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NYC synagogue protest bill tasks police with developing a protection plan. Mamdani still hasn’t committed to sign
The New York City Council has ditched a proposal for a strict up to 100-foot buffer zone for protests outside houses of worship and instead aims to direct the NYPD to develop a plan outlining how it would protect congregants from constitutionally protected protests.
The changes come in the face of reservations from Mayor Zohran Mamdani as well as civil liberties groups that have raised concerns that the measure could limit First Amendment rights.
Michael Gerber, the police department’s deputy commissioner for legal affairs, told council members Wednesday that the NYPD will craft a framework that carefully weighs constitutional considerations, balancing public safety with free speech rights and establishing clear procedures for managing protests.
The bill, introduced by Council Speaker Julie Menin, follows disruptive demonstrations at synagogues that targeted events promoting land sales in Israel and settlements and featured antisemitic slogans and chants. It initially proposed creating a perimeter of up to 100 feet to ensure access to services and events without harassment or being blocked at the door.
It is part of the Council speaker’s five-point plan to combat antisemitism, in conjunction with a new task force she appointed, as anti-Jewish incidents continue to account for a majority of reported hate crimes in New York City. In recent months, at least two protests outside synagogues featured antisemitic slogans and chants, heightening tensions and drawing condemnation. Last month, a person rammed a car into an entrance of the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who, like Menin, is Jewish, reportedly cautioned that a one-size-fits-all rule might not withstand legal challenge and could prove unworkable across neighborhoods with vastly different street layouts. Mamdani said he ordered his law department and police leadership to review the proposal’s legality. On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked an executive order issued by former Mayor Eric Adams in December that called on Tisch to evaluate proposals for establishing a buffer zone of at least 15 feet outside houses of worship.
Mamdani cited Tisch’s concerns in an interview with CNN earlier this week when asked for his position on the bill.
However, after internal discussions, the Council agreed to revise the language of the bill, placing implementation authority squarely with the police department rather than codifying a specific distance requirement.
Free speech protections
At a hearing by the newly created Committee to Combat Hate, Gerber, one of Tisch’s Jewish deputies, said the NYPD supports the legislation — describing the buffer as a “frozen zone.” — and is committed to transparency. The department will ensure protesters retain “sight and sound to the entrance of that location consistent with the First Amendment,” he said, referencing the right to peacefully protest. “At the same time, the protesters will not be permitted to obstruct, impede or interfere.” He added that demonstrators who enter frozen zones could be subject to arrest.
In response to questioning from Councilmember Shahana Hanif of Brooklyn, an Israel critic, Gerber said that anti-Zionist and antisemitic slogans, “with some extremely narrow exceptions,” will be safeguarded. He pointed to the 1977 neo-Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, which the court said was protected speech.
Mainstream Jewish groups that testified, including the Anti-Defamation League, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council, said they back the bill. At a rally held inside City Hall Wednesday morning, two Muslim imams and a Catholic clergyman also voiced their support.
The progressive group Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, which endorsed Mamdani through its affiliated political arm, and other groups supportive of the Palestinian cause, are lobbying Council members to oppose the bill. Mamdani, at an unrelated press conference, said the amended bill is a “distinct shift” from the original proposal but declined to commit to signing it until he sees its “final version.” A City Hall spokesperson referred back to the mayor’s comments when asked by the Forward whether the new language addressed his concerns.
At the hearing, Menin addressed what she described as “misconceptions” about the measure. “The First Amendment freedom of speech is truly sacrosanct, and it is a freedom that these bills will uphold,” Menin said. “What we will not allow people to do is abuse that freedom to harass and intimidate others outside religious and educational institutions.”
The council speaker said the November 19, 2025 demonstration outside Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue, which hosted an event promoting migration to Israel, “was not a peaceful protest.”
The legislation is “absolutely needed,” Menin said, to ensure that such demonstrations never happen again. “We can’t brush that under the rug,” she said. “I think any suggestion that the bills aren’t needed is just minimizing what the impact has been to the Jewish community.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul recently introduced similar legislation, which would create a 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship across New York State.
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At Trump’s Christian revival on the National Mall, one rabbi made a Jewish case for America
On the National Mall Sunday, Christian worship music boomed from giant speakers as “Adonai” and other names of God flashed across jumbo screens behind a praise band. Pastors invoked America’s biblical destiny. Sadie Robertson, the Christian social media personality and granddaughter of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, preached from both the Old and New Testaments.
And then Rabbi Meir Soloveichik — the lone Jewish speaker at the planned nine-hour “Rededicate 250” rally called by President Donald Trump, billed as a national “jubilee of prayer, praise and thanksgiving” — stepped to the podium and began talking about Irving Berlin.
Soloveichik, 48, a scion of one of modern Orthodoxy’s most revered rabbinic families and a member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, used his remarks to offer a Jewish case for American exceptionalism, a contrast to the explicitly Christian vision of the nation’s founding that defined the day.
Recalling how Berlin wrote “God Bless America” as fascism spread across Europe and antisemitism consumed the continent, Soloveichik described the song as both a patriotic anthem and a prayer of gratitude from a Jewish immigrant who found refuge in the United States. The hymn, he said, represented “a plaintive prayer to God that America continue to be blessed.”
The four-minute speech fit squarely within Soloveichik’s broader worldview. A senior scholar at the conservative Tikvah Fund and rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, he has long argued that America’s civic ideals are aligned with traditional Judaism and biblical morality. His 2024 book, Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship, examines Jewish political leadership through the lens of faith and moral responsibility.
For Soloveichik, the connection between Judaism and American identity culminated in the Second World War. He noted that “God Bless America” was first broadcast publicly the day after Kristallnacht, when Nazis destroyed Jewish homes and synagogues across Germany. “At the very moment when darkness deepened,” Soloveichik said, “America raised its voice united in the song that Irving Berlin wrote.”
He added that “in the years that followed 1938, the prayer that is ‘God Bless America’ was carried by American soldiers who defeated evil, liberating Europe and the world.”
Then came the line that drew some of the loudest applause of his remarks: “It is a reminder, as hatred of Jews makes itself manifest again, that antisemitism is utterly un-American.”
Separation of church and state
The moment captured the complicated role Jews increasingly occupy within the Trump-era religious right: embraced as part of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, even as critics warn that the broader movement surrounding events like Rededicate 250 blurs the line between religious pluralism and Christian nationalism.
Rachel Laser, the Jewish CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, denounced the rally before the event. “If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country,” she said in a statement. “Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian Nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans.”
Sunday’s event — part revival meeting, part patriotic pageant — was the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s religious programming tied to this year’s 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson were slated to appear alongside evangelical pastors, worship leaders and conservative Christian influencers. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance were scheduled to address the crowd by video, while Trump himself spent the weekend golfing after returning from an overseas trip to China.
“This is a recognition of the deeply embedded history and religious and moral tradition of the country,” Johnson said Sunday on Fox News, dismissing criticism that the rally blurred the separation of church and state. Those objecting to the event, he added, “want to erase the history of America.”
No Muslim speakers appeared on the lineup. Organizers promoted Trump’s declaration of a national “Shabbat 250” observance the day prior as evidence of interfaith inclusion.
One of the Sunday event’s chief promoters, Trump spiritual adviser Pastor Paula White-Cain, had reassured supporters beforehand that the gathering would celebrate America’s Christian foundations without “praying to all these different Gods.”
Soloveichik did not address those tensions. Instead, he closed by returning to the image of America as a nation uniquely capable, in his telling, of transforming a Jewish refugee into the composer of one of the country’s most enduring patriotic hymns.
“To sing this song,” he said, “is to be reminded that America’s story is unique.”
“GOD BLESS AMERICA IS NOT JUST A SONG. IT’S A PRAYER.” 🇺🇸🙏
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik delivers a powerful reminder that America’s love of liberty has always been tied to faith — tracing its story and why anti-Semitism is fundamentally un-American. pic.twitter.com/aKMg42nS2I
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) May 17, 2026
The post At Trump’s Christian revival on the National Mall, one rabbi made a Jewish case for America appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel to Establish Defense Offices in Former UNRWA Compound
A man handles fallen cables at the Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as the headquarters is dismantled by Israeli forces, in East Jerusalem, January 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Israel’s cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to build a defense compound on the site of the recently demolished premises of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in East Jerusalem.
Israel in January demolished structures inside the UN Palestinian refugee agency’s East Jerusalem compound after seizing the site last year, in an act condemned by the agency as a violation of international law.
In a joint statement, the Defense Ministry and Jerusalem Municipality said the new compound would include the establishment of a military museum, a recruitment office and a defense minister’s office.
Defense Minister Israel Katz called the decision one of “sovereignty, Zionism, and security.”
UNRWA, which Israeli authorities accuse of bias, had not used the building since the start of last year after Israel ordered it to vacate all its premises and cease its operations.
A UNRWA spokesperson declined to comment on the Israeli plan.
The agency operates in East Jerusalem, which the U.N. and most countries consider territory occupied by Israel as it was captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel considers all Jerusalem to be its indivisible capital.
UNRWA also operates in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East, providing schooling, healthcare, social services and shelter to millions of Palestinians.
“There is nothing more symbolic or justified than establishing the new IDF recruitment office and defense establishment institutions precisely on the ruins of the former UNRWA compound — an organization whose employees took part in the massacres, murders, and atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7,” Katz said.
Israel has alleged that some UNRWA staff were members of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and took part in the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 Israelis and led to Israel’s war against Hamas.
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Palestinian Leader’s Son Wins Role in Abbas’ Party, Official Says
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, accompanied by his son Yasser, leaves a hospital in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, May 28, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
The millionaire businessman son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has won a steering role in his father’s political party Fatah, a party official said on Sunday, as a succession fight looms for control of the embattled Palestinian Authority (PA).
Yasser Abbas won a seat in elections for the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body, at its first general conference in almost a decade. Mahmoud Abbas, 90, will remain chairman, it decided.
The PA was set up as an interim administration under the 1990s Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group still internationally recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people. The powerful Fatah party dominates both the PA and the PLO.
Abbas’ son’s foray into politics has fueled speculation that the president may be seeking to position Yasser, 64, to succeed him as head of Fatah.
That has drawn criticism from some Fatah officials, who say Yasser would be unable to unify Palestinians or help them chart a new political future after years without national elections or tangible steps toward statehood.
In the more than two decades since Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Fatah founder Yasser Arafat, Palestinians have come to view the PA as ineffective and corrupt, something denied by Abbas, who has ruled by decree since his mandate expired in 2009.
In 2007, Abbas’ Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip were overpowered by Hamas militants who seized control of the enclave, a year after Hamas swept the Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Peace talks with Israel meant to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem collapsed in 2014, with expanding Israeli settlements since carving up areas slated for Palestinian statehood. The PA is also grappling with a financial crisis.
Yasser Abbas, who has never held an official role within Fatah or the PA, runs tobacco and contracting firms in the parts of the West Bank where the PA exercises limited self rule. Critics have long alleged that he and his brother Tarek have used public funds to help their businesses, allegations both men reject.
Among others to have won seats on the Central Committee are Majed Faraj, head of the General Intelligence Agency, and former militant group leader Zakaria Zubeidi, released in a Hamas-Israel prisoner-hostage exchange as part of a 2025 Gaza ceasefire.