Romanian soldiers walk after laying a wreath during ceremonies at a Holocaust memorial in Bucharest, Oct. 8, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel

Like many Central and Eastern European countries that regained independence after the fall of Communism, Romania was only able to confront its Holocaust-era past half a century after those crimes took place. It has made great strides to tackle the Holocaust denial and antisemitism that was once a prominent feature of its post-war landscape.

However, the emergence of the right-wing, populist, and openly antisemitic AUR Party threatens to undo this progress.

The chairman of the party, George Simion, has announced plans to visit Washington, DC, this week. He and his colleagues will seek meetings with members of Congress and also hope to be received by the Trump administration.

Simion will claim to be the voice of a European “patriotic party,” and argue that legislation adopted by the Romanian Parliament and upheld by the country’s Constitutional Court unfairly muzzles his free speech rights. He may even give lip service to the fight against antisemitism, aware that it is a priority for President Trump.

But no one should be deceived.

The AUR party members in Parliament have opposed all legislation that promotes Holocaust education and penalizes antisemitic and other hate crimes.

They have even physically attacked and intimidated MP Silviu Vexler, President of the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities, in the halls of Parliament, while leveling antisemitic slurs, with shouts of “kike,” “traitor,” and “to the gas.” They promote the legacy of the mass murderer of Jews during the Holocaust.

Such wanton hatred and denial of history stands in stark contrast to the important work done by an international historical commission appointed in 2004 by then-Romanian President Ion Iliescu and chaired by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. The commission’s report detailed the deaths of 280,000–380,000 Jews carried out by Romanian authorities, along with the participation of legionnaire and Iron Guard fascist movements.

I had the honor of being a member of that commission, and in the two decades since that report was issued, Romania has made considerable progress in Holocaust research and education, and in the adoption of legislation to address antisemitism and Holocaust denial. It was under the leadership of Romania, when the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) adopted the Working Definition of Antisemitism in 2016, now an indispensable guidance tool endorsed by more than 45 nations.

In October 2024, Romania played host to an international conference focused on Holocaust education and distortion, and offered its own good practices as examples for other governments to replicate.

The AUR wants to reverse these positive developments. It has declared the Holocaust in Romania to be a “minor issue,” and opposed including Holocaust education in the school curricula. It maintains close relations with far-right networks inspired by the fascist-era Iron Guard movement. It has consistently denied the responsibility of Romania’s wartime leader, Ion Antonescu, for the murder of Romanian Jews, despite the documentation provided by the Wiesel Commission. In fact, one of its leaders has even insisted that Wiesel himself was an “imposter” who had never actually been at Auschwitz.

Any meetings will be used by Simion and his colleagues back home to claim American support for their agenda. And that will only bolster those who are restoring the reputation of fascist-era leaders and fanning the flames of antisemitism.

Should Simion get the meetings he seeks with Trump administration officials and Members of Congress, it’s critical that he hear a clear and critical message calling on him to take verifiable steps to reform his party. These should include supporting Holocaust education and legal measures to prosecute antisemitic incidents.

He should be urged to support the Romanian government’s endorsement of the (US State Department) Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism and to embrace the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. And he should be asked to remove from party leadership those individuals who have shown themselves to be unapologetic antisemites and to apologize to Silviu Vexler for their attacks on him and the Jewish community.

Optimally, these steps should be taken before any meeting is granted. But regardless of the timing, there should be no ambiguity in the message that is delivered. 

Rabbi Andrew Baker is Director, International Jewish Affairs, at American Jewish Committee.

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump is interviewed by Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland (not pictured) during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

Donald Trump wants to create peace in Gaza. He wants headlines that frame him as a historic dealmaker and a global statesman. But behind the carefully staged announcements and the language of “stability” and “prosperity,” Trump’s newly assembled Gaza peace structure reveals a misplaced trust in failed diplomatic elites, and fails to accurately account for Israel’s security realities.

The appointment of Sigrid Kaag to Trump’s Gaza Executive Board is emblematic of this problem.

Kaag is frequently portrayed as an experienced, neutral technocrat. Her defenders point to decades of United Nations service and her time as a Dutch minister as proof of professionalism. Yet in the Middle East, neutrality is not an abstract virtue; it has concrete consequences. And the institutional culture in which Kaag built her career has consistently betrayed Israel, while empowering those who undermine it.

This is not a personal attack. It is a political assessment.

For decades, the United Nations has approached the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a deeply flawed lens. Israel is treated as a permanent suspect, the Palestinian leadership as a perpetual victim, and terrorism as an unfortunate but contextualized byproduct of “despair.”

This framework did not begin with Kaag, but she rose within it, succeeded within it, and continues to represent it.

That same UN ecosystem once elevated Yasser Arafat from terrorist mastermind to international statesman, without demanding that he dismantle the machinery of violence. The results were catastrophic: waves of suicide bombings, incitement, and a peace process that collapsed under the weight of its own dishonesty.

The lesson should have been clear. Instead, the same thinking persists.

Figures like Kaag emphasize humanitarian access, reconstruction, and governance mechanisms while consistently avoiding the core issue: Gaza’s problems are not caused by a lack of international oversight, but by the systematic indoctrination of hatred and the glorification of violence. Without confronting that reality, no amount of technocratic management will bring peace.

Donald Trump’s political history shows a consistent pattern at times: grand gestures, dramatic announcements, and a hunger for recognition that can override strategic depth.

The Gaza peace plan features these elements, and that’s a bad omen for the future of peace in the region.

Rather than anchoring Gaza’s future in hard security guarantees for Israel, clear red lines against terror financing, and ideological deradicalization, Trump has surrounded himself with figures whose records suggest the opposite: a preference for “balance,” moral equivalence, and pressure on Israel to accommodate the unacceptable.

Unfortunately, it seems that Gaza is being used as a stage, not treated as a powder keg.

And Israel will pay the price if this experiment fails.

The composition of Trump’s Gaza councils should alarm anyone who understands the region. UN veterans, European moral arbiters, and political figures with long histories of criticizing Israel’s self-defense now sit at the table defining “peace.”

What is absent is just as telling as what is present.

There is no serious focus on dismantling terror ideology. No insistence on ending incitement. No recognition that Gaza’s suffering is directly linked to Hamas’ strategy of embedding itself within civilian infrastructure, and radicalizing the population against Israel.

Instead, Israel is once again expected to prove restraint, flexibility, and goodwill, while its enemies are treated as stakeholders rather than threats.

Trump’s defenders will argue that engagement is better than isolation, and that new structures are better than stalemate. But engagement without moral clarity is not diplomacy. It is delusion.

By empowering figures whose careers were shaped by institutions that consistently misinterpret Palestinian politics and excuse extremist behavior, Trump is not stabilizing Gaza. He is laying the groundwork for the next crisis.

Trump should prioritize hard truths over flattering headlines. He should reject failed diplomatic paradigms instead of recycling them. And he should stop mistaking international applause for strategic success.

Peace built on denial is not peace at all.

It is merely the pause before the next war.

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.

Smoldered remains of the Beth Israel Congregation’s library in Jackson, Mississippi. Photo: Screenshot.

Six months ago, I stood on the grounds of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi. I observed a sign that read in bold, “Bombings In Jewish Community.”

I was curious about the history, so I leaned in and read further: “In 1967, Beth Israel broke ground for a new synagogue on Old Canton Road. The first service was held that March. Six months later, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the new synagogue.”

I have visited synagogues across the United States, and spent years studying Jewish history through firsthand experiences visiting sanctuaries, cemeteries, memorials, and communities that thrived in places many already forget that Jews ever lived in.

So coming across a sign of a synagogue being attacked in the 1960s felt horrifying, but not unfamiliar. American Jewish history knows well what living under the shadows of hate feels like — especially in those years when Jews were accused by extremists of “masterminding a plot to ruin America.”

That led to the synagogue bombings of the late 1950s, where justice never arrived in many of the cases.

After reading that sign, I walked the garden of the Beth Israel Congregation, which has a Holocaust memorial formed from seven glass structures, each representing a part of the Holocaust. One of them depicts the Ghetto, another one Kristallnacht. One that caught my eye, was for the victims who wore striped clothes. Another one depicts the book burnings. I found myself thinking of my own family history, as all of my great-grandparents were Holocaust survivors.

And yet, I stood there grateful. Grateful to be an American Jew living freely, enjoying the unalienable rights this country promises its citizens. Grateful for raising my children in a land that, with all its flaws, has been a safe haven for Jewish life.

Still like many American Jews, I asked myself: Could another synagogue be attacked? Could our books burn again? Could this history return in a new form? And most of all, could the unthinkable become thinkable again?

Earlier this month, that question was answered — painfully.

Federal authorities say a 19-year-old admitted that he set fire to Beth Israel because of the building’s “Jewish ties.” The fire consumed portions of the building, some Torah scrolls, and memories of a defiant and historic Jewish community.

Synagogue attacks are often treated as isolated incidents. A tragedy for a few. An investigation for authorities. A bit of solidarity from some, and the news cycle moves on.

They are no longer reported as “The 1950s Synagogue Bombings,” which is how they were in the past, and even has its own dedicated Wikipedia page.

But looking back, over the past few years, multiple synagogues and Jewish centers in the United States have been targeted by fire.

Some have been prosecuted as arson, while most carried hate crime charges. In Texas, a man was charged and sentenced after admitting guilt to a hate crime and arson connected to an attempt to burn down Congregation Beth Israel in Austin. In Arizona, the Justice Department announced a hate crime charge tied to the Khal Chasidim synagogue fire in Casa Grande. In Florida, prosecutors charged a man tied to the fire at the Chabad Jewish center in Punta Gorda, stating that the man had “hatred towards Jewish people.”

But the latest attack in Jackson, Mississippi is symbolic. It’s not another one — it  is a second act by fire on the same platform, nearly 60 years apart.

We live in a faster world now — social media, constant noise, outrage, and excitement. We often skim through things that should make us stop.

We treat extremists’ behavior as news, and hateful rhetoric as theater or comedy. We rarely pause. But standing at the Beth Israel Congregation months ago, reading what happened in 1967, worrying about what could happen again and then watching my worry become a reality — has forced me to pause and ask are we living through “The 2020s Synagogue Burnings?”

American Jewry changed dramatically over the last 60 years. Jews have done very well in this country, with most still holding onto their Judaism. And yet it pains me to say that hatred did not disappear. It changed its vocabulary, its slogans, its platforms, its activists, and its camps. But the basic “Jews are the problem” is maintained. Our houses of worship are burning throughout the land.

Jew hatred travels. It mutates. Sometimes it wears the nationalism hat, other times the “social justice” hat, and other times it wears the libertarian hat. Sometimes it’s just a joke. But the line is not hard to draw when we’re willing to draw it consistently.

When leaders in our country dismiss Nazi rhetoric as “Kids being kids” and brand them as “stupid jokes” or when Jewish leaders and politicians choose to politicize antisemitism and make it a partisan tool, it sends a confusing and ultimately a harmful message.

We should be clear.

Hate towards any group of people is wrong. Hate towards Jews for being Jewish is wrong. Nazi “jokes” are not childish or stupid, they’re corrosive. Praising terror groups is evil. Harassing a visible Jew in the streets with any political chants just because you recognize a Jew and want to intimidate him — is evil.

We the Jewish community have work to do, too. We cannot let our public voice become only “look at what they did to us.” We cannot let bigots frame the story of American Jewish life as one of living in the shadows.

While speaking of and confronting bigotry, which is real and dangerous, we should also insist on our truth and shine light — that Jewish life here has contributed quietly and profoundly to the country’s civic and moral fabric, and that our contributions, just like the contributions of many others in the country, have shaped our country for the better.

And while we do not have to justify our existence and right to belong, it is still a mistake that we allow our identity in the American public to be reduced to one of victimhood.

I am a Jewish father, and a patriot of this country. And I keep returning to the most difficult question: will my children and grandchildren read this 60 years from now and conclude the same — that nothing has changed? Or will we as a collective finally do better?

The writer is an Orthodox Jewish New York businessman.