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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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Africa Becomes Center of Global Terrorism Amid ISIS Revivals, Al Qaeda Alliances
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
Both independent analysts and the United States government have identified rising Islamist terrorist threats across Sub-Saharan Africa as a growing concern, now positioning the region at the center of attention regarding global jihadist terrorism.
Gen. Dagvin Anderson, commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), has started a series of visits to African partners, starting with Ethiopia, Somaliland, and Puntland.
“The whole reason I came here is because we have shared threats,” Anderson said. “I’m not new to this region; I understand what the issues are, and we’re here to help empower our African partners to address these threats in a united way.”
Just last week, AFRICOM coordinated with the government of Somalia to strike Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Shabaab targets.
“As we face the growing security threats, including the rise of terrorist activities in East Africa, the Sahel, and West Africa’s coastal regions, the collective efforts are more important than ever,” Anderson said. “Together we can build a more prosperous and secure future for the United States, for Africa, and most importantly, for our children.”
Anderson’s trip came after the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a report last month showing that, last year, 86 percent of all terrorism-related deaths occurred in just 10 countries, with seven of them in Africa and five in the continent’s Sahel region.
The report explained how the Sahel — a belt that runs across the African continent and is also called the Sahelian acacia savanna — dominates the map of terrorism deaths today.
“Where once the global terror threat was concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, today it is centered in the Sahel, specifically in the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger,” the report’s four authors wrote before noting that, according to the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, the region comprised more than half of all terrorism-related deaths last year.
“The data shows that while countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and Nigeria have been largely steady when it comes to significant impact by terrorism over recent years, Sahelian countries (Burkina Faso, chief among them) have experienced a steep increase,” the analysts assessed. “In 2023 and 2024, Burkina Faso was most impacted by terrorism globally.”
Regarding the specific groups responsible for these slayings in the Sahel, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies primarily blamed an al-Qaeda-affiliate, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), which it identified as being responsible for 83 percent of deaths in the region.
In August, a report from the Observer Research Foundation argued that “the African continent remains the principal theater of global jihadist activity.”
Colin Clarke and co-author Anoushka Varma, both of the Soufan Group, described the threat of JNIM. The group “has entrenched its position as the deadliest terrorist group in the Sahel, escalating attacks across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, while making inroads into Benin, Ghana, and Togo — countries that had largely avoided jihadist violence until now,” they wrote. “In the first half of 2025, JNIM claimed to have carried out at least 280 attacks in Burkina Faso — double the number recorded during the same period in 2024 — and was responsible for approximately 8,800 fatalities across the Sahel that year.”
Another region of the continent drawing the concern of counter-terrorism analysts is the Horn of Africa (HOA), where the West Point researchers identified the “critical case” of the “the triangular confluence that has developed between the Houthis, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al-Shabaab.”
Despite the Houthis being backed by Shi’ite Iran and operating primarily out of Yemen, the West Point report noted that “there is even evidence that the Houthis have collaborated with Islamic State Somalia [a Sunni group], coordinating on intelligence and procurement of drones and technical training.”
Clarke and Varma also explained the unique threats operating in the HOA in their analysis, explaining that “both the Islamic State–Somalia Province (IS-Somalia) and al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate, al-Shabaab, remain key drivers of regional instability.”
In April 2025, they wrote, al-Shabaab “launched a renewed offensive in Middle Shabelle, regaining territorial control not seen since the Somali federal government’s counteroffensive in 2022.” The analysts also identified that “IS-Somalia has attracted foreign fighters from Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and even among the Somali diaspora in the West.”
In addition to the increased violence in the HOA and Sahel African regions, two other alarming trends in terrorism that West Point’s researchers named are the wide involvement of Iran with organized crime gangs and the decreasing ages of first-time terrorist suspects.
The report stated that over the last five years, Iran has conducted 157 foreign operations, with 22 involving criminal groups and 55 involving terrorist groups. These range from “Hell’s Angels gang members in Canada to the Kinahan Cartel in Ireland.”
Likewise, the age range of terrorism offenders has transformed.
The authors stated that many analysts have identified “a new wave of extremism among children” and that “across Europe as a whole, nearly two-thirds of Islamic State-linked arrests in 2024 involved teenagers. This included the infamous August 2024 plot by three males aged 17 to 19 targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna, Austria.”
In 2024, the United Kingdom reported that 20 percent of its terrorism suspects were legally classified as minors.
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Amid campus tensions, CUNY steps up outreach to Brooklyn yeshivas
The City University of New York is boosting its outreach to Jewish high schools as tensions over antisemitism allegations continue to flare on some of its 26 colleges across the five boroughs.
On Tuesday, CUNY chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and Brooklyn College president Michelle Anderson visited Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School, a Modern Orthodox school in Brooklyn where students study halacha, Talmud, and Tanakh alongside secular subjects.
Their visit focused on promoting a dual enrollment program that allows students to take Brooklyn College courses without leaving the building. Teachers at the high school were hired as adjunct faculty for Brooklyn College to teach college-level subjects including calculus, physics, English composition, algebra II, and “American pluralism.” Students who pass the courses earn college credit.
While CUNY has partnered with New York City public schools to offer the dual enrollment program since 2000, it opened the program to independent religious schools only last year. This fall, 78 students from religious schools participated, including students from Joel Braverman and Magen David Yeshivah School in Brooklyn.
The visit to a yeshiva from top-level CUNY administrators also came amid fallout from an interfaith event at CUNY’s City College last month, where a speaker urged Muslim students to leave in protest because a “Zionist” was present.
“You’re in shock? We’re not, we’re used to it,” a Jewish student says in a recording of the event reviewed by the Forward. “That’s how interfaith goes at CCNY.”
Ilya Bratman, Hillel director for multiple campuses in the CUNY system and the Jewish representative at the event, told the Forward in a phone interview that the incident unfortunately typified the climate Jewish students face at CUNY.
“Whenever the college has tried to create interfaith opportunities, they often end up in this kind of environment — terrible, overwhelming,” Bratman said.
In a statement, a City College spokesperson said the school “has zero tolerance for acts of hate or bigotry of any kind and will promptly take all necessary and appropriate actions to address any such discrimination and remedy its effects.”
During Tuesday’s visit, CUNY administrators did not directly discuss the incident but said the yeshiva partnership reflects a broader commitment to making campuses welcoming to Jewish students.
“The pilot shows that we want to be able to attract students from the yeshivas,” Matos Rodríguez said. “There’s things out there in the world that we have to navigate, but we want to continue to send signals about what we consider to be important.”
Anderson highlighted that Brooklyn College received an “A” from the Anti-Defamation League’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card. She touted the school’s active Hillel, Judaic Studies department and accommodations for Jewish holidays.
Jacob Hanan, a Joel Braverman junior taking four dual-enrollment classes, said Jewish life is central to his college search — and Brooklyn College is currently at the top of his list.
“I look for programs that have a healthy environment, not that much antisemitism going around, as well as other Jewish students on campus I can interact with, and maybe a Hillel to make it easier to practice,” he said in an interview with the Forward.
Rebecca Weinwurzel, another junior in the program, told the Forward she’s been grateful for the opportunity to take more challenging courses. She, too, is considering Brooklyn College, partly because of her experience in the dual enrollment program.
“I do see a lot that Brooklyn College is one of the schools that will knock down any antisemitism that comes their way very quickly,” she said. “And that is a very big plus for me.”
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I was interrogated by Israeli authorities — I know why they’re terrified of peace activists like me
Two weeks ago, I was on my way home from Israel after leading young Jewish activists across the country to meet with Israelis and Palestinians fighting for peace and justice. But just as my plane at Ben Gurion Airport was beginning to board, I was called to the gate desk, where I was told that I would be further questioned by airport security.
I was interrogated and searched for the next hour; one security agent accused me of having suspect political motivations because my checked luggage contained materials sympathetic to Israeli pro-democracy protesters and Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. They were trying to scare me. I felt, viscerally, how much Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to deter American Jews from aiding Israelis and Palestinians working toward peace and shared security.
But it didn’t intimidate me. Instead, it left me feeling more convinced than ever that it’s crucial for Jews around the world to take direct action for equality and justice in Israel and the West Bank. Because for every American Jew who, like me, has to endure a little ordeal with airport security, there are millions of Palestinians and Israelis facing far worse repression. And it is our duty to stand with them.
As the director of young leadership and education at the New Israel Fund, an organization that has spent decades building movements that advance freedom, security and equality for all people under Israeli control, I had led a delegation of young people on a trip through Israel and the West Bank, where we met with Israeli peace activists who survived the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023; Negev Bedouin communities demanding the government given them access to water and electricity; and humanitarian organizations fighting to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza.
In my luggage were materials that reflected my politics, among them a poster I had gotten at a protest in Tel Aviv that said, “Only peace will bring security,” and two books — the graphic novel Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City and Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture — that I had purchased at The Educational Bookshop, a renowned Palestinian cultural center in East Jerusalem that Israeli authorities have raided multiple times since Oct. 7.
The first agent to examine me asked about those materials, as well as some T-shirts that referred to Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, with a profanity. “If you believe in peace and human rights for all people, then why are these messages so one-sided?” the security agent asked.
I said that I didn’t think they were. Israelis want peace: At well-attended protests led by the Hostage Families’ Forum throughout the war in Gaza, attendees demanded a deal to end the fighting in exchange for a return of the hostages. And most Israelis oppose Ben-Gvir, viewing his Jewish supremacist vision — which would see Israel annex the vast majority of the West Bank, and violent Jewish extremists given a pass — as a major threat to the future of their country.
Then, two agents led me into another room with an array of scanners and equipment. I started to sweat. Just before my trip, two Jewish American activists were deported after volunteering in the West Bank. They were slapped with a 10-year ban from entering Israel. Could that happen to me?
One agent asked me if I visited the West Bank, and who I’d met with. I thought of my friend Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian peace activist murdered by an internationally-sanctioned settler in July.
As soon as I had landed in Israel, I’d rented a car and drove to Awdah’s village of Umm al Khair, to visit his family, whom I’d gotten to know when I lived and worked there as a human rights activist in 2022. As Awdah’s three children, all under 5, ran around our feet, I handed a bouquet of flowers to his widow. Awdah’s cousin recounted how he and a dozen other members of the community had been arrested and tortured for days immediately after Awdah’s killing. With tears in his eyes, he told me how he had been forced to miss Awdah’s funeral — which took place only after a bureaucratic standoff with the authorities, who held Awdah’s body for 10 days before finally releasing it to his family.
His killer, in contrast, was detained for a single day. Upon his release, his gun was returned to him. The police claimed that they couldn’t pursue further investigation for lack of evidence, even though there were multiple videos of the shooting, including Awdah’s own.
Yes, I had visited the West Bank, I told the agent. I’d met with some friends who are struggling to be free.
What I didn’t say: Despite my fury over Awdah’s murder, when I visited Umm al Khair, and stood over the stain of Awdah’s blood on the concrete where he was killed, I felt an odd sense of calm wash over me.
Violence and hatred are magnetic: they have the power to call out the evil in all of us. I’ve felt that disturbing call myself. But I’ve also felt how nonviolence can counteract that dark magnetism. I’ve seen thousands of Jews from Israel and the diaspora choose to intercede in situations of oppression, to be a protective presence against settler and state violence, and to try to use our bodies to repel cruelty and domination. I’ve seen it work in places like Umm al Khair, and that’s why I have hope.
More people who believe in freedom, equality and security for all people need to engage in this work on the ground. Because the authoritarians and Jewish supremacists who wish to repress our movement are, in fact, scared of Jews and Palestinians who partner together. They’re scared because we are bonded not by blood and soil but values and visions of a shared future.
What we want is simple: a land where all Israelis and Palestinians can live free from repression and violence, build homes and watch their families flourish, and travel with whatever books they want. This is the future that my Israeli and Palestinian friends are fighting for. And I will, too, by any nonviolent means necessary.
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