the state of Israel has been established.” He conceded, “Some of the ways that Abdul has spoken about antisemitism have landed imperfectly with some people.”
Yet Biss insisted, “I think he’s shown a willingness to learn and grow.” He also warned the crowd against what he called “the political narrowness of the organized Jewish community.”
It was one of several such small-room Jewish conversations about the race that have taken place in recent weeks. Others have featured New York congressional candidate Brad Lander and Vermont U.S. Rep. Becca Balint. Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the Senate primary that El-Sayed eventually won, will speak at another.
The events are intended “to breathe some air into the possibility that Abdul is not scary, that he is not antisemitic,” said Stacie Chaiken, an organizer with Michigan Jews for Democracy, which is also putting on the meet-and-greets. The coalition’s open letter of Jews pledging to vote for El-Sayed has topped 950 signatures to date.
To win over more Jews, Rogers will make his case by acknowledging what other Jews have told him is a deep fear for where the country is headed.
“They’re afraid for what kind of America their children will live in,” Rogers told JTA of the Jews he’s spoken to on the campaign trail. El-Sayed is building a “movement,” the Republican said, arguing that such a movement bodes poorly for Jews: “You have to remember, if elected to the Senate, this is just the beginning for them.”
Democrat US Senate candidate for Michigan Abdul El-Sayed speaks during a midterm campaign rally in Flint, Michigan on October 18, 2026. El-Sayed is competing against Republican candidate Mike Rodgers for Michigan’s US Senate seat in the upcoming midterm elections. (Jeff Kowalsky / AFP via Getty Images)
Rogers repeatedly brought up his opponent’s “ideology” and “extremism.” He sought to link El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, echoing a growing GOP line of attack. Republicans have cited resurfaced tweets by El-Sayed’s half-sister describing their mother’s activism in the movement in the early 1970s.
El-Sayed has disavowed the group and accused questioners of invoking Islamophobic tropes.
Rogers also said he doubted the sincerity of El-Sayed’s August apology to the Jewish community for his “hurt people hurt people” remarks regarding the March attack on Temple Israel — a similar sentiment other Michigan Jews have shared with JTA.
“That’s not an apology,” he said. “That says, ‘I’m sorry I said it then. Maybe I should have said it later.’ I don’t buy that.”
The Rogers campaign is additionally arguing that El-Sayed’s rhetoric has activated a deeper antisemitic contingent on the left. A Rogers campaign staffer, who is Jewish, posted to X Tuesday morning that El-Sayed is “a raging antisemite who is responsible for the hate and vitriol Michigan Jews face daily,” with a link to his ABC interview. That staffer, Abby Ronson, told JTA that she received death threats because of the tweet after progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan went after her.
El-Sayed has strongly rejected any allegation that he is antisemitic, saying he loves Judaism and that “AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people.” Some of the state’s top Jewish Democrats, including Slotkin and state Attorney General Dana Nessel, have endorsed him; others, including congressional candidate Jeremy Moss, have not.
But Rogers also hopes to tell more of Michigan’s Jews who he is — beyond simply not being El-Sayed. There’s someone else, he said, who he’s not: the deeply unpopular Republican president.
“I’m not Trump. And I don’t plan to be Trump when I get to Washington,” Rogers said. He listed issues he has broken with Trump on, including the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, which Rogers formerly supported but now wants wrapped up: “I argue we met our objectives. Don’t hang out there very long.”
If such a view puts him at odds with Israeli leadership, he said, they will politely hash it out. “Every once in a while, we’re going to disagree with our allies. I don’t see this as a problem.”
Still, when it comes to issues of concern to Jewish voters, Rogers said he’s more aligned with Trump than not. He “absolutely” approves of the president’s campaign against campus antisemitism, which has drawn criticism and legal action for pulling billions of dollars in funding from various universities in order to pressure them to sign settlements.
If the government wanted to do the same to the University of Michigan, the state’s top research school that has been embroiled in a stream of antisemitism controversies of its own, Rogers — who donned Michigan gear for a TV ad running in the state — would support it.
“I wish there were a better way, but nothing else is working,” he told JTA. “Hell, their professors are talking in ways that would be shocking about an ally to the United States, and they’re buying into this ‘oppressor versus oppressed.’ It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. The whole thing is anti-American. We’re going to get it fixed.”
Rogers dismissed as “a made-up story” reports that his allies had asked the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC not to advertise publicly on his behalf, reportedly because they fearedfearing its involvement could hurt his campaign.
“What I’ve always said is, if anybody wants to help defeat the most extreme candidate from his Democratic Socialists of America ties to his very, I think, hateful, angry, riddled contempt for Israel and Jews, welcome,” Rogers said. “I’ll take anybody that wants to help.” El-Sayed is not a DSA member, but he has spoken at the organization’s events and received campaign support from its members.
Recently, an AIPAC-linked super PAC, the United Democracy Project, spent about $95,000 against El-Sayed, according to federal elections filings. That expenditure took the form of mailers targeting the Jewish community.
Rogers insists his fight against El-Sayed is bigger than the candidates. Voters, he said, are concerned with what the Democratic Party’s treatment of Jews says about the coalition’s direction in general.
“I can’t tell you how many people tell me that they’re so disappointed in their party,” he said. “And if you can bring yourself to diminish one set of people or one ethnic group of people in Michigan, what stops you there? I argue, nothing.”
Yet many of the Michigan Jews trying to convince their neighbors to vote for El-Sayed are making the same argument — in a different order — about Republicans. The GOP’s demonizing of certain immigrant groups and LGBTQ people, progressive Jews argue, could lead back to antisemitism.
“A society that abandons pluralism in an effort to attack someone other than the Jews is surely going to be coming for the Jews pretty soon,” Biss told the assembled crowd on Monday.
Rogers rejected the premise that Republicans are doing the same thing. “I don’t equate them at all,” he said. “It may be a legitimate concern. But if you have somebody that wants to eliminate, you know, ‘from the river to the sea,’ last I checked, that’s just about every Jew that lives in Israel. There’s no more clear, brighter line than that.”
On his way out the door to speak at the Detroit Economic Club, Rogers was asked if he had any last message for American Jews.
“Keep the faith,” he said, before driving away.
The post Mike Rogers says his opponent is ‘anti-Jew.’ Do Michigan’s Jews believe him? appeared first on The Forward.
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Germany reprimands Iran over plot to kill Jewish leader and Israel advocate
(JTA) — Germany’s foreign ministry summoned Iran’s ambassador after a German court convicted two men of spying for Tehran and plotting attacks on a leader of the country’s Jewish community and a prominent non-Jewish supporter of Israel.
A slap on the wrist is not enough, said Volker Beck, president of the interfaith German-Israeli Society, who had been one of the spies’ targets.
Iranian Ambassador Majid Nili Ahmadabadi and most of the embassy’s personnel should be personae non grata in Germany, Beck said. He added he would be satisfied if the embassy was emptied except for a lone guard “to look after the building and this is it.”
Hamburg’s Higher Regional Court last week sentenced 54-year-old defendant S. to eight-and-a-half years in prison and 43-year-old defendant M. to four and a half years for plotting assassinations and an arson attack. The convicts’ full names have not been publicized.
The court found that the two men, living in Denmark, had in early 2025 carried out orders from Iranian intelligence oepratives to spy on Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Beck, a Green Party politician and longtime Israel advocate, with the aim of planning an assassination.
In a statement issued Oct. 15, the court said that defendant S. was allegedly tasked “with conducting surveillance on Jewish or Israeli targets — including both locations and individuals — within Germany and preparing to carry out murders and arson attacks against them.”
S. was also convicted of conducting surveillance on a Jewish grocery store in Berlin. “To execute these orders, the defendant S. reportedly enlisted the assistance of the defendant M,” the court said.
The convicted men have until Oct. 22 to appeal the verdict. Further details about the case and the court’s reasoning will be released with the final report, in about three months, a spokesperson for the court told JTA in an email.
In a statement sent to JTA, Schuster praised the verdict but called the case “the tip of the iceberg.”
“With the now proven commissioning of these two spies, the regime in Tehran has once again shown its true face. The masterminds are in Iran, and the danger they pose to our open society remains great as long as the mullahs’ regime exists,” he said.
At the trial, Germany’s federal security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, testified that it got wind of the plot in 2024, Beck told JTA. “Last year I had six weeks of the highest level of personal protection,” said Beck, who is not Jewish. He couldn’t take out the trash or walk his dog without police protection.
After German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul’s summoned Iran’s ambassador, Iran called in Germany’s ambassador to the country, Axel Wilhelm Dittmann, for a meeting in Tehran to complain about accusations it considers “baseless.”
In a post Oct. 19 on X, the German Foreign Ministry said Germany “will not allow Iran to threaten our free society. We will not tolerate attacks on Jewish life and those who defend it—anywhere, least of all in Germany. The malicious attempted attacks against” Schuster and Beck “will have legal consequences.”
The post Germany reprimands Iran over plot to kill Jewish leader and Israel advocate appeared first on The Forward.
