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Visiting Jerusalem, Ron DeSantis tries out his Jewish stump speech
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ron DeSantis may not have declared that he’s running for president yet, but his incipient campaign was on full display Thursday at a conference in Jerusalem, where he ran down a laundry list of issues relevant to Israel and American Jews.
Most of the Florida governor’s remarks reflected what has become Republican orthodoxy in the post-Donald Trump era: He supports Israeli West Bank settlements as well as keeping Jerusalem under full Israeli control. He wants the United States to be more aggressive toward Iran’s nuclear program. He vehemently opposes the movement to boycott Israel.
And he declined to take a position on the Israeli government’s effort to sap the Israeli Supreme Court of much of its power — which President Joe Biden has repeatedly criticized as a danger to Israeli democracy.
“We must also, in America, respect Israel’s right to make its own decisions about its own governance,” he said. “You’re a smart country. You figure it out. It shouldn’t be for us to butt into these important issues.”.
He also pushed back at claims that his legislation has led to the banning of Holocaust books in his state, calling them “fake narratives” (though multiple Holocaust books have been banned). And, at a press conference, he signed a bill that aims to penalize antisemitic harassment. He also touted a new bill that gives vouchers worth thousands of dollars to parents who send their children to private schools.
“We’ve really seen a historic migration of American Jews and Israeli Americans moving to southern Florida,” he said. “It’s really, really boomed, and I think Florida’s policies have really reinforced that.”
DeSantis, who landed in Israel yesterday, was the keynote speaker at a conference on Thursday hosted by the Jerusalem Post at the Museum of Tolerance here. He received multiple standing ovations and cheers throughout the morning. At a press conference after his speech, some of his supporters sat among the journalists and clapped at his responses.
Israel is the latest on a four-stop international trip by DeSantis, who is expected to announce later this year that he will challenge former President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. On the trip, he is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and other officials. His trip also includes stops in Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
“If there’s any announcements, those will come at the appropriate time,” he said in response to a question about his potential candidacy.
In his speech, DeSantis described his past support for Israel, advocating for the 2018 move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and, in 2019, holding a Florida cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. He also told the crowd that he baptized his children with water from the Sea of Galilee and said he put a note in the Western Wall asking God to protect Florida from hurricane season.
An affinity for the Bible also played a role in DeSantis’ position on the West Bank, which he called “disputed” rather than “occupied.” He referred to the territory by the term “Judea and Samaria,” which is the Israeli government’s standard term for the area and also emphasizes its place in the Bible. He spoke of visits to the northern West Bank settlement of Ariel, as well as to the City of David, a Jewish neighborhood and archaeological site in eastern Jerusalem.
“We visited the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria,” he said during his speech regarding a previous trip. Later, at the press conference, he said, “Those are the most historic Jewish lands there are, going back thousands and thousands of years.”
He also came out staunchly in favor of continued Israeli control of eastern Jerusalem, claiming that it is the best way to ensure religious freedom in the city. Palestinians aspire for the city’s eastern area to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
“With Israeli sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem, people have the ability to practice their religion freely,” he said. “They have the ability to visit their sites freely. That would just actually not be true if that were in other hands.”
Although his Israel policies dovetail with those of Trump, and even though Trump’s Israel ambassador, David Friedman, was at the conference, DeSantis avoided saying the former president’s name in his speech, instead referring to “the previous administration.” He did say Trump’s name once during the press conference.
Following his speech, DeSantis announced partnerships with Israeli firms to develop tech products, and portrayed his state as an inviting home for Jews. He said the state had invested millions of dollars into synagogue security as well as Holocaust education. And he signed a bill that bans projecting threatening images on buildings without permission, as well as littering with the intent to intimidate.
Florida has seen an uptick recently in white supremacist activity. The Goyim Defense League, a far-right antisemitic group, relocated there last year. In October, several public spaces in Jacksonville displayed messages promoting the antisemitic ideas of rapper Kanye West. Neo-Nazis intimidated attendees at an Orlando-area Chabad center in February, and last week, police arrested a man for a March attack on a different Florida Chabad center.
“This is going to be able to provide more tools to be able to combat antisemitic activity,” DeSantis said. ״If you have a synagogue and someone shines a swastika-like image on that, they have a right to do the image for themselves, but putting it on someone else’s property, they’re defining that in this bill as a trespass.”
The signing of that bill, and DeSantis’ contention that he supports Holocaust education, comes as legislation he signed has enabled parents in the state to pursue bans of Holocaust literature. A South Florida school district library removed a Holocaust-themed novel by Jodi Picoult in March, and this month, a high school in the state removed a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary from its shelves.
Despite those instances and other bans parents are seeking, DeSantis claimed that there was no significant campaign to ban Holocaust books. He called that allegation the “book ban hoax.”
“Those are all fake narratives,” he said. “We’ve provided curriculum transparency for parents, to make sure that the curriculum used in school is transparent and to make sure everything is age appropriate and is not conflicting with Florida standards. And so, what parents have identified unfortunately are pornographic images in books.”
The legislation, which has targeted books about sexuality and gender, is at the center of DeSantis’ campaign to limit or ban discussion of those topics in schools. The law, called the “Parental Rights in Education” bill and dubbed by critics as the “Don’t say gay” bill, also bans discussion of LGBTQ topics between kindergarten and third grade, among other measures. It is one of a series of recent state laws limiting transgender rights.
That law is also at the center of DeSantis’ feud with Disney, the state’s largest employer, which just sued the governor for allegedly punishing the company for its criticism of the law. At the press conference, DeSantis said the suit is about Disney wanting “to be able to control things without proper oversight.”
DeSantis did not refer specifically to the Anne Frank graphic novel in his remarks, and said Florida had “beefed up” Holocaust education in the state. But a Jewish ally of his who accompanied him on the trip, Republican state Rep. Randy Fine, defended banning the book, which he called the “Anne Frank pornography book.”
“I read the diary of Anne Frank many times as a kid and I don’t remember any of that stuff that they put in that graphic novel,” Fine told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And frankly that graphic novel is antisemitic. To sexualize the diary of Anne Frank in that sort of inappropriate way, it is antisemitic.”
When told that the passages, which are authentic and relate to Frank’s attraction to another girl as well as a description of her own genitalia, have been included in the diary for decades, Fine said that the graphic novel was inappropriate regardless because it depicted the passages in an image.
“It wasn’t just that the passages were in the book,” he said. “It was how they were visualized.”
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The post Visiting Jerusalem, Ron DeSantis tries out his Jewish stump speech appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Irish Jews report 143 antisemitic incidents in 6 months through a new reporting system
(JTA) — Jews in Ireland reported over 100 antisemitic incidents through a communal reporting system within six months after it launched, according to a new report.
The findings published early Monday by the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland constitute the first attempt to document antisemitic incidents in Ireland.
Irish Jews, a small community of about 2,200, reported 143 incidents between July 2025 and January 2026. These were dominated by verbal abuse, vandalism, threats, exclusion or discrimination and direct digital hate messages. Physical assault was less common, with only three instances reported.
All incidents were self-reported to the JRCI, which cannot independently investigate or adjudicate them. Ireland does not have an official state mechanism for recording antisemitic incidents, the group said. And while the police record hate crimes based on nationality, ethnicity or religion, they do not isolate crimes motivated by antisemitism.
The JRCI said that 30% of incidents were triggered by cues of Jewish identity or Israeli origin, such as a Jewish symbol, an accent or speaking Hebrew in public. Such patterns often crossed the boundaries of hate driven by nationality, ethnicity and religion.
“These dynamics cannot be adequately addressed through generalized anti-racism frameworks alone,” JRCI chair Maurice Cohen said in a statement. “Antisemitism presents distinct characteristics requiring targeted policy responses.”
Cohen called for “a dedicated, standalone national plan to combat antisemitism in Ireland.”
Of the reported incidents, 25 included “Holocaust distortion” or antisemitic conspiracy theories. These findings add to a Claims Conference survey in January, which said that 9% of Irish adults believed the Holocaust was a myth, while another 17% believed the number of Jews killed had been greatly exaggerated. Half of Irish adults did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
At the same time, a November 2025 survey by the European Commission surfaced broad recognition of antisemitism in Ireland. 41% of respondents said that antisemitism was a problem in the country and 47% said it had increased over the past five years.
At a ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, Ireland’s taoiseach (or prime minister) Micheál Martin said, “I am acutely conscious that our Jewish community here in Ireland is experiencing a growing level of antisemitism. I know that elements of our public discourse has coarsened.”
Martin has strenuously criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying at the United Nations last year that Israel committed genocide and demonstrated “an abandonment of all norms, all international rules and law.” Catherine Connolly, a socialist politician who has faced backlash for saying Hamas is “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people,” was elected as Ireland’s president in October.
Ireland has historically supported the Palestinians, a stance often linked to the country’s own history of British imperial rule, and formally recognized a Palestinian state in 2024.
In Martin’s Holocaust commemoration speech, he also condemned the most recent event to inflame the Irish Jewish community. Late last year, a proposal to rename Herzog Park in Dublin — named for Chaim Herzog, the son of the first Irish chief rabbi who became Israel’s sixth president in 1983 — was decried by Irish Jews who said it would erase Irish Jewish history. The proposal was later tabled.
Martin, who also denounced the proposal when it was active, said the Jewish community “has every right to be deeply concerned and to express that concern.”
Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization and an Irish Jew who grew up in Dublin, said the JRCI report showed a picture of antisemitic incidents that were separate from “a debate about the policies of Israel or a debate about the Palestinian state.”
“When you have discontinuation of service because somebody is heard speaking Hebrew, or has a Jewish-identifying symbol on them, that’s not about a political position on the spectrum towards Israel,” said Taylor. “That’s something that crosses into antisemitism.”
Ireland’s chief rabbi Yoni Wieder said the report reflected experiences he already heard from his congregants.
“The report does not claim that antisemitism has become a daily reality for all Jewish people in Ireland — it has not,” said Wieder. “What it does show is that antisemitism surfaces often enough, and in ordinary enough settings, that it cannot be dismissed as rare or confined to the margins of society. This means that for many, Jewish belonging in Ireland feels more fragile than it should.”
The post Irish Jews report 143 antisemitic incidents in 6 months through a new reporting system appeared first on The Forward.
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Yet again, Israel’s public shelters become sites of camaraderie amid steep danger
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Spirits ran high inside a large public bomb shelter in the Israeli coastal city of Jaffa, with loud chatter, singing and greetings of “Happy Iran Holiday,” an incongruous soundtrack to the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran and the hundreds of missiles that followed.
The room itself looked much cheerier than most shelters, with a ball pit and bright Gymboree mattresses left over from its other job in peacetime, when it doubles as a kindergarten.
A day earlier, the shelter became the accidental venue for a bar mitzvah celebration, when worshipers from the synagogue across the road took refuge there.
One particularly raucous group was made up mostly of American-Israelis from the neighborhood. One of them, Steph Graber, said she was in a good mood despite being exhausted from middle-of-the-night runs to the shelter.
“I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the adrenaline of war or something,” she said on Sunday morning. “But also it’s amazing to see the U.S. and Israel as allies working together to reduce the threat from Iran.”
Graber said she had been sheltering elsewhere but had “FOMO” about not being with her friends, so she switched over in the brief lull between sirens.
Martine Berkowitz, a friend of Graber’s, also said the community around her was what made the disruption feel manageable. Sirens kept interrupting even basic tasks, she said, including her attempt to take a shower, which she tried five times.
“My friends live on my corner, so I’m doing great. We’re all together all the time,” she said. During the last Iran flare-up in June, she didn’t have that kind of built-in circle nearby, she said. “Being alone then was really rough.”
The mood wasn’t confined to Jaffa. Across the country, similar scenes played out in shelters and spread on social media, including one from Nachlaot in Jerusalem of people singing “For the Jews There was Light and Joy,” a Purim song marking the story’s turn after Haman’s plot to kill the Jews was thwarted. The parallel to the current moment, as the Jews once again sought to topple a Persian rule who had called for their death, was not lost on anyone.
In a sprawling underground parking lot turned shelter at Dizengoff Center in central Tel Aviv, Shabbat prayers gave way to dancing and songs of “Don’t Be Afraid, Oh Israel” and “Am Yisrael Chai.” Saul Sadka, who was there, posted a video of the revelers, captioning it “joy and stoicism.”
Sadka later said he was struck by the “sense of solidarity,” and noted that it was Shabbat Zachor, when Jews read the passage about Amalek, a nemesis that they are commanded never to forget. “People seem willing to suffer for a while if it means the defeat of the IRGC,” he said.
Another bomb shelter in Tel Aviv struck a less pious tone, turning into a makeshift night club with red lights, a DJ and people dancing.
In one video, one of hundreds of comedic shelter clips circulating online, a comedian quipped, “The nation of Israel lives” — but only as long as the shelter “has wifi and the iPads have battery.”
Natalie Silverlieb was in the mamak, the communal reinforced safe room on her building’s floor. She said the logistics of repeated alerts had become harder since she became a mother.
“Doing this with a baby is crazy,” she said. The room was packed, including other babies and dogs, and she and her partner tried to follow a system that would get their baby back to sleep quickly.
“I’m so, so, so exhausted,” she said. “When I was doing this on my own the last time, I could at least come back to my apartment and just lay on the couch. But now there’s no laying on the couch. It’s go, go, go.”
For Silverlieb, the uncertainty of the past few weeks hadn’t disappeared so much as changed shape. “The waiting for it to end is more stressful than the waiting for it to begin,” she said. “I just hope it ends quickly. It’s a lot, period.”
In a nearby grocery store, another siren, the 30th or so in as many hours, sent shoppers scrambling. In the residential building next door, the shelter downstairs was decrepit and doorless. Children played limbo with a strip of red cloth. One woman began pitching HAAT, a new, mostly Arab-run delivery service she said was giving Wolt a run for its money. A few people pulled out their phones to download the app, trading jokes about whether it would deliver to shelters, and during sirens. Because it is Ramadan, Muslims in Israel are doubly on edge, from fasting on top of the missiles.
Sasha, who lives in the building, said she was “half happy” the waiting was over. The repeated dashes up and down the stairs, she joked, were at least getting her to her daily goal of 10,000 steps. Still, she said, it “won’t help us if the [Iranian] regime doesn’t fall.”
A Ukrainian who grew up under Soviet rule, taught her what it meant to live without freedom, she said. “We want to see the Iranian people free and a better Middle East for everyone.”
Evyatar said he doubted the regime would fall “unless the Iranian citizens themselves finish the job.”
Ma’or, another neighbor, said he would “happily sit in my bomb shelter if it meant giving my Iranian friends, both in Iran and out, a chance at a normal life.” He pointed to a friend in Tehran who works as a tattoo artist, an illegal trade under the regime.
“I mean, he’s not even free to give someone a tattoo without going underground,” he said. “I’m baffled by the people cheering [on] the IRGC. People who say this war is illegal are out of their goddamn minds.”
Evyatar said he began Saturday uneasy, but grew calmer as the hours passed and he gauged the pattern of the strikes. The alerts came far more often than the 12-day war, but the blasts felt less intense. “At the beginning I felt scared, like it was June all over again.” Over time, he said, he has learned to tell the difference between the sounds of interceptions, shrapnel and direct impacts.
As he spoke, a loud boom hit outside, rattling the shelter and stopping the conversation. “That, for example, was a June sound,” he said.
It turned out to be shrapnel coming down not far away. The impact was part of a wider series of strikes across central Israel, including one that turned lethal in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, when a public bomb shelter was hit. Nine people were killed including multiple from the same family. Dozens more were wounded, and others still were unaccounted for.
In Beit Shemesh, the strike changed the atmosphere in a city that had so far heard only occasional sirens, during both this round and the last one.
Netanel Alkoby, a Beit Shemesh resident who spent 12 years in the reserves with the Home Front Command, said he has always taken alerts seriously, but that over time a degree of complacency still set in. The strike, he said, “changed our perspective a lot,” forcing him to be more careful, more on guard, and to treat every warning “with the utmost seriousness.”
In the underground shelter at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a sign overhead read “the safest shelter in existence.” Patients hobbled in, some with casts and crutches. With doctors also sheltering there, patients used the moment to buttonhole them with questions.
One staffer watched a line of women form to speak to a physician. “Poor thing, he can’t even enjoy the siren in peace,” she said.
Back in the central Jaffa shelter, a couple in black leather and dark glasses stood apart from the banter around them.
“Any fear and terror that Israeli citizens are feeling right now is a direct result of this violent racist Islamophobic power hungry greedy fascist government,” said the woman, who declined to give her name, referring to the Netanyahu-led coalition.
Asked whether she thought attacking Iran was a bad idea, she said: “I think it’s a bad idea to attack anyone in 2026. We teach toddlers not to fight and here we have fully grown men doing this, dooming all of us.”
“It’s time we take the power from aging white men,” she said.
Nearby, Martine Berkowitz agreed — in part. “Yep, they are behaving like toddlers. And they are aging white men. Who are fighting evil brown men. If it brings freedom to Iran then it was worth it. But if it doesn’t, then it was all for nothing.”
The post Yet again, Israel’s public shelters become sites of camaraderie amid steep danger appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu: ‘Our Forces Are Striking the Heart of Tehran With Increasing Strength’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, in Jerusalem, Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israeli forces had “eliminated the dictator Ali Khamenei” along with dozens of senior officials of Iran’s regime during a statement delivered from the roof of the Kirya, Israel’s defense headquarters.
“Yesterday, we eliminated the dictator Khamenei. Along with him, dozens of senior officials from the oppressive regime were eliminated,” Netanyahu said after a meeting with the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, and the Director of Mossad. He added that he had issued instructions to continue the offensive.
According to Netanyahu, Israeli forces are “now striking at the heart of Tehran with increasing intensity,” a campaign he said will “increase further in the days to come.”
The Prime Minister also acknowledged the toll of the conflict on Israel, calling recent days “painful” and offering condolences to the families of victims in Tel Aviv and Beit Shemesh, while wishing a speedy recovery to those injured.
Netanyahu emphasized that the operation mobilizes “the full power of the Israel Defense Forces, like never before,” in order to “guarantee our existence and our future.” He also highlighted US support, noting “the assistance of my friend, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and of the American military.”
“This combination of forces allows us to do what I have hoped to accomplish for 40 years: strike the terrorist regime right in the face,” Netanyahu concluded. “I promised it — and we will keep our word.”