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Menachem Wecker

Menachem Wecker is the U.S. bureau news editor of JNS.

The percentage of hate crimes in the state so far this year targeting Jews, 5%, appeared to suggest an improvement over 2025, when Jews were targets of 6.8% of hate crimes, and the past year, when the figure was 6.3%.
“I remain deeply concerned and very troubled by the unacceptable spike in hate crimes, particularly driven by those targeting Jewish New Yorkers,” New York City Council speaker Julie Menin told JNS.
“Our concern isn’t simply the number of reported criminal incidents,” Moshe Herman told JNS. “More often, we see growing social hostility, misinformation about Israel and an increase in antisemitic rhetoric online and in public discourse.”
“A person should be forthright and honest,” but Dr. Anthony Fauci “made himself out to be someone with something to hide,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken told JNS.
“There’s not a day that I don’t try to consult with him, and with my father,” the Israeli prime minister said, half a century after the counter-terror operation in Uganda.
“Idaho was one of the first 12 states to pass legislation regarding malicious harassment,” the state says in a newly released report.
“I think that the Israeli defense industry especially is very resilient, and I think they know how to adapt to the new situation,” Col. (Res.) Aviram Hasson told JNS.
Art historian Jacob Wisse told JNS that he is concerned “when museums, which I value for the rigor, depth and richness of their curatorial voice, fall back, lazily, on untruths.”
“When the mayor of New York repeatedly uses his platform to relentlessly single out and demonize Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, and calls those who support it ‘monsters,’ he contributes to a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers are increasingly targeted and unsafe,” Eric Goldstein, CEO of the UJA, said at a press conference.
“We’re a tiny percentage of the population, yet we’re over 50% of the attacks, and the mayor’s diatribes don’t help,” Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Ohab Zedek, a synagogue the victim attends, told JNS on the fast of Tisha B’Av.
The New York City Police Department told JNS that it is probing two attacks, of oil thrown at Queens synagogues, as hate crimes.
“Friends like Lindsey Graham come along once in a generation,” stated William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.