Uncategorized
Meet the real Jewish Republican of color being floated to replace George Santos, the fake one
(JTA) — Last Friday, as George Santos completed his second week in Congress, Mazi Melesa Pilip was contemplating the relief Shabbat would bring — and also the sting of the betrayal she felt by her fellow Long Island lawmaker.
Among the welter of falsehoods that Santos scattered throughout the byways of the Great Neck area in northern Long Island he and Pilip both represent — Santos in Congress, Pilip as a Nassau County legislator — Santos has pitched himself as a Jewish and Black Republican who overcame hardship to earn multiple degrees.
All lies, but as it happens those descriptors apply to Pilip, an Ethiopian Jew who won’t count out a run for Congress if Santos ever accedes to demands, including from fellow Republicans, to resign. (Santos says he intends to serve out his two-year term.)
“I’m not going to lie to you, people are definitely asking me to run,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview as she drove while shopping for Shabbat. “That doesn’t mean nothing.”
Pilip said her journey into American politics was propelled by her experience advocating for fellow Ethiopian immigrants in Israel — where she moved as a child through the Operation Solomon airlift and lived until marrying her American husband — and by her children’s experience with antisemitism in their Long Island schools.
“I am a strong believer, if you see something’s not working well for your community, or for yourself, you have to be involved,” she said. “You can’t just complain from outside.”
A Politico reporter, Olivia Beavers, reported on Twitter last week that Pilip was one of two Republicans the Nassau County Party is considering running should Santos step down. (The other is Jack Martins, a state senator; both he and Pilip ousted Democrats in a recent Republican sweep of Nassau County.)
Right now, Pilip said, she is focusing on serving her constituents through the Nassau County legislature. Any decision about replacing Santos, she said, is up to Joseph Cairo, the GOP chairman in Nassau County.
“The only person who can make a decision on who’s going to run will be the chairman,” Pilip said. “Time will show — it’s too early to say anything to be honest. I will continue to serve my residents and I love serving the people. I want to be a voice for the people, and anything I can do to help more people, I will definitely consider it.”
Cairo has not said yet who he would like to run to replace Santos, but two things are clear: He wants Santos to go, and he likes Pilip, a lot.
Cairo convened a press conference last week of leading Nassau County Republicans calling on Santos to step down because of the multiple lies he told while running and because he faces multiple criminal investigations. In unrelenting reporting since last month, reporters have detailed how Santos lied about his education, his job experience, his charitable giving and his family background.
“Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I’m calling for his immediate resignation,” Cairo said at the press conference.
Cairo had led an effort to diversify GOP candidates on the island, and a year ago, at Pilip’s swearing-in ceremony, he explained why: He was an Italian American whose parents favored Republican ideals but felt unwelcome in the GOP until they helped integrate it themselves, in New Jersey and then on Long Island. It had become his mission to bring more minority candidates into the fold, and he recruited several of them to run in the 2021 local elections.
Pedram Bal, a Persian Jew and the mayor of Great Neck, told Cairo he should look at Pilip, an Ethiopian-Jewish immigrant who was active in efforts to revitalize Great Neck, and who had been vice president of her synagogue, Kol Yisrael Achim. It was an easy sell, Cairo said, and it paid off.
“An Orthodox Jewish woman, a religious refugee from Ethiopia is elected as a Republican to the Nassau County legislature!” he marveled at the inauguration.
Of the many lies Santos has told about himself, the Nassau County Republicans at the press conference seemed especially offended by his claims of descent from Holocaust survivors.
“For him to make up this story, that his parents were Holocaust survivors is beyond the pale. It is simply tragic and outrageous, and disgusting,” said Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is the first Jew elected to the position. “He is a stain on the House of Representatives. He’s a stain on the Third Congressional District.”
Pilip calls for the prosecution of the alleged assailant in the violent attack on a Jewish New Yorker in 2021, at a press conference, in Mineola, N.Y., Jan. 29, 2023. (Office of Mazi Melesa Pilip)
Jewish Republicans have been at pains to call on Santos to quit: The Republican Jewish Coalition said he will not be welcome at its events. With much fanfare, the RJC had presented Santos and Max Miller, a freshman Republican from Ohio, as the next generation of Republican Jewish leaders at its annual conference in Las Vegas in November. Miller last week also called on Santos to resign, saying in a statement that Santos sought to “benefit from the murder of millions of Jewish people.”
When Pilip spoke at the press conference, she did not address his lies about his heritage. “I’m also paying for the lies told by Congressman George Santos,” she said. “People trusted him, people campaigned for him, including me, as a county legislator. At this point, the trust is no longer there. Therefore, he should resign.”
In her interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Pilip said she found the fact of Santos’s compulsive lying more offensive than the lies themselves, including about his heritage. She had put her reputation on the line campaigning for him last year.
“I trusted him and I told people to vote for him. I campaigned with him. And so when you do something like this, and then keep every day there’s something new coming about him,” she said. “It’s making you feel uncomfortable because people asking, you know, what’s, what’s going on, Mazi, what happened with this guy?”
Pilip campaigning for the legislative seat in 2021 had bonded with her constituents. Speaking to local media she described how much she enjoyed the hustle of campaigning.
“I was going from synagogue to synagogue, bringing out the vote,” she told Five Towns Jewish Home last year.
“Sometimes I would leave Friday night to go to a shul and I would sleep at someone’s house on Friday night because I’m shomer Shabbat and I couldn’t walk back home,” she told the local magazine for Orthodox Jews. “And then I would go to another synagogue the next day, on Shabbat, to spend time there and talk to people. Only when Shabbat was over would I go home. I did this for two months. It was intense but it was worth it. I met a lot of people. I would go to train stations and park events — any event, large or small, I was there.”
She became a local celebrity, giving birth to twin daughters — her sixth and seventh children — just weeks before the election.
Pilipl, 43, said in her interview with JTA that her involvement in politics was almost inevitable, after she had migrated to Israel on Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift, when she was 12.
“I have always been very active, even as a child in Israel,” advocating for the opportunities she saw that Israelis just a few years older than her were enjoying. Over her father’s objections, she enlisted in the paratroop division of the Israel Defense Forces (she says he is now proud of her service). While at university, she led the Ethiopian Student Union for two years. She has a degree in occupational therapy from the University of Haifa and a degree in diplomacy and security from Tel Aviv University.
“I was a voice of so many young kids who wanted equal opportunity and really my main focus was especially education, because I do believe through education, you can achieve a lot and you can integrate into the society,” she said. “So we were encouraging younger-generation [Ethiopian immigrants] my age to go to higher education. Because we came, you know, from nothing, and we came without any education.”
She met her husband, an American medical student at the Technion, while she was at the University of Haifa. They moved to the United States, where she became active speaking about Israel for Jewish federations and other Jewish groups. Her Instagram handle couples the U.S. and Israeli flags. Her husband, Adalbert, who was born in Ukraine, and whose mother is the child of Holocaust survivors, was especially offended by Santos’s Holocaust lies, Pilip said.
“Why would you use this painful history and create something like this and tell people that his grandparents survived just for the political benefit of it?” she said.
Pilip said her political interests were revived two years ago when her oldest son was preparing for bar mitzvah and he told her about antisemitic comments he endured from a classmate in the Great Neck Public Schools system. “He said, ‘Mom, you know, this child told me, I wish Hitler would kill you all,’” she recalled. She said that perhaps the child had been bullied, and was acting out against others, but it rattled her that he was resorting to antisemitism. “That a 12-year-old child would talk like this? It’s bad.”
So when Bal, the Great Neck mayor, approached her about running for elected office, she was game.
She campaigned on reviving Great Neck’s downtown, but also acting as a bridge in troubled times among the multiple minority communities in the area.
“Promoting understanding, education of cultures, religions and systemic hate has to be addressed from our young people on up,” she said in a candidate’s statement before her election.
Last Friday, however, she was looking forward to a little respite from the Santos follies.
“I’m going to pick up a couple of things from the grocery,” she said “I have to cook for my kids for Shabbat. Shabbat is starting early. So I think I’ll just spend time with my family, my kids. Just a very relaxing time.”
—
The post Meet the real Jewish Republican of color being floated to replace George Santos, the fake one appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Mamdani visits Holocaust survivor at her apartment on Holocaust Remembrance Day
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday made a private visit to the Manhattan apartment of an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, a gesture to a Jewish community divided over his positions, and reflecting his focus on affordability and dignity for New Yorkers living on fixed incomes.
Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mamdani spent 40 minutes talking with Olga Spiegel, who was born in France in 1943 after her family fled there, believing French children would not be separated from their parents. Her father was later deported to a concentration camp. Spiegel escaped with her mother into Italy, hiding for months in a stable before being sheltered by a priest in Rome until liberation, according to Blue Card, an organization that assists Holocaust survivors in need and organized the visit.
Mamdani allocated discretionary funds to the organization while serving as a member of the New York State Assembly, and its executive director, Masha Pearl, was a member of Mamdani’s transition team.
New York is home to the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, with an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 living in the metropolitan area. More than 5,000 are at or below the poverty line, most live alone and many are homebound. Nearly 40% struggle to meet basic needs such as food, housing and medical care, according to the organization, and 84% survive on less than $24,000 a year, largely from Social Security and modest pensions.
City Hall described the private visit, which was not listed on the mayor’s public schedule, as warm and welcoming.
“It was an incredibly powerful meeting,” said Monica Klein, a spokesperson for the mayor, “and drove home that the Holocaust is not simply a thing of the past, but something that impacts countless New Yorkers every single day.”
An artist, Spiegel settled in New York in the mid-1960s and has spent the past 48 years in the same rent-stabilized apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan. Spiegel showed Mamdani her studio and artwork, and the two bonded over their shared love of art. The mayor also shared his family’s immigration story.
The visit came amid growing scrutiny of Mamdani’s approach to Jewish issues. His anti-Zionist worldview and revocation of executive orders tied to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests on his first day in office were met with criticism from mainstream Jewish organizations.
During the mayoral primary last year, Mamdani faced backlash over his decision not to co-sponsor a resolution commemorating the Holocaust in the state legislature. Mamdani pushed back, saying he voted in favor of the Holocaust Remembrance Day resolution every year since he entered the Assembly in 2021 “to honor the more than 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazis.”
In a statement posted on X earlier Tuesday, Mamdani said Holocaust Remembrance Day “calls on us to do more than reflect; it calls on us to act — to confront antisemitism wherever it exists and to reject all forms of hatred and dehumanization.”
The post Mamdani visits Holocaust survivor at her apartment on Holocaust Remembrance Day appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
ISIS Threat Surges Across Syria and Beyond, Raising Alarm Bells From Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa
Islamic State – Central Africa Province released documentary entitled “Jihad and Dawah” covering group’s campaigns in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and battles against Congolese and Ugandan armies. Photo: Screenshot
US and Iraqi officials are warning of a resurgent terrorist threat posed by Islamic State (ISIS), with the number of militants in Syria reportedly soaring to 10,000 and regional instability raising concern from Iraq to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Earlier this week, Iraqi intelligence services sounded the alarm over the surging ISIS threat, warning of a sharp increase in the terrorist group’s fighters in northern Syria, the country’s western neighbor, and expressing growing concerns among officials.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri revealed that ISIS fighters in Syria have skyrocketed from roughly 2,000 to 10,000 in just one year.
This number far surpasses last year’s estimate in the UN Security Council report, which placed the total of ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq at roughly 3,000 as of August.
“This represents a real danger for Iraq, because ISIS — whether in Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else in the world — is a single organization and will likely seek to establish a new foothold to launch attacks,” al-Shatri told the Washington Post.
He also noted that the terrorists who joined ISIS in Syria over the past year include men previously linked to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and al-Qaeda, many of whom have expressed dissatisfaction with the current political leadership.
As the Syrian government advances to retake territory long controlled by Kurdish forces, Iraqi officials are increasingly concerned about a resurgent ISIS threat.
In the wake of escalating violent clashes across Syria over the past few weeks, chaos erupted in regional prisons holding thousands of ISIS members, allowing many to escape into the desert.
Even though many escaped ISIS members were later recaptured, the Iraqi government rapidly deployed thousands of troops to bolster its border with Syria, warning that the threat of further attacks remained high.
Last week, the US military began relocating ISIS detainees from northeastern Syrian prisons, formerly controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to Iraqi facilities following the SDF’s withdrawal as Syrian government forces advanced into the area.
On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said the decision to temporarily transfer ISIS detainees to local prisons aims to safeguard both Iraq’s national security and the stability of the broader region.
According to the US Central Command, around 2,500 ISIS fighters remained at large in Syria and Iraq in 2024, but no updates have been released since.
These latest warnings from the Iraqi government come amid rising concerns following the departure this month of the last US troops from Ain al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar province, bringing to a close a mission that had supported local forces in combating ISIS terrorism.
The United States is now focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, where analysts have identified rising Islamist terrorist threats, making the region a central concern in the fight against global jihadist terrorism.
Last week, the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said Washington is stepping up equipment shipments and intelligence support to Nigeria as part of a wider government effort to strengthen its presence across the region and assist African forces in combating Islamic State-linked militants.
Brennan also revealed that the US military continues to engage closely with the armed forces of the junta-led Sahel nations — Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali.
Under US President Donald Trump, “we’ve gotten a lot more aggressive and are working with partners to target … [regional] threats, mainly ISIS,” Brennan told reporters.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” he continued. “It’s been about more enabling partners and then providing them equipment and capabilities with less restrictions so that they can be more successful.”
Uncategorized
Antisemitism Witnessed by 78% of EU Teachers in Classrooms, UN Survey Finds
Krakow, Poland – Oct. 5, 2024: Pro-Palestinian activists in front of the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University. Photo: Artur Widak via Reuters Connect
Teachers across the European Union are witnessing antisemitism as a near daily social occurrence in the classroom and the workplace, according to a new survey issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Released on Tuesday, the survey of 2,030 teachers found that 78 percent have “encountered at least one antisemitic incident between students,” and 27 percent have “witnessed nine or more such incidents.” It added that 61 percent saw students promoting Holocaust denialism, while others had students who drew or wore Nazi symbols. Forty-two percent witnessed “other teachers being antisemitic.”
“Hate speech, notably antisemitism and Holocaust denial, has reached levels not seen since World War II,” UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany said in a statement. “Most teachers have never received specific training to confront this reality, including the consequences related to AI development. UNESCO provides policymakers with unique tools to empower teachers in more than 30 countries — from classrooms and campuses to sports clubs — and soon even more.”
Included in a UNESCO report titled “Addressing Antisemitism Through Education: A Survey of Teachers’ Knowledge and Understanding,” the survey comes amid a global rise in antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Since then, many European antisemitic incidents have occurred on college campuses, including someone assaulting a group of Jewish students while shouting “Zionist fascists” at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Vienna hosting an “Intifada Camp,” a pro-Hamas encampment. At the Free University of Brussels campus in Solbosch, a pro-Hamas group illegally occupied an administrative building and renamed it after a terrorist. Elsewhere across Europe, anti-Zionists damaged property to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros, desecrated Jewish religious symbols, graffitied Jewish students’ dormitories with swastikas, and carried out gang assaults on Jewish student leaders.
Violence in the streets of Europe’s major cities is also a regular occurrence. In July 2025, a group of people wielding knives attacked Jews walking home from an event on the Greek island of Rhodes; in Davos, Switzerland a man spat on, attacked, and verbally abused a Jewish couple— an offense he reportedly perpetrated multiple times against other Jewish people.
European governments are responding to the antisemitism crisis by paying closer attention to its linkage with the politics and ideology of anti-Zionism, a connection many political leaders hesitated to acknowledge and which UNESCO, despite having exuded anti-Zionist hostility in the past, also cited as a leading cause of rising antisemitism.
“Almost half of teachers (43.6 percent) had encountered students articulating hateful comments in relation to the State of Israel either once or twice, or often,” the report, summarizing the survey results, stated. “Hateful comments targeted at the State of Israel might not necessarily be antisemitism and may be motivated by other forms of hostility. However, comments motivated by hate are significantly more likely to include prejudice, or incite further dehumanization and violence.”
The document added, “Moreover, the prevalence of emotionally charged comments around the conflict in the Middle East highlights the salience of this topic and the need for targeted training and guidance for teachers on how to handle difficult conversations in an increasingly polarized environment.”
Across the Atlantic, teachers in the US have seen a surge of antisemitism in K-12 schools.
According to another survey conducted by the StandWithUs Jewish advocacy organization, 61.6 of teachers have been both targets and witnesses of antisemitic conduct in a professional setting. Meanwhile, nearly half suffered antisemitism perpetrated by their teachers unions, purportedly their advocates and representatives in collective bargaining.
School districts, obligated to comply with civil rights laws which proscribe discrimination, fail at prevention, according to the data. Of the 65 percent of respondents who said they are required to take anti-bias trainings, only 10 percent said those trainings address antisemitism.
“This first of its kind empirical study sought to understand antisemitism experienced by Jewish educators in K-12 education. Over 60 percent of respondents reporting that they personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism in their profession is an astounding number,” StandWithUs data and analytics director Dr. Alexandra Fishman said in a statement. “StandWithUs is deeply committed to rigorous research that serves both academic and lay audiences.”
Civil rights groups have argued that pushing anti-Zionism in the classroom can have a profound impact on students, who in many cases perpetrate antisemitic incidents. On Thursday, for example, local media reported that two 15-year-olds were arrested on suspicion of having graffitied 60 swastikas all over a playground in Brooklyn, New York.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.