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Jersey City’s outgoing Jewish mayor Steven Fulop signs antisemitism orders as ‘guardrails’ for his successor
(JTA) — As he leaves office after nearly 13 years, Jersey City’s Jewish mayor Steven Fulop is leaving his successor “guardrails” he hopes will help protect the city’s Jewish community.
Fulop, who has served as Jersey City’s mayor since 2013, signed two executive orders on Dec. 22: one banning the city from participating in efforts to “boycott, divest from, and sanction the State of Israel,” and the other to protect houses of worship and congregants from protest.
Fulop said in an interview that he assigned the orders to ensure that the “next administration doesn’t go in a direction that I think is adverse to some of the communities in Jersey City.”
James Solomon, who is being sworn in on Wednesday after being elected in November, has not publicly commented about Israel or the war in Gaza. But Fulop said he expected Solomon to soon face “pressures from a lot of different people, including the city council.”
New members elected to Jersey City’s city council last month include Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks, who are both members of the Democratic Socialists of America, a leading critic of Israel. Ephros, who is Jewish, has been a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate and co-organized a October 2023 letter titled “Not in Our Name! Jewish Socialists Say No to Apartheid and Genocide,” which compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
“For me, it was important to set Jersey City in a place that, even with a new council coming in, that it was set on a path to protect a large and growing Jewish community in Jersey City so that they do not feel that there’s any discrimination,” Fulop told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Fulop’s executive orders echoed those of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who also signed executive orders shortly before leaving office banning BDS and regulating protests outside of synagogues, knowing that his successor, Zohran Mamdani, is a staunch critic of Israel.
Mamdani swiftly repealed Adams’ orders within his first hours in office this month.
Fulop said he doesn’t know where Solomon leans. “There isn’t a lot that he said on it, so how he views this, and if he views it as something that he’s going to engage in in Jersey City, is unclear,” he said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you see a trend nationally that definitely is leaning more into antisemitic rhetoric, and I think we need to be conscious of that.”
Solomon did not respond to requests for comment. Solomon is not Jewish.
Fulop chose not to run for reelection as mayor last year after serving for three terms. In June, he lost his bid for the Democratic nomination in the New Jersey gubernatorial election to Mikie Sherrill, who won the race in November.
With a total population of about 300,000 just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Jersey City is home to approximately 6,000 Jews, according to a 2018 population study by the Berman Jewish DataBank, and hosts roughly seven synagogues and a handful of kosher eateries. The city’s Jewish population has grown over the past decade, driven in part by Orthodox families seeking more affordability than in neighboring New York City.
Fulop garnered national attention in 2019 after he was one of the first New Jersey officials to describe a deadly shooting at a kosher market as antisemitic.
“The governor and attorney general were reluctant to call it an antisemitic attack, and I pushed publicly,” Fulop recalled. “I got criticized for it, but I thought it was important at the time to recognize what it was while the world and the country was watching how we respond to make sure that it is clear that it was an antisemitic attack because we can’t be dismissive of these sort of things.”
At the time, an influx of Jewish residents in the city had stoked tensions over concerns about gentrification, but Fulop said that he had worked to “build bridges” between the city’s diverse communities.
“There was a lot of strain between the African American community and the Jewish community, a lot of misunderstanding between the two communities,” said Fulop. “We did our best to facilitate conversations between leadership in both those communities in order to build bridges. I think we did a good job.”
Fulop’s efforts to contend with antisemitism have not always placed him in lockstep with Jewish leaders in New Jersey. Last year, for example, he announced that he opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, saying that he believed New Jersey “already has strong hate crime legislation” and that it was important to “protect free speech.” The definition has drawn criticism for identifying some forms of Israel criticism as antisemitic.
“I think that specific definition is counter productive,” he said in his announcement, which came amid a push for the state to adopt the definition. He added, “I say this in the context of someone who is Jewish, as someone who has a Jewish education, as someone who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. as someone who is continued supporter of the NJ-Israel Commission and someone that opposes BDS legislation.”
Last week, the New Jersey Legislature failed to advance on a bill to adopt the IHRA definition, eliciting criticism from the state’s five Jewish federations, including the one serving Jersey City.
Fulop said that, so far, protests outside of synagogues and BDS efforts had not been as prevalent in Jersey City as they have been in New York in recent months. Still, he said, he hoped the executive orders could serve as “guardrails.”
“Historically, antisemitism kind of creeps up in a lot of different places when it’s unexpected, and from my standpoint, even when you’ve seen it in other cities across the country, even though it hasn’t been in Jersey City, putting those guardrails in place and those protections were important,” said Fulop.
Looking ahead to Jersey City’s new leadership, Fulop, who will soon serve as the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said he viewed his executive orders as “helpful” to his successor.
“I view this as helpful for him, ultimately, that it sets up principles that protect everybody, and you’re not going to discriminate against anybody,” he said. “That was how we looked at it.”
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Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism
(JTA) — Vanderbilt University has launched an inquiry into a mathematics lecturer whose classroom exercise about Palestinian territory drew criticism from the activist group StopAntisemitism.
Tekin Karadağ, a senior lecturer at the university’s department of mathematics, drew the ire of the antisemitism watchdog after it obtained a slide from one of his lectures that used a pro-Palestinian protest slogan and suggested that Israel was shrinking the Palestinian territory.
“Assume Palestine as a state with a rectangular land shape. There is the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the Jordan River on the east,” read the slide. “From the river to the sea, Palestine (…) was approximately 100 km. in 1946. The land decreases by 250 sq. km per year, due to the occupation by Israel. How fast is the width of the land decreasing now?”
Karadǎg, a Turkish national who received his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021, included the question under “examples related to the popular issues” in a survey of calculus class, according to StopAntisemitism, which wrote in a post on X that Karadǎg was “bringing his anti-Israel, antisemitic bias into his classroom.”
In a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vanderbilt said that the content had been removed and that an inquiry had been launched into Karadağ.
“The university has received reports alleging a member of the faculty engaged in unprofessional conduct related to content shared during course instruction,” the school said. “The content in question has been removed, and a formal inquiry has been initiated consistent with relevant university policy.”
In recent years, rhetoric about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses has grown increasingly fraught, with professors’ commentary on the region sparking heavy scrutiny and, at times, disciplinary measures when their universities have determined that they exceeded the bounds of academic freedom. A recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force found that students frequently experienced pro-Palestinian advocacy in classes entirely unrelated to the Middle East — such as dance or math classes.
The inquiry was not the first time that Vanderbilt took swift action against the expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments on its campus.
In March 2024, the university, which has roughly 1,100 Jewish undergraduate students, was among the first universities to expel students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This year, the school’s antisemitism “grade” from the Anti-Defamation League was bumped up from a “C” to an “A.”
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Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm
(JTA) — British actor Hugh Laurie pushed back against being labeled as a “Zionist” after facing a wave of online criticism for posting a tribute to the Israeli producer of the hit television show “Tehran.”
“Dana Eden, who co-created and produced ‘Tehran’, died on Sunday, seemingly by her own hand,” Laurie, who played a nuclear inspector in the show’s third season, tweeted last week. “It’s a terrible thing. She was brilliant, and funny, and an exceptional leader. Love and condolences to all who knew her.”
The seemingly innocuous post eulogizing Eden, 52, who was found dead while filming the latest season of the hit Apple TV+ series in Athens last week, quickly drew a volley of backlash on social media.
“She was part of the occupation force’s propaganda arm,” wrote one user in response to Laurie’s post. “What a shame, didn’t expect you to be a closet Zionist.” Another wrote that Eden “creates propaganda for Israel so that they can kill kids more effectively. People should have no sympathy for her.”
The award-winning series, which follows a young Israeli Mossad agent in Iran, was produced by the Israeli public broadcaster Kan and purchased by Apple TV+ in 2020 for roughly $20 million. Eden’s death, for which no cause has been announced, occurred during production of the show’s fourth season, which had already stalled following Oct. 7.
Laurie is not the first actor to spurn the “Zionist” label, as entertainers in recent years have increasingly faced pressure to declare their views on Israel. In December, Jewish actress Odessa A’zion pushed back on claims she was a Zionist after an image of her wearing an IDF shirt as a teenager circulated online.
On Friday, Laurie, who previously starred in the Emmy Award-winning medical drama “House,” shot back at the criticism.
“Nothing I have ever said or done could lead a sane person to believe that I am a Zionist,” wrote Laurie in a post on X. “However. If someone exults in the death of a friend of mine, yes I will block them. If you wouldn’t do the same in my position, you can f—ck off too.”
Laurie’s subsequent post also drew outcry, but this time from pro-Israel influencers who lamented the actor’s disavowal of the Zionist label, calling him “weak” and a “pathetic weasel” in the replies.
Freelance journalist Angela Epstein replied to Laurie’s post, writing, “Not Hugh Laurie as well. I thought he was one of the decent ones….”
“God almighty, why does no one understand English any more?” wrote Laurie in response to Epstein’s critique. “I have not spoken or written a word that would indicate pro or anti Zionism. That’s what those words mean. Blimey.”
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German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage
(JTA) — An anti-Zionist group in Germany has drawn condemnation after it announced plans for a protest against the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in response to a ban on pro-Palestinian symbols at the site.
The group Kufiyas in Buchenwald claims that the memorial has become a place of “historical revisionism and genocide denial.” It announced a demonstration for April 11, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp.
“Instead of honoring the persecuted and resolutely opposing every genocide, the memorial spreads Israeli propaganda and provides the ideological ammunition for the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the group says on its website.
Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazis and one of the largest in the country, was the site of the murder of roughly 56,000 male prisoners, including 11,000 Jews, from 1937 to 1945.
Last year, a German court ruled that the concentration camp had a right to refuse entry to visitors who wear a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by a woman who attempted to wear the scarf to an event commemorating the concentration camp’s liberation.
The woman, who was only identified by her first name, Anna, posted a testimony about her actions on the Kufiyas in Buchenwald Instagram page in which she said she was inspired by the resistance of Buchenwald prisoners.
“Our fundamental principle is this: criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, settlement policy, or actions in the Gaza Strip is legitimate,” said the Buchenwald Foundation’s director Jens-Christian Wagner in a statement outlining the memorial’s protocols. “However, it becomes antisemitic when used to relativize the Holocaust and discredit its victims as perpetrators. We will not tolerate this at the Buchenwald Memorial.”
The campaign against the memorial has been signed onto by a host of pro-Palestinian groups, including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which has defended the protest on X as evidence of what “commemorating past German crimes has to do with rejecting current ones.”
In a post on Instagram announcing the protest earlier this month, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald group wrote that it would hold a “public protest” in Weimar, the German city located nearby the concentration camp. The group also said it planned to host lectures and a “tour that vividly illustrates the events in the former concentration camp.”
It was unclear whether the protest is intended to take place outside the memorial itself. Kufiyas in Buchenwald did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the location of the protest.
The protest quickly drew condemnation from German leaders, including the country’s antisemitism czar Felix Klein, who told the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung that the protest marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”
Michael Panse, the commissioner for combatting antisemitism for the German state Thuringia, where Weimar is located, told the outlet that the protest was “tasteless and historically ignorant.”
The protests also drew condemnation from the European Jewish Congress, which wrote in a post on X that the demonstration represents a “deeply troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust remembrance.”
“Holocaust memorial sites are places of solemn reflection and respect for the victims of National Socialism,” the post continued. “They must never be exploited to promote agendas that deny Israel’s legitimacy or glorify those who perpetrate violence against Jews.”
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