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Israeli democracy is ‘robust,’ former PM Naftali Bennett assures New Yorkers
(New York Jewish Week) — Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told an audience here that reports of the deaths of Israeli democracy are exaggerated, and urged American Jews to make their concerns known to the new far-right government rather than walk away.
“There are a lot of foolish words flying out in the air,” Bennett said last night in remarks at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, referring to various proposals among newly installed Israeli cabinet members. “There’s a core of responsibility that will fend off the most radical of the suggestions, but to be fair, I don’t know.”
Speaking onstage with Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, Bennett appeared to be referring to two critics of LGBT rights in Israel, Bezalel Smotrich and Noam Party leader Avi Maoz, when he said, “No one’s going to touch the LGBT community in Israel. No one’s going to mess around with it. Israel is robust.”
Bennett, who served as prime minister from 2021 to 2022 in the rotation government that preceded Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in December, spoke at the Reform synagogue at a particularly tense time in Diaspora-Israel relations. Leaders of groups representing American Judaism’s largely liberal community have expressed deep concerns over proposals by Netanyahu’s new coalition partners to greatly expand Jewish settlement in the West Bank, curb minority rights and strengthen Orthodox control in matters of Jewish religious status.
Two weeks ago, Goldstein wrote a statement saying that he is “alarmed” by recent reforms, introduced by Israel’s newly installed justice minister, that would allow Israel’s parliament to override decisions by the Supreme Court and further politicize the selection of its justices. He implored Netanyahu to reject the overhaul.
On this too, Bennett sought to be reassuring. He criticized a Supreme Court that he said had “gradually usurped authority that it didn’t have,” but said that it needed only a “small little nudge” to address those concerns. “I smell a compromise coming,” he said.
“I recommend you enter a dialogue with the government” in Israel, he urged the audience. “Speak up and talk with the government. Israelis sometimes think the world revolves around Israel and don’t always see the broader view of Jews around the world and the world itself. I think sharing with the Israeli leadership, what’s going on and what it means and what the implications are, is meaningful. There are ministers who have never been abroad, so you are what you are experience.”
Bennett, who stepped away from politics last year ahead of the November election, also spoke at length about his efforts to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the first months of Russia’s unprovoked war on its neighbor. Bennett asserted that in meetings with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president said he would no longer demand regime change and demilitarization in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Vlodomyr Zelensky told him Ukraine would “no longer want to join NATO, which was the very reason for the war.” Bennett suggested the negotiations fell apart because of Ukrainian objections. “I want to be cautious here,” he said. “The message [from Zelensky] was ‘we don’t want to run yet to ceasefire for various reasons…. Putin was an aggressor and he needs to pay the price.’”
Despite Bennett’s reassurances that Israel’s democracy remains robust, many audience members remained wary about the new government.
“I’m concerned about what I’m seeing in Israel,” said Asaf Jacobi, 39, who earned his law degree in Israel and served in its military. “They’re trying to unstabilize the checks and balances in Israel to the extreme. [Netanyahu] is clearly putting his interests over the country, and you can see people in the streets are really not happy with what’s happening. It’s too religious and too extreme.”
Debra Delorenzo, who has lived in the Upper East Side her whole life, said Bennett “did a wonderful job. He’s a good speaker and engages the audience.” And yet, she said, “I wanted him to address certain things and he skirted around it. I wanted him to talk about the occupation. I wanted him to talk about [Netanyahu] who I can’t stand. Israel is a democracy, but it’s losing it’s panache about it. It’s become more of an occupier. I love Israel, and I”m Jewish, but there are things going on there that [Bennett] didn’t address.”
One elderly woman, who declined to give her name, welcomed the political changes in Israel.
“We love the government,” she said. “And we think that the change in the judicial system should have occurred long ago.”
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Kate Hudson Reminisces About Jewish Grandmother’s ‘Amazing’ Cooking, Gets Emotional Over Jewish Food
Kate Hudson attends premiere of “Song Sung Blue” by FocusFeatures at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, NY on Dec. 11, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Actress Kate Hudson got nostalgic talking about her Jewish grandmother’s cooking, and all the Jewish foods that she loves and makes, during a podcast interview that aired on Wednesday.
The star of “Song Sung Blue” made an appearance on the New Year’s Eve episode of “Table Manners,” a podcast hosted by Jewish mother and daughter duo Lennie and Jessie Ware in which they talk largely about food and family while sharing a meal with their guest. Hudson has Hungarian Jewish roots on her maternal side of the family, and after she did DNA testing, the actress discovered that she is also half Sicilian, she said on the podcast. She also learned that she has German and Swedish roots.
When Hudson was asked at the start of the podcast to share a memorable dish from her childhood, she began by talking about her mother, award-winning actress Goldie Hawn, and her great cooking before mentioning her grandmother’s skills in the kitchen.
“I grew up with a mother that could throw anything into a pot, no cookbook, no nothing, and somehow it tasted amazing,” said the “Running Point” star. “And my grandma was an amazing cook, but she was a very traditional Jewish cook, like challah, amazing matzah balls, brisket – her brisket was to die for – [and] latkes. And she’d make the best challah French toast.”
Later on, Jessie asked the Golden Globe-winning actress to share a “nostalgic taste” that can transport her back in time. Hudson replied by talking about her grandmother’s matzah ball soup. The actress said she makes matzah ball soup too, but nothing compares to her grandmother’s.
“My grandmother made the best matzah balls,” Hudson explained. “Their fluff made them perfect. Perfect matzah ball soup … her matzah balls, nothing like ’em.” She also said that “any Jewish meat,” like her grandmother’s brisket, makes her feel like she’s with her “gram.”
“It makes me emotional, Jewish food,” Hudson added. “And blintzes, for instance. I grew up with blueberry blintzes, and I love them so much. I just with my daughter got some the other day and I got so emotional. You realize no matter how religious you are – we’re not a religious family. It’s not like, we didn’t go to temple. I mean we did when my grandma was alive, but after that, we didn’t really carry the religious part of our Judaism. But the traditions are so amazing and beautiful.”
The conversation then circled back to challah and Hudson shared that she bakes a four-strand challah with the help of a “diagram” but also small challah rolls.
“I still make challah. We pray on the challah bread. We do the whole thing,” she shared. “Every time I do, we talk about what each ingredient, what it represents. There are such beautiful traditions. And my grandma gave that to us, no one else. She was the only one. And thank God for that. Sitting around the table on a Jewish holiday and the food that it represents, just makes me happy.”
Jessie replied by telling her mother, “You never told me what all the ingredients of challah bread represent. You’ve just given me Jewish guilt.” Lennie laughed and replied that she has never baked challah before. Hudson immediately offered to share her challah recipe, saying, “They’re so easy.”
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New York City Woman Punched Over Hat Defending Jews
A New York City subway platform on Oct. 25, 2022. Photo: Jakub Porzycki via Reuters Connect
A woman was punched in the face this week while riding the New York City subway for wearing a hat that said “F— Antisemitism,” according to a local report.
“F— Jews,” the suspect, described as a “Black man in his 40s,” allegedly said to her before striking the blow on Tuesday afternoon, the New York Daily News reported, citing local law enforcement.
The victim then “fled” the railcar at the 116th St. – Columbia University subway station in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, while the assailant remained on board, the News added. She was reportedly not seriously injured, as medics did not treat her following the incident’s being reported to law enforcement.
The assault is one of the latest acts of antisemitism on the city’s public transport. Last month, two Black men assaulted two Jewish men on a train in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, with one of them seizing hold of a victim’s neck and shoving him. Not a day later, according to a local NBC affiliate, someone stabbed a Jewish man in the same neighborhood. It has been reported that the dispute began when the would-be stabber uttered an antisemitic comment to the victim.
Beyond public transit, New York City has seen an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes over the last two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). A new report released on Wednesday by the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, which was established in May, noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of this year, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising just 11 percent of the city’s population.
New York City is home to the world’s largest Jewish community outside of Israel.
In a moment of rising neo-Nazism and tensions between Arab Muslims and Jews over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this week’s subway incident highlights antisemitism in New York City’s African American community, which has been the source of much of the recent antisemitic violence.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, in just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November 2024, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery. In another incident, a man smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
In 2023, an analysis of NYPD data conducted by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA), found that 97 percent of antisemitic hate crimes were perpetrated by members of other minority groups and nearly a quarter by teenagers. Over two-thirds, 69 percent, of the assailants, it added, were Black, the report continued, with most attacks, 77 percent, taking place in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
Tensions between Blacks and Jews have limited inter-group cooperation in recent decades, causing the halcyon days of the relationship in the 20th century, when Jewish philanthropy helped sustain the Civil Rights Movement, to seem more like ancient history than a current, lived experience. Black antisemitism increased in volume and visibility in the 1960s, with the rise of the Nation of Islam and the Black Power movement, and since then some prominent Black leaders have called Jews “hymies,” stoked a race riot in Crown Heights in which Blacks assaulted Jews in the streets, and promoted the anti-Zionist movement, which aims to dispossess Jews of their homeland in Israel. Most recently, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement blamed Israel for police killings of Black men.
The rift is often cited as a missed opportunity for a permanent solidarity between two historically oppressed groups. However, that has not stopped Black and Jewish leaders from attempting to revive the Black-Jewish alliance of lore.
In 2019, Black and Jewish members of Congress launched the Black-Jewish Congressional Caucus and “relaunched” it in 2023 with the help of the National Urban League, American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s an incredible and positive development,” Darius Jones, CEO of the National Black Empowerment Council, told The Algemeiner during the relaunch event in 2023. “Fighting antisemitism and racism has inspired a resurrection of the Black-Jewish relationship at the community level, and it’s great to see it happening and even better that national leadership is stepping up to move it along.”
Several members of Congress delivered remarks during the event, including co-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-NY), who said that both Jews and Blacks are equally reviled by white supremacists.
“Jewish tradition teaches that it is incumbent upon us to speak out and act against injustice. African American and Jewish communities have a long, shared history of confronting discrimination and racism in the United States, and the recent rise of white supremacy, bigotry, and antisemitism poses a direct threat to both our communities,” Schultz said. “This caucus will build upon our historic fight for a better, more peaceful world, while also raising awareness in Congress about the common issues facing our communities.”
In 2024, the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a nonprofit which promotes academic freedom and free speech, partnered with South Carolina State University and Voorhees University — two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — to host a series of student and faculty seminars on the history of “Black-Jewish solidarity,” from the creation of Rosenwald Schools for Black children following the abolition of slavery to the present day.
“Recent surveys and studies show a disturbing rate of antisemitic attitudes among Black Americans, especially young people,” AEN executive director Miriam Elman told The Algemeiner at the time. “HBCUs have a critically important role to play as allies with the Jewish community to counter antisemitism.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Community in Spain Condemns Online Map Labeling Schools, Businesses as ‘Zionist’
The children’s bookstore in Sant Cugat, Spain, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and slogans, prompting outrage from the local Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot
Members of Spain’s Jewish community have filed complaints against a French online platform over a map pinpointing Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, warning it revives Europe’s darkest antisemitic practices and dangerously promotes harassment and violence.
According to the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map — known as Barcelonaz — was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marks over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
“Our goal is to understand how Zionism operates and the forms it takes, with the intention of making visible and denouncing the impact of its investments in our territory,” the project’s website states.
Users are also encouraged to donate and to submit additional locations that meet the criteria set by the map’s creators.
Jewish leaders in Spain have strongly denounced the initiative, warning that it fosters further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
Several community organizations have filed complaints with GoGoCarto, demanding the site’s removal and arguing that it violates French laws against hate speech and discrimination, Enfoque Judío reported.
The newly unveiled project “clearly has an antisemitic and discriminatory character, as it seeks to identify and stigmatize a population based on its real or perceived religious affiliation,” the complainants wrote in a letter obtained by Enfoque Judío.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics, a stance that has only intensified in recent months, coinciding with a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents targeting the local Jewish community — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions.
Last week, Israeli mural artists Hodaya and Dudi Shoval were physically assaulted in Barcelona while working on a project that turns existing murals into pro-Israel messages, confronting a rising tide of antisemitic and anti-Israeli graffiti throughout the city.
While working in the city center, a group of unknown individuals approached them and started shouting antisemitic insults before turning violent.
As the Shovals and their camera crew tried to flee the scene, the assailants began throwing objects, including a glass bottle that smashed against their photographer’s head.
Amid this increasingly hostile climate, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has faced growing backlash from political leaders and the Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.
As part of its anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state internationally, the Spanish government announced earlier this week a ban on imports from hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights — making Spain the second European Union country to implement such a policy in its ongoing effort to boycott Israel.
Spain’s newly implemented measure marks its latest attempts to curb Israel’s defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, as ties between the two countries continue to deteriorate amid ongoing tensions.
In September, Spain also passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
On Tuesday, Spain’s consumer ministry ordered seven travel booking websites to take down 138 listings for holiday homes in Palestinian territories, warning they could face sanctions if they continue advertising Israeli-owned properties in those areas.
Earlier this year, the Spanish government also announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.