Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 25, 2021

An overwhelming majority of American Jews, about 83 percent, share the same basic demographic profile but there are signs that American Jewry is growing more diverse.

The 83 percent is made up of Jews who say they are white and do not identify with ethnic labels such as Hispanic, Sephardic or Mizrahi. They were all born in the same set of places the United States, Canada and Europe, plus countries of the former Soviet Union and so were both their parents.

The remainder, an estimated 17 percent, depart from this profile in at least one regard. These American Jews identify as Black, Asian, some other minority race or multiracial. Also grouped here are Jews of any race who identify as Hispanic, Mizrahi or Sephardic or anyone born in the rest of the world, including Israel.

Those are among the findings of a report released May 25, by the Pew Research Center that offers the most detailed information yet on the diversity of American Jews.

Pew found only 8 percent said they are Black, Hispanic, Asian, other minority races or multiracial with an additional 2 percent identified as white and Hispanic. The vast majority identified as only white.

There is more diversity among young Jews, suggesting that a shift could be underway in the U.S. Jewish population. According to the new estimate, 15 percent of Jews under 30 identify as Hispanic, Black, Asian or multiracial.

The extensive survey on race, ethnicity, heritage and immigration is sure to add fuel to an already fraught debate about the demographics of the Jewish community amid efforts to make communal institutions more inclusive.

People are finally waking up to the fact that our Jewish community is quite multicultural, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who leads a Reform congregation in New York and is Asian American, said in a comment featured in the Pew report.

But while the Pew report has much to say about the topic of diversity, it provides no new estimate for the number of Jews of color. Thats because the survey asked about categories of race and ethnicity in the manner of the U.S. Census Bureau.

As the term Jew of color came into common use over the past decade, experts and community leaders have debated what it means and how to estimate the size of the group to which it applies. Some demographers of U.S. Jewry have published estimates of 6 percent. Others say that 12-15 percent of American Jews could be defined as Jews of color.

The Pew study does not resolve the debate, said Ari Kelman, a Stanford professor and one of the lead authors of a 2019 study that argued that Jews of color are chronically undercounted and suggested the real figure could be as high as 15 percent.

Kelmans research, carried out as part of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, came amid a push to make the Jewish institution more welcoming to a diversity of Jews.

This higher estimate boosted calls to hire more Jews of color, launch education and outreach initiatives, and increase funding for groups like Jewish Multiracial Network and Bechol Lashon.

The report also contained some questions about the heritage of American Jews, finding that two-thirds identify as Ashkenazi. But the findings do not clearly illuminate the background of the other third.

Thats because 25 percent say they are just Jewish or could not be accounted for because some survey respondents refused to answer. And while 4 percent say they are Mizrahi or Sephardic, these terms may not have captured Jews of Iranian, Syrian and other Middle Eastern backgrounds.

Whether Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jews represent diversity among American Jews the same way that Black Jews do is an entirely different question, according to Mijal Bitton, a scholar who studies Jewish diversity. Some Ashkenazi Jews are not white, while some Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews are white, Bitton said in a comment featured in the Pew report.

The idea that the Syrian Jews Ive studied are Jews of color would feel overwhelmingly foreign and even ludicrous to them, Bitton said. Some might identify as white, some as Middle Eastern, some as non-White but not as Jews of color.

To provide another measure of diversity, the survey also asked about immigration, finding that an estimated 90 percent of Americans were born in the United States. Meanwhile, 10 percent were born abroad, and an additional 21 percent have at least one parent who was born abroad. In other words, about a third of U.S. Jews are first- or second-generation immigrants, mostly from Europe or the Soviet Union.

The Pew report found fewer Israelis than many other estimates. Only about 3 percent of American Jews, or 225,000, were born in Israel or have a parent born there, according to the report.

In past years and decades, surveys of the U.S. Jewish population often didnt ask about race and ethnicity, making it difficult to estimate change over time. A 2013 report from Pew said that Jews who identify as Hispanic, Black, other non-white or mixed make up 6 percent of the U.S. Jewish population. The current Pew estimate puts the figure at 8 percent, a little higher, but both estimates are subject to a margin of error.

Still, the new study offers some evidence that the U.S. Jewish community is growing increasingly diverse.

Only 3-4 percent of U.S. Jews aged 50 and older identify as Hispanic, Black, Asian, other minority races and multiracial. For Jews under 50, the level shoots up to 12-15 percent.

Diversity at the household level is also significant. An estimated 17 percent of American Jews live in a home with at least one person who is Hispanic, Black, Asian, multiracial or otherwise not white.

I am hoping that this new study will take some of the data on Jews of color that is already out there and add to it, said Jared Jackson, executive director of the advocacy organization Jews in ALL Hues. Jewish institutions by and large have not held themselves accountable to all Jews in the United States. This will give us a chance to make better decisions as a community.

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Without using the term, Pew survey unveils new data on 'Jews of color' - jewishpresstampa

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Posted By admin on May 25, 2021

It is almost twelve years since I wrote an article with the title - The Columbus Industry. There have been others - The Columbus Conspiracy, The Columbus Conundrum, The Columbus Improbability - but the one about the industry was more or less where it all started. And by it, I mean the determination to disprove that Columbus came from Genoa, my fascination with which lies with what can seem to border on the obsession of those who wish to do this, and all that there is riding on locating his birthplace somewhere other than Genoa.

There was stuff that predated The Columbus Industry, the DNA studies in particular. There is or has been more than one stab at using DNA in seeking the truth about Columbus. The main project has its roots in research initiated in 2002. The following year, the remains of Columbus, his son Hernando and his brother Diego were exhumed from the Cathedral in Seville, but it is only recently that DNA technology has advanced enough to allow for what is hoped will give rise to something conclusive. Was Columbus born in Genoa? And if not, where?

Academic and scientific research creates its own little industry of funding and of peer-reviwed acclaim. In The Columbus Industry I highlighted the work of Estelle Irizarry, emeritus professor of Spanish literature at the University of Georgetown in Washington. In her book, The DNA of the Writings of Columbus, Irizarry placed Columbus as having come from Catalan-speaking Aragon. He could speak Catalan before he could speak the language of the Spanish court that was to sponsor his journeys - that of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Ferdinand.

Irizarrys linguistic analysis suggested that Columbus may have been descended from the Sephardic Jews in Spain. Their language was Ladino, a mix (usually) of Hebrew and Spanish. Irizarry identified use of Ladino by Columbus and implied that there was a variant - Ladino-Catalan. Sephardic Jews were to be found across Spain, but they were prominent in Aragon, Catalonia and Palma.

Much of the debate about Columbus has centred on what he spoke, how he spoke and how he wrote. As far as his writing is concerned, it was pretty much impossible for him to have done so in Ligurian, the language of Genoa, as it wasnt a written language. As to how he spoke, coming from Ligurian-speaking Genoa would have meant that he had, as scholars have observed, a strange speaking voice.

But this voice, it is argued, was because rather than a Ligurian speaker, he was a Catalan speaker. Moreover, he was a Catalan speaker who was born in Mallorca.

This is a generally accepted version of Columbuss background: In 1451, Christoffa Corombo was born in Genoa. His father was called Domenico, and he was a lowly weaver who later became an innkeeper. Christoffas mother, Susanna, was also a weaver. Corombo rose from these humble origins to find a place in the Spanish court.

Here is the Mallorcan version, that of historian Gabriel Verd Martorell: In 1460, Cristfor Colom was born in Felanitx. The exact location was the finca of sAlqueria Roja. His father was an Aragonese nobleman, the brother of Ferdinand, who was to marry Isabel. His mother was called Margarita Colom. Cristfor was the bastard nephew of the Spanish king. This bloodline, unknown to others at the royal court, was to prove vital in giving Cristfor the patronage to sail on his journeys.

The DNA study being overseen at the University of Granada also involves genetic identification labs in Florence, Rome, Mexico and the US. A documentary film and a mini-series are to be made. The first results are due in a couple of months time. The final conclusions, it is hoped, will be released in October.

Linguistic, scientific, historical research; this is all worthy in seeking to try and explain the Columbus conundrum. I dont knock any of it, but where the real industry angle kicks in lies with those scheduled conclusions. It wont be any old date. It will be October 12, Spains National Day and the date in 1492 when Columbus came across the island he was to call San Salvador.

If it were to be proven that Columbus was Spanish in one way or another, one can imagine what this will mean. There wont just be a rewriting of history books, there will be a Columbus explosion. It wasnt just a Spanish expedition that discovered the New World, it was a Spaniard, to boot. Enhanced cultural tourism opportunities beckon. And if he came from Mallorca specifically, well ... .

There again, there is always the anti-Columbus lobby because of his apparent treatment of the Taino people. There is also the possibility, as the professor of forensic medicine in Granada has admitted, that the extracted DNA will not be of sufficient quality to draw conclusions. In which case, that part of the industry dedicated to Columbus research will continue for many a year yet.

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The Blog: The Columbus industry - so it goes on - Majorca Daily Bulletin

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Posted By admin on May 25, 2021

May 28 marks the 70th anniversary of the influential British radio comedy program The Goon Show, which inspired fans from the Monty Python group to John Lennon. The Jewish content of The Goons, comprising comedians Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers as well as the Welsh singer Harry Secombe, is usually overlooked amid the shows comedic chaos and anarchy.

Milligan, the presiding genius over the surreal scripts, cherished the Jewish roots of his colleague Sellers, whose mother was of Ashkenazi and Sephardic origin.

After Sellers died in 1980, Milligan wrote a letter to the editor of The Jewish Chronicle, a periodical founded in 1841, to complain that at no stage [of the funeral ceremony] was there any attempt to introduce any connection with the Jewish side of [Sellers] family. As his Mother was Jewish, most certainly then he was Jewish, whereas he did choose to be a Christian (though sometimes he fancied various other religions), his whole attitude and personality seemed to be that of a Jew. Because of this I wish some small representation by the Jewish Synagogue could have been reported or mentioned during these Ceremonies.

The Dadaist sound collages of the Goon Show included Sellers delivering ancient gags clearly presented as being delivered by Jewish characters or idiotic antisemites.

At one moment, Sellers might be Cyril, a Jewish nudnik concerned about imbibing non-Kosher water; at another, he was Major Denis Bloodnok, a nitwit who refers to a cash register as the old Jewish piano.

In a different shtick, Sellers plays a manservant named Headstone the butler, who explains that someone vanished from right under his mothers nose. Asked what he was doing there, Headstone explains: It was raining at the time, I believe.

Sellers also appeared as Lew Cash, nicknamed Schnorrer, a Jewish theatrical agent based on the real-life impresario Lew Grade.

The Goon Shows Lew Cash was a comparatively benign portrayal of the showbiz titan born Lev Winogradsky. The London satirical publication Private Eye referred to Lew Grade as Low Greed.

Amid the sonic chaos of the Goons, Harry Secombe also played a character named Izzy, based on the Jewish comedian Issy Bonn.

Born Benjamin Levin, Bonn performed a routine that included sentimental songs like My Yiddishe Momme. Billed as The Hebrew Vocal Raconteur, Bonn was so lastingly famous that his image appears on the cover of the 1967 Beatles album Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Yet just as Milligan valued Sellers Judaism, so Secombe prized his friendship with Ernest Levy, longtime chazzan at Giffnock & Newlands Hebrew Congregation, the largest shul in Scotland.

A concentration camp survivor, Levy was invited with the Glasgow Jewish Choral Society in 1983 to appear on Secombes BBC-TV show Songs of Praise. In his preface to Levys Holocaust memoir, Secombe wrote, What was remarkable about [Levys] story was his lack of bitterness about what had happened to him, and his forgiveness for those who had been his persecutors. A man of infinite compassion in these days of gathering hatreds and prejudices his shining sincerity made a lasting impression on me.

A photo preserved in the Scottish Jewish Archive Centre of Levy, Secombe, and Glasgow Jewish Choral Society members exudes sincere good fellowship.

Other integral Jewish partners in the Goon panorama were Max Geldray and Ray Ellington, responsible for the musical interludes punctuating the breakneck verbal sprees. Geldray, a Dutch Jewish harmonica player, was referred to on the program as Conks, a UK slang term for nose.

Born Max van Gelder in Amsterdam, Geldray was among the pioneers of jazz harmonica, alongside other Jewish virtuosos such as Larry Adler, Borrah Minevitch (born Boruch Minewitz), and Morton Fraser (born Emmanuel Fish).

So essential was Geldrays contribution to the show that in 1958, when the BBC proposed canceling his contract as a cost-cutting measure, Sellers threatened to quit the show.

Ray Ellington, a singer, bassist and drummer, was born to an African-American father and Russian Jewish mother who raised her son in an Orthodox household. Ellington attended the South London Jewish School before being hired to perform with Harry Roy (born Lipman) and His Orchestra, a group notorious for risqu comic material.

Ellingtons pianist on The Goon Show was a German Jewish refugee who assumed the stage name of Dick Katz after fleeing his homeland. Ellington favored a somewhat eccentric repertoire of novelty songs which fit right into the Goon sensibility.

A number of the Goons, including Milligan, Secombe and Geldray, had suffered to varying degrees from shell-shock during wartime combat. As a form of respite, Milligan surrounded himself with reassuring mini-stock companies of Jewish performers for other projects, when Sellers was unavailable.

Milligan often worked with John Bluthal (born Isaac Bluthal in Jezierzany, Galicia) former star of the Yiddish Theatre of Melbourne, Australia.

Bluthals ability to create a range of comic voices was likened to Sellerss talent for mimicry. In one typical exchange reflecting the old Yiddish expression Its hard to be a Jew (*Shver tsu zayn a yid), Milligan would ask Bluthal, Are you Jewish? and receive the reply: No, a tree fell on me!

Milligan also relished working with Marty Feldman, the wall-eyed comic of Ukrainian Jewish origin; the South African Jewish diva Sheila Steafel; Rita Webb, a Jewish actress from the East End of London whose stumpy, belligerent persona provoked hilarity; and his fellow comedy writer Brad Ashton (born Bernie Abrahams in Stepney, London).

Ashton/Abrahams later noted, In the early 50s I found the BBC a bit antisemitic, so having a Jewish name did not help. I changed my surname by deed poll, which was witnessed by Spike Milligan on the occasion of Ashtons marriage in 1961.

Some casual listeners found references to Jews on The Goon Show and other Milligan programs unsettling, although comedy mavens like Stephen Fry, of Hungarian Jewish origin, idolize him unreservedly. Fry especially admires Milligans series of war memoirs, published by Anthony Blond, of a Sephardic Jewish family.

Nor did a Jewish psychiatrist whose therapy made possible Milligans postwar achievements express any concerns. Dr. Sydney Gottlieb, who treated a range of patients from concentration camp survivors to homeless alcoholics, ministered to Milligan with humane care and understanding that won Gottlieb a verse tribute from UK poet Adrian Mitchell.

And Rabbi John Levi of Melbournes Temple Beth Israel good-humoredly reviewed The Bible According to Spike Milligan (1994) a book-length spoof, proclaiming that the Lord told Milligan: Inscribe your version of the Bible on 186 pages of print and even if you get things a bit wrong, I shall forgive thee! And he did.

Rabbi Levis implication may have been that Jewish listeners to The Goon Show should likewise excuse the occasional deliberately outdated Jewish-themed gag, given the Yiddishkeit that was part of the programs uniquely zany ambiance.

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The secret Jewish history of The Goon Show - Forward

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Posted By admin on May 25, 2021

In the fights over the future of Israel and Palestine, in which enmities are often understood to be both ancient and eternal, Peter Beinart is the rare figure to have come unstuck. Having made his name as a stalwart of liberal Zionism and a prominent center-left supporter of the Iraq War, both as an editor of The New Republic and a familiar face on cable news, Beinart has spent much of the past decade reconsidering those positions. Last summer, he made a clean break. The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decadesa state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jewshas failed, Beinart wrote, in a long essay for Jewish Currents. He called on interested parties to work toward a single state in the Middle East that would protect the rights of Israeli Jews and Palestinians alike. On May 11th, as violence escalated in Israel and Gaza, Beinart published a second essay, arguing that the Jewish right to return home should also apply to Palestinians. If Palestinians have no right to return to their homeland, he wrote, neither do we. Two days later, Rashida Tlaib, the left-wing Palestinian congresswoman, quoted Beinart when she led several of her progressive colleagues to the floor of the House to denounce Israels latest actions. No one involved in these debates missed the implication: the most influential liberal Zionist of his generation no longer believed in an exclusively Jewish state in the Middle East. Peter Beinart had switched sides.

Beinart, who turned fifty this year, has lived for a decade within a well-defined Orthodox Jewish community on the Upper West Side. He looks similar to how he did when he first became a public figure, around the turn of the centurythe same close-cropped black hair, smooth skin, and wide-set featuresand hes retained the earnest, slightly formal manner of a person who has been debating very serious matters from a very young age. Because he is saying Kaddish for his father, an anti-apartheid South African Jew, who died not long ago, Beinart visits a synagogue twice a day, and spends an hour each morning studying the Talmud. Within this community he is a better fit religiously than politically. One day not too long ago, he was walking to shul when a man came up to him and asked if he was Peter Beinart. And like a complete idiot, I thought, Oh, yes, how nice of you to recognize me. The man said, Your politics are shit.

For a couple of years, Beinart had been a scholar-in-residence at a Passover programelaborate affairs in which mostly Orthodox Jews travel to hotels in places like the Yucatn or Whistler that have been rented for the occasion, with lectures and religious ceremonies. Its like Jews gone wild. All people do is pray, and eat, and talk about what theyre gonna eat, Beinart said. I loved it so much. Its fabulous. At one event, there were rumors that Ivanka Trump was present. Another year, a book of Beinarts was published, in which he detailed what he saw as a crisis within Zionism. Word got around. Eventually Beinart learned that someone had raised an alarm. He said, If Beinarts going to be there, and you want me to not withdraw, youve gotta insure that I never lay eyes on him. Literally I was such a turnoff that people wouldnt come. Beinart became slightly sentimental. They can hate me if they want, he told me. Theyre still my people.

Even by Israeli standards, the latest escalation of hostilities has taken place across an unusually intimate geography. The crisis began in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, over a court case which threatened the eviction of six Palestinian families, but it spread not just outward, to the skies and to the occupied territories, but inward, to Israels mixed cities. In Lod, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Israeli Arab protesters threw stones and set fires at a Jewish school, a synagogue, and other businesses; a Jewish man was killed when he was hit by a rock while driving, and an Arab Israeli was shot to death. The citys mayor called for a state of emergency, saying that the country was on the brink of a civil war. In Bat Yam, a mob of Jewish extremists beat an Arab motorist whom they had pulled from a car, an incident captured by an Israeli news crew. There were other incidents, in Ramla and Hebron. Mobs attacked civilians, or police, or, in one case, a news crew of the public broadcaster. On Friday, a ceasefire agreement, brokered by Egypt, put a stop to the violence, at least temporarily. But the fact that the fighting was not contained in Gaza or the West Bank, that it spilled so fluidly into Israel proper, made all the decades of political effort to delineate two states, with a green line between them, seem suddenly far-fetched. The fact that this violence breaks out in all of these mixed cities inside the Green Line, I think, has been shocking to a lot of Jews, Beinart told me the other day, via Zoom. But probably less so to Palestinians, because its just a reminder that there is a Palestinian people.

Giving up on the two-state solution is a pessimistic proposition. It means deciding that a project that has created the government for one people (the Palestinians), and directed the history of another (the Israelis), in which millions of people and many nations have spent decades invested, is a lost cause. In Beinarts telling, he only came to the position this past spring, in the stasis of the 2020 pandemic. He was already questioning the feasibility of a two-state solution, but he couldnt get his mind around an alternative. So I started reading, he told me, many Palestinian writers and historians: Ali Abunimah, Mahmoud Darwish, Edward Said. He came across an interview from 2000 in which Said, who was born in Mandatory Palestine, more than a decade before the establishment of Israel, had declared himself the last Jewish intellectual, distinguishing himself from the satisfied suburban squires in Israel and America who had lost the feeling of statelessness and marginalization. (Such a mindfuck! Beinart said). These Palestinan intellectuals, he thought, turned out to be deep readers of the conflict, similar to the insights that Black American writers brought to U.S. history. Just in this clichd way that white liberals thought we could never elect Trump, and Black Americans thought we couldits exactly the same way, if you talk to many Jews about the idea of another nakba [when seven hundred thousand Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948], they will say, What kind of slander is that? You talk to Palestinians, and theyre like, Uh-huh. Sure.

Holed up on the West Side with his books, Beinart could encounter the Palestinian case in a more dispassionate setting. He noticed the generosity of these writers, and the empathy they showed toward the Jewish experience. But he also noticed that these writers account of Palestinian history had a deep continuity to it. They say the nakba never ended, Beinart said. This summer, he was praying during Tisha BAv, a holy day during which Jews are invited to imagine themselves leaving Jerusalem when it was in flames, and to imagine hoping to redeem it through return. The experience made him think of how hypocritical it seemed for a Jew to tell a Palestinian to give up on returning home. On the one hand you had the temple, on the other the nakba. In Gaza, no one needs to cast his mind thousands of years into the past to imagine himself as a refugee. Beinart said, Theres just something kind of absurd about the idea that we think so little of Palestinians that we dont think that they know how to teach their children to remember things.

There is sometimes a totalizing strain in Beinarts thinking. Too few American Jews, he said, recognize what a service the Palestinian Authority provides for Israel, by keeping relative order at a relatively low cost. I do think we may be entering an era where eventually the Palestinian Authority is going to collapse, and the cost for Israel of controlling millions of people who lack basic rights goes up, and that fills me with some dread. He mentioned a close friend from college who had been killed in a Hamas bus bombing. The last thing I want to see is for Israelis, Jews to be killed. But I think it is unrealistic to think that you can maintain control over millions of people who lack basic rights at a low cost forever. The cost has gone up. And I think one possible scenario is that it never goes back down to where it was before. He recalled that, in 1985, South Africa declared a partial state of emergency because of the anti-apartheid resistence. Beinart said, So it was basically a kind of intifada in South Africa, but it never ended. And so Ive mostly just been thinking about, What happens if this never ends?

Beinarts writing, thematically, has often orbited political power. So has his life. Though he frequently visited Cape Town, where his family was from, in childhood and adolescence, he grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father was an architecture professor at M.I.T.; after his parents divorced, his mother, whose family were Sephardic Jews from the Mediterranean, married Robert Brustein, who founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre. Even by the standards of tenured Cambridge, Beinarts academic path was incandescent: Buckingham Browne & Nichols, then Yale, then a Rhodes scholarship, after which he moved to Washington to take a job at The New Republic, whose combative eminences, Marty Peretz and Leon Wieseltier, were both deeply devoted to the Jewish experience and the cause of Israel. Within a few years, Beinart, still not yet thirty, was made the editor of The New Republic and the heir to its particular negotiation between universalist and tribal causes. It was in some ways a Jewish magazineyou could analogize it to the way that National Review has always been a Catholic magazine, Beinart said. And yet it was, of course, also an important general magazine of arts and politics, and the fact that you could have those two at the same time, with Jewish identity as front and center, as it was for Marty and also for Leon, to me just showed how much Jews had arrived.

But as the Clinton era gave way to the Bush Administration, both the magazine and Beinart himself occupied a more specific niche, as prominent liberal interventionists who supported the Iraq War. In 2006, when Beinart published The Good Fight: Why Liberalsand Only LiberalsCan Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, he recalled, both Bill and Hillary Clinton came to the book party. And that was not because it was a great book. It wasnt. It was because, at that point, I was saying something useful to Democratic politicians. Those politicians, he said, were worried that the Democratic Party had this Vietnam syndrome where it was on the defensive on foreign policy, and my book was about reclaiming Cold War liberalism.

In his newsletter this winter, Beinart noted that several of his contemporaries from this time, most of them well-credentialled Gen X liberals, are now running American foreign policy. Tony Blinken, who started at The New Republic a couple of years before Beinart, is now the Secretary of State. Jake Sullivan, who was also a Rhodes Scholar, is the national-security adviser. Beinart once interviewed for a position at the Center for New American Security, the think tank founded by Michle Fluorney, who was a candidate to be Bidens Secretary of Defense. Beinarts departure from a similar trajectory wasnt fatedhe applied to work in the Obama Administration and might have stayed in Washington. But the timing wasnt right. As the Iraq intervention deteriorated, during George W. Bushs second term, Beinart decided that his whole framework for thinking about American foreign policy had basically run aground. On Israel, the situation wasnt much better. Barack Obamas early efforts to challenge Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements were not effective, even within his own party, and the nascent left-wing Jewish lobby around J Street was not strong enough to back him. Obama threw in the towel pretty early, Beinart said. He was working at the time on a book about the hubristic traits in American foreign policy in which he was critical of his own position on the Iraq War, which was itself a quiet split with Washington. In 2009, Beinart secured a tenure-track position in CUNYs journalism department and moved his family to New York. Among the young Washington liberals who seemed poised to run the world, he was one who left.

Political actors of Beinarts type, who were made in Washington institutions, are often denounced for their variability. But, up close, they tend to have virtues, too. They can take heat. Beinarts alienation from the mainstream American Jewish establishment began with the publication of The Crisis of Zionism, in 2012, in which he predicted a coming split between an increasingly hard-line Orthodox community, its numbers swelled by high birth rates, and more assimilated liberals who were becoming less and less attached to Israel. (Beinart, communally Orthodox and politically progressive, was the rare Jew of his generation with a foot in both camps.) But his willingness to publicly change his mind about Iraq also earned him some credibility in the Obama Administration. Ben Rhodes, a longtime foreign-policy aide to Obama, told me, When I was in government, the totality of Peters world view certainly led me to question the relevance of the type of language we are using to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the efficacy of putting faith in negotiations with someone like Bibi Netanyahu, who has no interest in resolving this conflict, and the ethical questions raised by U.S. assistance that can be used for purposes we should be increasingly uncomfortable about. Rhodes told me that he had recently gone on Beinarts podcast and made some comments critical of Israel, which led Mike Pompeo, Trumps Secretary of State, to accuse Rhodes, who is half Jewish, of holding anti-Semitic views. Rhodes got in touch with Beinart. He wasnt overly sympathetic, Rhodes said. He was kind of like, This is the price.

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A Liberal Zionists Move to the Left on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - The New Yorker

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Posted By admin on May 25, 2021

Palestinian families are living in limbo as the conclusion of a long-running legal battle against their eviction from East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah district draws near.

The fragile truce between Israel and Palestinian militant groups has brought uneasy quiet to the district, where fragrant citrus trees grow in courtyard gardens and cosy terraces overflow with flowering jasmine.

The houses the Palestinians have lived in for nearly 70 years are filled with hand-carved furniture, ornate rugs and traditional embroidery. Maps of historical Palestine hang on the walls of some and the golden Dome of the Rock, in the vicinity of the Al Aqsa Mosque, can be seen from the highest windows.

But Israeli military checkpoints tightly control access to the area and Palestinians say the neighbourhood has now taken on the atmosphere of a militarised zone.

"The Israeli army installed several barriers that arbitrarily limited our right of movement," said Yara Yaeesh, a 32-year-old resident of the affluent Al Hara Al Fokaniya lane, named with the Arabic for the high plain.

"Many of us won't leave the area as Israeli soldiers give us a lot of hassle when we come back," she told The National, referring to the checkpoints that Israel says are key to maintaining security.

Though the open hostilities have ended, the families right to live in the district remains threatened by a concerted effort, backed by influential Israeli settler groups, to evict them from their homes.

The eviction threats turned the tiny district into a flashpoint in the latest surge of unrest between Israel and the Palestinians.

The legal battle over the right to live in Sheikh Jarrah culminated in an appeal to Israels Supreme Court to overturn a verdict from last year in favour of the Israeli settlers.

The Supreme Court discussed the case in two sessions on April 30 and May 2 this year.

A third session that was due to take place on May 10 was cancelled as tensions sparked the worst violence seen in the Palestinian territories and Israel since 2014.

The Justice Ministry plans to schedule a new hearing within weeks.

If the Supreme Court appeal is successful, the families could gain long-sought recognition from Israel of their right to live in Sheikh Jarrah. If it fails, then they will lose their homes.

The eviction proceedings in the case that will again appear before the Supreme Court, as well as similar previous cases in occupied East Jerusalem, are based on the application of two Israeli laws, the Absentee Property Law and the Legal and Administrative Matters Law of 1970.

International rights groups say the Israeli authorities have largely allowed the takeover of the land and homes of Palestinians, in East and West Jerusalem, who left or were expelled as a result of the 1948 conflict or fled the Israeli occupation in 1967, by declaring them absentees' properties.

The last seven months have been exhausting for the 78 members of 19 Palestinian families facing eviction and displacement from what they insist are their homes and lands.

The families do not enjoy the same legal and social rights as some of their neighbours, however.

If the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem leave the holy city for more than six years for any reason including to study or work they will not be allowed to return.

If they move to live outside the districts municipal boundaries, even to nearby cities in the West Bank like Ramallah, they lose their blue resident IDs issued by Israel.

Salah Abu Hussein has been defending Palestinian families in the area since 1994. He told The National how he and his team scoured archives for Ottoman-era documents supporting the families right to live in Sheikh Jarrah.

We visited Turkey four times and searched the Ottoman archives and found nothing supporting the claims of the Israeli settlers that the land was owned by two Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish settler groups in the 19th century. We have copies of the relevant archival materials and have presented them to the Israeli Supreme Court, he said.

We visited Turkey four times and searched the Ottoman archives and found nothing supporting the claims of the Israeli settlers

Salah Abu Hussein

The first lawsuit filed by Jewish plaintiffs to displace Palestinian families dates back to 1972," said Mr Abu Hussein. Most of the Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah have been stuck in legal limbo since the 1970s.

The Palestinian families in the current case say their predecessors were unable to register the land in Sheikh Jarrah in their names in the 1950s when they were resettled there by Jordan in conjunction with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). At the time, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were under Jordanian control.

Up to 700,000 Palestinians fled or had been driven from their homes in several towns and cities that constituted historical Palestine and became Israel in 1948-49. Both sides of the conflict have been blaming each other since then.

When Israel seized East Jerusalem after the six-day war in 1967, Sheikh Jarrah came under Israeli control.

Then the Israeli authorities refused to register the land in Palestinian names as Israel fully administered East and West Jerusalem in 1967, said Mr Abu Hussein.

The Palestinian lawyer says that, in the early 1970s, an Israeli lawyer hired by the Palestinians to defend them against the threat of eviction was accused by his Palestinian clients of exploiting an ad hoc power of attorney arrangement to give Jewish settler groups landlord status over the Sheikh Jarrah families, who then became protected tenants.

The Israeli settlers claim the evidence supporting the Palestinian case is flawed and their lawyers are determined to slug it out.

They are spreading lies to influence innocent and ignorant minds, Chaim Silberstein, the president of the advocacy group Keep Jerusalem, told The National.

The Israeli courts sent the Ottoman title deeds to the forensic department to check their authenticity and the forensic department returned the documents and said they were completely forged. The ink was recent and the stamps on the documents were not of the period that they claim to be, said Mr Silberstein, who is also a councillor for the Beit El settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Israel cites historical and religious ties in its claim to the land of the West Bank, and around 650,000 Jewish settlers live there among three million Palestinians.

Mr Silberstein rejects the term settlement, calling Beit El a Jewish community in Judea and Samaria.

This land is holy for Jews, he said, referring to Sheikh Jarrah. Theres the tomb of high priest Simeon the Just Jews have been visiting it for thousands of years.

Since 1967, about 250 Israeli settlements have been established across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law, the UN says.

Mr Silberstein said two Jewish settler groups purchased four acres of land around the tomb from the original Turkish landowners in 1875.

The legal status of this case is that the Arab tenants of these properties have been living there illegally

Chaim Silberstein

The original acquisition has been challenged in courts and upheld many times, he said.

Mr Silberstein claimed many of the settlers had reclaimed properties that were being illegally occupied by what he called squatters.

The legal status of this case is that the Arab tenants of these properties have been living there illegally. They have been offered compensation to leave or to pay rent. They have refused those offers and, as a result, they are no longer eligible to live in those homes as they have lost their rights by their own failure. They had an opportunity to remain but refused. The law is on our side, he added, sounding confident.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its capital, citing historical and religious ties to the land, but the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

Last year, former US President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, upsetting many allies in the region and the West alike.

A video that was widely shared in May on social media recently by Palestinian residents encapsulated the existence paradox in just a few minutes.

It shows the argument between Mona Al Kurd, whose family faces eviction and displacement in the ongoing case, with a Jewish settler from New York, who lives in half of her house after a Jewish settler group won a legal battle in 2009.

The man was standing in the garden of the house in defiance of the protests by Ms Al Kurd.

The UN says the Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah are refugees who lost both their original homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.

In 1956, these refugee families moved into Sheikh Jarrah with the support of the Jordanian government and material assistance from UNRWA following their displacement. They have resided in these homes for nearly 70 years. They are now at risk of being displaced for the second time in living memory, UNRWA said.

Theres a huge legal imbalance between the Palestinians and Jews in Sheikh Jarrah

Suhad Bishara, Adalah

The evictions, if ordered and implemented, would violate Israel's obligations under international law.

Israel has frequently characterised the legal battle over Sheikh Jarrah as a property dispute.

In a statement on May 9, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said: "Regrettably, the [Palestinian Authority] and Palestinian terror groups are presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties, as a nationalistic cause, in order to incite violence in Jerusalem.

But Suhad Bishara, the director of the Land and Planning rights unit of the Palestinian advocacy group Adalah, said the great religious significance of Jerusalem to Judaism, Christianity and Islam means this is not the case.

Israel, she said, cannot impose its own set of laws in occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, to evict Palestinians from their homes.

Theres a huge legal imbalance between the Palestinians and Jews in Sheikh Jarrah, she said.

Defending yourself against the occupier with the tools the occupier has imposed on you is a mission impossible.

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Inside the decades-long struggle for the right to live in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah - The National

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Posted By admin on May 25, 2021

Led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in the House, and Bernie Sanders (D-VT), in the Senate, progressives in the United States are moving to block a $375 million precision-guided munitionsJoint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) sale to Jerusalem. The Washington Post broke the story that Congress had been notified of the sale, on May 5. The deadline for the pols to slash the sale, as a sanction, is up May 20. Democratic Representatives, Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) joined AOC in introducing the joint resolution. Should this bloc, made up mostly of Democratic Socialists, have success in their joint resolution, it would be unprecedented. Congress has never successfully blocked a proposed arms sale via a joint resolution of disapproval, according to the Congressional Research Service, wrote John Haltiwanger in Business Insider.

AOC wrote that Washington, or Wall Street, would be selling JDAMS to Jerusalem without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights. She says it would cause the United States to enable Israel in the death, displacement and disenfranchisement of millions. But her accusation of Israeli schadenfreude towards the 64 dead Palestinian children is a sick travesty. At a time when so many, including President Biden, support a ceasefire, we should not be sending direct attack weaponry to Prime Minister Netanyahu to prolong this violence concluded the youngest-ever member of Congress, who randomly claims she has Sephardic ancestry. The United States should not be rubber-stamping weapons sales to the Israeli government as they deploy our resources to target international media outlets, schools, hospitals, humanitarian missions and civilian sites for bombing she Tweeted, completely overlooking the fact that Hamas clearly utilizes vulnerable civilians, as shields.

Israels bombardment of the Gaza Strip has dominated global headlines. And it has drowned-out the massive elephant in the room: the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is the Izz ad-Din alQassamBrigades chief benefactor. Instead, the same voices who introduced a bill to ditch the sale of JDAMS to Jerusalem, are the same antagonists who are influencing the Biden administration to reenter the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), with Tehran, thereby sending hundreds of millions of dollars in liquid assets to the Ayatollahs regime, which will inevitably be spent on Shiite proxy militias, and Palestinian terrorist organizations, which endanger their own civilians by attacking the Jewish state, and even firing rockets, aimed at Israel, that dont make it past the Palestinian territory, and kill their own.

Most of the funding for the al-Qassam Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, comes from Iran. And said funding would only increase multifold were the United States and other European nations to reenter into an accord and unfreeze assets to Tehran. December 23, 2021, 150 House Democrats sent a letterto then-President-elect Joe Biden communicating support for diplomacy with Iran: We are united in our support for swiftly taking the necessary diplomatic steps to restore constraints on Irans nuclear program and return both Iran and the United States to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a starting point for further negotiations Representatives David Price (D-NC), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Abigail D. Spanberger (D-VA), and Brad Sherman (D-CA) drafted the missive.

But the American political players whoalbeit underhandedlystrive to handcuff the Jewish state and empower Hamas and, subsequently, the al-Qassam Brigades, (and the Quds arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) dont just stop with the Representatives of Congress, or the Brooklyn-born, Jewish, elderly Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont. According to John Bolton, 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations, employed by former-President George W. Bush, and 27th United States National Security Advisorfoolishly fired by ex-President Donald J. TrumpBidens Climate Czar, John Kerry, longtime chum of Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, spilled to the Quds Force (the IRGCs hawkish military wing which oversees Palestine) contrarian, classified information about Israeli strikes on Iranian military targets, inside Syria. Democrats have rallied around Kerry, while the press has all but ignored or dismissed the controversy, wrote Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post. This makes it clear why congressional progressives side with the Palestinians, who are represented by Hamasand create a division within the Democratic Party. If John Kerry had his way, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and of course, the Squad, Israel would be forced to give up more land, and not respond to terrorism and attacks from al-Qassam, and finally, would be sanctioned. Whats more: Iran would have nuclear weapons.

As for the JCPOA, and why it is not worth salvaging, in an op-ed to the Washington Post, John Bolton wrote, In Iran, it is not the negotiators who matter, nor what they say. Its increasingly the IRGC, [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] which controls the nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, commands conventional military activities externally, and supports terrorists worldwide.

Scott Shlomo Krane has been blogging for TOI since February 2012. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Tablet, Ha'aretz, The Jerusalem Post, the Daily Caller, JazzTimes and AllAboutJazz.com. Scott was a columnist and breaking news editor for Arutz Sheva-Israel National News (2011-2013). In addition to holding a degree in Judaic Studies and a Master's in English from Bar-Ilan University (for which he wrote his thesis on the poetry of American master, John Ashbery), he has learned Judaism at Hadar Ha'Torah Rabbinical Seminary in Brooklyn.

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US progressives and the push to empower the Quds Force and al-Qassam Brigades - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on May 23, 2021

New York, NY, April 20, 2021 ... ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) released the following statement regarding the guilty verdict reached today in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd:

The jurys decision to hold Derek Chauvin accountable for the murder of George Floyd is acriticallynecessary firststep in securing#JusticeforGeorgeFloyd.

And yet, no guilty verdict can change the fact that George Floyd -- and Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, and too many others -- should be alive today. Our country's policingand criminallegalsystemshave targeted and devalued Black, brown, and Indigenous lives for centuries.The issue is much bigger than one traffic stop, one no-knock raid, one police shooting, one department, or one city.It is long past time for our country to tackle systemic racism, reimagine what public safety looks like, and create transformational change to ensure justice and fair treatment for all people. Black Lives Matter, and our society's laws, practices, and institutions must reflect that.

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Posted By admin on May 23, 2021

Children are being subjected to extensive trauma in Israels bombardment of the Gaza Strip. For some, its trauma theyve seen repeatedly throughout their short lives. (May 19) AP Domestic

Five Jewish groups penned a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday expressing concern about the recent surge of antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. amid the military confrontation between Israel and Hamas, which agreed to acease-fire this week.

The American Jewish Community, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federations of North America, Hadassah and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America called on the president to use his platform to condemn antisemitism and take a number of actions to combat anti-Jewish hate in the U.S.

"We are grateful for the current ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, but we fear that the way the conflict has been used to amplify antisemitic rhetoric, embolden dangerous actors and attack Jews and Jewish communities will have ramifications far beyond these past two weeks," the groups wrote.

The cease-fire between Israel and Hamas took effect Thursday evening after both parties agreed to halt an 11-day military confrontation that left at least 230 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. Some 58,000 Palestinians have fled their homes, the Associated Press reported.

Middle East conflict: Israel, Hamas agree to cease-fire after hundreds killed in Gaza

'Every incendiary ingredient imaginable': Here's what sparked worst Mideast violence since 2014

People reclaim valuable materials from a debris pile of a building destroyed by an airstrike prior to a cease-fire reached after an 11-day war between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel, in Gaza City, Saturday, May 22, 2021.(Photo: John Minchillo, AP)

The conflict has increased tensions in the U.S. online and in person between supporters of Israel and Palestinians. The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based international Jewish organization, said it has seen a "dangerous and drastic surge" in antisemitic hate crimes since the conflict broke out.

"We are tracking acts of harassment, vandalism and violence as well as a torrent of online abuse,"Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement Thursday. He added, "It's happening around the world."

The Anti-Defamation League said it has documented"disturbing antisemitism" on multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. The group said its analysis of Twitter posts from May 7 to May 14 found more than 17,000 tweets used variations of the phrase, "Hitler was right."

"ADL has also seen an increase in on-the-ground activity that demonizes Israel and that has crossed at times into antisemitism," the group said in a statement.

Thousands of people have marched in major U.S. cities in recent weeks to protest Israel's actions. The majority of protesters "have stayed within the lines of free and civil discourse," but there have been "some expressions of clear antisemitism at these events," theAnti-DefamationLeague said.

The group said it hasdocumented "signs that invoke the age-old antisemitic accusation that Jews are responsible for killing Jesus" and "Holocaust analogies that demonize Zionists."

Hate crimes are on the rise against communities of color. In 2019, they reached their highest level in more than a decade. Heres why. USA TODAY

Last Sunday,two people shattered a window at a synagogue in Skokie, Illinois,according to local police, who are investigating the incident as a hate crime. Police said officers at the scene located a broken stick and a "Freedom for Palestine"sign on the ground beneath the window.

In Bal Harbour, Florida, police are investigating after a Jewish family said four men in an SUV hurled antisemitic slurs at them early last week.

Around the same time, someone smashed the frontdoor of a synagoguein Tucson, Arizona, according to police.

In New York City Thursday evening, 26 people were arrested as pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators clashed in Times Square, and police were investigating the assault of a Jewish man in the same areaas a hate crime, officials said.

"The anti-Semitism we're seeing across our countryisnt in isolation and isntjust a few incidents. Its part of a horrible and consistent pattern. History teaches us we ignore that pattern at our own peril," Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter Fridayafter meeting with Jewish community leaders at City Hall.

Authorities in Los Angeles, meanwhile, were investigating a pair of incidents, both of which involved a caravan of vehicles,this week as possible antisemitic hate crimes.

Palestine: Americans largely support Israel but sympathy for Palestinians is on the rise

Israel-Hamas conflict: Gaza children bearing the brunt

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, center, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, speaks in front of civic and faith leaders outside City Hall, Thursday, May 20, 2021, in Los Angeles. Faith and community leaders in Los Angeles called for peace, tolerance and unity in the wake of violence in the city that is being investigated as potential hate crimes.(Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP)

The isn't the first time the U.S. has seen a rise in antisemitic hate crimes following conflict in the Middle East, according to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

"Since national data collection began in 1992, the worst months of each decade revolved around disputes in the Holy Land or around conflictual elections," Levin said.

In the 1990s, the month that saw the most antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. was March 1994, following the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, when an American-Israeli man fatally shot 29 people and wounded more than a hundred in the West Bank, Levin said.

In the 2000s, the worst month for antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. was October 2000, during the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Over the last decade, however, the most hate crimes happened aroundthe 2018 U.S. midterm elections, Levin said.

In 2019, antisemitic hate crimes hit multiyear highs and, for thefirst time in recent memory, Jews were the top target in America's three largest cities, Levin said. But as coronaviruspandemic lockdowns took effect, antisemitic hate crimes declined significantly as crimes against Asian Americans surged, he said.

"This month, as violence in the Middle East escalated, that pause in antisemitic violence appears to be over," Levin said.

Dozens of U.S. lawmakers have condemned the wave of antisemitic hate crimes. Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., who has been vocal about the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S., wrote on Twitter the "wave of anti-Semitic attacks against the Jewish community is disgusting & must not be tolerated."

"An attack on one community is an attack on all of our communities," Meng added.

In addition to the rise in antisemitic violence, Muslims in the U.S. have also been the targets of hate in recent weeks, and at least two mosques have been vandalized in what police are investigatingas hate crimes.

Last week, worshippers arriving for morning prayers at a mosque in Brooklyn to celebrate the end of Ramadanfound the words "Death to Palestine" spray painted on the entrance. And Monday, a religious flag was burned and graffiti was written on the base of a mosque on Long Island.

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Jewish groups sound alarm on rise in antisemitic hate crimes amid tensions between Israel, Hamas - USA TODAY

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Posted By admin on May 23, 2021

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Harassment, vandalism, assault and even Zoom meetings have been disrupted by graphic and racist messages.

Antisemitism has been on the rise in America, and Florida is seeing a surge in incidents, causing a rise in the costs of security.

From Boca Raton to Tequesta, Palm Beach County is home to the most Jewish Americans in South Florida, and the population is increasing rapidly.

"We're seeing a strong Jewish community growing in Boynton, Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter," said Rabbi Andrew Rosenkranz.

WPTV

But according to the Anti-Defamation League, Florida is now also home to the fourth most antisemitic incidents in the United States.

"We went out to investigate, and it wasn't just one, but it was many and multiple," Rosenkranz said.

Earlier this year, Rosenkranz said swastikas were found drawn on windows of a vacant restaurant in Wellington located around the corner from his synagogue, Temple Beth Torah.

"When you see a symbol like that, and you're a member of a community that it's directed towards, you know there are people out there who hate you," Rosenkranz.

The ADL just released its audit of antisemitic incidents, which says Florida saw a 40 percent increase in 2020 compared to 2019.

WPTV

The ADL's H.E.A.T. (Hate, Extremism, Antisemitism, Terrorism) Map shows most of the incidents happening in South Florida.

"In the last three years, we have seen the highest numbers of antisemitic incidents targeting the Jewish community since we started recording the audit in 1979," said Yael Hershfied, interim regional director of the ADL's Florida office.

She said the lockdown at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic did not prevent the hate, and those who pedal it started infiltrating new spaces.

"For example, Shabbat services at synagogues that were being held over Zoom, and we learned this new term now -- Zoombombing. It was being infiltrated by haters," Hershfied said.

WPTV

A new Pew Research Center report released this month not only shows the rise in antisemitism, but it also said more than half of Jewish Americans feel less safe than five years ago.

Now, Jewish institutions and synagogues are making upgrades and spending a significant amount of money on security.

"Over the past two years we have brought in about $700,000 in federal funding to go to about a dozen or so different Jewish institutions to support things like panic buttons, cameras on the outside," said Michael Hoffman, the President & CEO at Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County.

Hoffman said five years ago security spending was minimal. But now it's working with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, FEMA and local law enforcement to ensure everyone's safety while also investing in education to combat antisemitism.

WPTV

"Over $600,000 is being spent on an annual basis to help support the community advocacy and educational needs in our community," Hoffman said.

Rosenkranz said hate is a learned trait. He teaches love and tolerance, and although it's a strain on the budget, he said he cannot afford not to also focus on security.

"We now have the ritual of a bar mitzvah, we have the ritual of a wedding ceremony, we have the Jewish ritual of a funeral. Now, we have the ritual of security," Rosenkranz.

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Rise in antisemitic incidents in South Florida prompts Jewish groups to spend thousands on security - Fox 4

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Posted By admin on May 23, 2021

About a dozen people lined the corners of a busy intersection in the Old Port on Friday afternoon to support the people of Palestine. Over the past two weeks, at least 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have been killed in a series of missile attacks and airstrikes, according to the Israeli Defense Forces. Most casualties, on both sides, have been civilians. The violence was sparked by clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in Jerusalem and subsequent rocket attacks fired by the Hamas militant group into Israel. The support for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire is something unfamiliar to Ghada Harb, a Palestinian-American who was visiting Portland with friends when she walked by the demonstration. "I can't tell you the hope these people give me," she said. "It means the world to me. It means there are people who care about humanity." Harb said in the various times fighting has broken out in the region during her lifetime, the civilian casualties in Palestine often go overlooked. However, she noted that she has seen growing American support for Palestinians since the most recent fighting began earlier this month. "I think people's eyes are open for the whole world," she said. "I think social media and people made a difference."One of the demonstration's organizers, Bob Schiable, said they were there to oppose actions by the state of Israel, not the Jewish community. "We make the distinction between political Zionism and Judaism," he said. "People are dying every day in Gaza." Since the fighting intensified, the Anti-Defamation League has been tracking a spike in anti-Semitic attacks. The organization said it had received 191 reports of potentially anti-Semitic incidents since the violence broke out. Abraham Peck, a research professor at the University of Southern Maine who specialized in the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, said increasing anti-Israeli sentiment can fuel already-growing white-nationalism movements. "Muslims, Arabs and Jews really do need to sit together again and say, we need to understand what unites us. Then, we'll talk about what separates us," Peck said, adding that he hoped the current ceasefire will hold and open the door to longer-lasting peace. Following the ceasefire, the Jewish Community of Southern Maine released a statement on Friday that read: "The security of the State of Israel is paramount, but we acknowledge that true security is not achieved by arms alone... We mourn the results of the violence, and we join those of goodwill throughout the world who are praying that the cease-fire holds."

About a dozen people lined the corners of a busy intersection in the Old Port on Friday afternoon to support the people of Palestine.

Over the past two weeks, at least 230 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have been killed in a series of missile attacks and airstrikes, according to the Israeli Defense Forces. Most casualties, on both sides, have been civilians.

The violence was sparked by clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in Jerusalem and subsequent rocket attacks fired by the Hamas militant group into Israel.

The support for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire is something unfamiliar to Ghada Harb, a Palestinian-American who was visiting Portland with friends when she walked by the demonstration.

"I can't tell you the hope these people give me," she said. "It means the world to me. It means there are people who care about humanity."

Harb said in the various times fighting has broken out in the region during her lifetime, the civilian casualties in Palestine often go overlooked. However, she noted that she has seen growing American support for Palestinians since the most recent fighting began earlier this month.

"I think people's eyes are open for the whole world," she said. "I think social media and people made a difference."

One of the demonstration's organizers, Bob Schiable, said they were there to oppose actions by the state of Israel, not the Jewish community.

"We make the distinction between political Zionism and Judaism," he said. "People are dying every day in Gaza."

Since the fighting intensified, the Anti-Defamation League has been tracking a spike in anti-Semitic attacks. The organization said it had received 191 reports of potentially anti-Semitic incidents since the violence broke out.

Abraham Peck, a research professor at the University of Southern Maine who specialized in the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, said increasing anti-Israeli sentiment can fuel already-growing white-nationalism movements.

"Muslims, Arabs and Jews really do need to sit together again and say, we need to understand what unites us. Then, we'll talk about what separates us," Peck said, adding that he hoped the current ceasefire will hold and open the door to longer-lasting peace.

Following the ceasefire, the Jewish Community of Southern Maine released a statement on Friday that read: "The security of the State of Israel is paramount, but we acknowledge that true security is not achieved by arms alone... We mourn the results of the violence, and we join those of goodwill throughout the world who are praying that the cease-fire holds."

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'I can't tell you the hope these people give me': Mainers rally to support Palestine - WMTW Portland

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