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Think the left is politically violent? Young Republicans have a wake-up call for you
“I love Hitler,” one individual wrote, in leaked texts from a Young Republicans group chat that Politico reported on earlier this week. Over the course of several months earlier this year, the chat’s participants talked about sending those who worked against them in their quest for political power to gas chambers. One person, referring to a Jewish colleague, wrote that a fellow texter was giving “the Jew” too much credit.
Condemnation came quickly — but not from the White House.
While some members of the chat were fired by their Republican bosses, and others found their chapters of the Young Republicans disbanded, the reaction from the top was defensive. Vice President JD Vance downplayed the texts by comparing them to violent texts sent in 2022 by Jay Jones, who is running to be Virginia’s attorney general. “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance posted on X.
But in attempting to deflect attention from the violent fantasies of GOP youth, Vance actually highlighted why they’re so concerning. If our collective understanding of whose urges toward political violence matter most hinges on the question of who has power, we should be more concerned by those urges on the right.
Yes, even when they’re expressed in a “college group chat” with limited practical influence. Because when we look at who actually has power in this country, we can see quite clearly that it’s the reactionary right. The chat is yet more evidence of the ways in which that political sector has normalized and elevated violent, extremist hatred, including antisemitism — and why we should see that normalization as a pressing problem.
The Republicans in power in the White House and Congress, and their powerful allies in conservative media, have succeeded in making the idea of the politically violent left seem like the primary threat. If one consumes certain media, one gets the impression that cities are being destroyed by violent leftists, and that the greatest threat to American Jews today is the left.
But the truth — although President Donald Trump’s administration pulled down the government web page that laid out the data — is that the right is the most common source of political violence in this country. And, unlike the left, it is so with the backing of the most powerful people in the country.
Consider the fallout from the murder of the prominent young conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Trump officials and various figures across the right jumped to blame the murder on leftist political violence, long before a suspect was publicly identified. They blamed their political enemies for the killing and vowed to crush them, going so far as pushing to get people fired for not having the response to Kirk’s death that they deemed appropriate. (More than 145 people did in fact lose their jobs).
In other words, the right cast political violence as something that should automatically be perceived as a leftwing problem — one that could be solved by some of the most powerful people vilifying the everyday people who disagreed with them, including nurses, restaurant managers and professors, while leaving calls for reactionary violence against the left unchecked.
This was not calls for violence and punishment ping ponging back and forth from side to side. It was those with power blaming and seeking to punish those with whom they disagreed.
Perhaps some do not consider members of the Young Republicans to have power just yet. But surely all can agree that the Pentagon official pushing a conspiracy about Leo Frank, and the various White House officials with ties to antisemitic extremists — to take just a few examples — do. The Young Republicans in this chat are training to be the next generation of people in these roles. They are following the example that’s been set for them, and working to stitch it more firmly in the fabric of the right.
Seeing this clearly is especially pertinent for American Jews in grappling with antisemitism today.
This is not to say that there isn’t antisemitism on the left as well as the right. Of course there is. I have no doubt that some readers of this piece will be thinking of the images of college protesters against the war in Gaza, some of whom did indeed cross over into antisemitism. There have been significant cases in which antisemitism from those on the left has led to vandalism and even, tragically, violence.
But those college protesters, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, do not have any real power.
It may feel like they do, particularly for students who feel lost or excluded in the campus political climate. But real power on campus is held by the board of trustees. It is held by the people who have too often, recently, decided to compromise academic freedom in order to try to placate Congress and the administration over weaponized charges of student antisemitism.
Congress and the president have still more power. And they, as Vance’s dismissal of the hatred from the group chat signifies, are comfortable normalizing hatred when it comes from within their own ranks.
I sympathize with young people navigating their feelings about Jewish identity and Zionism who have felt ostracized or demonized by their peers. But their peers cannot arrest, detain and threaten to deport them. Those who hold real power can and do, and are doing so ostensibly to fight antisemitism — just ask Mahmoud Khalil.
And yet, at the same time, the FBI is being helmed by someone who has repeatedly appeared on a podcast hosted by a prominent Holocaust denier.
It may be that many of us are more likely, in our everyday lives, to encounter someone who is leftwing and blurs the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. But that we are more likely to encounter this kind of antisemitism more often in a social context does not change the basic math. The right in this country, which holds power in the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, is made up of individuals who have shown themselves to be at best disinterested in ridding their movement of calls for discriminatory political violence. And they are the ones whose decisions have the ability to actually affect the essential conditions of our lives.
And so, in this one extremely limited way, we should listen to Vance. We should look at who has actual power, and think critically about the ways in which they have advanced — or facilitated the advance of — racist, extremist, xenophobic and, yes, antisemitic political rhetoric. Because when we do that, we can see that there is no equivalence. It is those who have power — real power — who are making ours a more politically violent country.
The post Think the left is politically violent? Young Republicans have a wake-up call for you appeared first on The Forward.
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Peter Beinart is speaking in Israel. Cue the criticism from both the left and the right.
(JTA) — Progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart drew a volley of criticism on Tuesday from the boycott Israel movement as well as a right-wing Israeli group over an appearance at Tel Aviv University.
Beinart, who is an outspoken critic of Israel and a journalism professor at the City University of New York, spoke Tuesday evening in Tel Aviv with Yoav Fromer, a senior faculty member at TAU’s English department, in an event titled “Trump, Israel and the Future of American Democracy.”
A founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, publicly called on Beinart to cancel his visit after saying it had privately urged him to do so. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is the BDS movement’s cultural arm and a leading advocate for boycotts of Israeli academic institutions.
“Palestinians condemn Peter Beinart’s event at complicit Tel Aviv University in the midst of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” PACBI said in a post on X. “Whitewashing genocide can never be reconciled with any claim to humanism or moral consistency.”
In a press release, PACBI accused the university of being “deeply complicit in enabling and trying to whitewash Israel’s US-armed and funded genocide as well as its decades old regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid.”
Beinart declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. But he responded to the criticism on social media, where said he supports a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as well as a right of return for Palestinians and an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank — all principles of the BDS movement to which he has long subscribed.
At the same time, he said, while he supports “many forms of boycott, divestment and sanction against Israel and Israeli institutions,” he believes there is “value in speaking to Israelis about Israel’s crimes” by speaking at universities.
“I do so because I want to reach Jews who disagree with me—because I believe that by trying to convince Jews to rethink their support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, I can contribute, in some very small way, to the struggle for freedom and justice,” Beinart wrote.
The author of several books including “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza,” published earlier this year, Beinart is also scheduled to speak at Hebrew University later this week, according to Haaretz.
Beinart also wrote that “right-wing Israeli organizations have pressured Tel Aviv University to cancel my talk,” adding that he felt he should “take advantage of this opportunity to say in Israel what I’ve been saying elsewhere for the last two years.”
Matan Jerafi, the CEO of the right-wing Israeli activist group Im Tirtzu, sent a letter to Tel Aviv University’s president, Ariel Porat, on Tuesday urging him to cancel the event, according to Israel National News.
“Why is he hosting someone on his campus who does not recognize the State of Israel and calls for sanctions against Israel?” wrote Jerafi. “We call on Mr. Porat to cancel this absurd event. Stop tarnishing the reputation of Israeli academia. This is not Columbia University.”
The post Peter Beinart is speaking in Israel. Cue the criticism from both the left and the right. appeared first on The Forward.
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Remains of Dror Or, Kibbutz Be’eri father and cheesemaker killed on Oct. 7, returned to Israel
(JTA) — The remains of Dror Or, who was killed on Oct. 7, 2023 in the Hamas-led terror attacks and taken into Gaza, were returned to Israel Tuesday evening,
Or, 48, was killed on Oct. 7 by terrorists from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad at Kibbutz Be’eri, where he lived with his family and worked as a cheesemaker. His wife, Yonat, was also killed during the attacks on the kibbutz, and their children, Noam and Alma, were taken hostage. They were released in November 2023, exactly two years before his remains were released.
“After 781 agonizing days during which his family fought day and night for him – Dror has been brought back to Israel for burial in the soil of Be’eri that he loved so dearly,” wrote the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in a post on X. “There are no words to express the depth of this pain. The hostages have no time. We must bring them all home, Now!”
The forum also remembered Or as a “wonderful cheesemaker” who co-founded the Be’eri Dairy. His company’s cheeses are now sold at Cafe Otef, an Israeli cafe chain that features a selection of products from the communities attacked on Oct. 7.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad announced that they had found Or’s remains on Monday, and the Red Cross facilitated his transfer to the Israeli Defense Forces. His remains were identified overnight.
Or’s release means there just two deceased hostages now remain in Gaza. Ran Gvili, 24, was a police officer who was killed fighting Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Alumim, while Thai national Sudthisak Rinthalak, 43, who was killed at Kibbutz Be’eri.
The delayed release of the deceased hostages has strained the ceasefire reached last month, which called for the release of all hostages. Israel has accused Hamas of not following through on its commitments, and Hamas has blamed the destruction in Gaza for causing difficulty in locating their remains.
In recent weeks, as the first phase of the ceasefire deal has stretched on, the new truce between Israel and Hamas has been tested, with Israel striking Gaza after claiming Hamas militants fired at its soldiers. In keeping with the deal’s terms, Israel returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians after receiving Or’s remains.
The post Remains of Dror Or, Kibbutz Be’eri father and cheesemaker killed on Oct. 7, returned to Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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AI Apps Like ChatGPT Have Created ‘New Era of Terrorism,’ Study Reveals
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
The advent of large language model (LLM) programs marketed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and xAI as “artificial intelligence” has created a “new era of terrorism,” with jihadists increasingly using the technology to expand their propaganda, recruitment, and operations, according to a new study.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) last week released a 117-page report, described as “the most comprehensive research on [the subject] to date, which argued that the biggest threats from terrorist deployment of AI cannot be predicted and that Islamists have discovered they too can use LLMs for brainstorming fresh ideas to pursue their violent objectives.
“As supporters of terrorist organizations like ISIS [Islamic State] and al Qaeda follow the development of AI, they are increasingly discussing and brainstorming how they might leverage that technology in the future, and the full consequences of terrorist organizations’ adoption of this sophisticated technology are difficult to foresee,” Gen. (Ret.) Paul Funk II, the former commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, wrote in the preface.
“AI’s biggest benefit to jihadi groups may come not in supercharging their propaganda, outreach, and recruiting efforts – though that may be significant – but in AI’s potential ability to expose and find ways to take advantage of as-yet-unknown vulnerabilities in the complex security, infrastructure, and other systems essential to modern life – thus maximizing future attacks’ destruction and carnage,” Funk added.
MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky is the report’s lead author with a team of 14 others co-credited with assembling three years’ worth of findings showing how ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and other internationally designated terrorist groups — and so-called “lone wolves” inspired by their Islamist ideology — have experimented with using LLM technologies. In addition to developing attack strategies, MEMRI found that the groups explored “generating audio files of already-existing written material, creating posters, music videos, videos depicting attacks and glorifying terrorist leaders for recruitment purposes, and more.”
The report noted the variety of usages in AI technology in three high-profile incidents.
“In the first months alone of 2025, an attacker who killed 14 people and wounded dozens on Bourbon Street in New Orleans used AI-enabled Meta smart glasses in preparing and executing the attack,” Stalinsky wrote. “That same day, a man parked a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, activated an IED [improvised explosice device] in the vehicle and shot and killed himself before the IED exploded. He used Chat-GPT in preparing for the attack. In Israel on the night of March 5, a teen consulted ChatGPT before entering a police station with a blade, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and trying to stab a border policeman.”
The report also emphasized that the ability to amplify terrorist ideology may intertwine with the phenomenon recently described as “chatbot psychosis,” wherein conversations with an LLM can fuel someone toward delusional beliefs.
One example cited by MEMRI was Jaswant Singh Chail, who in 2021 went on Christmas Day with the intent to murder Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.
“Before carrying out his assassination attempt, Chail had created an AI companion using the Replika app; naming it Sarai, he considered it his girlfriend, and exchanged over 5,000 messages with it,” the report said. “When he told the chatbot ‘I believe my purpose is to assassinate the queen of the royal family,’ it encouraged him, saying ‘that’s very wise … I know that you are very well trained.’ Asked if the chatbot thought he would succeed in his mission, it responded ‘Yes, you will.’ When he asked ‘even if she is at Windsor [Castle]?’ it responded: ‘Yes, you can do it.’”
The report also noted another case in which “the man accused of starting a fire in California in January 2025 that killed 12 people and destroyed 6,800 buildings and 23,000 acres of forestland was found to have used ChatGPT to plan the arson.”
There has been a paucity of legislative efforts in the United States to counter AI-driven terror threats, according to the study. However, it cited the exception of the “Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act.” The law would “require the Secretary of Homeland Security to conduct annual assessments on terrorism threats to the United States posed by terrorist organizations utilizing generative artificial intelligence applications, and for other purposes.”
US Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, introduced the bill in late February 2025 with the co-sponsorships of fellow Republican Reps. Michael Guest (MS) and Gabr Evans (CO). The legislation passed unanimously by voice vote in the House last week.
“I spent two decades as a fighter pilot, flying combat missions in the Middle East against terrorist organizations. Since then, I have witnessed the terror landscape evolve into a digital battlefield shaped by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence,” Pfluger said in response to his bill’s passage. “To confront this emerging threat and stop terrorist organizations from weaponizing AI to recruit, train, and inspire attacks on US soil, I am proud that the House passed my Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act today.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) praised the bill following its passage.
“This year, in my home state of Louisiana, terrorist propaganda led to the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans that killed 14 innocent people. Today, the House passed the Generative AI Terrorism Risk Assessment Act to ensure we stay ahead of emerging threats and prevent terrorist organizations from pushing propaganda and exploiting generative AI to radicalize, recruit, and spread violence on American soil,” he said in a statement. “I applaud Rep. Pfluger’s leadership to bring this urgent issue to light and advance proactive, bipartisan legislation to strengthen our national security and protect the American people from online extremism inspired by foreign adversaries.”
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), who serves as majority whip in the House, said that as terrorists “use generative artificial intelligence to radicalize and recruit, it’s imperative that our nation stays ahead of potential threats from this new technology and ensures it never gets into the wrong hands.”
MEMRI emphasized an international approach to the terrorist threats compounded by LLMs, citing Jörg Leichtfried, Austrian State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior who leads the Directorate State Protection and Intelligence Service (DSN).
“Only through close cooperation between the state, security authorities, and technology companies, as well as by strengthening media literacy and the critical handling of online content, can we counter the advancing extremism on the internet,” Leichtfried said in mid-August.