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Jewish institutions awaken to climate crisis, with hundreds pledging action
(JTA) — For a decade starting in 2002, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi devoted herself to pro-Israel advocacy. After that, the Jewish philanthropist and activist from Annapolis, Maryland, went all in to fight for disability rights, working in the field for the next decade. Now, Mizrahi is focused on climate change.
“Let me put it this way: In 2021, we donated to one climate organization, and in 2022, we donated to 17 of them,” Mizrahi said, referring to the small charity fund she runs with her husband, tech entrepreneur Victor Mizrahi. This year, the couple made their largest climate-related donation yet, sending a group of nine climate reporters to Israel to meet tech startups working on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mizrahi and her husband have also begun commercially investing in such startups.
“I was hoping other people would solve it,” she said. “But the pace of the change is not nearly meeting the demand at the moment. I felt that even though I don’t know the subject, I’m just going to have to do it because I have kids and I don’t want this world to fall apart.”
Climate change has long ranked at or near the top of a list of issues concerning Jews in the United States, according to multiple surveys, and Jews have been heavily involved in the wider climate movement. But until recently, the issue had a marginal place on the agendas of Jewish communal organizations, which neglected climate even as the subject took on importance in the activism and policies of other religious communities and in the larger philanthropic world.
Mizrahi’s newfound emphasis on climate is an early example of a larger shift that is underway in Jewish philanthropy, a multibillion-dollar world made up of thousands of individual donors, charitable foundations and nonprofit organizations.
“It’s the beginning of what will become a more widespread focus among Jewish groups,” said Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, the founder and CEO of the Jewish climate group Dayenu. “We’re seeing an awakening to this as a profoundly Jewish issue, and awakening to the role that the Jewish community has to play in addressing the climate crisis.”
Scientists say that decisions regarding carbon emissions made in the next few years will affect life on Earth for thousands of years to come. The most recent warning came in March, when leading global experts with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a new report, stating that “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
The large Jewish populations living in the coastal United States are vulnerable to extreme storms, sea-level rise, severe heat and other weather disruptions — a situation dramatized in the recent Apple television series “Extrapolations,” in which a rabbi contends with rising sea waters infiltrating his Florida synagogue. Meanwhile, Israel is experiencing a slew of impacts from drought and floods to security threats tied regional climate-related instability.
A flooded road after heavy rainfall in the central Israeli city of Lod, Jan. 16, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
Israeli officials visit the site where a road collapsed into a large sinkhole at Mineral Beach in the Dead Sea on December 7, 2017. Many facilities and beaches have been closed or shut down in recent years following the increase in sinkholes caused by ever-declining sea levels, as climate change strains the country’s water resources. (Mark Neyman/GPO)
The last few months have seen a flurry of new initiatives aimed at both greening Jewish institutions and directing collective action on climate.
In December, for example, Rosenn’s group published a report calculating that endowments of Jewish organizations, from family foundations to local federations, are invested in the fossil fuel industry to the tune of at least $3 billion. The report launched an ongoing campaign called All Our Might that urges Jewish leaders to withdraw these investments and put the money toward clean energy instead.
Meanwhile, many of the most prominent Jewish organizations in the country — representing local federations, Hillel chapters, summer camps, community centers, day schools and nearly every religious denomination — had already joined a new green coalition organized by another Jewish environmental group and were preparing to unveil pledges to do more in the fight against climate change.
The unveiling of the climate pledges happened in March, under the leadership of Adamah, a nonprofit created through the merger of two stalwarts of Jewish environmentalism, Hazon and the Pearlstone Center.
“Climate and sustainability have not been on the list of priorities for the vast majority of Jewish organizations; this coalition and these climate action plans reflect a deep paradigm shift and culture change moving forward,” Adamah CEO Jakir Mandela said at the time.
The commitments made by members of Adamah’s Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition include sending youth leaders to global climate summits, reducing emissions of buildings and vehicles and lobbying the federal government to pass climate policies.
More than 300 congregations and nonprofits have joined. For Earth Day, Adamah announced a million-dollar fund offering interest-free loans and matching grants to Jewish groups for projects to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
If any single event can be said to mark the debut of the climate issue as a top Jewish communal priority, it is probably the recent annual conference of the Jewish Funders Network, which took place in March in Phoenix, bringing together thousands of donors and charity executives.
For the gathering’s first event, before the formal opening of the conference, a group of participants went on a field trip to downtown Phoenix to learn about the local effects of the climate crisis. Far more people signed up than organizers anticipated, and with about 55 passengers, the tour bus chartered for the occasion reached capacity. Mizrahi, who was among the participants, said the trip was helpful as a networking opportunity for like-minded philanthropists.
“We wanted to expose them to how the existential threats posed by climate change are not long term, but are already here,” Yanklowitz said. “People down in the Zone are dying every summer from heat exhaustion and dehydration.”
Based on his debrief with the group afterward, Yanklowitz feels the trip left an impact on participants.
“I didn’t hear anyone say, ‘Oh, I’m changing my commitments.’ But I did get the sense that climate change was kind of abstract for many people, and that now it really hit home,” Yanklowitz said.
The rest of the conference featured multiple talks and gatherings dedicated to climate, including on the main stage, and an announcement that Birthright, which offers free trips to Israel for young Jews, was increasing its own climate activism with the help of a new donation.
In an interview, Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and Stephen Bronfman, children of Birthright founder Charles Bronfman, said their $9 million gift is meant to honor their father on the occasion of his 90th birthday, while also bringing Birthright more in line with the values of a new generation that is environmentally-minded.
Birthright organizers will use the funding to develop programming focused on climate that could, for example, expose participants to Israel’s clean tech scene. The money is also intended to help Birthright lower its own carbon footprint, potentially by switching to electric buses or adding more vegetarian meals.
The Bronfmans hope that Birthright’s significant purchasing power in Israeli tourism will nudge the industry toward more ecologically sustainable practices.
“To me, Birthright is like Walmart — everyone wants to do business with them,” Stephen Bronfman said. “They have the power to dictate terms to their service providers and affect the supply chain.”
The widespread interest in climate mobilization among Jewish groups comes after years in which the issue languished outside the mainstream. Rosenn, the head of Dayenu, who has attended about 15 conferences of the Jewish Funder Network, noticed a change this year.
“There used to be half a dozen people at a breakfast before the program talking about climate. And it wasn’t even climate, necessarily — it was the environment writ large,” she said.
The Jewish world is, in many ways, still lagging behind the larger climate movement. Divesting endowment funds from the fossil fuel industry, for example, is seen as a bold step among Jewish groups even though at least 1,590 institutions representing nearly $41 trillion in assets have already publicly committed to doing so, according to a website tracking such pledges. About a third of the groups on the list are defined as faith-based organizations, but only three are Jewish: Kolot Chayeinu, a congregation in Park Slope, Brooklyn; the Reform movement’s pension system; and the American Jewish World Service, a global justice group.
Rabbi Laura Bellows, now Dayenu’s director of spiritual activism and education, waves matzah as she encourages major financial organizations to divest from fossil fuels at a rally in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2022. (Bora Chung | Survival Media Agency / Courtesy of Dayenu)
Adamah’s own climate plan doesn’t include a pledge to divest but only a promise that it will investigate the option of doing so for its endowment and employee retirement funds. Instead, the plan touts the group’s education and advocacy efforts, and focuses on reducing emissions at its retreat centers.
Adamah’s chief climate officer, Risa Alyson Cooper, acknowledged that Jewish community institutions have been “largely absent” from the divestment movement and said her group regards divestment as one of several required tools for addressing the climate crisis.
She said the Jewish community hit a milestone when 12 of the 20 founding members of Adamah’s climate coalition said in their climate plans that they would consider amending their financial practices. That was significant, she said, in light of the organizations’ complex and deliberate governing structures, which can make executing such changes onerous.
“While the Jewish community may have lagged behind in years past, we are catching up quickly,” Cooper said.
Such a shift would mark not only a milestone for Jewish climate activism but also a departure from how the Jewish community has historically done philanthropy, said Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, executive vice president of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.
She said wielding financial holdings for social impact has been a hallmark of advocacy by Christian groups. Last year, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) opted to divest from fossil fuels in light of the climate crisis.
The Jewish community, meanwhile, has tended to act primarily through charitable donations. One of the reasons for the difference, she said, is that the Jewish community is much less centralized with communal assets spread across many endowments, making the actions of any single group relatively less impactful.
“Adamah had done some really important work to change individual behavior and grow people’s connections to the environment, but the bigger piece of bold collective action to fight the climate crisis was missing,” Kahn-Troster said. “The overall community is late to respond to the urgency of the problem. But I do think that the work of these organizations is very significant, so I’m excited to see it.”
Kahn-Troster’s historical view is informed by the legacy of her father, Rabbi Lawrence Troster, an environmental activist who had pushed for communal Jewish action on climate, and by the passion for climate justice displayed by her 15-year-old, Liora Pelavin, a member of the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, an arm of Adamah.
“Finding a meaningful Jewish space to do grassroots-level climate advocacy that many young people are demanding has been really important to Liora,” Kahn-Troster said.
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The post Jewish institutions awaken to climate crisis, with hundreds pledging action appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Hasan Piker favors Hamas, is pushing Dems to be anti-Israel — and wants Jews not to worry about him
(JTA) — “People are probably going to yell at me for having this conversation,” Hasan Piker said from his livestreaming chair, midway through a video call with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss his views on Jews, Israel and Zionism.
By “people,” Piker meant his own: the 3 million followers he boasts on the streaming site Twitch, where the left-wing personality, from the same chair, opines about politics in between video game sessions for up to eight hours a day. That doesn’t include the many more who watch clips of his show on YouTube or follow him on X.
“People are going to say, ‘What are you doing? This is Jewish exceptionalism. Why do you care so much about making sure that Jews like you?’” he continued.
The 34-year-old New Jersey native, who has recently rocketed into the center of the Democratic Party’s identity crisis, then answered his own question.
“I still think that there’s value in reaching as many people as possible and helping them understand where I’m coming from,” he said, “so they’re not freaking out when they see their nieces or nephews watching me on Twitch, and then they think that their sons or daughters or nieces or nephews have turned into neo-Nazis.”
“That’s why I’m having this conversation with you,” he added. “So that more people can hear something in the Jewish newspapers that isn’t just, ‘This guy is a heinous antisemite.’”
Piker is an avowed anti-Zionist who has said that “Hamas is 1,000 times better” than Israel, has said that “I don’t have an issue” with Hezbollah, compared an Iranian-backed Houthi rebel to Anne Frank and likened liberal Zionists to “liberal Nazis.” And he reiterated to JTA, “I do still believe that Zionism is a racist ideology. Like, I genuinely believe that.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt recently called Piker “one of the most outspoken, virulent antisemitic influencers in the world.” The stalwart pro-Israel Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres wrote the heads of Twitch “to express alarm about the amplification of antisemitism on Twitch at the hands of Hasan Piker,” saying he “has emerged as the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America.”
Such criticism has escalated as Piker, a self-described Marxist and socialist, becomes an increasingly influential player in Democratic politics. He joined rallies for a Michigan Senate candidate earlier this month and has hosted several progressive members of Congress. Next month, the provocateur will appear in San Francisco with Saikat Chakrabarti, a congressional candidate who says Israel committed genocide in Gaza. His influence is beginning to extend beyond progressives, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading 2028 presidential candidate, has said he would appear on Piker’s stream.
Speaking to JTA in his first extensive interview with a Jewish news outlet, Piker acknowledged that anti-Israel activism can morph into anti-Jewish rhetoric — but also said he can’t be responsible for what everyone in his movement says. He explained that he wants to combat antisemitism — in part because it undercuts anti-Israel activism. He condemned “heinous” violence against Jews, such as the Temple Israel attack in Michigan — but maintained that American Jewish organizations are fanning the flames and creating an atmosphere of “hysteria.”
How does Piker reconcile the tensions and contradictions that radiate within his worldview? The answer is important not just because his influence is rising but because there are signs that a growing number of Americans already share some of his fundamental beliefs: that Israel is a malign presence in the world and for the United States in particular; that the United States should stop sending aid to Israel; and that Israel’s character and conduct explains the violence its people face from the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.
As American Jews adjust to a new reality in which old norms about antisemitism and the U.S.-Israel relationship are being shattered, Piker’s vision is one that, some warn, Jews will need to increasingly grapple with going forward.
Piker, though, says many Jews are on his side.
“There are a lot of young American Jews, at least in my community, who also feel this way,” he said. “They might be a little bit more shy about expressing their opinions in polite company.”
JTA spoke to Piker several days before the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and several cabinet members at Sunday’s White House Correspondents Dinner, an event that has prompted renewed concern about escalating violent rhetoric on both sides of the aisle. Some, including the pro-Israel right-wing Jewish influencer Lizzy Savetsky, have attributed the shooting specifically to rhetoric promulgated by Piker.
Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Turkish parents but largely raised in Istanbul, Piker got his start on his uncle Cenk Uygur’s left-wing web network The Young Turks. In 2020 Piker left the company and launched a Twitch stream from his Los Angeles-area home in West Hollywood that has now outstripped Uygur’s influence.
Piker’s comments about Israel are nestled among hourslong streams that touch on a wide variety of topics he labels as anti-imperialist and anti-fascist. That includes criticizing America, which he has said “deserved 9/11.”
Yair Rosenberg, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argued in a recent piece that Piker exhibits a “soft spot for left-coded expansionist authoritarian regimes.” Rosenberg cited the influencer’s praise of Mao Zedong and lament of the fall of the Soviet Union, noting that “the tens of millions of victims of the Soviet Union went unmentioned.” Rosenberg is currently engaged in a back-and-forth with Piker after saying the streamer mischaracterized Albert Einstein’s views on Israel; a symptom, he said, of a fast-and-loose approach to facts.
Piker’s hold on younger left-leaning audiences has alternately alarmed many liberals and made them envious. Some in the party have likened him to the right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson or even streamer Nick Fuentes, known for his praise of Hitler and attacks on “organized Jewry.”
He’s broken with at least one significant Jewish ally: Ethan Klein, a progressive YouTuber with his own history of incendiary comments, used to host a podcast about the left with Piker. That ended shortly after Oct. 7, when Klein, who is married to an Israeli, sharply diverged from Piker on Israel. Today, Piker posts memes comparing Klein to Sen. John Fetterman, the Democrat whose sharply pro-Israel views the left sees as traitorous.
But others see in him the potential to achieve an elusive goal: a “Joe Rogan of the left” who can draw young, largely male, disaffected voters to the Democrats through the force of his charisma and unfiltered opinions. Jewish New York Times columnist Ezra Klein recently joined several other prominent liberal pundits in encouraging engagement with Piker and said the streamer was an anti-Zionist, not a “Jew hater.” (Last week, Piker appeared on a Times Opinion podcast as a political commentator to argue in favor of petty theft as a form of political protest.)
Yehuda Kurtzer, founder of the liberal Zionist think tank the Shalom Hartman Institute, disagrees with Klein: to welcome Piker, he argued, means “embracing the changing of the goalposts in the acceptability of Jew-hatred in liberal societies.”
Either way, Piker doesn’t just want outreach; he wants to convince people of his positions. Chief among them is that the Democratic Party should become explicitly anti-Israel.
“If there was real expression of democracy in this country, yes, the Democratic Party would be the anti-Israel party,” he told JTA.
When it comes to his position on the future of Israel itself, Piker described his ultimate goal as “a secular, solitary state where everyone has equal rights and representation, Jews, Muslims, Christians alike” — a state that would come with the Palestinian right of return, a truth and reconciliation committee, and “some form of reparations.” But he was open, he said, to “a binational solution” in the region “in the interim period, even if it’s not the most moral from my perspective.”
He dismissed concerns that his vision would put Jews at risk; once Palestinians were fully integrated into the Israeli security apparatus, he said, they would simply have no further need for Hamas.
He told JTA that he sees himself as committed to combatting antisemitism, on his terms. In the conversation, he condemned some behavior that others on the left have justified or even celebrated.
“Antisemitism still exists. Heinous hate crimes still exist in the country, right? Synagogues being attacked, painting swastikas on the side of Hillel buildings, all this stuff,” Piker said. “This is real antisemitism, and it’s horrifying for people to experience, because they’re like, ‘I want to go to my place of worship with my family, and now I’m worried that someone could just ram their car into it.’ No one should have to live like that.”
Yet he didn’t walk back any of his earlier statements. (He has previously apologized for referring to ultra-Orthodox Jews as “inbred.”)
Then there was the matter of antisemitism on the left. When first asked about it, he acknowledged its existence, in softer terms: “It is undeniable that there has been a shift, for sure, where people, I think, are not as careful in their expressions in the way that they communicate on these issues,” he said. But he also described it largely as a downstream effect of pro-Israel lobbying and American Jewish organizations that he said have created a “forced tying of Judaism and Israel.”
Was that also true for the self-proclaimed anti-Zionists who said that Temple Israel in Michigan, attacked last month, was a legitimate target for a man whose brother had been killed in an Israeli strike on Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon? Or the ones who were celebrating the murders of Israel Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum last year?
“I don’t believe that, by the way. I don’t think it’s a legitimate target, for the record,” Piker responded. (On his stream the day of the Temple Israel attack, he declared, “There is no justification for f**king trying to go into a synagogue and murdering kids.”)
He chalked up left-wing antisemitism, in part, to it being “much easier to get Americans on board with just hating entire populations, than to actually be anti-imperialist, anti-genocide, anti-fascist, unfortunately.”
But then he again said the “biggest reason” is the downstream effect of pro-Israel lobbying — along with, as he puts it, “a lot of the Jewish advocacy organizations that claim to be Jewish advocacy organizations, but just simply are Israel advocacy organizations, like the ADL and numerous others.” Young people upset with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, he said, are being taught by such messaging that they must be antisemitic, and some of them wind up believing it.
“It creates an environment of panic and hysteria that serves the interest of Israel,” he said. “And I think it’s actually not beneficial to American Jews at all.”
He acknowledged that not everyone on the left seemed to think that fighting antisemitism was a moral imperative. “This will come across as, maybe, messed up,” he prefaced. “But the attitude from some is, antisemitism is a problem — however, it’s nowhere near as large a problem as Islamophobia is.” When it comes to his fans, he said, “some people say, ‘Why should we care about this?’”
He was not one of those people, he insisted — even if, in his estimation, antisemitism is no longer “a systematic form of discrimination” in America the way it had been in the prewar period.
Piker believes his stated interest in fighting antisemitism sets him apart from anti-Israel streamers on the far right — including Fuentes, the avowed white supremacist and Hitler fan, to whom a growing number of Jewish and political figures are comparing him.
“In Piker’s case, his record speaks for itself, the same with Nick Fuentes. I don’t need to go into details about who they are or what they represent,” Ted Deutch, head of the American Jewish Committee, told Jewish Insider last month. “Neither one of them belongs in the middle of the political process as a result of candidates choosing to put them there.”
Piker is insulted by the comparison to Fuentes. He thinks Jewish groups consider him a threat precisely because he’s not Fuentes. That means, he said, that they may see him as a more persuadable, rational influence on young Jews.
“Nick Fuentes, we both know, is a neo-Nazi. He’s a Holocaust denier, right? He’s horrible. His worldview is repulsive,” Piker said. “He’s not going to be able to get Jonathan Greenblatt’s nieces and nephews to really reconsider their relationship with Israel.”
An ADL official sharply disputed Piker’s characterization. The organization is warning about Piker, said Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, because his praise of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is normalizing them for his audience.
“I don’t think Hasan Piker is offering a nuanced understanding. He’s celebrating them. I mean, his favorite flag is Hezbollah,” Segal said. “He is giving them voice and legitimacy that I think many in the Jewish community are concerned about. Is that unreasonable, for people to be concerned when they hear that type of language? I don’t think it is.”
Segal also rejected the claim that the ADL and other Jewish groups were contributing to antisemitism, as when Piker said, “They’re fomenting more antisemitic tendencies amongst the population by consistently refusing to separate American Jews from the State of Israel.”
Segal said that view “ignores the various ways in which we’re combatting antisemitism every day.” He added, “It’s like saying an oncologist causes cancer.”
The ADL monitors hate of all ideologies, tracks and responds to antisemitic incidents, and conducts research into antisemitism. But the group has also pulled back on some civil rights work following criticism from the right, and Greenblatt has defined anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism — a move that reportedly angered members of his own staff, some of whom quit the organization over what they said was its overt emphasis on pro-Israel advocacy.
But Piker believes he’s far from the fringe of sentiments among Democrats, and even Jewish Democrats, when it comes to his views on Israel. There is evidence of discontent on that front: A recent survey from the Jewish Federations of North America showed that about 7% of Jews overall identified as “anti-Zionist,” almost as many as tell pollsters they are Orthodox, and that figure was twice as high for Jews under 35.
To that end, he said, he wants to build coalitions with liberal Zionists — the same group he has disparaged as “liberal Nazis.” Both his political hero, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and an up-and-comer he’s intrigued by, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, are Jews who have voted to condition aid to Israel even as they are broadly supportive of a two-state solution.
That’s fine with Piker — despite the fact that he once said “you shouldn’t even let someone be the f**king local dog catcher” if “they’ve ever exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel.”
He told JTA he likes the stances that politicians like Sanders and Ossoff have taken to move the dialogue on the issue. He insists that, despite his strong language, he doesn’t see litmus tests the same way many in his cohort do post-Oct. 7, as more and more on the left have taken to freezing out “Zionists” from coalitions, not to mention public society in general.
“I’m a pragmatic person,” he said. “The way I see Palestine as a litmus test is not to say, ‘Oh, if you’re not fully on board with this, you’re evil and repulsive. And therefore I can never align with you in any meaningful capacity.’” Instead of insisting on anti-Zionists, he said, he looks for “people who have sympathies that I think don’t stand in the way of conversation further into a more productive place.”
He pointed to the reaction of young Jews he knew in Georgia who were outraged after more than 50 Jewish groups, including several synagogues and the ADL, penned an open letter criticizing Ossoff’s vote in 2024 to stop certain arms sales to Israel.
“There are people who are like, ‘What is this? This doesn’t represent me at all. Why are you using my name? Why are you using my religion to take this stance that I find to be unconscionable?’” he said.
Piker is convinced that the Democratic Party wouldn’t lose its strong base of Jewish supporters even if it became a full-bore anti-Israel party. Liberal Jews, he thinks, would simply decide their other concerns outweigh Israel.
“American Jews are American. If they were Israeli, they would live in Israel,” Piker said. “At the end of the day, American Jews have American problems, right? And I don’t think Israel is as high of a priority.
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” he mused. “For many American Jews, they might even say, ‘Hasan, how dare you say this. You don’t know this. That’s not the case. It is very important for me.’ And then they’ll go and vote for American-related issues.” He pointed to the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he had hosted on his stream, as a case in point: an estimated one-third of the city’s Jews voted for him, according to exit polls.
Fundamentally, Piker believes antisemitism is a distraction for the left. “If you see what Israel is doing to be a problem, as I do, and you want to solve this problem, you have to dial in on the actual root of this problem,” he said. “And I find that antisemitism, oftentimes, is moving people to focus on Jewish people rather than the actual issue itself.”
Isn’t he being disingenuous? After all, he talks about movement-building and claiming to fight antisemitism while also saying things he knows most Jews will consider antisemitic.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, though he later added that he does “fully understand” why many Jews consider him antisemitic. “That’s why I’m having this conversation.”
He signed off soon after, popping up a few minutes later on his Twitch stream for the start of another session. His fans were tuned in already, waiting for him.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hasan Piker favors Hamas, is pushing Dems to be anti-Israel — and wants Jews not to worry about him appeared first on The Forward.
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Russians Retreat as Al Qaeda-Linked Jihadists, Tuareg Separatists Kill Mali’s Defense Minister, Capture Key Town
A Malian soldier stands in position with his weapon during an attack on Mali’s main military base Kati outside the capital Bamako, Mali, April 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The military junta in Mali came under attack this past weekend in multiple locations across the expansive desert nation, resulting in the death of Defense Minister Sadio Camara and the seizure of Kidal, a key town in the African country’s eastern region.
The strikes resulted from an alliance between Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM,) an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group fighting to establish a state governed by strict Islamic Shariah law, and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg rebel separatist militia which seeks to form an independent nation in Mali’s northeast.
Local sources told France 24 that the groups had seized control of Kidal, a reported FLA stronghold, on Monday. This victory followed the retreat of Russia’s Africa Corps, the mercenary organization the Malian government had contracted at a monthly rate of $10 million to provide security.
Fox News Digital reported reviewing video of Russian mercenary casualties and Russian vehicles fleeing Kidal. An FLA spokesperson told the Associated Press that Russia’s Africa Corps had withdrawn and that a “white” agreement had been made.
Other locations hit by attacks included Kati, Gao, Sévaré, and Mopti.
JNIM took credit for bombings at Mali’s primary airport in Bamako.’
Meanwhile, JNIM is the suspect of a car bomb planted outside Camara’s home which exploded on Saturday, killing Mali’s top military leader and three other family members.
The attacks tell “every Malian, every regional capital, and every foreign partner that JNIM can operate at will inside the supposedly secure heart of the state,” Justyna Gudzowska, executive director of The Sentry, an investigative and policy group, told Reuters.
Mali’s military junta, which has ruled since August 2020, on Monday announced injuries sustained by two of its other leaders, Gen. Oumar Diarra, who serves as chief of the armed forces’ general staff, and Gen. Modibo Koné, director of the National Security Agency.
Yvan Guichaoua, a Sahel specialist at the German research center BICC, told Reuters that the attacks intended to “decapitate” the government.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said that the United States “strongly condemns” the terrorist attack in Mali.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and all those affected,” the spokesperson added to Fox News Digital. “We stand with the Malian people and government in the face of this violence. The United States remains committed to supporting efforts to advance peace, stability, and security across Mali and the region.”
A statement from the office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is “deeply concerned by reports of attacks in several locations across Mali. He strongly condemns these acts of violence, expresses solidarity with the Malian people, and stresses the need to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany, told Germany’s DW that the strikes were the biggest he had seen in the country in years.
“Remarkably, there has been a coordination between jihadists and Tuareg rebels, which have nothing in common, but they have a joint enemy,” Laessing said. “They staged together an attack in 2012 and took over northern Mali. Then later they fell out. The jihadists got rid of the Tuaregs. So, it’s remarkable that they made a comeback.”
According to a statement from Russia’s foreign ministry posted to Telegram, 250 militants struck the Bamako Senou International Airport and the military base nearby.
“The Malian Armed Forces repelled the attack and are currently taking further steps to eliminate the militia that may have been, reportedly, trained by Western security agencies,” the foreign ministry said. “Russia is deeply concerned about these developments. This terrorist activity poses a direct threat to the stability of friendly Mali and could have the most serious consequences for the entire region.”
Laessing also spoke to the Associated Press, calling the attack a major blow to Russia.
“The [Russian] mercenaries had no intelligence about the attacks and were unable to protect major cities,” he said. “They have unnecessarily worsened the conflict by not distinguishing between civilians and combatants.”
“The fact that the Malian military intelligence has not been able to detect that these attacks were about to take place is a major failure for them,” Nina Wilen, director for the Africa Program at Egmont Institute for International Relations, told DW, saying the attacks revealed how “strong JNIM has become over the past year.”
She noted that Camara had been a key figure in establishing relations with Russia, making him a symbolic figure to target and send a message opposing the presence of Russian troops.
Islamist activity in the Sahel of Western Africa has risen in recent years, causing analysts to label the region the most lethal place on the planet for terrorist deaths, with JNIM leading the body count.
The trend has caught the attention of Washington, DC.
“Across the Sahel in West Africa and in East Africa, terrorist groups are expanding, embedding, and operating with increasing capability,” US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said during a hearing last week on terrorism in Africa. “ISIS affiliates and al-Qaeda-linked groups are growing, controlling territory, and exploiting weak governance.”
“In region after region, terrorist groups are outpacing the ability of local governments to respond,” Cruz added. “The failures threaten our interest globally and endanger the American homeland. The threat is rapidly growing and demands attention.”
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US soldier charged for threatening to ‘kill every single Jew’ inside of a synagogue
(JTA) — A soldier stationed at Fort Polk in Louisiana was arrested last week after he told users on the popular messaging platform Discord that he planned to conduct a mass shooting at a synagogue.
Jakob Marcoulier, 22, was arrested last Thursday and charged with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce after the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received a tip in February that he had made threats toward synagogues, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the western district of Louisiana.
According to court documents, the FBI obtained audio from Discord in which Marcoulier allegedly said, “After this deployment if the Jews still have reign over our government, I am going to walk into a synagogue with my AK, with a 75-round drum mag, and all of my extra mags, with my level four plates, and my haka helmet that’s three plus, and I am going to kill every single Jew I know inside of that synagogue. And that’s my goal in life.”
During the communications, Marcoulier told the other users, “You guys will never do anything about but I will. I just have to finish this, I have to go back overseas and do what I have to do. And then you’ll see me in the news. I promise you.”
He also allegedly said that he would “kill these motherf—kers in order to make sure the white youth is f—king secured.”
It was not immediately clear when Marcoulier made the comments, but the United States and Israel jointly attacked Iran on Feb. 28 following a buildup of U.S. troops in the Middle East.
The Iran war has put Jewish institutions across the country and the around the world on high alert, with attacks on synagogues including arsons in Europe and a synagogue ramming in suburban Detroit last month.
“Threats against synagogues and Jewish Americans are threats to the religious freedom promised to every single one of us, and this Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to protecting those freedoms,” United States Attorney Zachary A. Keller said in a statement.
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