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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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London’s Metropolitan Police launches new 100-officer unit to protect Jewish communities
(JTA) — London’s police force has created a new unit to protect Jews, in the latest effort to stem a wave of attacks and calm mounting anxiety in the city’s Jewish communities.
The new “Community Protection Team” will boast 100 members and include both officers already working in Jewish communities and newly assigned officers, the Metropolitan Police announced on Wednesday.
The announcement came a day after an arson at a disused synagogue and a week after a stabbing of two Jewish men in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green. It also comes a day after top Metropolitan Police brass joined an emergency summit on antisemitic violence convened by Prime Minister Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street, his home and office.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said he was working with the British government and London Mayor Sadiq Khan to secure additional funding beyond the 25 million pounds (about $34 million) allocated last week to safeguard Jewish communities.
“We are working with Government and the Mayor to ensure the approach we are building can be sustained over time, not just for Jewish communities, but as a model that can support other communities across London when facing elevated risk,” Rowley said in a statement. “A settled, long‑term model built around local teams will be far more effective than repeated emergency responses, reducing risk and delivering lasting reassurance.”
Welcoming the new police unit, Khan called on Londoners to share in the task of tackling antisemitism.
“Working with the police and others, I am determined to bear down on antisemitism and ensure Jewish Londoners feel safe and are safe in our city,” he said in a statement. “Alongside the police action we need a relentless approach to tackling all hate crime in London and we all have a role to play in calling out hate in all its forms to build a safer London for everyone.”
The Metropolitan Police revealed on Wednesday that it has arrested “about 50 people” over the last four weeks in connection with antisemitic hate crimes, and eight had already been formally charged. The force disclosed previously unreported incidents including a man arrested on Friday “following reports he threatened a Jewish man while using racially offensive language” and a man arrested on Saturday after rocks were thrown at a Jewish community ambulance that was transporting a patient.
The force had previously announced more than two dozen arrests linked to a series of arsons at synagogues and ambulances owned by the Jewish volunteer emergency service Hatzola, as well as the man accused of carrying out the Golders Green stabbing attack. Police officials have said they believe at least some of the people arrested may have been paid, possibly by Iran, to carry out the attacks.
The Community Security Trust, Britain’s Jewish security charity, said it welcomed the creation of the new unit and viewed the mounting arrests as evidence of the police force’s seriousness when it comes to protecting Jewish Londoners.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post London’s Metropolitan Police launches new 100-officer unit to protect Jewish communities appeared first on The Forward.
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ADL says antisemitic incidents dropped by a third in 2025, but assaults reached record levels
(JTA) — Antisemitic incidents in the United States fell sharply in 2025 from record highs in the previous two years, but physical assaults, including deadly attacks, continued to rise, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit.
In 2025, the ADL recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents across the country, marking a 33% decrease compared to 2024, when it recorded 9,354 incidents. (Antisemitic incidents increased by 5% from 2023 to 2024.)
Still, 2025 marked the third-highest year for antisemitic incidents since the ADL began tracking them in 1979 — after 2023 and 2024.
And incidents of assault involving a deadly weapon, which included the firebombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence, increased by 39%, from 23 in 2024 to 32 last year.
“Our 2025 Audit, which shows it was one of the most violent years for American Jews on record, is a reminder of how dramatically the threat landscape has shifted. Numbers that would have shocked us five years ago are now our floor,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO and national director, said in a statement. “People are being murdered because of antisemitism on American soil, and thousands more are threatened. ADL will not stop until that baseline changes.”
While antisemitic harassment and vandalism both declined from 2024 levels, from 6,552 to 4,003 incidents of harassment and 2,606 to 2,068 cases of vandalism, the ADL’s report found that incidents of assault rose from 196 to 203, a 4% increase from 2024 to 2025. At least 300 victims were targeted by incidents of assault, according to the report.
Last year also saw the first time since 2019 that murders were recorded in antisemitic attacks, including two Israeli embassy staffers shot to death outside the Capital Jewish Museum last May and another victim who died of injuries sustained during the June firebombing attack at a Boulder, Colorado, demonstration for Israeli hostages.
“Behind every one of these incidents is a real person: a family threatened at their synagogue, a rabbi attacked on the street, a student harassed on campus,” Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president for Counter-Extremism and Intelligence, said in a statement. “2025 brought some of the most violent antisemitic attacks in recent memory.”
The ADL’s annual antisemitism audit, which has widely been viewed as an authoritative survey of antisemitism in the country, also found a significant drop in antisemitic incidents reported on college campuses, with incidents dropping by 66% from 1,694 in 2024 to to 583 in 2025.
Antisemitic incidents related to anti-Israel protests, including encampments, also decreased by 83% on college campuses in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the survey.
That decline dovetailed with a number of universities across the country that, following the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses in 2024, moved to restrict or dismantle encampments and adopt stricter policies governing demonstrations.
Incidents directed at Jewish institutions decreased from 1,702 incidents in 2024 to 1,129 this year, marking a 34% drop. Bomb threats to Jewish institutions also dramatically decreased, with the ADL recording 59 bomb threats against Jewish institutions in 2025 compared to 627 in 2024 and 996 in 2023.
In non-Jewish K-12 schools, incidents decreased slightly from 860 in 2024 to 825 in 2025, with the ADL reporting that the “vast majority of incidents involve individual, peer-to-peer behavior, such as antisemitic bullying or students vandalizing classrooms with swastikas.”
The audit also reported a nearly 50% drop in the distribution of white supremacist propaganda.
The ADL has long drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian voices for tallying incidents of anti-Israel sentiments as antisemitic. This year, the group reported that 45% of all incidents it tracked were related to Israel or Zionism, down from 58% in 2024.
The ADL said its counts “do not include legitimate political protest of Israeli policies or general pro-Palestinian activism,” and cited examples of antisemitic protest including celebrations of violence against Jews and glorification for terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
The ADL attributed the drop in Israel-related antisemitic incidents to a “lower level of antisemitic activity at rallies organized by anti-Israel groups,” with incidents occurring in the vicinity of anti-Israel protests decreasing by 67% from 2024 and 2025.
Other examples of antisemitic incidents included in this year’s tally were an anti-Israel protest at the University of Oregon in February in which protesters displayed signs that read “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as well as a message spray-painted on a sidewalk in Los Angeles in October that read “Stop the new Holocaust. Boycott, shame Zionism fascists [sic].”
Aryeh Tuchman, an antisemitism researcher who spent two decades at the ADL before joining the rival Nexus Project, said that despite criticism of the audit, it is “the best data set of antisemitic incidents that anyone can compile in the United States.”
“No one agrees with anyone at this point on what constitutes, you know, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, like even those two words don’t mean very much anymore, and so people certainly are going to disagree with ADL,” Tuchman said, later adding. “Everybody who feels maybe a little bit differently than the ADL, or lots differently from the ADL, they need to engage with the audit on their own terms and find the value to them.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Protesters picket Manhattan synagogue over Israel real estate sale, testing Mamdani and new law
Protesters thronged a Manhattan synagogue Tuesday night outside an event promoting real estate in Israel and the West Bank — returning to the scene of a clash last year that prompted a new law shielding houses of worship and put the heat on newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The demonstration at Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side drew more than 100 protesters, kept nearly a block away from the house of worship by barricades and a heavy NYPD presence.
Chants of “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “We don’t want a two-state, we want ’48” rose from the crowd — slogans Zionist organizations view as antisemitic and a call for violence and removal of Jews in the region.
At one point, two protesters near the event ripped down a plastered poster of the Lubavitcher Rebbe that read “Messiah is here” from a traffic light and threw it in the trash.
A smaller group of pro-Israel counterprotesters rallied across the street from the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
A spokesperson for the synagogue said it rented out the space for the Great Israeli Real Estate Event, which advertised properties for sale in Israel and the West Bank.
The standoff comes just days after a new law governing protests outside houses of worship took effect — a measure that City Council Speaker Julie Menin introduced after a November 2025 demonstration at Park East Synagogue.
The protests, combined with what some Jewish leaders saw as slow or equivocal responses from Mamdani, led to calls for legislation that would limit demonstrations near houses of worship.
Menin initially aimed to establish protest-free buffer zones of up to 100 feet outside synagogues but revised the bill after pushback from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, some progressive Jewish groups and free speech advocates, under threat of legal challenges.
A watered-down version of that legislation that allows the NYPD to determine how large buffer zones need to be on a case-by-case basis passed with a veto-proof majority last month. Mamdani allowed the bill to become law without his signature.
Mamdani meanwhile vetoed a similar bill that would apply to schools. The Council could still vote to override that veto.
Police closed off the entire street where the synagogue sits to the public, while allowing the event’s attendees to enter. The demonstrators were well over 100 feet away from the building — a greater distance than even the largest buffer zone proposed by Menin.
Supporters of the law argued that its flexible standard — allowing the NYPD to determine buffer zone distances rather than specifying them precisely — would protect protesters’ rights. But the security at Park East showed how that discretion can, in practice, expand protest-free zones by granting the NYPD wide latitude to set the distance themselves.
A spokesperson for Mamdani, a vocal critic of Israel, said on Tuesday before the protest that the mayor is “deeply opposed” to the event, characterizing the sale of property in the West Bank as a violation of international law. The spokesperson, Sam Raskin, nevertheless emphasized that the city was ready to ensure the safety of participants entering the venue and those demonstrating.
“Our administration has been clear that we are committed to ensuring safe entry and exit from any house of worship, and that such access never be in question while all protesters are able to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said Raskin ahead of the event.
‘People are outraged’
Tuesday’s event was the first time under the new law, but the NYPD protest plan it calls for is still a work in progress: the police department still has another month to present a plan and 90 days to publicize it.
Local politicians noted the sensitive nature of the protest, saying that alone is reason to condemn it.
Assemblymember Alex Bores and Councilmember Virginia Maloney, who represent the district where the synagogue is located, said in a joint statement that the situation naturally evoked “painful memories of times when people have been harassed while entering houses of worship.”
Micah Lasher, a state legislator who is vying for the open congressional seat on Manhattan’s west side, described the protest as “intended to create fear in the hearts of Jewish New Yorkers and stigmatize the community.” Lasher said leaders should condemn the protest, no matter any disagreement on policy.
Rob Jereski, a local attorney who is Jewish and came to support the Palestinian side, had reservations about the security perimeters, arguing it kept protesters too far from the real estate event.
“I know the new law is supposed to maintain free speech and honor the Constitution, but this doesn’t seem to do it,” Jereski said. “The fact that Jews pray in a place doesn’t mean that crimes that are committed in that place should be without a response if people are outraged.”
Some counterprotesters also criticized the new Council measure — for not going far enough.
“That’s outrageous that it’s not clear that you cannot demonstrate and harass kids or people around religious institutions,” said Tomer Morad, a demonstrator on the Israeli side.
Karen Lichtbraun, an activist affiliated with the Zionist Herut movement in New York, said the new bill was a “joke” that doesn’t address the problem.
“Today, thank God, they’re away from the synagogue,” she said. “But what happens if next time the police commissioner decides that they can be 50 feet or 10 feet away?”
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