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Jewish conservatives are looking to JD Vance to draw a line against the antisemitic right. He hasn’t delivered.
(JTA) — Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss and Dan Senor were mostly in lockstep as they condemned antisemitism on the right during an event for Jewish conservatives on Sunday night.
But despite their shared concern about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, they were divided on how to think about Vice President JD Vance, who hasn’t publicly disavowed either the influential podcast host or the white supremacist he recently interviewed.
“I’m worried, but I’m not alarmed,” said Senor, a columnist and host of the podcast “Call Me Back,” about the groundswell of antisemitic expressions on the right.
“You’re not alarmed?” interjected Weiss, the newly named editor-in-chief of CBS News.
“I’m not alarmed because I am struck that every leader that is under pressure from this online mob is still standing strong,” said Senor, who pointed out that President Donald Trump has been steadfastly pro-Israel. “Who has fallen? No one has fallen.”
Weiss pressed the issue, singling out Vance: “But what does it mean that the vice president of the United States had Tucker Carlson on his show, when he had hosted Charlie Kirk’s show?”
The question, referring to Vance’s tribute to the slain leader of Turning Point USA, drew applause from many of the more than 1,000 attendees at the 2025 Jewish Leadership Conference, held in Manhattan and organized by the conservative Tikvah Fund.
The exchange aired a growing debate within the Republican party and the right as a whole. Stoked by Carlson’s friendly sit-down with Fuentes, and Carlson’s own harsh criticisms of Israel, it has led to calls within the party that its leaders disavow the antisemites in its midst. Influential Jewish conservatives, who see Republicans as a much more reliable friend to Israel than the Democrats, are eyeing key figures like Vance as counterweights to the right’s increasingly isolationist and emboldened antisemitic forces.
But so far Vance — a likely 2028 presidential candidate — has not delivered any rebuke to Carlson, Fuentes and the growing antisemitic “groyper” movement on the right. Instead, he has drawn concern over what his critics say is a weak response: He did not push back on skeptical questions about Israel, including one laced with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, at a Turning Point USA event at Ole Miss. He also downplayed the significance of the text messages shared among Young Republicans, which included jokes about gas chambers, racist slurs and praise of Hitler. Vance dismissed the invective as “jokes” and said that critics should “grow up.”
Vance’s failure to call out what others see as troubling isolationism and blatant antisemitism has become a talking point at Jewish gatherings.
Scott Jennings, a conservative political commentator for CNN, spoke about the U.S.-Israel relationship at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington on Sunday. Jennings did not name Vance, but alluded to him as a presidential candidate in 2028. “Hopefully the people who run to replace this administration understand the benefit of this, that it’s a good thing and not something to be ashamed of,” he said, referring to support of Israel.
Meanwhile, donors at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas two weeks ago were not shy about their views on Vance.
“In 2028 you can bet, if he’s the nominee, I won’t vote for him,” said Ed Wenger, who called Vance “Tucker Central.”
The vice president, Wenger said, “sounds like he tolerates religions” other than Christianity, rather than embracing them. “Well, I don’t need Vance to tolerate Judaism or me.”
Valerie Greenfeld’s thoughts on Vance in 2028 were quick and straight to the point. “Marco Rubio for president,” said Greenfeld, an author attending the RJC summit.
Jewish activist Shabbos Kestenbaum, who spoke during the RJC’s summit, criticized Vance’s response to the conspiracy-laced question at the Turning Point USA event.
“When you have a vice president who is unable to condemn the obvious antisemitic, conspiratorial, victim-blaming mentality of young people, that is incredibly concerning,” Kestenbaum said in an interview. “And I am very concerned about JD Vance’s inevitable run for the presidency. This is not someone who I have seen has been able to show the moral clarity that a leader needs.”
Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member and former White House press secretary, did not criticize Vance, but said about the vice president’s response to antisemitism within the party, “This is going to be one of those issues that’s going to define his future.”
“The number of candidates who emerge to run for president will be significant on the Republican side, and that’s going to begin in earnest in about one year,” Fleischer said. “And I think JD’s going to have to earn it like everybody else, and be very curious to see what he has to say.”
While Vance hasn’t weighed in on the Carlson-Fuentes controversy, he did defend Carlson’s son, Buckley, in an X post on Saturday. An X user had asserted that Tucker Carlson’s brother “idolizes Nick Fuentes” and asked whether Buckley, who serves as an aide to the vice president, is “also a vile bigot.”
“Every time I see a public attack on Buckley it’s a complete lie,” Vance wrote, later adding that “*everyone* who I’ve seen attack Buckley with lies is a scumbag.” His tweets did not mention Fuentes.
Saul Sadka, a pro-Israel influencer with nearly 65,000 followers on X, recently called out Vance’s exchange about Buckley Carlson and his failure to condemn his father. The vice president has “decided that trying to impress the schoolyard bullies by performatively picking on Jews is the way to become popular as the new kid in school,” wrote Sadka.
Vance’s boss also ignored the Carlson-Fuentes tensions for weeks, only to brush aside concerns about Carlson, who joined him on the campaign trail last year. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump said on Sunday. “If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. People have to decide.”
And while Trump hosted Fuentes and rapper Kanye West for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 (Trump later claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was), some still see him as a bulwark against the anti-Israel and antisemitic waves represented by the groypers.
Kestenbaum said he is “so proud to support President Trump,” but is concerned about the power vacuum that will be created once his second term ends.
“I’m just concerned that when President Trump reaches his term limit, and when there is an open Republican primary, that we will see the nefarious far-right actors that President Trump has so clearly kept at bay, and has made clear have no room in the Republican Party — I’m concerned that they will be let in,” Kestenbaum said.
At Sunday’s Tikvah conference, Shapiro, the conservative political commentator and founder of the Daily Wire, cautioned against dismissing the threat of figures like Fuentes — whom he called a “basement dweller” — and the far-right influencer Andrew Tate, and their influence on younger, more online generations.
“They haven’t aged into the voting population yet,” Shapiro said about their audiences. “And so I think one of the things that we have to be very careful of is trying to write that off as not a problem.”
Weiss concurred, saying, “It’s a great lesson of the left over the past 15 years that everything was downstream of online culture.”
Senor, responding to Weiss, agreed that Vance should say more about the rising tides. “I am patiently waiting for the vice president to come out, like a number of other leaders have come out in recent weeks,” he said. Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell both criticized the Heritage Foundation for standing by Carlson.
Jonathan Silver, the moderator and Tikvah’s chief programming officer, cut in at that point, saying there’s “comfort to be had in the fact that elected leaders have acted in such a patriotic, American way,” before shifting the conversation more specifically to asking why Fuentes appeals to young people.
Many attending the Tikvah event seemed also to be waiting for a strong statement from Vance condemning Fuentes and Carlson.
“I’m willing to be patient — but only so patient,” said Neil Cooper, referring back to Senor’s comment that he’s “patiently waiting” for Vance to comment on Carlson.
Luke Moon, a leader of a Christian Zionist non-profit, expressed concern about an emerging “neo-isolationist” wing of Republicans who oppose supporting Israel.
Moon said he’s even noticed a recent shift in how Vance has posted about Israel on social media.
“JD went to Israel a couple weeks ago, and they didn’t post pictures of him at the [Western] Wall,” Moon said. “Now I appreciate that as a Christian he should go to the Holy Sepulchre. But he had also previously gone to the Wall.”
Others did not take issue with Vance, saying they believed the threat at hand was being blown out of proportion.
“That’s just a small little group of people. Only people involved in journalism take that stuff serious,” said Edward Shapiro, a retired professor who has moved from New Jersey to Florida.
He added, “They’re such fringe characters.”
As for Weiss, who was named to head CBS News after four years at the helm of the consistently pro-Israel Free Press, she said she hoped to use her new position to counter the voices like the ones at the center of Sunday’s discussion.
“The choices that it feels like we have sometimes — which is [the progressive streamer] Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson, or Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, the kind of people who are rising in the podcast charts — those don’t actually represent our values,” Weiss said. “And I don’t think that they represent the values or the worldview of the vast majority of Americans.”
The post Jewish conservatives are looking to JD Vance to draw a line against the antisemitic right. He hasn’t delivered. appeared first on The Forward.
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Spain Expands Anti-Israel Measures, Bans Golan, West Bank Products Amid Rising Tensions With Jerusalem
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks at a press conference in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, China, Sept. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Xihao Jiang
The Spanish government has announced 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 as the latest move in its ongoing effort to boycott Israel.
According to a statement from Spain’s Ministry of Finance on Monday, the ban — set to take effect on Tuesday — is the result of a September decree “adopting urgent measures against genocide in Gaza and in support of the Palestinian population.”
The regulation “prohibits … the entry into Spain of products originating from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Among all members of the EU, Spain is the second country to take such action, following Slovenia — one of the bloc’s smallest economies — which became the first EU member to ban Israeli products in August, and potentially to be joined by Ireland, where parliament is currently working on a similar measure.
As a major trade partner of Spain, Israel exports roughly $850 million in goods to the country each year — about half the value of Spanish exports to Israel — with products from the West Bank and the Golan making up only a small fraction of those shipments, according to the Israel Export Institute.
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.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has launched a fierce anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.
Even as Spain ramps up its anti-Israel campaign, authorities this week granted Airbus exceptional permission to produce aircraft and drones using Israeli technology at its Spanish plants — despite having banned military and dual-use products from the Jewish state just two months ago.
Approved last Tuesday by the cabinet and defended by several ministers this week, the exemption reflects the pressure from companies and domestic interests that some of Europe’s toughest critics of Israel’s recent war have faced as they attempt to impose trade sanctions.
In September, Spain 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.
Spain has also canceled a €700 million ($825 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers, as the government conducts a broader review to systematically phase out Israeli weapons and technology from its armed forces.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has faced increasing backlash from his country’s political leaders and Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.
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UN’s Francesca Albanese Lashes Out at ‘Pro-Genocide Minions’ After Georgetown University Severs Ties
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights, on Nov. 14, 2023. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
A controversial United Nations official who has been criticized for using her role to promote anti-Israel bias and pro-Hamas propaganda denied on Monday that Georgetown University severed its relationship with her due to accusations that she is antisemitic, explaining that she was dropped due to the US government’s decision to sanction her.
“I had an affiliation with a US university. I used to lecture there. Everything has been cut down,” she said earlier this month at an event with ODI Global.
A university official confirmed to JNS on Friday that Georgetown severed ties with Albanese due to the imposition of sanctions, saying, “US institutions are prohibited by federal law from affiliating with individuals subject to US sanctions.”
In July, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese, accusing her of “political and economic warfare” against the US and Israel. “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time.
Following news of Georgetown’s severing ties with Albanese, some media reports suggested the decision was based on her antisemitic comments. The UN official appeared to respond to such claims on the social media platform X.
“Georgetown’s decision to end my 10-year-old affiliation is yet another fallout of the sanctions the US imposed on me last July for exposing Israel’s genocide and the complicity of US businesses. Any other explanation is the usual laughable propaganda of the pro-genocide minions,” she posted on X.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
In August, she defended Hamas as a legitimate “political force” in Gaza that has built schools and hospitals while ruling the Palestinian enclave for nearly two decades, arguing that people should not think of the internationally designated terrorist group as armed “cut-throats” or “fighters.”
Months earlier, Albanese called on all medical professionals to cut ties with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” — an accusation she made repeatedly since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The UN recently launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore last October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 atrocities to justify the continued “colonization” of Gaza.
Albanese claimed last year that Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. In 2023, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
In response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.” In July 2024, she also called for Israel to be expelled from the UN.
Albanese even once confessed that she struggles with impartiality. In an interview with the Institute for Palestine Studies in which she discussed Palestinian refugees and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) she said, “I feared deep down perhaps I feared that embarking on research on a matter on which I deeply held personal views could compromise my objectivity.”
UN Watch cheered Albanese’s dismissal from Georgetown as a victory against rising antisemitism.
“We welcome Georgetown University’s decision,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “Academic institutions have a responsibility to uphold basic standards of integrity and human dignity. Removing an official who has repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and justified terrorism is a necessary step toward restoring those standards.”
Calling on the UN to join Georgetown in dismissing Albanese, he added, “This sends an important message. Positions of authority at the United Nations do not grant immunity from accountability, and universities should not serve as safe havens for those who abuse their platforms to promote hatred. The UN must follow Georgetown’s lead and remove Albanese.”
Albanese is not without allies at Georgetown. One of them, Middle East studies associate professor Nader Hashemi, said on X that Albanese’s status as a sanctioned person will change if and when the Democrats win the US presidency and that she will be hosted at Georgetown again.
“As soon as the sanctions are lifted on Francesca, we plan to host a [sic] her again at Georgetown University,” he wrote. “I’m certain her affiliation will also be restored. When she does return to campus, I suspect there is not a room large enough to accommodate all the people who want to meet her.”
Hatred for Israel, often fueled by the spread of misinformation about the Jewish state’s history and conduct in Gaza, is fueling violence against Jews in the US and elsewhere, according to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner earlier this year.
In June, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally with Molotov cocktails and a “makeshift” flamethrower in Boulder, Colorado, killing one person and injuring 13 in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. According to court documents, the man charged for the attack yelled “Free Palestine” during the violence and also told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
The Colorado firebombing came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder also yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supported the criminal charges against the suspect stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Recent research has found that anti-Zionist faculty at universities have created a hostile climate for Jews and Israelis.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), university faculty and staff have exacerbated the antisemitism crisis by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues.
The actions by faculty provided an academic pretext for the relentless wave of antisemitic incidents of discrimination and harassment which pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated against Jewish and Israeli members of campus communities since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to the survey, released in September.
The survey of “Jewish-identifying US-based faculty members” found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it. Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).
Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Russian Teen Assaulted Over Israeli Flag Photo as Antisemitism Concerns Mount, Amid Calls for Jews to Leave Country
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, former chief rabbi of Moscow and current president of the Conference of European Rabbis, on June 24, 2024. Photo: IMAGO/epd via Reuters Connect
A 15-year-old student at a school in Russia was brutally assaulted by classmates after posting a photo featuring an Israeli flag on social media, Russian media reported, leaving him with a serious eye fracture from an incident that has drawn public outrage and is now under criminal investigation.
Earlier this month, a high school student in St. Petersburg, a major city in northwestern Russia, was physically attacked by two classmates after changing his social media profile photo to one featuring an Israeli flag, according to a report by local News Channel 78 on Sunday.
One of the attackers allegedly harassed the boy over his profile picture, demanding that he remove it and apologize.
After a verbal confrontation in which the attacker threatened the boy and hurled insults, including references to the Holocaust, he allegedly demanded that the victim meet him in the bathroom to continue the discussion.
When the two boys met there, the assailant reportedly demanded that he apologize on his knees. The victim refused but said he was willing to apologize without being humiliated.
The attacker then struck him repeatedly in the face while another boy blocked the bathroom exit.
The victim had to be hospitalized after suffering a fracture to the eye socket and underwent surgery under general anesthesia to remove bone fragments.
After spending more than a week in the hospital, he is now receiving outpatient care, and his family is coordinating with school administrators on a transition to home-based schooling as recommended by his doctors.
The boy’s mother reported the assault to the police, prompting local authorities to open a criminal investigation for assault and battery.
This incident came after Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as Moscow’s chief rabbi from 1993 to 2022, recently urged Jews to leave Russia and consider immigrating to Israel, citing a growing hostile climate and rising antisemitic attacks targeting the local Jewish community.
“I have long urged Russia’s Jews to consider aliyah, the return to Israel. The post-Soviet renaissance was extraordinary, but illusions of permanence ignore history,” Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, wrote in an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.
“Now, more than ever, Russia’s Jews should heed the call to leave. Israel offers not just refuge but a homeland where Jewish life is sovereign, not contingent on geopolitical whims,” he continued.
Although the number of Jews leaving Russia has declined, the country still accounted for the largest number of immigrants to Israel in 2025, with roughly 8,300 arrivals, according to data released Monday by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry.
This figure marked a nearly 60 percent drop from 19,500 last year and a small fraction of the 74,000 who immigrated in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.