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What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president
(JTA) – In late April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Jerusalem, voicing support for Israeli West Bank settlements, touting a law he had just signed giving families thousands of dollars per year in private school tuition vouchers and signing a bill that increased penalties for antisemitic harassment.
Two weeks later, his education department rejected two new textbooks on the Holocaust as part of a clampdown on what he has called “woke indoctrination.”
Those two developments may anchor the Jewish arguments for and against DeSantis as he stands on the cusp of announcing a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Supporters paint him as a steadfast ally of Israel who speaks to the pocketbook concerns of Jewish families. In the years since he became Florida’s governor in 2019, the state has seen an influx of Orthodox Jews, drawn both by lax pandemic policies and the promise of discounted day school tuition.
But DeSantis’ opponents portray him as a cultural reactionary whose anti-“woke” politics are inhibiting education on the Holocaust and antisemitism — along with teaching about race, gender and sexuality. He has repeatedly condemned George Soros, the progressive megadonor who is an avatar of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surveys show that his near-total restriction of abortion rights is unpopular with Jews nationally.
And hanging over the campaign is the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, who is running for a second term, is leading in the polls — and shares much in common with DeSantis even as he has attacked him.
While DeSantis’ allies have played up some of their differences (such as DeSantis’ youth and military service), when it comes to their respective records on issues of interest to Jewish voters, Trump and DeSantis are less distinct.
Each has sought to cultivate Jewish support by focusing on Israel and erasing church-state separations that, Orthodox Jewish leaders argue, inhibit religious freedoms. And both have attracted white nationalist supporters while leaning into the culture wars.
DeSantis is set to officially announce his campaign in a chat with Elon Musk, who was just condemned by a wide range of Jewish figures (and defended by a handful of others) for tweeting that Soros “hates humanity.”
Here’s what you need to know about DeSantis’s Jewish record:
He has been an outspoken booster of Israel.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Jerusalem Post conference at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on April 27, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
DeSantis, a Catholic, has a visceral affinity for Israel, and has framed his support for the country in religious terms.
“When I took office, I promised to make Florida the most pro-Israel state in the United States, and we have been able to deliver on that promise,” he said this week, addressing evangelical Christians at the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Orlando, The Jerusalem Post reported.
He likes to tell audiences that on his first visit to Israel as a U.S. congressman, his wife Casey scooped up water from the Sea of Galilee into an empty bottle to save for baptisms. The couple had yet to have children.
The water came in handy for the baptisms of their first and second children, but after DeSantis was elected governor, staff at his residence cleared away the unremarkable bottle (which was still half full) after their second child was baptized in 2019. Not long afterward, DeSantis mentioned the minor fiasco in passing at a synagogue in Boca Raton, and before he knew it people were sending him bottles of water from Israel.
The gesture still moves him. “I was sent, all the way from Israel, this beautiful big glass jar filled with water from the Sea of Galilee that sat on my desk in the governor’s office in Tallahassee until our third child was born and baptized, and we used that water to do it,” DeSantis said last month when he visited Israel.
DeSantis made Israel a focus when he was congressman, taking a leading role in advocating for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among a group of lawmakers who toured Jerusalem in March 2017 and was bold enough to pick out what he said would be the likeliest site.
In November of that year, as chairman of the House national security subcommittee, he convened a hearing on what he called the necessity of moving the embassy. The following month, Trump announced the move, and the site the Trump administration chose was the one DeSantis had identified.
In May 2019, just months after becoming governor, DeSantis convened his state cabinet in Jerusalem and gave a definition of antisemitism favored by the pro-Israel community the force of law. The same year, he banned government officials from using Airbnb after the vacation rental broker removed listings in West Bank settlements. DeSantis’ blacklisting of the company was seen was key to Airbnb reversing the decision.
He’s garnered allies — and enemies — among Florida’s Jews.
DeSantis has done much to cultivate support in Florida’s growing Orthodox community, which shares his enthusiasm for bringing faith into government.
In 2021, DeSantis came to a Chabad synagogue in Surfside to sign two bills, one affording state recognition to Hatzalah, the Jewish ambulance service, and the other tasking all Florida public schools with setting aside a daily moment of silence, long a key initiative of the Chabad movement.
In his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, DeSantis campaigned on steering state money to religious day schools. This year he made good on the promise, signing a law that makes $7,800 in scholarship funds available annually to schoolchildren across the state, regardless of income, and to be used at their school of choice.
DeSantis also has plenty of Jewish enemies in a state where the majority of the Jewish community votes for Democrats.
In his first term, he had a contentious relationship with Nikki Fried, a Democrat who, as agriculture commissioner, was one of the four ministers in the Cabinet who had a vote. DeSantis maneuvered to freeze her out of the decision-making process.
Fried, who describes herself as a “good Jewish girl from Miami,” now chairs the state’s Democratic Party. She routinely calls DeSantis a fascist. In April, she was arrested at an abortion rights protest outside Tallahassee’s City Hall.
Under DeSantis, Florida has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That stance has set him up for clashes with other prominent Jews in the state as well. Last year, he suspended Andrew Warren, a Jewish state attorney, because Warren pledged not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue in Boynton Beach, spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban in 2022, citing religious freedom arguments. Daniel Uhlfelder, a Jewish lawyer who drew attention when he dressed as the Grim Reaper to protest DeSantis’s reopening of the beaches during the pandemic, signed on as an attorney for the synagogue.
His “war on woke” has had implications on Holocaust education.
Recently, much of DeSantis’ tenure has been defined by what he calls the “war on woke,” a term originated by Black Americans to describe awareness of racial inequity but now more often functions as shorthand for conservative criticism of progressive values. DeSantis has enacted multiple pieces of legislation restricting what can be taught in schools and has also limited transgender rights, banning gender-affirming medical care for children.
While most of the books challenged under DeSantis’ education laws have focused on race and gender, the study of the Holocaust has been affected as well. In addition to the education department’s rejection of the Holocaust textbooks this month, Florida laws that make teachers liable for teaching inappropriate content to students have led multiple school districts to take Holocaust novels off the shelves, including a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
DeSantis calls claims that he’s chilling Holocaust education “fake narratives.” He and his defenders point to his requiring all Florida public schools to certify that they teach about the Holocaust.
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity has increased under his watch.
A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by emerging white supremacist groups — some of whom have gone to bat for DeSantis in the past.
DeSantis has been dogged by accusations that he caters to the far right. One of the most stinging exchanges in the 2018 election season came when Andrew Gillum, DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in the race, accused DeSantis of not being forceful enough in renouncing the white nationalists who expressed support for him in robocalls.
“First of all, he’s got neo-Nazis helping him out in this state,” Gillum said. “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” DeSantis flinched.
DeSantis eked out a victory a few weeks later, and was soundly reelected last year, but he remains sensitive on the issue. Last year, when neo-Nazis intimidated Orlando’s Jews with signs and shouts at an overpass, politicians in the state reflexively condemned them. A reporter asked DeSantis why he had not done so, and after calling the neo-Nazis “jackasses,” the governor said the question was a “smear” and added, “We’re not playing that game.” (Several months later, the leader of the antisemitic propaganda group Goyim Defense League moved from California to Florida, saying he thought the Sunshine State would be more hospitable to his efforts.)
DeSantis has also called liberal prosecutors “Soros-funded”. It’s not an unusual political gambit — the billionaire Jewish liberal donor does fund progressives running for prosecutor. But Soros has also been the focus of multiple conspiracy theories that antisemitism watchdogs say are antisemitic, casting the Holocaust survivor as a malign influence with excessive power.
Some Jewish donors are already supporting him.
DeSantis appeared last year at a conference in New York of Jewish conservatives, where he talked to a friendly audience about his war against the “woke” and was also conveniently in the room with some of the most generous Republican donors.
He is reportedly working some of those donors, who gave generously to his gubernatorial runs. He was a star last November at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Las Vegas confab, and Axios reported that he met with Miriam Adelson, the widow of GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, as well as other Jewish donors when he was in Jerusalem last month.
A number of them are hanging back, not wanting to alienate Trump while he remains influential in the party. (Adelson has said she does not want to weigh in on the primaries.)
Among the Jewish donors and fundraisers said to be in DeSantis’s camp: Jay Zeidman, a onetime Jewish White House liaison who is now a Houston based businessman; Gabriel Groisman, a lawyer who is the former mayor of Bal Harbor; and Fred Karlinsky, a leading insurance lawyer.
Last week, Jewish conservative political commentator Dave Rubin tweeted that DeSantis would bring “Freedom, sanity and competency” to the country. Groisman shared the tweet with the word “This.”
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The post What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls
Friday before sundown, I realized that Abe Foxman had not sent me his weekly “Shabbat Shalom” message. For the past seven years, since we began texting regularly about Jewish and political issues, the message would arrive each Friday like clockwork — often accompanied by screenshots of Shabbat memes. My response never changed: “Good Shabbos, tzaddik,” using the Hebrew word for a righteous person that Foxman himself often used.
A few minutes after sundown, I texted him anyway: “Good Shabbos, tzaddik.” Then I turned off my phone. The message showed as “read” Saturday night. But there was no response.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one waiting for Foxman’s Shabbat greetings. The silence said everything. On Sunday, the Anti-Defamation League announced that its former longtime chief had died at age 86.
I first started texting with Foxman after he stepped down in 2015 as national director of the ADL, concluding a remarkable 50-year run with the organization, including nearly three decades at its helm. By then, he had become one of the most recognizable Jewish communal leaders in America. He was nicknamed the “Jewish Pope.” Former President Barack Obama, a frequent target of Foxman’s criticism over Israel policy, said upon Foxman’s retirement: “Abe is irreplaceable.”
For me, a rookie journalist covering national politics through a Jewish lens, Foxman became an invaluable source. He was in the room with presidents, prime ministers and world leaders during some of the Jewish community’s most consequential moments. Yet he was always available. He answered calls quickly. He texted back. He spoke candidly. He could be sharp, direct and deeply critical when he thought leaders were making mistakes. But he was also compassionate, warm and surprisingly personal.
Every conversation began the same way: asking about me. My kids. How I was holding up. Only then would we get to politics. The conversation would often veer from Yiddish to English and back again.
Our last conversation was on April 15, after a record 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers to Israel and 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. “A broch,” Foxman replied, using the Yiddish word for disaster. “A sad time for American politics.”
That worldview shaped much of his public commentary in recent years. In interviews with the Forward and other publications, Foxman weighed in on rising antisemitism, campus protests, Democratic divisions over Israel, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and the Biden-Netanyahu relationship.
Foxman could be combative and unapologetic. Critics on the left viewed him as too hawkish on Israel, while critics on the right sometimes accused him of being too willing to criticize the Israeli government or American conservatives. But nobody doubted his commitment to the Jewish people and to Israel.
Foxman’s own life story
Born in Baranavichy in 1940, in what is now Belarus, Foxman survived the Holocaust as an infant after being hidden by his Polish Catholic nanny, who baptized him to hide his Jewish identity, while his parents were confined to a ghetto. After the war, he was reunited with his parents, first living in a displaced persons camp in Austria before immigrating to the United States.
Those early experiences shaped the course of his career and ultimately made him one of the most influential Jewish communal leaders of the modern era.
In 1965, after getting degrees from City College of New York and New York University School of Law, Foxman joined the Anti-Defamation League as a legal assistant. Over the next five decades, Foxman rose through the ranks of the organization before being named its national director in 1987, a position he held until 2015.
Under his leadership, the ADL became one of the world’s most prominent voices combating antisemitism and hate.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed Foxman to serve on the council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was reappointed by Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. He was also vice chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Foxman was often willing to challenge leaders he believed were wrong on Israel, including Democratic presidents he otherwise respected. He was sharply critical of Obama’s approach toward Israel early in his presidency and became one of the leading Jewish voices opposing the administration’s 2009 demand for a freeze on Israeli settlements.
In remarks at Foxman’s farewell dinner in 2015, Susan Rice, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and national security advisor under Obama, told the audience: “The thing I most value about Abe is his candor and integrity. He holds everyone to the same high standards, and I can always count on him to tell it to me straight, even when he knows I won’t necessarily like what he has to say.” In 2020, Foxman publicly advocated for Biden to choose Rice as his vice-presidential running mate.
“America and the Jewish people have lost a moral voice, a passionate advocate for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, and a remarkable leader,” Foxman’s successor, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement announcing Foxman’s death.
Foxman’s political commentary
Even after retiring from the ADL, Foxman remained a leading voice in Jewish public life, especially after the election of Trump in 2016.
Foxman told me in an interview at the time that the Jewish community should engage with Trump and hold him accountable when needed. He advised Trump to be cautious about making good on his promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He became more critical of Trump after the president said that there were “very fine people on both sides” in response to a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In 2020, Foxman broke his tradition of not endorsing political candidates to back Biden. He argued that Trump was a “demagogue” whose reelection would be a “body blow for our country and our community.”
Once Biden took office, Foxman started to express doubts about the president’s handling of the U.S. relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said it “sends the wrong message to our friends and enemies” that Israel is being held to a higher standard than other countries in the region. Foxman was also a harsh critic of the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul, warning that the right-wing cabinet ministers could hamper support for Israel among American Jews.
In 2024, he warned that Biden’s increasingly harsh rhetoric over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza would repel Jewish voters. “I believe that this administration, because of its political season, is taking American Jews for granted or has written us off,” said Foxman. ”If they’re worried that the Arabs in Michigan will vote with their feet, they need to worry that Jews can also vote with their feet.”
Most recently, Foxman was critical of national Democrats opposing the military operations against the Iranian regime in March for a lack of congressional authority. “Sadly, it is purely political games,” Foxman told me, noting that previous Democratic administrations conducted military operations without explicit congressional authorization. “Ninety-nine percent of Democrats are on record saying Iran is a terrorist state and cannot have nuclear weapons. So why this game?” he asked.
Now, as Jews mark Jewish American Heritage Month, that voice is silent. But for me, and for the many people still waiting for one more “Shabbat Shalom” message from Foxman, he will not soon be forgotten.
Foxman is survived by his wife Golda, his daughters Michelle and Ariel and four grandchildren.
JTA contributed to this article.
The post Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls appeared first on The Forward.
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Jailed Iranian Peace Laureate Mohammadi Moved to Hospital in Tehran
A picture of Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on the wall of the Grand Hotel in central Oslo before the Nobel banquet, in connection with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2023, in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2023. Photo: NTB/Javad Parsa via REUTERS
Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has been moved to a hospital in the capital, Tehran, and has been granted a suspension of her sentence on heavy bail, a foundation run by her family said on Sunday.
Mohammadi, 54, won the prize in 2023 while in prison for a campaign to advance women’s rights and abolish the death penalty. She suffered a heart attack two weeks ago.
Her family had called for her to be transferred from Zanjan, northwest of Tehran, where she was serving her sentence and where she had been initially taken to a hospital, so that she could receive better medical care.
She is now at Tehran Pars Hospital for treatment by her own medical team after being transferred by ambulance, the Narges Mohammadi Foundation said in a statement.
Mohammadi was sentenced to a new prison term of 7-1/2 years, the foundation said in February, weeks before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran. The Nobel committee at the time called on Tehran to free her immediately.
She had been arrested in December after denouncing the death of a lawyer, Khosrow Alikordi. A prosecutor told reporters that she had made provocative remarks at Alikordi’s memorial ceremony.
The foundation gave no details of the bail arrangements or suspension of her sentence.
“However, a suspension is not enough,” it said. “Narges Mohammadi requires permanent, specialized care. We must ensure she never returns to prison.”
Iran shut down most of the internet in the country in January as authorities suppressed mass protests triggered by economic unease. Rights groups have reported ongoing executions of people involved in the unrest.
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Israel’s Attorney General Calls to Cancel Netanyahu’s Mossad Chief Appointment
Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara. Photo: Twitter
i24 News – Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara told the High Court of Justice on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman as the next Mossad chief must be canceled.
Baharav-Miara filed her position ahead of a Tuesday hearing on petitions challenging the appointment, telling the court that “substantial flaws” had been found both in the process conducted by the advisory committee and in the conclusions it drew. She said Netanyahu’s decision suffered from “extreme and blatant unreasonableness” and could not stand legally.
At the center of the dispute is the case of Ori Elmakayes, who was a 17-year-old minor when he was activated in 2022 by Division 210, without going through authorized intelligence channels. At the time, the division was commanded by Gofman. Elmakayes was arrested in May 2022 under espionage charges after two officers sent him classified information and told him to post it online as part of an “influence campaign,” despite not being authorized to do so. Gofman initiated this operation. Elmakayes was then held in full detention until July, spending an extended period under electronic monitoring and house arrest before the indictment against him was canceled in late 2023.
Baharav-Miara says Gofman’s involvement in leaking the classified information to the minor, “casts a heavy shadow on Gofman’s integrity and thus on his appointment to head the Mossad.” The attorney general also identified serious procedural failings in the advisory committee’s work. She notes that the majority members signed their opinion before committee chairman and former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis had written his dissent and before two members had reviewed several classified documents significant to the full picture. Grunis concluded that integrity flaws had been found and that it was not appropriate to appoint Gofman as Mossad chief.
The attorney general also says the committee failed to hear directly from Elmakayes or from a relevant senior military intelligence officer, instead relying in part on media interviews.
Netanyahu, who appointed Gofman to head the Mossad starting in early June, for a five-year term, submitted his own response to the court on this past Friday, arguing that the decision fell within his executive authority. The Prime Minister also said that his assessment of the matter was “dozens of times superior” to that of the court, adding that Gofman’s integrity was “found pure,” and describing him as the most qualified candidate.
Other coalition figures responded to the attorney general with sharp criticism, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir accused Baharav-Miara of fighting the state, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said her position was “one step too far” and vowed to advance legislation splitting the attorney general’s role in the Knesset’s summer session.