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Orthodox Union will meet with Israel’s far-right finance minister, while Conservative and Reform movements join call to snub him
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The leading institutions of the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements are among a coalition of liberal Jewish groups calling on American Jews to snub Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, when he visits the United States next week.
But the Orthodox Union, an umbrella organization for Orthodox Jews, has confirmed to JTA that it will meet with Smotrich.
The non-Orthodox groups were among more than 70 organizations to sign an open letter denouncing Smotrich. About half of the signatories on the letter, which was published Thursday, are synagogues. It was organized by the Progressive Israel Network, a coalition of groups that support progressive policies in Israel, after Smotrich said earlier this month that a Palestinian village should be “wiped out.” He has since repeatedly walked back the statement.
The Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist umbrella groups represent the vast majority of synagogue-attending U.S. Jews and, in previous years, have welcomed senior Israeli officials to their events. Their presence on the open letter underscores the extent to which Smotrich and his far-right allies have alarmed parts of the organized American Jewish community.
“We pledge to not invite Smotrich to speak at our congregations, organizations, and communal institutions during his visit and to speak out against his participation in other fora across our communities,” the letter says. “We call on all other Jewish communal organizations to join us in this protest as a demonstration of our commitment to our Jewish and democratic values. Our communities must reject Bezalel Smotrich and his party of hate.”
The boycott by the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist groups stands in contrast to the O.U., whose executive vice president, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he believes Smotrich “will use the opportunity to build greater understanding of and familiarity with the American Jewish community and its institutions.”
“We look forward to welcoming Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to our offices as part of his forthcoming visit to the United States,” Hauer said in a statement. “We appreciate every opportunity to welcome and interact with Israeli elected officials as it is our responsibility to build mutual familiarity and understanding that will contribute to the deepening and strengthening of the relationship between the State of Israel and American Jewry.”
Another Orthodox group, Agudath Israel of America, has no plans at this time to meet with Smotrich, its Washington director, Rabbi Abba Cohen, told JTA.
Smotrich arrives Sunday to speak to Israel Bonds, which sells Israeli government bonds to investors abroad and is closely tied to the Finance Ministry. Smotrich is also responsible for civilian affairs in parts of the West Bank, which he has called to annex to Israel. He also supports the judicial reform being advanced by the Israeli government, which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power.
Smotrich has a history of remarks denigrating minorities. But he has drawn especially harsh criticism over the past week and a half after saying that the Israel Defense Forces should “wipe out” a West Bank village, Huwara, where a gunman killed two Israeli brothers. Israeli settlers rioted in Huwara following the attack, burning buildings and cars, and injuring residents. A Palestinian died amid the riots.
In the wake of Smotrich’s statement, the Biden administration said it would not meet with him. In recent days, Smotich has repeatedly walked back the “wipe out” remark, and his latest disavowal came in a lengthy and impassioned Facebook post on Wednesday. Smotrich wrote that a friend who is an Israeli combat pilot explained that Smotrich’s call to destroy Huwara could be taken literally, and that pilots believed they could get orders to bomb the village. Smotrich said his friend linked that concern to a recent decision by 37 reservist combat pilots to boycott part of their training. The main aim of that boycott was to protest the planned judicial reform.
Smotrich said that he meant, at most, that buildings lining the road through Huwara, which is a main West Bank throughway, should be removed.
“And so after I failed in this responsibility, and believe me I am still rattled by the thought that I was understood this way, I must apologize to the army and its commanders, especially to the Air Force, if I was part of a breach of the important trust between the Israel Defense Forces, the army of the people, and the elected political echelon,” Smotrich said.
He added that the experience of being misunderstood by his ideological opponents has made him consider how he may have misjudged those he disagrees with.
“If there is a giant gap between who I am and how I am perceived on ‘the other side,’ to the extent that I could be accused of calling for the murder of women and children, who knows what kind of gap exists between how I perceive people… on the other side, and who and what they really are?” he wrote. “Maybe I make the exact same mistake.”
His apologies have done little to assuage concerns. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, meeting Thursday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, alluded to the Smotrich dilemma when he decried inflammatory rhetoric as well as violence by settlers and Palestinian terrorists.
“I am here as a friend who is deeply committed to the security of the State of Israel. The United States also remains firmly opposed to any acts that contribute more insecurity, including settlement expansion, and inflammatory rhetoric,” Austin said. “And we’re especially concerned by violence by settlers against Palestinians.”
A number of other groups are not planning to meet with Smotrich, but would not elaborate further. Most prominent among them is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Haaretz reported Thursday that two rabbis known for their closeness to AIPAC the pro-Israel lobby, have joined protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, and Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party in particular. An array of left-leaning Jewish groups is planning to picket Smotrich’s speech.
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The post Orthodox Union will meet with Israel’s far-right finance minister, while Conservative and Reform movements join call to snub him appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Recorded anti-Jewish hate crimes rise 10% in England and Wales
(JTA) — Hate crimes targeting Jewish people in England and Wales rose by 10% in the year ended in March, according to the latest data released by the British government.
Police-reported hate crime — including crime influenced by other factors such as race and sexual orientation — overall increased by 7% compared with the previous year, according to the Home Office data released last week.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband posted on X on Monday, “Antisemitism has no place in our society. This morning, I hosted a crucial discussion with the J7 Global Task Force to discuss how we can work together across countries to stamp out the scourge of antisemitism.”
Following the meeting, the Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement explaining that Miliband and the task force had discussed, among other things, “the sharp rise in global antisemitism” and the “continued demonisation of Israel.” Representatives from the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Argentina and Australia make up the task force.
“In the meeting, the J7 proposed a new international intergovernmental ministerial task force on antisemitism, comprising the countries represented in the J7 and taking on the key themes discussed. We were pleased that the Foreign Secretary agreed to host an inaugural meeting of J7 countries’ ministers to start this process,” the statement sent to JTA said.
The Community Security Trust, a charity that protects the Jewish community and monitors antisemitism, said on X that the new data show “that antisemitic hate crime remains at an unacceptably high level.”
“As seen previously, Jewish people continue to experience by far the highest police-recorded rate per head of religious hate crime of any faith group,” CST said. “This shows the disproportionate scale of anti-Jewish hatred and its impact on Jewish life in Britain.”
Religious hate crime rose by 13% overall in the 12 months to March 2026, the report said. The overall figure rose from 10,067 to 11,419 offenses.
The two groups most affected were Jews and Muslims, the Home Office said. Religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims increased 15%, the report found, with spikes reported around public protests in September 2025 and the start of the U.S. war with Iran in February.
The number of recorded offenses affecting Jews rose from 2,874 to 3,162 offenses, spiking after the attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester last year on Yom Kippur.
Two men, Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, were killed on Oct. 2, 2025, after Jihad Al-Shamie, who was wearing a fake suicide bomb belt, drove into the gates of Heaton Park synagogue and began attacking congregants with a knife. Cravitz died from stab wounds; Daulby was fatally struck by a police bullet during the response.
A spate of violent antisemitic incidents followed this year, including the torching of four ambulances belonging to Jewish volunteer service Hatzola on March 23 and the stabbing of two Jewish men in separate attacks in Golders Green on April 29.
The Home Office figures, which do not include data from London’s Metropolitan Police Service because of a change in how it records crime, showed the second-highest level of religious hate crime directed at the Jewish community since the Home Office began keeping records in 2018. It was surpassed only by the year ending March 2024.
“In the last year, there were 117 police recorded religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people per 10,000 population, the highest rate for any religious group. The next highest rate was for religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims, with 13 per 10,000 population,” said the Home Office.
The report was published on Oct. 8, at a time of heightened sensitivity. Eleven people were arrested at pro-Palestinian marches in London a day earlier, despite calls by the Metropolitan Police to avoid demonstrating on the anniversary of Hamas’ deadly 2023 raids inside Israel.
Police reported 20 arrests at Saturday’s pro-Palestinian protest in London, where many demonstrators were wearing kaffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and brandishing banners.
The level of hate directed at the Jewish community has remained at an “elevated level” since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict, the report stated.
The CST said, “There is an urgent need to reduce the amount of incitement connected to conflict overseas,” adding that “much more needs to be done across society to tackle this problem.”
Over the summer the government announced a major funding boost to support the Jewish community, promising £250 million ($335 million) over the next three years for increased policing and protection of Jewish communities.
More remains to be done, according to community organizations.
A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said the report’s publication “confirms the need for rigorous prosecution to ensure deterrence, and a whole of society approach to tackling hatred and extremism, and to stopping conflict in the Middle East being used to incite hatred against the Jewish community.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said the report was evidence that the British justice system was failing the Jewish community.
“Antisemites, emboldened by the Hamas terrorist atrocity three years ago, are not only not letting up in their hatred but are doubling down,” it said in a statement. “That’s because there is no real deterrent. So really these figures are most damning for the criminal justice system, which has utterly failed to defend British Jews.
“Even as conflict in the Middle East is easing off, antisemitism in the U.K. is rising, yet there have been essentially no changes in policing policy over the past three years and nobody has been held to account for this monumental failure,” the campaign said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Recorded anti-Jewish hate crimes rise 10% in England and Wales appeared first on The Forward.
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Hasan Piker criticizes ‘opportunists’ who accused Mamdani of genocide
(JTA) — Hasan Piker called the protesters who jeered New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at an Oct. 7 vigil last week “opportunists,” who “tarnished” the anti-Zionist movement’s message.
Piker, the popular streamer who has campaigned for a number of democratic socialist candidates, made his remarks Sunday at Jewish Currents Live, an all-day event hosted by the left-wing magazine at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Speaking on a panel titled “Can the Left Wield Power?”, he said that the protesters had “valid concerns,” including demands like firing police commissioner Jessica Tisch and disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, a heavily armed unit that often responds to protests.
But he criticized the Democratic Socialists of America — the left-wing political organization that Mamdani has called his “political home” — for not playing a bigger role in last week’s protest, which started at City Hall and later overran an Israeli peace vigil. DSA did not sponsor the protest, though some campus chapters of its student section, the Young DSA, participated.
“The DSA not being at the forefront of the anti-Zionist mobilization in New York City is what allowed that mobilization to be tarnished by opportunists, sectarians and those who actually were calling him a genocidaire — which I obviously find to be ridiculous,” Piker said, referring to protesters’ chants of “Mayor Mamdani you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
Piker, who has drawn heat for his anti-Israel views, did not comment on the Hamas iconography displayed by numerous protesters, nor the decision to crash an Oct. 7 vigil that memorialized the 1,200 people killed in the Hamas-led attacks on that date in 2023, and the 74,000 Palestinians who have been killed since then, according to Gaza health ministry figures, which do not distinguish civilians from combatants.
Separately, Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by ICE last year, reportedly criticized those protesters’ “purity politics” during an event in Washington, D.C.
“You don’t have to agree with someone 100 percent — 85 percent is good,” he said, provided that the end goal is “liberating Palestine and ending the unconditional support of the United States.”
Where should Democrats draw the line?
Two Democratic congressional nominees from New York, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, appeared on a separate panel focused on Israel and the Democratic Party.
Lander is Jewish and Darializa Avila Chevalier helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment in 2024. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, moderated the panel, which also featured Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian American elected to public office in her state.
Their discussion exposed some of the gaps between Lander and Avila Chevalier, both progressives who were endorsed by Mamdani this year and who appeared in a campaign ad together alongside fellow Mamdani endorsee Claire Valdez.
Beinart asked where Democrats should draw the line on what is considered legitimate Palestinian resistance. He pointed to the pro-Palestinian protest held in New York City on Oct. 8, 2023, which Avila Chevalier attended and Lander called “abominable” at the time.
“I think international law has already drawn that line,” Avila Chevalier said, arguing that U.S. protests should target Israel, which receives U.S. support, rather than Hamas.
“We could be the biggest anti-Hamas protesters, but a protest against Hamas in the U.S. isn’t going to do anything,” Avila Chevalier said. “Because we don’t fund it. We don’t have any structural power over it, there is nothing tying us to that institution other than condemning it endlessly.”
After the event, Lander did not confirm to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency whether he had spoken about that Oct. 8 protest with Avila Chevalier.
“We have talked about these issues broadly in private, and I don’t want to characterize those conversations,” Lander told JTA. “And obviously I’ve made my feelings known in public, and I stand by them. I mean, on that day, I was in mourning.”
An attendee named Mark, 29, who declined to share his last name to avoid potential workplace complications, said he felt that Avila Chevalier “didn’t really acknowledge the criticism about perhaps disregarding loss of life; despite the power imbalance, it is lost life.”
For Lander, meanwhile, Mark said it was “politically expedient” for him to not directly address Avila Chevalier’s presence at the 2023 protest. “This is a super lefty crowd that probably would eat him alive if he went against her right now,” he said.
During the panel, Avila Chevalier repeated her call for an arms embargo against Israel while Lander stopped short of doing so, consistent with his statements in the past that Israel should be able to buy defensive ware. Both said Congress must pass the Block the Bombs Act and vote to suspend the sale of offensive U.S. military weapons to Israel. Lander was the only speaker on stage who advocated for a two-state solution in the region.
Beinart asked Romman about Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Democratic senator running for reelection in her state, and how she views his stance on Palestine. She said she was pleased that both Georgia senators have been consistently voting in favor of Bernie Sanders’ resolution to block arms sales to Israel, but added that “in terms of leading, in terms of rhetoric, there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
“We’ll get everyone to where we need them to be eventually,” she said.
‘The bund is back in town’
The Jewish Labor Bund — the early 20th-century socialist movement that fought against Bolshevism, Nazism and Zionism — came up at numerous points on Sunday. One attendee doled out fliers with a website URL and the message, “Tell your bubbe the bund is back in town.” It was also a subject of a conversation that featured Molly Crabapple, whose 2026 book “Here Where We Live is Our Country” focuses on the Bund.
Arlene Geiger, an Upper West Sider and longtime activist, told JTA that she related to those conversations.
“My connection to Judaism is not to Israel, it never has been. It’s more to Eastern Europe and the Bund, so that spoke to me,” Geiger said.
Mark, who is from New Jersey, said he doesn’t come from a “staunchly pro-Zionist” family, but that he has a new interest in leftist Jewish spaces since realizing that he could no longer comfortably distance himself from the issue of Israel, which he believes is committing a genocide.
“It’s just an education for me to be immersed in this kind of space,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hasan Piker criticizes ‘opportunists’ who accused Mamdani of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
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In Israel, boy killed, hikers injured, after suspected Hezbollah cluster bomb detonates
(JTA) — An explosion during a school hiking trip killed a boy about 14 years old on Monday and injured 24 others in northern Israel, Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, said.
Rescue teams were dispatched to the scene, and the injured were evacuated to hospitals in northern Israel.
“An initial investigation by IDF forces at the site indicates that it was likely a cluster bomb belonging to the Hezbollah terror organization that had been left in the area and exploded,” the military said in a statement.
“The injured were scattered along the route, some trying to help their wounded friends,” explained David Radko, an MDA medic who said he was the first to arrive on the scene. “Despite the horrific scenes and distress, the injured cooperated with me exceptionally well. Everyone tried to help their friends as much as they could. Some even applied tourniquets to their friends to stop the bleeding.”
Police Commissioner Danny Levy visited the scene and said authorities may ban similar school trips in the near future. “We need to examine whether we are putting students at risk by allowing them to go on these trips,” he said.
Tamir Douadi, a resident of Kibbutz Manara, described the scene in a voice cracking with emotion to Channel 12: “Look, they’re young people, children. You see them sitting there like that, holding their friends.”
The object exploded “in the hands” of one of the schoolchildren, Comm. Meir Eliyahu, commander of the Israel Police’s Northern District told reporters at the scene.
Orly Ben Simon, an MDA paramedic, said personnel identified several people with injuries of varying severity, including a 14-year-old boy who was unconscious and in critical condition. “We immediately began prolonged and intensive resuscitation efforts. Unfortunately, his injuries were critical, and we had to pronounce him dead at the scene,” she said in a statement provided by the MDA.
She added that medical teams treated two teenagers who were seriously injured, as well as other injured people who were able to walk.
In an initial statement, the Ma’alot-Tarshiha municipality said the explosion occurred during an annual hiking trip by students from the ORT Ma’alot religious high school, located in the mixed Jewish-Arab town, about five miles from the Lebanese border. The entire area has come under heavy fire from Hezbollah since Oct. 7, 2023, and some of the munitions have failed to detonate.
MDA said the injured included 22 teenagers and two adults in their 50s. Two of the injured were in serious condition and 10 were in moderate condition. They were evacuated by ambulance and helicopter to hospitals in Haifa, Safed and Nahariya.
Israel’s Education Ministry described the incident as “extremely serious.” According to the ministry, the trip was properly approved in accordance with established procedures. Ma’alot-Tarshiha Mayor Moti Ben David told Israeli media that the route was a popular hiking trail.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post In Israel, boy killed, hikers injured, after suspected Hezbollah cluster bomb detonates appeared first on The Forward.
