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Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader with strained Jewish relations, dies at 84
(JTA) — The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Black leader who sought to build a “rainbow coalition” for America’s future but struggled to include Jews in it, has died at 84.
For American Jews, Jackson’s use of an antisemitic epithet, criticism of Israel and association with the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan during his first presidential run in 1984 proved hard to overcome, even as the towering figure apologized in part and preached reconciliation.
“This man is brilliant, he is a leader,” Edgar Bronfman, then president of the World Jewish Congress, said in 1992 after inviting Jackson to address its conference in Brussels. “Do I trust him totally? Of course not. Because he is not a Jewish leader, he is a Black leader, he’s got a different agenda. Do I think that he and I can work together to bring the Black and Jewish communities together to fight against racism? Yes.”
Born in the Jim Crow South and educated as a Baptist minister in Chicago, Jackson emerged as a purveyor of a hopeful vision of racial inclusion and economic uplift in the years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom he had worked. After clashing with other King allies over the appropriate tenor of civil rights activism, he formed his own group — ultimately called Operation PUSH — to advance his vision: uniting groups marginalized economically or politically into a governing majority to achieve economic and social justice.
Soon, his group’s economic boycotts were winning commitments to minority hiring and propelling him into the political mainstream. Jackson succeeded in negotiating the freedom of U.S. hostages abroad, including in Syria and Cuba in 1984. Soon, he was mounting a historic campaign for president, becoming only the second Black national candidate since Reconstruction. In his second Democratic primary run, in 1988, he won 11 primaries and caucuses, nabbing 7 million votes and driving a dramatic expansion in the number of Black registered voters.
But criticism dogged Jackson, even as he notched civil rights and national politics wins. Some in his own community accused him of caring more about the concerns of affluent African-Americans than about the poverty afflicting the majority of Black people in the United States; others charged him with profiting personally off of his advocacy.
Perhaps the most significant breaches came with American Jews, who had played a prominent role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
In 1979, he met in Lebanon with Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat in an effort to broker ties between the group and the United States. At the time, the U.S. position was not to engage with the PLO or its leader until it had acknowledged Israel’s right to exist.
Jackson also visited Israel during the same trip, but two Jewish members of the delegation — including one who helped plan it after working with Jackson to oppose a Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, the previous year — quit in protest partway through, saying that they had concluded that Jackson was a “dangerous man” who “cares not one bit about the Israeli point of view.”
In 1983, soon after announcing his first presidential campaign, the far-right Jewish Defense League announced a “Jews for Jackson” effort to thwart him. The announcement prompted Jackson’s first denial that he was antisemitic.
Tensions exploded early the next year when Jackson admitted that he had used the term “Hymietown” to describe New York City in what he believed had been a private conversation with a reporter. The term, an offensive slur for Jews that riffs off the name Hyman, smarted for a community that had hoped antisemitism in the United States was a thing of the past.
Jackson first denied making the comments, including during a televised national debate, but then apologized in a speech at a synagogue in Manchester, New Hampshire, ahead of the first presidential primary. “It’s human to err, divine to forgive,” he said, explaining that he had not wanted the comment to disrupt his campaign.
“I appeal to you tonight as a Jewish community to find yourself in the rainbow coalition,” Jackson continued, adding, “I categorically deny that I am either antisemitic or anti-Israel.”
At the same time, Jackson declined to distance himself from Farrakhan, a longtime associate who had introduced him at a Chicago rally. After Farrakhan made new antisemitic comments, calling Judaism a “gutter religion,” Jackson’s campaign denounced the comments but not Farrakhan himself.
That summer, Jackson also made new comments about Israel that violated sacrosanct beliefs among American Jewish leaders. Jackson endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel at a time when the idea was far out of the mainstream of American and Israeli politics. He also raised questions about U.S. military aid to Israel, saying that Israeli weapons were being used to maintain apartheid in South Africa.
Relations had soured so much that Jackson became a wedge issue during the 1988 election, when Republican strategists and figures such as Vice President George Bush suggested that Democrats were not forceful enough in condemning antisemitism.
There were some signs of openness. Jewish leaders, including Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said Jackson had met privately with them in an effort to mend fences. “It is a different Jackson in 1988 than in 1984,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said at the time. “One has to recognize and welcome that certain sensitivity he is now showing.”
By the early 1990s, Jackson had made gains in building trust with segments of the Jewish community, speaking at synagogues and Jewish community forums and participating in Holocaust remembrance events. In July 1992, he made two headlining speeches condemning hatred of Jews, at the Democratic National Convention and to a World Jewish Congress meeting in Brussels.
In the World Jewish Congress speech, he condemned antisemitism, praised Zionism as a “liberation movement” and called for Jews and Blacks to renew their joint fight against racism.
“Let us not turn closed scars into open wounds in the name of freedom and candor,” he said. “Let us be wise enough to act our way into a way of thinking, and not just think and talk ourselves into not acting.”
Bronfman, the WJC’s president, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time that he had invited Jackson to speak over the objections of many Jewish voices, because he wanted to make sure that a conference focused on racism against Jews also examined racism in the United States.
The speech won over some in attendance. “I was proved to be wrong,” said an Australian co-chair of the WJC’s board who had opposed Jackson’s invitation. “I do see genuine opportunities now, if we move forward, to some sort of a rapprochement.”
But Foxman said Jackson would still have to do more to convince him. “It is a record that has been marred by an insensitive view of Jewish history, the Holocaust, Zionism and the modern Jewish state, its government and their policies,” he said. “One speech to the Jewish community in the Palace of Congresses in Brussels will not repair it.”
Foxman said he would work with Jackson if Jackson chose to deliver similar comments before Black audiences in the United States.
By the late 1990s, a thaw appeared to have taken place. Yeshiva University invited Jackson to speak on the topic of Black-Jewish relations. While Jackson faced some protests at Park Avenue, at Y.U., President Norman Lamm praised him as a “leading, vibrant” activist who has “performed miracles in fostering racial harmony.”
During that speech, Jackson denied that “Black antisemitism,” then a topic of growing concern among Jewish leaders, was a structural phenomenon, saying that any hatred that existed was confined to misguided individuals and not a product of the community as a whole. He also argued that the far right posed a greater threat to Jews in the United States.
Around the same time, Jackson participated in a vigil on behalf of Iranian Jews outside Park East Synagogue in New York City. Rabbi Marc Schneier, whose father Arthur is Park East’s rabbi, said following Jackson’s death, “I have lost a cherished friend.”
Jackson maintained personal relationships with other Jewish figures. Following the death in 2021 of Robert Marx, a pioneering social justice advocate and leading Reform rabbi in Chicago who drew inspiration from his experiences marching with King, Jackson issued a bereft statement praising him as “the Jewish voice for justice” and saying, “We prayed together, sang together, and marched together. When Nazis marched in Skokie, we fought hate together. We have always been together. I love him so much. I miss him already.”
Some Jewish groups eulogized Jackson on Tuesday, though often acknowledging the wrinkles in his record. “It’s no secret that there were also very painful moments in Rev. Jackson’s relationship with the Jewish community, and he is a testament to engagement even when there are deep disagreements and pain,” said the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a civil rights group, in a statement. “He went on to be a key ally to the Jewish community, underscoring the urgency of building strong, long-lasting alliances against bigotry wherever it exists.”
Jackson announced in 2017 that he had Parkinson’s disease and had been increasingly out of the public eye. He shared a stage with Farrakhan at a memorial service for the singer Aretha Franklin in 2018 and traveled to Auschwitz in 2019 for a memorial service for the Roma victims of the Holocaust before making his last major public appearance in a wheelchair at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His organization announced in November that he had been hospitalized, and his family announced on Tuesday that he had “died peacefully.”
He is survived by his wife Jacqueline; six children including his son Jesse Jackson, Jr., who was elected to Congress in Illinois; and several grandchildren.
The post Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader with strained Jewish relations, dies at 84 appeared first on The Forward.
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Workplaces open, schools remain shut — and Israeli parents pull out their hair over wartime Zoom classes
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — When news broke that Israel might gradually reopen schools in areas considered safe enough, Yael Daniel, a mother in Bat Yam in the missile-hit center of the country, joked that she was “moving north.”
The war has shut schools and pushed children onto Zoom learning while many parents, like Daniel, keep working. Trying to supervise remote lessons for her three children, ages 6 to 8, who have attention difficulties, while holding down a full-time job has turned each day into “a nightmare,” she said.
“These are kids that need to be in a serious routine, and they’re not, and it’s really hard. I’m suffering,” she said.
The strain intensified after the IDF’s Home Front Command allowed workplaces to reopen last week under updated wartime guidelines, even as the education system remained closed.
Israeli actress and mother of two Meshi Kleinstein was one of many parents who took to social media as the decision drew anger and disbelief. “What a delusional country. Who looks after the children when the parents return to work?” she said on Instagram.
In response to the outcry, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Sunday that one parent in households with children under 14 would be allowed to take unpaid leave while the education system remains shut.
The move prompted further backlash from parents who say it effectively forces families to choose between supervising children at home and losing income.
And for some, like Zehavit, who was speaking from a bomb shelter during a siren in the central city of Jaffa, it didn’t make sense. “Just because my child is 14, does that automatically mean he’s fine to be alone and run to the shelter by himself in the event of a siren?”
Outside the shelter, another mother, Renana, said the arrangement has forced her to reorganize her workday around her son’s online classes.
“I have one child in first grade. Since the Zoom classes started I work less because he uses my computer,” she said.
“He has three consecutive hours with different teachers and I need to sit next to him so he can communicate with them, which means I’m listening to the whole lesson and not working.”
Claire Bloom Moradian spends her days shuffling her children between school Zooms, extracurricular Zooms and playdates just to approximate a routine. “It’s just chaos, I’m absolutely exhausted,” she said.
In a Facebook post, Rachel Sharansky Danziger recounted that the return to Zoom after Oct. 7 was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” leaving her so overwhelmed that she called a mental health hotline at the time, unable to understand why “all the death, the kidnappings, the horror” had not broken her, but remote learning did.
Zoom had revived the helplessness of the Covid years, she said, with too few devices, constant technical glitches and children yelling that nothing was working — all against a backdrop of dread about what might be looming outside the apartment doors.
“I can be strong,” she had told the woman on the other end of the helpline. “I can be positive and supportive and encouraging and manage myself and the domestic and social arena around me with precision and strength and awareness of the needs of those around me. But I can’t do all of this while trying to solve dozens of technological problems every morning.”
Education Minister Yoav Kisch said on Monday morning that he is examining a gradual reopening of schools using a color-coded system, with institutions expected to resume first in areas classified as “yellow,” meaning places where security conditions and access to protected spaces would allow limited in-person learning, with parents responsible for getting children to school.
About 40% of Israeli schools cannot offer all of their students access to bomb shelters if a siren sounds, according to data released this week.
Kisch’s terminology was another reminder of the pandemic-era, in which cities were ranked by color according to infection levels, with tighter restrictions in “red” areas. On social media, some parents greeted Kisch’s proposal with weary sarcasm. “Ah, yes, the color chart. Because that went so well the first time,” one person tweeted in response.
Municipal leaders were divided over whether to implement Kisch’s plan. Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav said the city would keep schools closed for now, saying he had “no intention of endangering students, drivers, and teaching staff,” as officials weighed the risks of transporting children during ongoing alerts. Others signaled they would move ahead. Roy Levy, mayor of nearby Nesher, said schools would reopen in line with Home Front Command guidelines, calling a return to classrooms “an emotional and social need.” Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion also said he would partially reopen the city’s education system, citing the need for “a routine, an educational framework and meetings with friends and teachers.”
But by Monday evening, Kisch was forced to backpedal after the IDF’s Home Front Command said that wartime restrictions would stay in effect across the country, keeping schools shut for now. A limited reopening may be attempted again starting next week — or not.
In one of the darkest incidents to emerge from Israel’s forced return to Zoom schooling, a teacher in Jerusalem was attacked by her partner in front of her students during an online lesson. He struck her in the head and smashed objects in their home before being arrested, later telling investigators he had acted out of “feelings of jealousy.”
Reports of domestic violence in Israel tend to rise during periods of war and home confinement. Data compiled after Oct. 7 showed a 28% increase in calls to Israel’s welfare ministry hotline related to domestic violence, sexual abuse and child neglect during the first months of the war.
Not everyone viewed Zoom as futile. Nataly Peleg, a first-grade teacher, said the classes are less about academics than about giving children a welcome distraction — even if she does not compel her own children to join theirs.
“It’s not so much whether they learn or not,” she said. “It’s about being together for a bit and focusing on something that isn’t the sirens and the surreal situations around us.”
Some children find the classes comforting, she said, while others are simply waiting for them to end or do not join at all. Still, she said, many parents have told her they appreciate the effort. “If even a handful of kids feel a bit better, it’s worth it,” she said.
Daniel, for her part, is trying to keep things in perspective. Despite feeling “super overwhelmed,” she said she is thankful her family is safe.
“Things could always be worse,” she said. “I’m just grateful we are all OK.”
In her post, Danziger said she was passing on the advice the hotline counselor had given her more than two and a half years ago.
“Don’t. Don’t let distance learning control you,” she said, adding that “nothing terrible would happen if your kids don’t join some of the Zooms — or, to be honest, all of them.”
While “we parents may not be bombing Tehran or deciphering nuclear secrets right now,” she wrote, “the responsibility for our children’s education and the functioning of our homes is still in our hands.”
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Ted Cruz says GOP not ‘winning’ fight against antisemitism from figures like Tucker Carlson
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — Some speakers struck a hopeful note during an antisemitism symposium on Tuesday morning hosted here by the Republican Jewish Coalition and National Review.
Ted Cruz was not one of them.
“Norm [Coleman, chair of the RJC] just said that we are winning. And I applaud him for that, because I want us to be winning,” Cruz said. “But I’m not sure it is accurate as a descriptive matter that we are winning right now.”
Cruz was referring to an ongoing battle within the Republican party over figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, conservative influencers who’ve spread antisemitic conspiracy theories.
It wasn’t the Texas senator’s first time speaking to the RJC crowd with grave warnings about right-wing antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric. He called antisemitism “an existential crisis in our party” at the RJC’s annual summit in November, which was held shortly after Carlson gave a friendly interview to avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes.
Four months later, Cruz’s speech served as a sobering follow-up: “This is the beginning of a battle where our nation, our beliefs, our Constitution, the principles that built America, are under assault. And we need to gird ourselves for battle and defeat this garbage,” he said Tuesday.
Cruz was far from the only speaker stressing the importance of rooting out right-wing antisemitism at the half-day symposium. The 100 or so attendees at the Museum of the Bible heard from speakers on how antisemitism is spread via social media, on policy responses to antisemitism, and why American exceptionalism is said to be inextricable from Jewish exceptionalism.
Cruz seemed to contradict Coleman’s assertion that “we are winning and they” — that is, “prominent polemicists” like Carlson, Owens and younger figures like Fuentes and Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, who traffic in “ancient hatred” — are “losing.”
Nonetheless, Coleman said in an interview after the event, he and Cruz are on the same page.
“First of all, I’m an optimist. Second of all, I could understand Sen. Cruz’s concern,” said Coleman, suggesting that Cruz didn’t want to leave the impression that the GOP’s internecine battle over antisemitism was over and “this isn’t a fight that has to be fought.
“It has to be fought tooth and nail because it’s so critically important,” said Coleman.
He added, “We haven’t won the fight. I think we’re winning the fight — and by the way, that’s shown in the fact that 85-90% of Republicans are on our side.”
Still, Coleman — who said in his public remarks that they are “not fringe figures whispering in dark corners,” and that they “have large megaphones” — later dismissed Carlson, Owens and Fuentes as being “fringe voices on our side.” Cruz, on the other hand, said during his remarks that antisemitism “is gaining real purchase, especially with young people.”
“I don’t want to wake up in five years and find myself in a country where both major political parties are unambiguously anti-Israel and unapologetically antisemitic,” Cruz said. “And I think that is a real possibility. If Tucker and his minions prevail, that will happen.”
To stop that from happening, Cruz said Christian pastors need to fight Carlson “on theological grounds” by dispelling the replacement theory that Carlson “aggressively” pushes. He also said there should be an effort to “follow the money” because he suspects that “many of these influencers are cashing a check” from countries like Qatar, Russia and China, as part of “an operation to destroy America.”
Cruz was far more explicit in his condemnations of Carlson than he’d been in November, when he held back from using the former Fox News personality’s name.
“I believe Tucker Carlson is the single-most dangerous demagogue in this country,” Cruz said on Tuesday, drawing applause.
“And I’ll tell you,” he said, “I’ve made the decision that I’m going to take him on directly.”
The debate over antisemitism and figures like Carlson and Owens has roiled the American conservative movement. More Republicans have weighed in over the last few months, including Trump, who said last week that Carlson is “not MAGA” after the commentator criticized American and Israeli strikes on Iran. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance has not publicly denounced Carlson, drawing skepticism and growing impatience from some Jewish Republicans.
Cruz blasted his fellow Republicans who have not publicly condemned Carlson.
“Nick Fuentes is easy to denounce,” he said. “I actually think it’s a tell among Republican politicians — if they’ll denounce Fuentes but are scared to say Tucker’s name, that tells you a great deal.”
Cruz did not name any such politicians.
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‘Path to Normalization’: Lebanese President Turns on Hezbollah, Calls for Israel Talks
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on during a meeting with Cyprus’ President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, July 9, 2025. Photo: Petros Karadjias/Pool via REUTERS
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Monday accused Hezbollah of dragging Lebanon toward becoming a “second Gaza” with its rocket attacks on Israel and called for negotiating a full ceasefire with Jerusalem, saying the launches served “the Iranian regime’s calculations” and risked “collapsing” the country.
Aoun’s remarks, among the most direct criticism of Iran-backed Hezbollah by a Lebanese president in years, accused the Islamist terror group of launching rockets as an “obvious trap” to lure his country back into a conflict with Israel.
“Whoever launched those rockets wanted to secure the fall of the Lebanese state, under aggression and chaos, even at the price of destroying dozens of our villages and the fall of tens of thousands of our people. For the sake of the Iranian regime’s calculations,” Aoun told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa in an online meeting.
Earlier this month, he added, the Lebanese government made “a clear and irrevocable decision” barring any military or security activity by Hezbollah.
An Israeli coalition of former diplomats, security experts, and business leaders called Aoun’s remarks a “courageous” and potentially “historic” opening by a Lebanese government seeking to disarm Hezbollah.
“Israel must seize the moment to create the necessary conditions for shaping a negotiated reality along the northern border — one that would constitute a significant strategic victory against Iran and further isolate it,” the Coalition for Regional Security said in a statement.
The group praised the “anti-Iranian Lebanese government” for seeking to disarm Hezbollah, but warned that “it is unable to accomplish this task alone.”
According to Lianne Pollak-David, the coalition’s founder, the current US-Israeli strikes on Iran were creating more space for Beirut to confront Hezbollah openly.
“The more Iran is weakened and isolated, the more the Lebanese government feels confident going directly and publicly against Hezbollah,” she told The Algemeiner.
But Pollak-David argued the Lebanese government could not disarm Hezbollah on its own and would need help from outside powers, including Israel. That, she said, would force Israel to walk a “very tricky fine line” to break Hezbollah on the one hand, without leaving Beirut to absorb the blowback by itself.
She called for “collaborating with the Lebanese government, leveraging all the regional coalition that has been formed around this war, and, under [US President Donald] Trump’s leadership, pushing for a new reality in Lebanon.”
Iran’s military and political incapacitation could even open the way to more regional peace agreements, she said.
“Everything is connected,” Pollak-David said. “The more Iran is isolated and the more its proxies are weakened, the more we’re seeing all the moderate forces in the region coordinating and collaborating,” increasing the chances of “Israel-Lebanese normalization and Israel-Arab normalization altogether.”
But Hezbollah expert Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi offered a far more skeptical view, questioning whether Aoun’s remarks signaled any real change on the ground.
“I don’t see the difference between Aoun’s remarks now and his remarks when he was elected, except for the willingness to have direct negotiations with Israel,” she told The Algemeiner.
When Aoun took office in January of last year, he said Lebanon must eventually ensure weapons are held only by the state, but he also said repeatedly that this had to happen through dialogue, not confrontation.
“The biggest question at stake, which I don’t get an answer to, is whether Aoun’s army is willing to clash with Hezbollah, because that is what it will take to disarm it,” Zehavi said, noting Aoun’s fear that such a clash could lead to civil war.
She pointed to reports from Monday that Hezbollah operatives arrested while transporting weapons south were released almost immediately on token bail of $20, which she said showed how little appetite Beirut had demonstrated for a real confrontation with the terrorist group.
Zehavi, who founded the Alma Center — a research center that focuses on security challenges relating to Israel’s northern border — said Aoun would need to do far more than denounce Hezbollah or talk about state authority over weapons before Israel could treat his government as a real partner. The first step, she said, was for his government to formally outlaw Hezbollah and take concrete action against it.
“I will be much more convinced in Aoun’s good intentions if he designates Hezbollah as a terrorist entity,” she said. “Meanwhile, I don’t think we should negotiate with this Lebanese government.”
Until then, she said, Israel should keep up its attacks on Hezbollah, particularly south of the Litani River, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.