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The ICE shooting in Minneapolis shattered my Holocaust survivor father’s’ American dream
Last fall, I visited a train platform in Zbaszyn, Poland, where my father saw his parents for the last time.
There, he and his brother boarded a Kindertransport to seek refuge in England in 1940. They survived the Holocaust; my grandparents and my aunt were murdered by Nazis. The years before that separation were marked by profound betrayals by the German government, which lied to them, their neighbors and the rest of the world about the violence being enacted against them, and what their future held.
I recalled that visit early Thursday morning, as I stood in front of the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, less than a mile from Bdote — the unceded land, sacred to Minnesota’s Dakota people, where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet.
That land is where Minnesota’s earliest white settlers displaced, brutalized and killed the Dakota before building Fort Snelling, one of the first United States military outposts in the American West. Later, in 1862, the federal government set up a concentration camp in the same area. Some 1,600 Dakota were sent there, and hundreds died from disease and the harsh conditions.
Now, the thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents sent by our federal government to terrorize Minneapolis gather and stage at the Whipple Building. And yesterday, an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross left that building, traveled a couple of miles west to South Minneapolis, and murdered Renée Nicole Good.
Good, 37, was a beloved community member. I didn’t know her, but I have friends who did. Their grief is devastating.
Renee was a treasured wife, they tell me. A mom to three children. A poet, an artist, and a community caretaker.
Her unjust death is horrific. And the resonances between our federal government’s bad faith response to it, and the kinds of stories I grew up hearing about the authoritarian government under which my father was raised, are terrifying.
Within hours of Good’s killing, President Donald Trump was spreading false claims about how it happened, claiming that Good ran over the ICE agent who shot her. Multiple video analyses have shown how inaccurate his words are. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good, who was driving at the time of shooting, was engaged in “domestic terrorism.” It has been sickening to hear these leaders not only desecrate Good’s memory, but also try to weaponize it to further energize their campaign against our immigrant neighbors and loved ones.
LIke many American Jews, I was raised to believe in the American dream, and in a government that was here to represent me, care for me, and be a force for good in the world. And as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, I always knew how fragile principles of liberty and equality can be.
I have known for a long time that the U.S. government has never equally defended the lives and rights of all people — and that it has too often, as in the case of the Dakota and other Indigenous Americans, actively destroyed those lives. But amid the Trump administration’s campaign against immigrant communities, it’s the tragedy of Good’s death that has most completely shattered the vision of what my Holocaust survivor father had taught me to hope for in the U.S.
Our current federal government lies to us, and lies about us. They blur the lines between fact and fiction. They gaslight. They have specifically tried to foment discord within the Jewish community, and between us and our allies. They try to divide us because they’re afraid of the strength and power that we have when we rise up as one.
That is why we gathered at the Whipple Federal Building today to honor Good’s memory, and to protest ICE’s ongoing assault on our fellow Minnesotans. This is the place where some of our neighbors go to be detained, and never come back. Instead, they are deported — sometimes to countries where they have never before set foot — and ripped from those they love, just as my father was ripped from his parents.
As Jews, we remember our family histories not to make us fearful or to isolate ourselves, but rather to prepare us for moments just like this one. Our history is not meant to be forgotten. It is not meant to sit neatly on museum shelves or be tucked away in old family albums. We are meant to carry it. We are meant to learn from it. And we are meant to act because of it.
The post The ICE shooting in Minneapolis shattered my Holocaust survivor father’s’ American dream appeared first on The Forward.
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JD Vance refuses to disavow Tucker Carlson
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that he has “political disagreements” with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories and sparked a rift within the Republican Party.
But that won’t impact their friendship, Vance said during a press conference on Thursday at the White House.
“Everybody knows that Tucker Carlson and I are friends, and I think it’s very obvious that Tucker has said some things that I disagree with,” Vance said.
He pointed to Carlson’s criticisms of Vance’s boss, President Donald Trump, as well as Carlson’s suggestion that he would rather Democratic progressive Abdul El-Sayed win Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat than Republican Mike Rogers, as examples of where they disagree.
“Tucker is a friend despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things. And I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them,” Vance said.
Vance’s refusal to disavow Carlson comes days after he appeared in a closed-doors session in Las Vegas before hundreds of Republican Jewish Coalition members, some of whom have indicated that they would prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Vance as Trump’s successor in 2028.
His RJC appearance started and ended with standing ovations for the vice president, and he spoke about the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship and denounced antisemitism during the 35-minute conversation. He angered a number of attendees and Jewish conservatives, however, when he sidestepped a question about Carlson and other controversial right-wing podcasters.
On Thursday, a reporter asked Vance about “those who are uneasy” with his close relationship to Carlson and believe that he is avoiding addressing questions about it.
“I’m not avoiding anything,” Vance countered.
After declining to distance himself from Carlson, Vance said that his refusal to do so should be a model for how other Americans engage in discourse across lines of disagreement.
“If you have a disagreement with someone politically — even over a deeply held issue — you should still be friends with that person, because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another,” Vance said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post JD Vance refuses to disavow Tucker Carlson appeared first on The Forward.
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Jerusalem cafe bows to Haredi protests, will no longer open on Shabbat
(JTA) — Cafe Basimta, the Jerusalem coffee shop that became a flashpoint in the city’s long-running dispute over Shabbat observance, will stop opening on Saturdays beginning this weekend after two months of weekly ultra-Orthodox protests.
The cafe said Thursday that the decision was made “after prolonged deliberation and with a heavy heart,” out of a desire to lower tensions and restore calm.
Eli Birnbaum, CEO of the messianic group Jews for Jesus, which runs the cafe, called the move a “difficult and painful decision” in the statement, saying it stemmed from a responsibility to its customers, its faith and Israeli society.
“Over the past few months, the cafe has become a focal point of friction and danger, a reality that contradicts our identity as Jews who believe in Jesus and our belief in loving others, respect and bringing people closer together, even with those who oppose us,” Birnbaum said.
He thanked Israel Police, the Jerusalem municipality and those who had come to support the cafe during the protests. “We now want to return Cafe Basimta to what it was intended to be: a calm, pleasant and open place for coffee, culture and dialogue.”
The decision marks a reversal for Cafe Basimta and its operator, Yoel Ben David, who said after the first protest on July 4 that the business would continue opening on weekends despite pressure from demonstrators. By late July, Ben David told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the protests had actually helped business financially, but added: “Me and the staff, we don’t love it. We’d all love it to just chill out.”
Basimta opened earlier this summer in Jerusalem’s central Nahlaot neighborhood, near the Mahane Yehuda market. It later emerged that the cafe was operated by Jews for Jesus, a missionary organization whose members identify as Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah.
The demonstrations began July 4 and continued for nine consecutive Saturdays through Aug. 29. At the first protest, dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators, many of them minors, surrounded the cafe, banged on its windows and overturned tables, according to staff and video from the scene.
Later protests saw demonstrators break through police barricades and try to approach the cafe, while a bag containing feces was thrown at its entrance on another weekend. In August, a woman was accused of putting glue in the front-door lock, delaying the cafe’s opening.
Supporters meanwhile began turning up each Saturday to patronize the cafe, at times forming long lines outside, while police deployed officers and barricades to separate the two sides. Politicians including Yisrael Beytenu Chairman and former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Democrats Chairman Yair Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff, also visited or backed supporters of the cafe.
Golan denounced Thursday’s decision as the result of “haredi terror,” saying weeks of violence, demonstrations and threats had ultimately forced the cafe to give in. Liberman said the closure showed growing religious coercion, writing on X that in “Israel 2026,” drinking coffee on Shabbat was forbidden while “hating, attacking and rioting on Shabbat was permitted.”
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Adir Schwartz, who heads the pluralist Hitorerut municipal faction, also criticized the closure. Hitorerut said it was examining ways to operate a cafe on Saturdays in response to Basimta’s closure.
A spokesperson for Jews for Jesus told JTA that any such initiative was unrelated to Basimta or the organization.
Basimta’s ties to Jews for Jesus have also prompted a separate campaign against the cafe by anti-missionary activists. Rabbi Binyamin Vulcan, who heads the counter-missionary activities of Or LeAchim, told JTA in July that the organization was planning a weekday demonstration focused specifically on the cafe’s connection to Jews for Jesus and was seeking to have it closed through municipal channels.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jerusalem cafe bows to Haredi protests, will no longer open on Shabbat appeared first on The Forward.
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Spain’s Jewish federation reports over 200 antisemitic incidents in 2025
(JTA) —
MADRID — Spain’s Jewish umbrella organization and a watchdog group have reported that antisemitic incidents rose 14.5% in 2025, warning that hatred was being “normalized.”
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) recorded 221 antisemitic incidents in Spain last year, up from 193 in 2024, in a report released Wednesday together with the Movement Against Intolerance (MCI), a Spanish human rights group. Spain is home to an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 Jews.
The trend matches an increase in hate incidents documented by the Spanish government. Spain’s Interior Ministry said in June that Jews were targeted in 69 hate crimes and incidents in 2025, jumping from 37 in 2024. Data from the Interior Ministry reflects crimes that are formally reported or detected by police, while the FCJE monitors incidents collected from community members, social media and other sources.
The new report came from the Observatory of Antisemitism, a joint initiative by the FCJE and the MCI to track antisemitism since Hamas’s attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing assault in Gaza. The initiative has followed incidents such as the vandalism of Holocaust memorials with swastikas, the desecration of Jewish graves and the individual targeting of Jews, including a group of French tourists who were harassed and spat on in July while leaving a synagogue in Barcelona.
“Since October 7, 2023, Spanish Jews have had to go to our gathering places with special security measures,” FCJE president David Obadía said in a statement. “Our children are the only ones who go to school with a police presence, and insults and discrimination are part of our reality practically every day.”
María Royo, a spokesperson for the FCJE, blamed “campaigns against Israel” for the rise in antisemitic incidents. She told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that some groups, saying Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, also “blame all Jews.”
“The security forces are doing everything within their power, but the government, politicians, media and opinion leaders could be much more rigorous and careful to prevent this situation,” said Royo.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is among Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel, which he says has committed genocide. The Israeli government has repeatedly said the Spanish government is antisemitic, an accusation that Spain strongly rejects.
Esteban Ibarra, the president of the MCI, said in a statement that antisemitism should be distinguished from debates about Israel.
“Antisemitism is not an opinion or a political disagreement: it is a form of hatred and discrimination against Jews,” said Ibarra. “When it is tolerated, normalized or minimized, coexistence deteriorates and democracy is weakened.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Spain’s Jewish federation reports over 200 antisemitic incidents in 2025 appeared first on The Forward.
