Uncategorized
‘We have to leave our comfort zone’: Cautious but determined, Israeli expats protest Netanyahu’s government
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Benny Chukrun, speaking in Hebrew on a wind-whipped day outside the Israeli embassy in the U.S. capital, had a message for his fellow protesters.
“We have a special role in Washington. We have access to the Jewish opinion leaders in the United States,” he said at a rally on Sunday opposing far-reaching changes planned by the new government in Israel, including a proposal to limit the power of the country’s judiciary. “We have to leave our comfort zone and act.”
Israeli expatriates have been coming together in cities worldwide in solidarity with the tens of thousands who have gathered every Saturday night in Tel Aviv and elsewhere to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. Rallies have taken place in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, Miami, Vancouver, Sydney, Berlin, Paris and London, drawing crowds ranging in size from 50 to 200. This weekend, the protests in North America took place on Sunday to accommodate demonstrators who observe Shabbat.
It’s new and at times intimidating territory for Israeli expatriates. Israelis in America were once known to keep a low profile in Jewish communities due to a stigma associated with leaving Israel. That sense of shame has faded as growing numbers of Israelis have relocated to the United States for work in the tech sector or other fields. Overseas travel and communication have also grown far easier. More recently, Israeli political activists in the United States have become best known for supporting their country publicly via organizations such as the Israeli-American Council.
The group organizing many of the rallies, UnXeptable, formed in 2020 to demonstrate in solidarity with Israeli protests against Netanyahu. Now, the mandate has broadened to oppose the actions of the Israeli government. That change has sparked familiar anxieties among Israelis in the United States: Are they harming Israel’s public image? Do they have a right to criticize their home country now that they have moved outside of its borders?
These questions populated multiple WhatsApp groups ahead of this weekend’s protests, said Kathy Goldberg, 57, an Israeli American who helped organize the solidarity protest in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.
“There were fears of it looking, ‘anti-Israel,’ fears of antisemitism, that it will look like we’re piling on Israel and giving them more ammunition, when in fact these are people who love Israel and believe that right now this is the most pro-Israeli thing we can do, to help protect Israel as a democracy,’” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
What helped Goldberg and other Israelis overcome those fears was the role that they feel Israelis living abroad can play in explaining to Jewish communities why it’s OK, this time, to come out and protest. At the rally outside of the Israeli embassy, Chukrun pointed out that Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli just traveled to the United States to defend the government’s proposals.
“Chikli was here a while ago, trying to persuade the conservative Jewish funders of Kohelet that the revolution underway is not antidemocratic,” Chukrun told the 50 or so Israelis who met outside the embassy, referring to the Kohelet Forum, an influential Israeli right-wing think tank that is leading the charge in advocating abroad for the new government.
“We can give the opposing voice, we must give the opposing voice,” he told the crowd, which responded with murmurs of agreement. “Whoever has friends in Jewish organizations, reach out. We must explain to them what is going on. There is a lot of ignorance, misunderstanding.”
The Israelis who are protesting, both in Israel and abroad, are reeling from a barrage of potential changes. The issue with the highest profile has been a proposed reform that would significantly weaken Israel’s judicial review and change the way judges are appointed. Groups of protesters also oppose government pledges to annex West Bank territory to Israel, restrict the rights of LGBTQ Israelis and expand police powers — particularly in relation to Israeli Arabs.
“A lot of [Jewish] Americans say,’What’s the problem? Here [in the United States], politicians pick judges,’” said Chukrun, 62, who works in educational tech. “They don’t understand that [in the United States], it is just one part of an overall structure of checks and balances, and you can’t just take one aspect of the state of Israel that is already a democracy standing on chicken legs.”
Expatriate Israeli protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
Etai Beck, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, told the crowd at the San Francisco protest that the Jewish Diaspora had a moral stake in speaking out now. He framed his speech as a true/false test. Like Chukrun, he criticized the Kohelet Forum as well as Israel Hayom, a free right-wing tabloid in Israel that is funded by Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.
“The Jewish people outside Israel are not allowed to express their opinions and join the protest: False,” he said in his remarks in English, which were shared on WhatsApp with other protesters. “One, Israel was established as the worldwide Jewish center. Two, the Jewish people worldwide lobbies and supports Israel — in Congress, in the media, in day to day life.”
To the degree that Israeli Americans have had a public profile until now, that profile has leaned right. The Israeli-American Council, funded to a large degree by the Adelsons, has served as a forum for Republicans in recent years; it was one of just two Jewish groups that Donald Trump agreed to speak to as president, and he used the occasion to mock American Jews for not supporting Israel enough. The protests IAC organizes typically defend Israel’s sitting government.
Shay Bar, 38, who attended the Los Angeles protest with his family, said the concerns of Israelis abroad in this instance stretched beyond partisanship.
“Our solidarity from abroad is for the future of Israel and our future here in the Diaspora,” he said. “If Israel’s democracy erodes, that will directly affect Jewish and Israeli life and in the Diaspora.”
At the Washington rally, protesters held up massive Israeli flags. An older man, speaking Hebrew, asked a group of teenagers holding up letters spelling “DEMOCRACY” in English whether they were aligned properly, and they collectively rolled their eyes and said, in English, that yes, they were. The protest ended with a rendition of “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem.
Protesters in San Francisco made light of an old Israeli warning not to “wash one’s dirty laundry” abroad. “We learned from Bibi [Netanyahu] to wash our dirty laundry overseas,” said a poster in San Francisco, a reference to Netanyahu’s wife Sara’s habit of loading her flights with dirty clothes because she preferred laundry service overseas.
“Some of us here are here temporarily, some not so much,” said Yoni Charash, 47, a lawyer wearing a T-shirt bearing UnXeptable’s logo. “We all go visit, we have a connection, those of us who leave Israel are not cut off from Israel.”
Nor were they cut off from the larger Jewish communities they live in, said Chukrun. Times had changed since Israelis arriving in the United States kept to themselves because they were alienated by the synagogue-centric life of American Jews.
“Jews in the United States feel the Judaism of faith and Israelis feel the Judaism of national identity, the Israeliness,” he told JTA. “There is a cultural difference, but in recent years it’s begun to change.”
Bar in Los Angeles said Israelis are likelier now to assimilate into American Jewish communities than not. “We’re Israeli Americans who live within the community, we send our kids to school with a Jewish education, go to synagogues on holidays and are an integral part of the American Jewish community,” he said.
Chukrun, speaking to JTA, said it was critical to leverage the relationships Israelis had with American Jews.
“We have to explain that it’s not the land of the patriarchs and matriarchs, not the land of the Bible,” he said. “It’s a real country with real people — with ugly things.”
—
The post ‘We have to leave our comfort zone’: Cautious but determined, Israeli expats protest Netanyahu’s government appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
American Families Sue PA and PLO Over ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Program Funding Deadly Terrorist Attacks
Relatives and friends of Tzeela Gez, who was shot dead while in a car with her husband in the West Bank, as they were driving to hospital to give birth, mourn during her funeral in Jerusalem, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Families of American victims of Palestinian terrorism filed a federal lawsuit in the US this week against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) over their “pay-for-slay” program, which finances deadly terrorist attacks.
Palestinian terrorist groups, which have long been riddled with accusations of corruption, have carried out for years a so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Under this policy, official payments are made to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and Palestinians injured in terrorist attacks.
Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of Palestinian terror groups’ budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
Filed in New York on behalf of Stuart Force and Hananel Gez, this new lawsuit aims to hold the PA and the PLO accountable for financing terrorism.
Stuart Force is the father of Taylor Force, a US Army captain and Vanderbilt MBA student who was killed in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in March 2016.
Hananel Gez was the victim of another terror attack earlier this year while driving his wife, Tzeela Gez, to the hospital to give birth. His wife was fatally shot, and their newborn son, Ravid Haim Gez, died two weeks later. Hananel was also injured in the attack.
The families said they were seeking compensatory damages to be determined at trial, along with a court order barring the PLO and the PA from making payments to Palestinian terrorists or their families.
Earlier this year, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced plans to reform the system, as the group seeks international support for a role in Gaza’s governance after the war.
However, the terror group continues providing payments to terrorists and their families, despite repeated promises of reform to Western governments, with amounts rising based on the severity of the attack and the length of prison sentences.
This new lawsuit draws on the legal precedent set by the Fuld v. PLO case in June, which made it possible for American victims of terrorism to pursue compensation for attacks carried out abroad.
Two other pieces of legislation also set important legal precedent for this case: the 2018 Taylor Force Act, which withholds American aid until the PA stops making payments to terrorists, and the 2019 Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which requires the PLO and PA to submit to US jurisdiction if they continue funding attacks.
Uncategorized
Pro-Hamas UK Doctor Arrested ‘For Inciting Racial Hatred’
Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan addresses the Activist Independent Movement’s Nakba77, Birmingham Demonstration for Palestine, outside the local BBC offices and studios in 2025. Photo: Screenshot
London’s Metropolitan Police arrested a doctor in the UK who called for the ethnic cleaning of Jews and celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel
Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, 31, was charged Tuesday on four charges related to her statements about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, London police said.
Video footage on social media shows police officers removing the trainee surgeon in handcuffs after explaining her alleged crimes.
Aldawan has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the General Medical Council and was scheduled to appear again before a tribunal on Thursday, following public pushback after a previous review cleared her to continue practicing medicine.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has led the push for government investigation into Aldawan. The group released a statement on X following the police’s actions.
“Dr Rahmeh Aladwan has been arrested. We have submitted numerous complaints to the General Medical Council (GMC) regarding this doctor, who is a prolific poster of the most deranged material and claims about Jewish people, and is self-evidently unfit to serve as a regulated professional,” CAA wrote. “The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) inexplicably disagreed, allowing her to continue to practice as a trainee pending further investigation, and we have threatened legal action.”
Some of Aladwan’s statements that led to CAA’s complaints and her Tuesday arrest included calling Royal Free Hospital in London “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and saying that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”
In the arrest video, the female officer tells Aladwan, “You’re under arrest for four offenses: malicious communications times three, and for inciting racial hatred.”
After hearing the charges against her, Aladwan asks the police officer in the video “Are you doing this for Israel?”
“I know you’re doing this for the Israeli Jewish lobby so you can get an arrest on me before my tribunal on Thursday,” she adds, according to the video. “A doctor for seven years and I’ve never harmed anybody. Never had any patient complaints. And this is what the British state is doing for Israel, for genocidal Israel.”
Uncategorized
Daniel Naroditsky, Jewish chess grandmaster and influential streamer, dies at 29
(JTA) — Daniel Naroditsky, a Jewish chess grandmaster and former child prodigy who became one of the game’s most popular voices through his streaming, commentary and teaching, has died at 29.
Naroditsky’s death was announced Monday by the Charlotte Chess Center, a chess academy in North Carolina, where he worked as a head coach. Information on his survivors and a cause of death was not immediately available.
“It is great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky. Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community, admired and respected by fans and players around the world. He was also a loving son and brother, and a loyal friend to many,” the Naroditsky family wrote in a statement shared by the Charlotte Chess Center.
As a teenager, Naroditsky published books on chess strategy, including “Mastering Positional Chess” in 2010 and “Mastering Complex Endgames” in 2012.
Naroditsky earned his chess grandmaster title, the highest honor given to competitors by the International Chess Federation, in 2013 when he was 17 and had yet to graduate high school.
He was an active content creator on Twitch and Youtube, where he had nearly 500,000 subscribers.
Known as Danya, Naroditsky was born on Nov. 9, 1995, in San Mateo, California to Vladimir Naroditsky and Lena Schuman, Jewish immigrants who came to the United States from Ukraine and Azerbaijan, respectively. Naroditsky attended Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City, California and was bar mitzvahed at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo in 2009.
In November 2007, Naroditsky was named the under-12 World Youth Chess Champion, telling J. The Jewish News of Northern California at the time that he “couldn’t play chess without loving it.”
“I played a rabbi,” a 10-year-old Naroditsky said after he earned the title. “He lost right away and instead of losing normally he threw all the pieces in the air and stormed out. I almost laughed.”
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University in 2019 after taking a year off to play in chess tournaments.
Naroditsky was introduced to the game by his brother, Alan, at just 6 years old and quickly developed an aptitude for the game.
“I think a lot of people want to imagine that it was love at first sight and that my brother couldn’t pull me away from the chessboard,” Naroditsky told the New York Times in 2022, when he was introduced as its chess columnist. “It was more of a gradual process, where chess slowly entered the battery of stuff we did to pass the time. A lot of my best memories are just doing stuff with my brother.”
In his last video uploaded to YouTube, titled “You Thought I Was Gone!? Speedrun Returns!,” Naroditsky told his fans that after a brief pause he was “back and better than ever.”
“I still can’t believe it and don’t want to believe it,” tweeted Dutch grandmaster Benjamin Bok about news of Naroditsky’s death. “It was always a privilege to play, train, and commentate with Danya, but above all, to call him my friend.”
At the time of his death, Naroditsky was ranked in the top 160 players in the world and the top 20 players in the United States, according to the International Chess Federation. He especially excelled at a fast-paced version of the game called blitz chess, for which he maintained a top 25 ranking throughout his adult career.
Naroditsky’s father, Vladimir, died in 2019.
“We ask for privacy for Daniel’s family during this extremely difficult time,” the statement from his family continued. “Let us remember Daniel for his passion and love for the game of chess, and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us every day.”
The post Daniel Naroditsky, Jewish chess grandmaster and influential streamer, dies at 29 appeared first on The Forward.