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Moldovan oligarch, wanted at home in billion-dollar scandal, backs Russian interests from a haven in Israel
CHISINAU, Moldova (JTA) — Perched on a sofa somewhere in Israel, fugitive Moldovan-Jewish businessman-turned-politician Ilan Shor is seen in a video from last month speaking to his supporters back home. His message is, by his standards, relatively mild.
“Maia, you really are Hitler,” he says, addressing Moldova’s pro-European president, Maia Sandu. “Whether you like it or not, I will make sure my people live well.”
With backing from Russia, Ilan Shor has become a leading figure in Moscow’s campaign to destabilize Moldova, a tiny impoverished country wedged between Ukraine and Romania. Facing charges — and since last week, a conviction in absentia — that he stole $1 billion dollars from the Moldovan banking system in 2014, he has been sheltering in Israel.
From there, the opposition leader who is still a member of Moldova’s parliament has been denouncing his charges as politically motivated, organizing regular protests in his native country and spreading disinformation that critics say is designed to undermine Moldova’s efforts to align itself closer with the European Union and away from Russia. Last June, Moldova — which has repeatedly condemned the Russian war in Ukraine — was granted candidate status to the European Union, together with Ukraine. (A previous government collapsed in February under the weight of economic and political stress amplified by Russia’s invasion.)
Whether a fugitive from justice or a target of political retaliation, the presence of the pro-Russian oligarch has become frequently awkward for Israel, which has in recent years become more willing to extradite its citizens facing charges abroad. Shor is an Israeli citizen, and yet he has been sanctioned by the United States in October and the United Kingdom in December. The Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment on any issues related to Shor’s activities, with officials saying that it was a legal issue.
“We do not want the territory of other countries to be used as a launching pad for hybrid attacks against us and for attempts to bring violence here,” said one senior official in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, when asked how they felt about Shor’s presence in Israel.
Last week, a court in Chisinau sentenced Shor to 15 years in prison for his involvement in the heist and ordered the confiscation of $290 million of his assets. Shor claims that the verdict was “revenge for the protest movement” and promised that it would be “annulled the day after the change in regime.”
Before the recent sentencing, Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s foreign minister, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his office in downtown Chisinau that Moldova had established information about “clear coordination between Shor and Russia in their joint attempts to destabilize Moldova.”
“The reality is that Shor is trying to bring violence onto the streets,” Popescu added. “He is operating from Israeli territory and that is problematic. This situation related to Shor is a factor that is problematic for our country, its stability, and for the stability of the region. The scale of the attempts to destabilize Moldova through violent means have risen recently and that is something that matters a lot.”
Ahead of a protest in downtown Chisinau last month, where 54 people were arrested, Moldova police said that they had detained seven people who had been promised up to $10,000 each to stir violence during the protests. Media here reported that the Shor Party, which Shor created in 2015, has been bribing people to attend protests and busing them in from towns across Moldova.
JTA requested an interview with a representative of Shor’s political party but received no response.
Ilan Shor was born in Israel to Moldovan Jewish parents who moved to Israel in the late 1970s, then moved back to Chisinau in 1990. He inherited from his father a successful chain of Moldovan duty-free stores and built a network of businesses across the country. He entered politics in 2015, in a move widely seen as an effort to try and protect himself from the legal fall-out of the banking scandal and fled to Israel in 2019.
Intelligence assessments in both Moldova and the United States have determined that Russia had been seeking to use such protests as a platform to topple Moldova’s government. Shor regularly addresses the protests on videos from his base in Israel.
Ukrainian and Western officials say Shor has links with the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, which has been channeling money into Moldova as part of its attempts to support pro-Russian voices, The Washington Post reported. Shor, who is married to a Russian pop star, is allegedly known to the FSB as “the Young One” (he is 36).
Demonstrators in Chisinau protest the Moldovan government, Nov 13, 2022. Shor has been involved in organizing ongoing protests. (Vudi Xhymshiti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Moldova is facing hybrid threats,” Popescu said. “We take our security very seriously and our institutions are doing everything they can to keep peace and calm, but it is totally unacceptable that people like Shor try to bring violence onto the streets of Moldova.”
Moldova has submitted an extradition request to Israeli authorities for Ilan Shor’s role in the banking scandal but has received no response, according to senior officials at the Moldovan foreign ministry. Some officials in Chisinau say that Israel may have been waiting for the completion of Shor’s legal appeal process, and that there may now be movement following his sentencing in absentia. Shor is also currently under investigation as a suspect in a range of other cases related to his activities during and since the fraud scandal.
“He is operating from Israeli territory and that is problematic,” Popescu said. “Our institutions are and will be taking the security of our citizens very seriously and knowing how careful Israel is about its own security, I am sure that Israel can have a lot of sympathy.”
“Shor is the most important political ally of Russia in Moldova,” said Valeriu Pasha, the director of the Moldovan thinktank Watchdog.MD. “The Shor Party works as a classic organized crime group, and it looks like he is ready to be part of some of the tough scenarios of Russian influence in Moldova.”
“He has received almost total control of Russian-affiliated media which is broadcasting in Moldova,” added Pasha. Shor owns a number of channels, while outlets like Russia’s Perviy Kanal, or Channel One, are rebroadcast in Moldova, where Romanian is the state language and Russian is spoken by Russians, Ukrainians and other ethnic minorities. Pasha said that Shor was playing a “critical role” in spreading pro-Russian narratives about the war in Ukraine and the Moldovan government.
Officials in Chisinau said that they were concerned that Shor could flee to Russia if his seven-and-half year sentence is upheld by Moldova’s Appellate Court. “We would want to see him extradited now,” said Veronica Dragalin, Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, “because we do not want that to happen.”
Dragalin dismisses allegations by Shor and his allies that the case against him is politically motivated.
“This tactic of trying to claim that you are being politically persecuted is something that happens quite often in these situations in Moldova,” said Dragalin. Bringing Shor to justice in Moldova “would have a significant ripple-down effect in terms of deterring crime,” by underlining that there are consequences for the “rich and powerful” when they break the law, she said.
Some among Moldova’s approximately 15,000 Jews — who have spent the past year dealing with an influx of Jewish refugees from Ukraine — worry that increasing anger towards Shor, who has a number of close Jewish associates in the country, might blow back onto the community.
“Speaking about the consequences of everything that is going on,” said Aliona Grossu, the director of the Jewish Community of Moldova, “when it is linked to some political figures, of course there is a spill-over effect on the community.”
This, she worried, had caused an uptick in antisemitism by causing the proliferation of stereotypes that most Jews in Moldova were either “illegally wealthy” or were “connected” to Shor.
Shor is not particularly close to the Jewish community in Moldova. Grossu emphasized that despite her having worked for the community for 13 years, she had never met him, and that he had never had any involvement with the community — beyond paying his membership dues.
There are pockets of support for Shor among the local Jewish population, which is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking. On a recent day in Orhei, a sleepy town in central Moldova that Shor was once mayor of and remains its member in parliament, the leader of the tiny local Jewish community welcomed a set of Jewish visitors from Chisinau. Iziaslav Mundrean, standing outside the town’s Jewish museum, said that Shor was “a good man.”
Shor, he added, had paid for the construction of a new driveway for the collapsing Jewish cemetery and a new gate to be installed. He had also funded windows for an old synagogue that has since been transformed into the Jewish museum for the town.
Two other Jewish men from Chisinau standing nearby raised their eyebrows at Mundrean’s comments and launched into a debate about whether there was anything to respect about Shor.
Shor simply “had not been given the opportunity,” Mundrean continued, adding that the widespread dislike towards him across Moldova was because “people by-and-large do not like rich Jews.”
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Prominent Jewish figures call for sanctions on Israel: ‘The ceasefire must be the beginning, not the end.’
(JTA) — As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas enters its second week, prominent Jews from around the world who have criticized Israel throughout the war have now signed onto a letter urging global leaders to ensure that the deal results in a “new era of peace and justice for all.”
The letter, which was addressed to António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and world leaders, also demands that Israel be held to account for “grievous violations of international law.”
“It was international pressure that helped to secure this ceasefire, and it must be sustained to guarantee that it endures. The ceasefire must be the beginning, not the end,” the letter says. “The risk of reverting to a political reality of indifference to occupation and permanent conflict is too great. This same pressure must be continued to deliver a new era of peace and justice for all—Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
The letter, titled “Jews Demand Action,” was released Wednesday as Vice President J.D. Vance visits Israel, amid signs casting doubt on the durability of the ceasefire deal.
It was signed by a host of prominent Jewish celebrities and public figures, many of whom have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel since the beginning of its two-year war in Gaza.
They include Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov, Emmy Award-winning actors Ilana Glazer and Hannah Einbinder, Canadian trauma guru Gabor Maté, and Oscar winners Jonathan Glazer and Yuval Avraham, who co-directed the documentary “No Other Land.”
The initiating signatories included American author and editor-at-large of Jewish Currents Peter Beinart; former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg; former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy; Libby Lenkinski, the vice president for public engagement of the New Israel Fund; British activist Em Hilton, and former Belgian member of parliament Simone Susskind.
“We launched this initiative because the deeds of Israel’s government in Gaza have been an affront to collective Jewish consciousness worldwide,” Burg said in a statement. “Pressure from people mobilizing across the world, which led to leaders taking a stand, helped produce a ceasefire. Now international pressure must be sustained to end this cycle of violence and oppression once and for all.”
The letter also urges “businesses, labor unions, civil society” and the United Nations’ member states to take four steps: comply with decisions of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court (which issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year), impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel, ensure humanitarian aid reaches Gaza and “refute false accusations of antisemitism.”
“We shall not rest until this ceasefire carries forward into an end of occupation and apartheid,” the letter continued. “We write in the hope that this initiative further emboldens a moment of renewed Jewish commitment to act with conscience and compassion. We vow to work urgently to achieve equality, justice, and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis.”
The post Prominent Jewish figures call for sanctions on Israel: ‘The ceasefire must be the beginning, not the end.’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Prominent Jewish figures call for sanctions on Israel: ‘The ceasefire must be the beginning, not the end.’
As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas enters its second week, prominent Jews from around the world who have criticized Israel throughout the war have now signed onto a letter urging global leaders to ensure that the deal results in a “new era of peace and justice for all.”
The letter, which was addressed to António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and world leaders, also demands that Israel be held to account for “grievous violations of international law.”
“It was international pressure that helped to secure this ceasefire, and it must be sustained to guarantee that it endures. The ceasefire must be the beginning, not the end,” the letter says. “The risk of reverting to a political reality of indifference to occupation and permanent conflict is too great. This same pressure must be continued to deliver a new era of peace and justice for all—Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
The letter, titled “Jews Demand Action,” was released Wednesday as Vice President J.D. Vance visits Israel, amid signs casting doubt on the durability of the ceasefire deal.
It was signed by a host of prominent Jewish celebrities and public figures, many of whom have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel since the beginning of its two-year war in Gaza.
They include Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov, Emmy Award-winning actors Ilana Glazer and Hannah Einbinder, Canadian trauma guru Gabor Maté, and Oscar winners Jonathan Glazer and Yuval Avraham, who co-directed the documentary “No Other Land.”
The initiating signatories included American author and editor-at-large of Jewish Currents Peter Beinart; former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg; former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy; Libby Lenkinski, the vice president for public engagement of the New Israel Fund; British activist Em Hilton, and former Belgian member of parliament Simone Susskind.
“We launched this initiative because the deeds of Israel’s government in Gaza have been an affront to collective Jewish consciousness worldwide,” Burg said in a statement. “Pressure from people mobilizing across the world, which led to leaders taking a stand, helped produce a ceasefire. Now international pressure must be sustained to end this cycle of violence and oppression once and for all.”
The letter also urges “businesses, labor unions, civil society” and the United Nations’ member states to take four steps: comply with decisions of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court (which issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year), impose sanctions and arms embargoes on Israel, ensure humanitarian aid reaches Gaza and “refute false accusations of antisemitism.”
“We shall not rest until this ceasefire carries forward into an end of occupation and apartheid,” the letter continued. “We write in the hope that this initiative further emboldens a moment of renewed Jewish commitment to act with conscience and compassion. We vow to work urgently to achieve equality, justice, and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis.”
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The post Prominent Jewish figures call for sanctions on Israel: ‘The ceasefire must be the beginning, not the end.’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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I was a villain on ‘Love is Blind.’ The antisemitic backlash brought me back to Judaism
Within hours of the debut of Love is Blind’s seventh season on Netflix in late 2024, “Leo the Art Dealer” became America’s newest reality TV villain.
That’s me.
TikToks mocking me gained millions of views; gossip columnists published pieces calling me arrogant, pretentious, obnoxious and a “walking red flag”; soon, Walmart was selling “Art Dealer” Halloween sets based on my style, and Netflix added the words “art dealer” to their official IG bio.
But I could deal with the hate. Until it turned antisemitic.
Most viewers knew I was Jewish from the Star of David chain around my neck. I didn’t anticipate how much negative attention that small piece of jewelry would attract. People weren’t just commenting on my behavior from the show. They were calling me a greedy Jew, indulging in antisemitic tropes, calling me the worst Jew ever, and much worse. My DM’s were filled with obscene and toxic messages that would make anyone nervous.
I felt the gamut of negative emotions – shock, hurt, anger and panic.
This experience is common among Jews in the public eye today. Sam Klein described the non-stop antisemitic comments he received after his appearance on Love in Blind UK season one. In 2022, internet personality Lizzy Savetsky dropped out of Real Housewives of New York, citing a “torrent of antisemitism” in response to the announcement that she would join the cast.
However, instead of making me cower or want to hide my Jewish identity, this experience actually pushed me to explore my roots more deeply. What started out as a traumatic experience became a catalyst for my return to my Jewish faith and community.
Before learning, grief
I had begun returning to Judaism during the COVID pandemic, well before my reality TV debut. I lost my mother and two grandparents early in the lockdown, and my father and stepfather received concurrent cancer diagnoses.
My inner world was completely falling apart.
That’s when, while scrolling YouTube one day with a close friend, I stumbled across the channel of Rabbi Shais Taub, a Chabad rabbi with a gift for taking complex Torah ideas and distilling them into easy-to-understand, bite-sized concepts. My Jewish knowledge at that point was pretty limited — we’re talking bagels and Seinfeld. But something about how Rabbi Shais broke down Jewish ideas and principles just grabbed me.
So I did what Jews have done for centuries when they needed guidance, in the mold of Pirkei Avot, which says “Make for yourself a teacher.” I reached out to the rabbi to ask some of my pressing questions: “Why does G-d allow tragedy in the world?” “How do I mourn for my deceased family?” and “How can I be a good Jew?”
Through his patient teaching, I slowly began to understand how Judaism could become a meaningful, active part of my life, and not just a cultural identity that I acknowledged once or twice a year.
Shidduch dating on steroids
In the early stages of my spiritual journey, I applied to be on Love is Blind. After a year of interviews, I was cast on the show, and filming began in October of 2023. For two weeks, I lived with 29 strangers in a surreal alternate universe, where I was surrounded by cameras and spent eight hours a day dating. It was like shidduch dating on steroids.
In the high-stakes environment of Love is Blind, I connected with a wonderful woman called Brittany. As part of the show’s editing process, however, the ways my Judaism played into our developing connection got cut. In reality, we had long conversations about how important it was to me to raise a Jewish family — even though I was still only beginning to figure out just what Judaism meant to me — and the process of conversion.
I proposed. Then, almost out of nowhere, the show’s producers decided our relationship wasn’t compelling enough to continue filming, and we were cut from the show. Shortly after, we discovered that while we seemed like a match during filming, in real life we realized we weren’t meant for each other, although today we remain great platonic friends.
The one-two punch of not being on the show and realizing Brittany and I weren’t meant for each other left me feeling completely lost and dejected.
Gaining fortitude — and needing it
I was spiraling, until Rabbi Shais invited me to visit the Ohel —the resting place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, in Queens, New York. I’d never been to the gravesite of a holy person before, but I figured I had nothing to lose.
Walking into that place just a few months after wrapping up the filming was like stepping into an altered space of spirituality. All the chaos and noise seemed to fade away, and I felt a profound stillness and inner peace, unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
Jewish tradition teaches that a righteous person like the Rebbe can help us spiritually and bring us blessings even after they’ve passed. Standing there at his resting place, something just opened up in my heart. I found myself praying — really praying — for the first time in my life.
To my surprise, shortly after my Ohel visit, Love is Blind producers let me know that Brittany and I were being re-edited into the show. Several months later, when the season was finally released on Netflix, the sense of profound peace I had begun to cultivate that day proved newly necessary. Beyond the reality show gossip, and crude and inflammatory comments, I received a crash course in online antisemitism — including insults about my appearance and death threats against me and my family. Some social media users, in response to my appearance, issued called for Hitler and Hamas to finish the job.
It was everywhere — in my social media comment sections and DM’s, in my personal email and text messages, as well as my business contact form and voicemail. I disconnected my business phone because the messages wouldn’t stop. Internet trolls flooded my business with one-star ratings on Google, just to hurt my prospects.
However, rather than demoralizing me, the hate and negativity gave me a push to go deeper into my Jewish identity and start observing practices I’d never seriously considered before. I began taking a digital Shabbat, disconnecting from social media every week between sundown on Friday and Saturday night. I also started putting on tefillin daily, and at Rabbi Shais’ suggestion, studying Sha’ar HaBitachon, a classic text about developing trust in God.
For the first time in my life, I felt truly connected to and cared for by something greater than myself.
What’s next
In our chaotic times, when hate speech goes viral and authentic connection feels increasingly rare, our community and traditions can bring a needed sense of grounding.
While online antisemitism is real and impacts everyone differently, I make the conscious choice to not make it the center of my identity. For me, being a Jew is more than combating antisemitism. It’s about feeling a sense of Jewish pride, connection and empowerment. I’ve become much more involved with my local Chabad, and even attended the Chabad Young Professionals international retreat.
Ultimately, while I didn’t find my life partner in the Love is Blind pods, it was a crucial step on my journey to becoming a proud and active Jew. Through thick and thin, our people have always overcome adversity by doubling down on our Jewish pride and traditions, and always finding a reason to kvell rather than kvetch.
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