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Zak Malamed is the latest Jewish Democrat running to unseat George Santos
(New York Jewish Week) — The founder of a Democratic fundraising group is the latest Jewish candidate to run for the seat held by Rep. George Santos, the Republican congressman arrested on federal criminal charges last week.
Zak Malamed, 29, said he was spurred to run by Santos’ election last year and, in particular, bristled at revelations that Santos had falsely claimed to be Jewish.
“He is an extreme MAGA Republican who doesn’t take antisemitism seriously, makes a mockery of our Jewish faith,” Malamed told the New York Jewish Week. He added that the way Santos “uses the history that many of us carry, with relatives who are victims or escaped the Holocaust, is astounding.”
Malamed announced Monday that he will run for the Democratic nomination in Santos’ New York district, which covers parts of Queens and Long Island. He is the third Jewish Democratic candidate to declare candidacy for the seat held by Santos, following former Democratic state senator Anna Kaplan, an Iranian-American who has long championed Holocaust education, and Josh Lafazan, a Jewish Nassau County legislator. Democratic attorney Will Murphy is also running, as is one Republican, former J.P. Morgan executive Kellen Curry.
Malamed, who grew up in Great Neck, a Long Island town in the district, cofounded a Democratic fundraising organization called “The Next 50″ that according to its website focuses on “building a leadership pipeline of justice and equity-minded leaders that will counter conservatives’ massive 50-year investment in young leaders.” One of its endorsees in next year’s races is Elissa Slotkin, the Jewish centrist Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who is now running for Senate.
Malamed said he hopes to bring integrity back to the district, particularly after Santos was charged last week with illicitly collecting unemployment assistance while earning a six-figure salary. The congressman — whom Malamed called “an international embarrassment” — has pleaded not guilty.
In addition to falsely claiming to be Jewish, Santos has spread a series of other falsehoods about his background. He has largely rejected fact-checking by news organizations from around the world, in the case of his ancestry saying he never claimed to be Jewish, calling himself “Jew-ish.” In a recording of the congressman posted to Twitter last week by MSNBC host Ari Melber, Santos can be heard saying, “If you sit in a room with a lot of Jews, you’re f—ed.”
Malamed grew up in Santos’ district and identifies as a Conservative Jew. He said his family has belonged to Temple Israel in Great Neck for more than 60 years.
“It’s where I went to preschool,” Malamed said. “It’s where I went to Hebrew school, and of course, I was bar mitzvahed here. … I maintain this deep connection and care for not just the community that raised me, but the Jewish community that raised me.”
As a high schooler, Malamed launched a group focused on elevating student voices in education policy making. He subsequently graduated from the University of Maryland and worked for the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire media mogul, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously worked at Facebook and at XQ, an education policy initiative founded by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs.
Malamed said he maintains “a commitment toward investing in others and elevating others’ leadership” and emphasized that the idea of running for office “didn’t even enter my mind [until] after Santos won.”
“It’s when I took stock of the field and realized that Democrats up and down the ballots have been rejected over the past couple of years, and have not found a way to break through and defeat MAGA Republicans,” he said.
Malamed said if elected, he would support Israel, a stance he attributed to the influence of his grandmother, who emigrated from Russia to Israel before moving to Great Neck in the late 1960s.
“My grandmother was in Israel the day its independence was declared by the United Nations,” Malamed said, referring to the 1947 U.N. vote approving a partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. “I think it’s important to bring next-generation leadership that’s committed to being proudly Jewish, unabashedly supportive of the state of Israel, and also committed to peace.”
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The post Zak Malamed is the latest Jewish Democrat running to unseat George Santos appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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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.
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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.”
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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.