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Netanyahu ally wants to stop Diaspora donors from funding pluralistic education in Israeli schools
(JTA) — In 2019, Israel’s Noam party drafted an internal report about an alleged plot by foreign forces to take control of the country’s schools in order to teach pluralistic values. At the time the party’s far-right leader, Avi Maoz, was a fringe politician with no authority to carry out the “cleansing” of which he dreamed.
Among the forces allegedly seeking to corrupt Israeli children, Maoz’s report named the European Union and the liberal New Israel Fund, both of which are longtime nemeses of the Israeli right.
But the plot to deny children what Noam considers a proper Jewish education doesn’t stop with the EU and NIF, according to the report. It also blamed many of the mainstream institutions of British and American Jewry, including the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, the Shalom Hartman Institute think tank, and U.S. donors to Israeli civil society organizations such as the Slifka and Mandel foundations.
“We must protect our people and our state from the infiltration of the alien bodies that arrive from foreign countries, foreign bodies, foreign foundations,” Maoz once said, according to Haaretz. “I would be very happy to have sufficient power to be appointed minister of education, to cleanse the entire education system of all foreign influences and to add Judaism, tradition, heritage and Zionism to the education system.”
Maoz hasn’t been appointed minister of education, but his dream of banishing these groups came a little closer to reality in December when Benjamin Netanyahu cut a deal with Maoz to form his government. In negotiations, Maoz had secured an appointment as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office under Netanyahu with control over extracurricular content in schools through a new department called the Jewish National Identity Authority. A few weeks later, Netanyahu’s cabinet took a critical step toward putting Maoz in charge.
Amid headlines about Maoz’s ascendance, someone leaked to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth the Noam party’s 2019 education memo along with other internal reports focused on perceived enemies in the Israeli military and Justice Ministry, and on LGBTQ individuals in general.
While the Israeli press referred to the reports as “blacklists,” the backlash to them has become subsumed in the general outcry over Israel’s new far-right government, including the anti-gay politics popular among many new members and the plan to strip Israel’s judicial branch of some of its powers.
Yet it’s in the area of education that the Noam party has the clearest path forward to accomplishing a specific political goal. And success for Noam could lead to a new type of rift between Israel and American Jews. The organizations he attacks are more than charities for Israeli school children — through their billions of dollars in donations, the institutions of American Jewry made themselves into partners in the very founding and development of the Jewish state.
In his new position, he would oversee funding and accreditation for external programs in Israeli schools. Each school can choose from thousands of approved programs, which range from sexual education and bar mitzvah preparation, to the types of pluralistic lesson plans — often meaning alternatives to the strictly religious or strictly secular options offered in Israeli schools — that Maoz has railed against.
For Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, whose Israeli branch was named in the Naom report, Maoz’s rhetoric betrays ignorance about the integral role of outside contributions in Israeli history.
“It’s not clear to me that these folks understand the depth of how Diaspora Jews have invested in the whole infrastructure of Israeli civil society since the founding of the State of Israel,” Kurtzer said. “So the portrayal of this as somehow Diaspora Jews are burrowing under the system — well, that is basically the whole story of how Zionism succeeded.”
Mark Charendoff, a longtime executive in Jewish philanthropy, also pushed back against Noam.
“There is a long and positive history of Diaspora Jewry’s involvement with education in Israel,” said Charendoff , who currently serves as the president of the Maimonides Fund, an increasingly influential New York-based charity. “The Israeli school system should certainly protect its integrity but even [the medieval sage] Maimonides found wisdom he could learn from among other cultures and used it to enrich our own.”
The Noam party memos, at least one of which Maoz has endorsed as a blueprint for his tenure, were obtained by Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal, and recently shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Here are the American Jewish charities named in the memo and which of their programs were targeted:
The Cleveland-based Mandel Foundation is singled out for the leadership training it offers education professionals. The report says Mandel has spent more than $58 million on this effort and is accused of harboring a liberal agenda. Mandel programs have included training for educators from across the denominational spectrum.
The Abraham Initiatives, which is based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel and promotes equal rights for Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, is described as a Jewish-Arab left-wing group. The report also singles out the programs, schools and teacher trainings aimed at supporting reconciliation and coexistence between Jews and Arabs.
The Shalom Hartman Institute, with offices in Jerusalem and New York City, earns a mention in the memo thanks to its Be’eri Program for Pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity, which is dedicated to enhancing Jewish and democratic values among secondary school educators and their students in Israel.
American Judaism’s Conservative movement is implicated through the Schechter Institutes which it sponsors and the affiliated Tali Education Fund. Dozens of schools throughout Israel receive curriculum materials related to pluralistic Jewish culture and heritage from Tali.
The U.S.-based Reform movement makes the list thanks to the training offered to Jewish education teachers as part of a program run jointly by the Reform-affiliated Hebrew Union College and Hebrew University.
The New York City-based Alan B. Slifka Foundation is named in the memo as a supporter of the Abraham Initiatives and the Shalom Hartman Institute.
The Russell Berrie Foundation, which is headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey, is included because of its contributions to the New Israel Fund and the Shalom Hartman Institute.
With offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, Israel Venture Network makes the list over its support for an independent program that trains all administrators in the Israeli school system.
Headquartered in New York City, the New Israel Fund is described as one of the main organs in the alleged conspiracy. “The New Israel Fund and funds affiliated with it have set out to take control of the education system,” read the first line of the report.
The organizations are named as “examples” in the memo, suggesting that the list is not exhaustive. Guilt by association with any of these groups would implicate a wide swath of American Jewry. IVN, or Israel Venture Network, for example, receives funding from the Jewish federations of multiple American cities and the Weinberg Foundation. The Abraham Initiatives lists numerous mainstream Jewish donors including the Klarman Family Foundation and late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Kurtzer said the leaked memos didn’t come as much of a shock to him. Any organization that is “pro-democracy, pro-pluralism, and believes in strong relationships between Israel and the diaspora” is familiar with being targeted in this way, he said.
“Some of the elements of the far right have built a whole industry on classifying anybody who has commitments to any of these values and branding them as anti-democratic and anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist,” Kurtzer said. “It hasn’t really stopped our work in Israel, though, sometimes it makes it unpleasant and uncomfortable to have to fend off some of these accusations.”
One of the largest donors to Shalom Hartman Institute goes unmentioned in Noam’s report: the Claws Foundation, which has given the institute millions of dollars. It would be hard to condemn this particular foundation as a liberal interloper: Claws is run by Jeff Yass and Arthur Dantchik, a pair of American Wall Street billionaires and prominent libertarians who are reviled by the Israeli left. In 2021, Haaretz revealed that Yass and Dantchik are major donors to the Kohelet Policy Forum, an influential Israeli think tank behind many of the recent landmark initiatives of the right.
Maoz’s politics also fit awkwardly with those of his own political predecessors, said Eitan Cooper, executive vice president of the Schechter Institutes of Jewish Studies. Cooper helps run one of the programs targeted by Maoz, the Tali Education Fund, which provides a non-Orthodox Jewish curriculum to about 80 secular Israeli schools.
Cooper recalled how the Tali program got started in the 1980s with the help of Zevulun Hammer, who served as Israel’s education minister for many years while helping lead the National Religious Party. Noam is one of the offshoots to have emerged after the National Religious Party’s dissolution in 2008.
“Hammer was the one who adopted Tali as education minister,” Cooper said. “He thought it was great and in fact, he gave Tali its name.”
But Cooper also said that there had always been fringe members of Hammer’s circle who looked at Tali with skepticism because of its non-Orthodox orientation. Some even alleged that the program was run by covert Christian missionaries.
Prior experience has steeled Cooper for this moment, and he said he’s not particularly concerned that Maoz’s threats will pan out.
“This kind of negative response to what we do has always existed,” Cooper said. “The educational ministry continues on, it sets the criteria for the programs that are accepted. I really don’t know what he is positioned to do. He hasn’t done anything yet.”
He believes that the demand for Tali’s content ensures the program will carry on.
“Our target audience is still out there,” he said.
Nachum Blass, who chairs the education policy program at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, regards it as inevitable that Maoz will secure authority over external programs at schools. And Blass said that Maoz could proceed to cancel programs he didn’t like or block new programs.
“There are thousands of programs,” Blass said. “If Maoz wants to review every program and decide which to cancel, it’s a very long process, and he will face lawsuits and petition to the Supreme Court.”
But the bigger worry for Blass is the chilling effect of Maoz’s rhetoric.
“The real danger,” he said, “is that schools will censor themselves and not pick certain programs because they worry they doesn’t fit the spirit of the times.”
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US Announces Ceasefire Extension With Iran
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before boarding Marine One to depart for Quantico, Virginia, from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would indefinitely extend the ceasefire with Iran, hours before it was set to expire, to allow the two countries to continue peace talks to end a war that has killed thousands of people and shaken the global economy.
Backing down from threats of new violence earlier in the day, Trump said in a statement he had agreed to a request by Pakistan, which has mediated peace talks in the seven-week-old war, “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Trump’s announcement appeared to be unilateral, and it was not immediately clear whether Iran, or the US ally Israel, would agree to extend the ceasefire, which began two weeks ago. Trump also said he would continue the US Navy’s blockade of Iran‘s ports and shore, which Iran‘s leaders have called an act of war.
There was no immediate comment from Iran‘s most senior leaders, but Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards, said Iran had not asked for a ceasefire extension and repeated threats to break the US blockade by force. An adviser to Iran‘s lead negotiator, the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said Trump’s announcement carried little weight.
“Trump’s ceasefire extension is certainly a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike,” Mahdi Mohammadi, the parliament speaker’s adviser, said in a statement on social media, calling the US blockade an ongoing military aggression. “The time for Iran to take the initiative has come.”
Trump said he would extend the ceasefire until Iran‘s “proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
It was the latest instance of Trump backing down at the 11th hour from his repeated threats to bomb every power plant in Iran. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and others have condemned the threats, noting international humanitarian law forbids attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Trump, who with Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, said he decided to extend the ceasefire because “the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so,” a reference to US-Israeli assassinations of some of the country’s leaders, including the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been succeeded by his son.
The US blockade became a sticking point as the two countries wavered this week on whether to send negotiators to a second round of peace talks in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
The ceasefire extension came only a few hours after Trump had said he was not inclined to continue the temporary truce and the US military was “raring to go.” He told CNBC in an interview that the US was in a strong negotiating position and would end up with what he called “a great deal.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump in a statement on social media for “graciously accepting our request to extend the ceasefire to allow ongoing diplomatic efforts to take their course.”
“I sincerely hope that both sides will continue to observe the ceasefire and be able to conclude a comprehensive ‘Peace Deal’ during the second round of talks scheduled at Islamabad for a permanent end to the conflict,” Sharif wrote.
It was not clear when, or if, that second round of talks would be scheduled.
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Hungarian PM-Elect Says ICC Warrants Will Be Enforced, Even for Netanyahu Invitation, as Orban Policy Reversed
Election winner Peter Magyar speaks during a press conference in Budapest, Hungary, April 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungarian Prime Minister-elect Peter Magyar vowed that his government would detain any foreign leader subject to International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants who entered its territory, even as he extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who himself faces such a warrant — to visit the country.
During a press conference on Monday, Magyar reiterated his pledge to reverse outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s decision to withdraw Hungary from the ICC.
The Hungarian leader also said that, despite inviting Netanyahu — who faces an ICC arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza — to a national ceremony, he could still be detained upon arrival, noting that ICC-related obligations would take precedence if the conditions were met.
“If a country is a member of the ICC and a wanted individual enters its territory, they must be detained,” Magyar told reporters. “Every state and head of government is aware of these obligations.”
“I also made clear to the Israeli prime minister that we will not reverse course on the ICC withdrawal, as my colleagues have reviewed the matter and concluded it can still be halted,” he added.
Magyar had spoken with Netanyahu last week after the Israeli leader called to congratulate him on his election victory, which came after the defeat of a government widely seen as a strong ally of Israel.
But his latest remarks have triggered confusion and outrage, deepening concerns over his stance on Israel and raising questions about the future of relations between the two countries.
Netanyahu visited Hungary in April 2025 at Orbán’s invitation, with the government rejecting the ICC warrants and announcing its withdrawal from the court during the visit.
At the time, Orbán denounced the ICC as “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel.
Israeli officials also say the military has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Under ICC warrants, all states that are parties to the Rome Statute — the 1998 international treaty that established the ICC and sets out its jurisdiction over crimes such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — are legally obligated to arrest Netanyahu if he enters their territory.
However, several countries, including Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, as is also the case with other countries, including the United States, that have not signed the court’s founding treaty.
However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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Exclusive: As Ceasefire Extended, Iranian Voice Describes Deepening Repression, Waning Hope Under Regime’s Grip
People attend the funeral of the security forces who were killed in the protests that erupted over the collapse of the currency’s value in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As a fragile ceasefire halting the US-Israeli military campaign in Iran continues, some Iranians say the pause in fighting has not brought relief but rather fear that the regime is regaining strength while internal repression intensifies.
In western Iran, a former schoolteacher who asked to be identified as “Maddie Ali” for security reasons says the ceasefire has left many ordinary citizens feeling abandoned and exposed, watching authorities tighten control while hopes for meaningful change fade.
“People actually felt more hopeful when the war was ongoing. Now, with the ceasefire in place, many feel discouraged and disappointed about the future, which feels increasingly uncertain,” Ali told The Algeminer in an exclusive interview.
Ali lost her job after authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout when fighting erupted earlier this year — a disruption that continues to shape daily life and restrict communication with the outside world, effectively cutting millions of Iranians off from independent reporting on the war and access to global news.
Internet access remains unstable across much of the country, forcing many people to rely on illegal black-market virtual private networks (VPNs) — tools that bypass government censorship — to stay connected beyond Iran’s borders, with access reportedly costing millions of tomans per gigabyte. (A toman is one-tenth of the rial, the official currency of Iran.)
Iran’s nationwide internet blackout has become the longest recorded of its kind, as authorities continue restricting access to the outside world in an effort to suppress internal opposition and silence domestic dissent.
Iranian authorities have even warned that citizens suspected of accessing the internet through VPNs could face arrest or imprisonment. According to state media reports, Iranian security forces have arrested several citizens in recent weeks for using the Starlink satellite internet system, which allows users to bypass state-controlled terrestrial infrastructure.
Human rights groups have warned that the regime repeatedly uses nationwide internet shutdowns as a tool to intensify its crackdown on opposition movements and conceal ongoing abuses from international scrutiny.
Ali said many people in Iran fear the ceasefire is giving authorities time to regroup and rebuild.
“People are deeply disappointed that the US and Israeli sides agreed to a ceasefire without taking the Iranian population into account,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “The regime has repeatedly proven its capacity to rebuild and recover time and time again.”
The US–Iran ceasefire, which took effect on April 8, was initially set to expire on Wednesday night if no agreement was reached. US President Donald Trump told Bloomberg on Monday that he was “highly unlikely” to extend the truce without a deal with Tehran.
“I’m not going to be rushed into making a bad deal,” the president said.
On Tuesday, however, Trump announced that he was extending the ceasefire indefinitely, to allow the two countries to continue peace talks to end the war.
In a statement on social media, Trump said he had agreed to a request by Pakistan, which has mediated the talks, “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Noting Iran’s government was “seriously fractured,” Trump said the US military would remain ready and continue its blockade on Iranian ports but continue abiding by the ceasefire “until such time as [Tehran’s] proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
According to Ali, who spoke with The Algemeiner before Trump’s announcement, reconstruction efforts began quickly after the fighting stopped, even as widespread infrastructure damage remained and internal repression intensified.
“There is frustration that the ceasefire may help the regime recover,” she said. “They started reconstruction for damaged sites and internal repression is still going on.”
Ali also said security forces remain highly visible across the country, especially after a sweeping crackdown earlier this year following mass demonstrations.
“We don’t have an option to really be out on the streets right now. It is really hard because of what happened in January. People are too afraid,” she said, referring to the nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, leaving tens of thousands of demonstrators tortured, imprisoned, or killed.
Checkpoints and surveillance now shape daily movement across many areas of the country.
“There are security forces on the streets stopping people, checking phones to see who they have been in contact with and reviewing messages — and they even make arrests,” Ali said.
Despite the risks, Ali said frustration with the regime runs deep after years of sustained crackdowns and tightening control.
“Most Iranians want an end to this regime. People are exhausted after decades of repression, arrests, executions, surveillance, and control,” she said. “Everybody was waiting for Israel and the US to do something and help us.”
“At the same time, people don’t support war itself — they support removing the regime, which is deeply rooted throughout the country,” Ali continued.
She said many Iranians initially saw the outbreak of fighting as a rare opening for change after years of failed internal protest movements.
“When the war began, many people actually felt hopeful,” Ali told The Algemeiner. “It’s not that they didn’t try to overthrow the regime themselves before — they did. But nothing worked.”
Even those who opposed the war, she said, are not necessarily defending the government.
“Those who were against the war mostly believed it would not lead to real change in the end — not that they supported the regime,” she explained.
More broadly, Ali said many citizens viewed outside military pressure as a necessary catalyst rather than something they welcomed.
“For many Iranians, support for the US and Israeli strikes came out of necessity and exhaustion — not because they support war,” she said.
Despite significant leadership losses during the conflict, Ali said the regime’s structure remains deeply entrenched nationwide.
“The regime and its ideology are embedded at every level — in cities, towns, and institutions across the country,” she said.
“From what we can see, the system is still functioning almost completely intact,” she continued. “It remains coordinated at both the national and local levels, and internal repression is actually increasing.”
“It feels suffocating and extreme, but at the same time it isn’t surprising,” she added.
For some inside Iran, Ali said, this reality has reshaped how people understand the scale of effort needed to dismantle the regime’s entrenched security apparatus.
“People support Israel and the United States, but they also believe airstrikes alone are not enough,” she said.
“Many believe that only a military ground intervention with troops on the ground could remove the regime from its roots,” she continued.
At the same time, she said many Iranians feel especially frustrated by what they see as political solidarity between Muslim-majority governments and Tehran’s leadership rather than support for ordinary citizens.
“Just because a government presents itself as Islamist does not give it the right to repress dissidents and crush its own people,” she said.
“Many Muslim countries have continued to cooperate with this regime, shaking hands with a killer regime instead of standing with the Iranian people,” Ali added.