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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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Did this field trip to a mosque violate the First Amendment? A group of Palo Alto parents think so.
A group of Jewish, Hindu and Zoroastrian parents and students are suing a California school district, alleging that a high school program’s field trip to a mosque — and no other houses of worship — violated the First Amendment.
The suit, brought forth by Community Members for Religious Neutrality in Public Schools – San Francisco Bay Area, focuses on two trips that were part of a social justice program at Palo Alto High School.
According to the complaint filed in the Northern District of California on August 7: “The district failed to maintain religious neutrality, failed to ensure equal treatment among faiths, failed to protect student privacy and failed to vet, supervise, and monitor religiously divisive outside speakers during the school-sponsored event.”
Community Members for Religious Neutrality in Public Schools nor the Palo Alto Unified School District immediately responded to requests for comment.
The trip was part of Palo Alto High’s Social Justice Pathway, where according to a promotional video, students in 10th through 12th grades take English and history courses “through a social justice lens rather than the standard analytical lens, where facts and dates are memorized.” Palo Alto High started the program in 2014.
Field trips around the Bay Area are a hallmark of the program, including travels to Angel Island, where many Asian immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the early 20th century, and to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Students also have heard from a variety of speakers, including a Holocaust survivor and a Cambodian refugee.
The field trips to the mosque happened in 2022 and 2025. The plaintiffs include three Jewish Palo Alto High students, at least one of whom took part in the Social Justice Pathway.
The parent plaintiffs allege that the school had not fully informed them that their children were going to participate in “religiously inflected activity.”
According to the complaint, female students were encouraged to observe the customary dress code of wearing head coverings inside the mosque. They also observed a midday prayer, interacted with participants of a Quran memorization program, received Qurans as gifts and were “taught that Islam, in particular, promotes social justice,” the suit says.
“[The plaintiffs] belong to religious traditions that practice social justice,” the suit says. “The government’s endorsement of Islam in particular as a social justice faith denigrates their respective traditions and their identities as members of faith communities due equal treatment and appreciation within the District, State and country.”
The plaintiffs allege that the visit violated the First Amendment, since the public school was promoting a specific religion, and the 14th amendment, for elevating one religion over others.
A student at Palo Alto High who is part of the Social Justice Pathway disagreed, describing it as part of a broader religion unit.
“There was never a point on this trip where I felt in any way that the mosque or the school was trying to even suggest conversion,” he wrote in an Instagram comment on a local news post about the lawsuit. “The goal was obvious to us: Learn about an underrepresented religion present in our community.”
But plaintiffs also objected to the history of one of the speakers. Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who has faced allegations of antisemitism.
In 2019, Billoo was removed from the board of the Women’s March for past remarks she had made. She faced criticism for a 2021 Facebook post, where she warned against “polite zionists” like Hilllel and the Jewish federations, saying “they are not your friends.” A tweet of hers from October 7, 2023, following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks against Israel, also has faced scrutiny: “Pray for Gaza. We are witnessing decolonization,” she wrote.
In an emailed statement to the Forward, Billoo wrote, “Public schools have an obligation to remain neutral toward religion, but neutrality does not mean shielding students from learning about religion or religious communities.”
“Visiting a mosque, observing Muslims practice their faith, or learning about Islam is not the same as being compelled to practice Islam,” she wrote. “We are concerned that this lawsuit risks turning ordinary engagement with Islam and Muslims into something suspicious and could have a chilling effect on educators who want their students to learn about the diverse communities around them.”
But plaintiffs said allowing Billoo to speak with the students demonstrated negligence on the part of the school.
“Ms. Billoo was allowed unfettered access to students to advocate personal religious and political views without balancing perspective or adequate supervision.”
The school also allowed photos of the high schoolers to be taken at the event without parents’ permission, the suit says.
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Remains of last Israeli soldier missing from First Lebanon War’s Sultan Yacoub battle found
(JTA) — The remains of Yehuda Katz, the last Israeli soldier still missing from the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub during the First Lebanon War, have been recovered after 44 years, the Israeli military said Tuesday, bringing to a close one of the country’s longest-running missing soldier cases.
Katz, a 22-year-old tank gunner and yeshiva student who disappeared just 10 days before he was due to complete his military service, was one of three soldiers whose fate was unknown for decades after Israeli forces became trapped by Syrian troops in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on June 11, 1982.
Twenty Israeli soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded in the battle, with six initially listed as missing. Three were later returned or confirmed dead, leaving Katz, Zachary Baumel and Zvi Feldman as the only soldiers whose fate were unknown. The remains of Baumel and Feldman were recovered in separate operations in 2019 and 2025.
Katz’s remains were located during a special overnight operation carried out by the IDF in cooperation with Mossad and based on intelligence obtained in recent months. They were returned to Israel and military representatives informed Katz’s family of the discovery Tuesday morning.
For the soldiers who survived Sultan Yacoub, the news ended a wait that had followed them for much of their lives.
Avi Rath, who fought alongside Katz, said the unresolved fate of his comrade had stayed with him for decades. “The look on the family’s faces stays with you your entire life, a look that says, ‘You didn’t finish the job,’” Rath said in an interview on Tuesday with KAN public radio’s “Kalman Liberman” program. “Thank God, this closes a circle and resolves some of the uncertainty, but there is also great pain. It weighs on our conscience.”
Katz had studied in the Hesder program at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, combining Torah study with military service. According to the yeshiva, he slept barely four hours a night while immersed in his studies. He had planned to become a rabbi and teach at a yeshiva after completing his military service.
On the night before the battle, Katz gathered fellow soldiers around him and taught them Maimonides’ laws governing the conduct of Jewish soldiers in battle, the yeshiva said on its website. He then led them in singing Psalm 23, including the verse about walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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What Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon has said about Israel and Gaza
Angie Nixon is not the first progressive and outspoken critic of Israel to win a major-party nomination for statewide office. But her upset victory in Florida’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate makes her the first member of the Democratic Socialists of America to do so.
The milestone comes after a string of victories for DSA-backed insurgents in local and congressional races from New York and New Jersey to Pennsylvania and Colorado since 2025, with criticism of Israel and the war in Gaza being central issues in many of their campaigns.
Nixon did not make Israel the centerpiece of her Senate campaign, which focused heavily on affordability, health care and other economic issues. But on Israel and Gaza, her record puts her broadly in line with the DSA’s approach.
Appearing on Morning Joe the morning after her victory, Nixon called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal who needs to answer to his crimes” and said she opposed sending Israel U.S. money or weapons “at this moment.”
Nixon will face Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody in November. Moody, who was appointed to the Senate after Marco Rubio became secretary of state, is considered a favorite in a state that shifted toward Republicans in recent elections. A University of North Florida poll released in July showed Moody leading Nixon 50% to 42%.
A state representative from Jacksonville, Nixon said after her victory that her formal ties to the DSA are new. In an interview with The Contrarian on Wednesday, she said she had “just recently joined the DSA because I was asked.”
The affiliation connects Nixon to a national organization that has made Palestinian advocacy a major part of its political identity. The DSA describes Palestinian liberation as an “essential part” of its broader socialist struggle. Its national co-chair, Megan Romer, recently said the group’s goal is “a free Palestine with a capital in Jerusalem,” which she acknowledged could be understood as support for a one-state solution.
The organization has at times enforced that position aggressively even with its own elected officials. In 2021, DSA members debated expelling then-U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a one-term New York Democrat, after he traveled to Israel with J Street, the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group, met with then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and voted for funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. The national organization ultimately decided against expelling him, while publicly criticizing his actions.
What Nixon has said on Israel and the Palestinians
Long before her upset Senate victory and DSA affiliation, Nixon had become one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in the Florida Legislature.
In November 2023, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, Nixon introduced a resolution calling on the Biden administration to push for “an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.”
The resolution sparked a heated and highly emotional debate in the Florida House, according to the Florida Phoenix. Nixon was largely isolated, with Republicans and members of her own party speaking against the measure and turning their backs on her. Nixon cried as she defended the resolution.
“Many of my colleagues have stated that folks are fearful of another massacre occurring to the Jewish people,” Nixon said. “Well, guess what? A massacre is occurring now.”
The Florida House ultimately rejected it 104-2.
In May 2024, Nixon joined pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of North Florida, telling students she was “in awe” of their generation. She later said she wanted the protesters to know that elected officials supported them and that they were “on the right side of history.”
In the campaign for Senate, her official foreign-policy platform called for ending unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, which she said had “fueled a genocide in Palestine.” She advocated for ending U.S. support for Israeli settlements and creating a path to Palestinian self-determination through the United Nations Security Council.
Jewish Insider reported that Rick Stark, chair of the Florida Democratic Jewish Caucus, said that during a Zoom meeting with the group, Nixon did not give a clear answer when asked whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He also said Nixon was unfamiliar with the meaning of the slogan “from the river to the sea,” but told participants that Palestinian friends had said it was not a call for Israel’s destruction.
Last month, Nixon said in an interview with WMNF Radio that she would have voted for a House amendment to end the $3.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel. The amendment, introduced by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a fierce critic of Israel who lost his Republican primary in May, received support from 103 of 212 House Democrats.
In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program Wednesday, the hosts asked Nixon what she would tell Jewish voters concerned about her position on the conflict. “We need to make sure that we’re putting Americans first before we go ahead and start sending money or military aid to any country outside of the U.S.,” Nixon said.
Pressed specifically on whether that meant cutting off all military aid to Israel, Nixon said: “At this time, I believe what’s happening over in Israel and in Palestine is not good for Israelis or Palestinians. And I do not support sending any money or any weapons to Israel at this moment.”
The post What Florida Senate nominee Angie Nixon has said about Israel and Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
