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Prominent NYC rabbi urges congregants to vote against Zohran Mamdani in Shabbat sermon
(JTA) — This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, JTA’s daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 15 days to the election.
🗣 Rabbis speak out
- Two leading New York rabbis are using their pulpits to condemn Zohran Mamdani as he holds onto a commanding lead in the last weeks of the race.
- Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who heads the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, decried the frontrunner in a speech to his congregation on Shabbat. “I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community,” he said, citing Mamdani’s views of Israel and Zionism.
- Cosgrove also urged his congregants to convince their Jewish friends and family to vote against Mamdani. He said Jewish New Yorkers should “prioritize their Jewish selves” by voting based on their connection to Israel, rather than local issues such as affordability.
- “As Jews, ahavat Israel — love of Israel — does take precedence over other loves,” said Cosgrove.
- Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who leads the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, addressed Mamdani in his own video that was shared with his congregation days earlier.
- Hirsch said Mamdani’s “ideological commitments” against Israel served to “delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility towards Judaism and Jews.” He told Mamdani, “I urge you to reconsider your long-held views of Israel’s right to exist.”
- Hirsch also said, “Most Jews are deeply offended by your ongoing accusations of Israeli genocide.” Four in 10 American Jews said they believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to a Washington Post poll conducted in early September.
- A Fox News survey last week found that Jews were closely split between Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, who is polling a distant second in the race.
- Other New York rabbis have been plagued by the question of whether to endorse in this election, since the IRS reversed a decades-long policy that barred endorsements from the pulpit. Hirsch previously told our reporter Grace Gilson that he was alarmed by Mamdani but would not make an endorsement, warning fellow clergy that “it diminishes us if we are perceived as being in a partisan camp.”
📣 Sliwa called on to quit
- Curtis Sliwa faced calls to quit the race during a meeting at Fifth Avenue Synagogue on Sunday, where our reporter Joseph Strauss saw attendees pleading with the Republican nominee who is polling third. The day before, on Shabbat, he visited The Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side. Later in the day, he headed to Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where Mamdani spoke last week.
- The Fifth Avenue Synagogue crowd was not unanimously anti-Sliwa, but they convened with the purpose of stopping Mamdani’s rise. One person accused Sliwa of being a “spoiler.”
- “We all love you, we want you to win,” said synagogue president Jacob Gold, who stood by Sliwa at the podium. “But you’re at 15%, and Cuomo’s at what percent? And Mamdani’s at what percent?” Gold said that he wanted Sliwa to “merge with Cuomo.”
- Cuomo himself urged Sliwa to drop out after the first general election debate on Thursday, during which he fielded barbs from both Sliwa and Mamdani.
- “There is no Curtis as a candidate. There’s Curtis as a spoiler,” Cuomo said to conservative Jewish radio host Sid Rosenberg on Friday. “If Curtis is not in the race, I win. And that’s a choice for Republicans. Do you vote for Curtis so you can say ‘I voted Republican’ and wind up electing Mamdani? Or do you vote for me?”
- Sliwa responded to his detractors, including Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman, in an interview with Jewish YouTuber Nate Friedman. He called Ackman a “jerk” who did not understand politics or live in New York City. To Cuomo, he said, “Get your own votes.”
🎂 Mamdani turns 34
- Mamdani celebrated his birthday on Saturday, taking the chance to address voters who express concerns about his age.
- “You’re worried about a 33-year-old becoming mayor of New York City,” he said in a video. “And I want you to know, I hear you. That’s why this weekend I’ll be making a change. I’m turning 34, and I’m committing that for every single day from here on out, I will grow older.”
- Mamdani asked supporters to mark his birthday by signing up for a canvassing shift. “The best gift is to beat Andrew Cuomo a second time,” he said.
👀 Trump watch
- President Trump continues to muse about the race. But after saying that Mamdani “hates Jewish people” and reiterating his threats to cut federal funding from New York under a Mayor Mamdani last week, he suggested over the weekend that the election result wouldn’t make much difference to him.
- “Would I rather have a Democrat than a communist? Barely. They’re almost becoming the same thing,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday morning. “I don’t know that I’m going to get involved.”
The post Prominent NYC rabbi urges congregants to vote against Zohran Mamdani in Shabbat sermon appeared first on The Forward.
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BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage
(JTA) — The head of BBC and its top news executive have quit amid allegations that the network misled viewers in coverage of President Donald Trump and the Gaza war.
The BBC’s director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness resigned on Sunday after a leaked report by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser to the broadcaster, who accused it of anti-Trump and anti-Israel bias. The memo was published in the right-leaning British newspaper The Telegraph last week.
Prescott accused the BBC of selectively splicing footage of Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in an episode of its documentary show “Panorama.” He said the show patched together sections of the remarks to suggest that Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
These words came from two parts of the speech spoken almost an hour apart, omitting a part in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” After Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, in which he said the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, his supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol.
Prescott’s memo accused BBC Arabic of choosing to “minimize Israeli suffering” to “paint Israel as the aggressor” in Gaza. The BBC previously faced backlash over failing to identify the narrator of a Gaza documentary as the son of a Hamas government official, along with using a contributor who said on social media that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did.” The network was also criticized for livestreaming a Glastonbury performance of the punk group Bob Vylan that included chants of “Death to the IDF.”
The BBC has been scrutinized from all political sides over its coverage of Israel and Gaza. Presenter David Yelland called the resignations of Davie and Turness a “coup” by members of the BBC Board who had “systematically undermined” Davie’s team.
Some insiders have raised concerns about Prescott’s friendship with Robbie Gibb, a member of the BBC board who played a key role in Prescott’s appointment as BBC adviser, according to The Guardian. Gibb was the director of communications for former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May between 2017 and 2019.
Both Trump and the Israeli government applauded the resignations in social media statements.
Israel’s foreign ministry said Davie’s resignation “underscores the deep-seated bias that has long characterised the BBC’s coverage of Israel” but said the problem was not limited to the broadcaster.
“Far too many news outlets are promoting politics disguised as facts, amplifying Hamas’s fake campaigns,” it tweeted. “The time has come for real accountability to restore integrity, fair and factual journalism.”
The chair of the BBC Board, Samir Shah, is expected to apologize for the editing of Trump’s speech on Monday, in a move meant to blunt potential damage to the U.K.-U.S. relationship.
The post BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas returns remains of hostage held for 11 years as attention deepens around postwar planning
(JTA) — Hamas returned the remains of Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier it murdered and kidnapped in 2014, to Israel on Sunday, bringing the number of hostages whose remains it still holds in Gaza to four.
All four were killed when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The number has shrunk steadily in recent days as Hamas has repatriated the remains of half a dozen hostages, including Itay Chen, the final American-Israeli held in Gaza.
The repatriations have come as Hamas has faced steep pressure, including from U.S. President Donald Trump, to uphold its end of the ceasefire deal that ended fighting in Gaza last month. As part of the deal, Hamas agreed to return all living and deceased hostages immediately, but while 20 living hostages were freed at one time last month, the group has located and released deceased hostages more slowly, sometimes with snafus that have drawn allegations of ceasefire violations.
Now, with the central demand of the first phase nearly satisfied, attention is increasingly turning to what happens next in Gaza, which has effectively been partitioned between areas under Israeli control and areas under Hamas control.
Trump’s plan calls for Israel to fully withdraw over time, but the United States has so far fallen short of convening an “International Stabilization Force” that would run Gaza and allow for its reconstruction. Israel has rejected Turkish participation and on Monday, the United Arab Emirates announced that it had ruled out joining for now.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law who has played a key role in negotiations toward ending the war, is back in Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. No details of their meeting were immediately disclosed.
Trump, meanwhile, is meeting with a different foreign leader in Washington on Monday — Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa. Al-Sharaa, who seized power last year, has sought to project a moderate profile after rising to prominence as an Islamist leader and has permitted Jews and representatives of the Syrian Jewish diaspora to visit Syria, though the tiny number of local Jews remaining say they are not optimistic about a resurgence of their once-mighty community.
Trump has suggested that Syria could join the Abraham Accords, normalization deals with Israel that expanded last week to include Kazakhstan, but that possibility feels far off.
The post Hamas returns remains of hostage held for 11 years as attention deepens around postwar planning appeared first on The Forward.
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BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage
The head of BBC and its top news executive have quit amid allegations that the network misled viewers in coverage of President Donald Trump and the Gaza war.
The BBC’s director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness resigned on Sunday after a leaked report by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser to the broadcaster, who accused it of anti-Trump and anti-Israel bias. The memo was published in the right-leaning British newspaper The Telegraph last week.
Prescott accused the BBC of selectively splicing footage of Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in an episode of its documentary show “Panorama.” He said the show patched together sections of the remarks to suggest that Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
These words came from two parts of the speech spoken almost an hour apart, omitting a part in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” After Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, in which he said the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, his supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol.
Prescott’s memo accused BBC Arabic of choosing to “minimize Israeli suffering” to “paint Israel as the aggressor” in Gaza. The BBC previously faced backlash over failing to identify the narrator of a Gaza documentary as the son of a Hamas government official, along with using a contributor who said on social media that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did.” The network was also criticized for livestreaming a Glastonbury performance of the punk group Bob Vylan that included chants of “Death to the IDF.”
The BBC has been scrutinized from all political sides over its coverage of Israel and Gaza. Presenter David Yelland called the resignations of Davie and Turness a “coup” by members of the BBC Board who had “systematically undermined” Davie’s team.
Some insiders have raised concerns about Prescott’s friendship with Robbie Gibb, a member of the BBC board who played a key role in Prescott’s appointment as BBC adviser, according to The Guardian. Gibb was the director of communications for former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May between 2017 and 2019.
Both Trump and the Israeli government applauded the resignations in social media statements.
Israel’s foreign ministry said Davie’s resignation “underscores the deep-seated bias that has long characterised the BBC’s coverage of Israel” but said the problem was not limited to the broadcaster.
“Far too many news outlets are promoting politics disguised as facts, amplifying Hamas’s fake campaigns,” it tweeted. “The time has come for real accountability to restore integrity, fair and factual journalism.”
The chair of the BBC Board, Samir Shah, is expected to apologize for the editing of Trump’s speech on Monday, in a move meant to blunt potential damage to the U.K.-U.S. relationship.
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The post BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.