The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday night to pass appropriations bills for the U.S. Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State. The votes were 218-210, 220-208 and 216-212, respectively. The bills now head to the Senate.
An amendment to the U.S. State Department appropriations bill, which passed by a voice vote, reduced the salary of suspended Iran special envoy Robert Malley to $1.
Another amendment, which failed by a 213-218 vote, sought to “prohibit any funds from being made available for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency,” or UNRWA.
Congress also voted overwhelmingly to maintain the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem (360-67) and to keep designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization (351-81), Jewish Insider reported, although neither was reported to be under serious consideration.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the first Jewish woman in the U.S. Senate who held her seat for nearly 31 years, died on Sept. 28, her office announced.
The former San Francisco mayor was a “trailblazer” who “became the longest-serving woman in the Senate, logging three decades in the upper chamber,” stated the Jewish Federations of North America.
“For American Jews, particularly Jewish women, Feinstein smashed glass ceilings as a powerful politician driven by her Jewish values and championing women’s rights in Washington,” JFNA added.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who ordered flags at half mast in Feinstein’s honor, called her “a historic figure and a great friend” while speaking during a tribute to retiring U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, according to the pool report.
“Dianne made her mark on everything from national security to the environment to protecting civil liberties,” Biden stated. “She’s made history in so many ways, and our country will benefit from her legacy for generations.”
Born in 1933 in San Francisco, Feinstein served three terms as the city’s mayor from 1978 to 1988. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992 and was the oldest member prior to her death.
“Dianne Feinstein was one of the most amazing people to ever grace the Senate. She was smart, strong, brave and compassionate—and she led with great integrity,” stated Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “May her memory be a blessing.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will appoint Feinstein’s replacement for the duration of her Senate term, has said he plans to name a black woman for the role and someone who is not planning to run for president in 2024.
Feinstein was predeceased by her husband, Richard Blum, who died in February 2022. She is survived by her daughter, Katherine Feinstein; and granddaughter, Eileen Feinstein Mariano.
Days before Rosh Hashanah, the Boca Raton Synagogue in Southeast Florida held a food giveaway in its parking lot for those in need.
Many filed into a tent with tables and shelves packed with honey jars and cakes, wine, grape juice, coffee, sugar, and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. There was also chicken, flour and other staples of the holiday menu that were free for those who needed it.
The synagogue held a similar giveaway last year before Rosh Hashanah and has done so annually prior to Passover, according to Talia Borenstein, the synagogue’s director of member engagement. The offerings make “a major difference” in alleviating rising costs, she told JNS.
Each year, the synagogue has expanded its offerings, she said, adding this was the first time that chicken was available.
The numbers
National kosher data is difficult to come by, but in general, kosher poultry and meat tend to cost more than non-kosher items for several reasons, including the way animals are slaughtered and how the process must be supervised.
The average price in U.S. cities went up from about $1.88 to $1.96 per pound for non-kosher whole chickens from August 2022 to August 2023, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) records. Bone-in chicken legs also went up during that span from $1.99 to $2.03 per pound, while the cost of boneless chicken breasts fell from $4.71 to $4.18 per pound. (See also the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s national report for chicken.)
Advertised prices for boneless chicken breasts are up compared to last week but significantly down from last year, according to data compiled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Poultry items are about to face some stiff competition in the coming weeks,” per the FDA report. It wasn’t clear to what extent the national prices from the FDA or BLS relate to kosher chicken.
In the middle of the summer, one of the nation’s leading kosher-meat distributors announced that it would need to raise prices on many items. Some Orthodox families feared the worst when rumors swirled on Facebook through WhatsApp and on websites that kosher meat prices could rise 40%.
“Everyone was going crazy,” Elan Kornblum, who runs the thousands of users-strong Facebook group Great Kosher Restaurants, told JNS. Kornblum posted about the price hike in July.
But after he spoke to several people who work in the industry, Kornblum urged people not to panic. The 40% hike wasn’t across the board or even on most meat items, he said, and the company has competitors.
“People who are conscientious—and there are many, and they should be—might not buy as much as they did or they might get a lesser quality of chicken,” he told JNS. “I don’t think there’s a drastic change.”
Budget creativity
Menachem Lubinsky, president and CEO of Lubicom Marketing Consulting and a kosher industry insider, told JNS that consumers are “being more cautious about their bill” and that some are switching from buying beef to chicken and fish.
One of the main challenges for kosher consumers this holiday season will be how to celebrate in the “same grand way as usual and to be creative with their budget,” he said. That includes buying meat well in advance of holidays, when prices are lower, and freezing it.
Others have turned to non-Jewish supermarkets that often sell kosher meat and chicken, including Costco and Trader Joe’s. In certain cities, kosher chicken and meat are significantly cheaper at those stores than it is at exclusively kosher supermarkets.
In other places outside of major Jewish centers, where kosher meat and chicken are less plentiful, consumers may need to stomach steeper prices or forgo chicken or meat for the holidays.
The 40% meat hike didn’t materialize, but insiders report that kosher food prices have risen during the High Holiday season and leading up to Sukkot. Many might think that 2020 was the peak year for food aid, due to the pandemic, but David Greenfield, CEO and executive director of Met Council on Jewish Poverty, told JNS that supplies have struggled more recently to keep pace with demand.
Some members of an online community board for Orthodox women bemoaned the challenge of feeding their families “nice” meals for the holidays on a limited food budget.
Suggestions on that message board for stretching budgets included using cheaper cuts of meat to make pulled beef and chicken and rice dishes with fewer and smaller pieces of chicken.
Bina Drazin, a South African native who lives in Cleveland, runs several charity programs that provide items, including baby formula, for free or nearly gratis.
A woman whom she helped recently told her that her credit card was maxed out. “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she said the woman told her.
“My aim is to help any Jew. That’s all I want to do,” Drazin told JNS. “Everybody needs help these days.”
JNS publishes a weekly listing of antisemitic incidents recorded and found by Jewish, pro-Jewish and pro-Israel organizations; national and international news; and social media. By the Anti-Defamation League’s count, an average of seven instances of varying measure occur daily in the United States. (Dates refer to when the news was reported, not when the events took place.)
Sept. 23
A probe into alleged antisemitism in his office promised by Eric Gonzalez, the district attorney of Brooklyn, N.Y., “has so far gone nowhere,” the New York Post reported. Police in Montgomery County, Md., investigated antisemitic salutes made by students, and school officials on the north shore of Long Island, N.Y. are looking into swastikas carved into desks at Riverhead High School.
Sept. 24
Antisemitic fliers were distributed in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and at a gun show in Allen, Texas. In Maine, the Hallowell City Council muted an antisemitic rant 45 seconds after it began on Zoom. Also in Maine, 50 people attended a rally in Freeport protesting recent antisemitic incidents in the town. The words “Neuremburg 2.0” (sic), next to a hangman noose, and “Covid is Jew” were spray-painted on an underpass in Melbourne, Australia.
Sept. 25
Racist fliers were distributed in a neighborhood in Prosper, Texas. A student at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md., performed a Nazi salute. In Beachwood, Ohio, a high school football coach resigned after the repeated use of the word “Nazi” as a play call. In Sydney, Australia, a home was vandalized with swastikas and strange messages. On New York’s Upper West Side, someone spray-painted obscenities and threats against Jews on a newsstand. In Minnesota, Vaughn Klingenberg, a Holocaust denier, has decided to run for the Roseville Area Schools board. On Yom Kippur, two men held up antisemitic signs with their arms in a Nazi salute in front of the Dallas Holocaust Museum.
Sept. 26
In Covington, Ky., someone has been posting antisemitic and racist stickers. The Anti-Defamation League published a summary of its efforts to monitor and counter the neo-Nazi group the Goyim Defense League after an incident in Georgia where they yelled slurs and waived swastika flags outside a synagogue. In Mount Pleasant, S.C., someone distributed antisemitic fliers in multiple neighborhoods. In a hip-hop podcast, rapper Malik Yusef suggested that Ye’s (Kanye West) hatred of Jewish rapper Drake may have influenced the mogul’s series of antisemitic remarks. In Pembroke Pines, Fla., someone spray-painted a swastika on a wall near a synagogue. At Carmel High School in Carmel, N.Y., near tony Westchester, a swastika and the name “Adolf Hitler” were chalked on a tennis court. The Combat Antisemitism Movement released a video debunking the stereotype that Jews are greedy. In Cleveland, two people disrupted a town hall meeting with antisemitic and homophobic comments. Joshua Wahl, an antisemitic Alaska man who already faces two homicide charges and has previously threatened online to kill Jews, was arrested for threatening to murder Mike Chitwood, the Florida Sheriff who has vocally challenged neo-Nazi agitators, prompting previous death threats from men in three other states and Canada. In London near the Emirates Football Stadium, someone graffitied the word “Yids” on a nearby pub.
Sept. 27
Former Ye political operative Ali Alexander said that even though Nazis committed “a little bit of genocide,” it would be wrong for them to be “painted as supervillains.” At Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, someone carved a swastika into a table. The ADL presented a new report on how social-media platforms are potentially profiting from ads placed next to extremist content. In Berkeley, Calif., the city council received a burst of antisemitic and racist slurs during a Zoom open comment at a meeting, as did the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, prompting the group to consider doing away with the Zoom open comment feature altogether. (To that end, the JCRC Bay Area and the Bay Area Network of Jewish Officials worked with the Jewish Community Federation to create a guide for officials to help curb the trend.) In Phoenix, police arrested a man in connection with a spree of antisemitic vandalism. On this date in 1938, the Nazis banned Jews from all legal practices. On this date in 1941, the mass killing of 23,000 Jews began at Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine, continuing through the next day.
Sept. 28
Germany has banned another neo-Nazi group, Artgemeinschaft, and raided member homes in a move comparable to a similar crackdown last week on Hammerskins Deutschland. Law enforcement in Pennsylvania charged a man from Peru, Eddie Manuel Nunez Santos, 33, with making fake bomb threats to area schools and Jewish organizations. In Ladera Heights, Calif., cars were vandalized with swastikas. A gun arrest from 2021 has led the FBI to uncover a neo-Nazi, Satanic, pedophile extortion criminal group that targets children. Luxembourg presented its action plan against antisemitism.
Sept. 29
In Rotterdam, England, a neo-Nazi went on a rampage, killing three people, two of whom he allegedly targeted for reporting him to police for animal cruelty. A new study has found that 90% of Jewish college students have experienced antisemitism during their time at school. The furor surrounding the honoring of a Ukrainian-Canadian Nazi collaborator has renewed calls for the removal of a monument in a cemetery outside Toronto honoring his unit. Video out of Germany shows attendees of an Oktoberfest event performing Nazi salutes during the performance of a song associated with Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime. In Greece, police confiscated more than half a ton of cocaine labeled with swastikas. Sharon Osbourne, the Jewish wife of legendary heavy-metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and a music manager, commented on Roger Waters’s recent antisemitic controversies, saying he “must have really lost the plot” and should go “live in an old people’s home … That is where he belongs.” On this date in 1941, a massacre of 34,000 Jews started in Babi Yar outside Kyiv, continuing on through the next day. On this date in 1933, the Nazi Party barred Jews from buying land.
“When oh, we all start arguing the history of the Jews,” sing LCD Soundsystem in “Call the Police,” their hit single from 2017, “You got nothing left to lose/And it gives me the blues.”
The lyrics are a nod to the idea that a fixation with Jews—what they have done, what they do and what they are apparently capable of—is the last intellectual refuge of the scoundrel. When the song was released, the immediate reference for that line was the growing and bitter polarization in America, but to my mind, it’s a valid observation in other contexts as well.
Like the manner in which the Holocaust has been shamefully manipulated and distorted in the context of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, now on the cusp of its second year.
A brief overview of the widely reported events of the last week is in order. Last Friday, Ukraine’s Jewish President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, addressed the Canadian parliament in Ottawa. One of the members of the audience—the recipient of a warm standing ovation after he was introduced as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” by Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota—was 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who had reportedly fought for Ukraine’s independence during World War II. Only it turned out that Hunka wasn’t a hero but very possibly a war criminal who had served with the First Ukrainian Division, otherwise known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi SS.
Once Hunka’s true identity was revealed, the fallout was pretty swift. After initially resisting calls to resign, Rota eventually relented and quit his post, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly offered shamefaced apologies. “It was a horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust,” said Trudeau, while Joly called the spectacle “an embarrassment to Canadians.”
Yet as the opposition and Canadian Jewish groups both pointed out, the remorse, however genuine, doesn’t explain how such a ghastly decision was made and implemented. In that light, Trudeau’s claim that the fault was essentially Rota’s (because it was the former Speaker who extended the invitation to Hunka) seems almost cowardly. After all, the prime minister of Canada should be aware that among the more than 1 million people of Ukrainian descent in his country, there are a significant number of apologists for crimes committed by Ukrainians during the war against Jews, Poles and anti-Nazi resistance fighters. Trudeau should also consider that since Canada provided a haven to many of these criminals after the war, the appearance of a nonagenarian Ukrainian on a VIP guest list should at the very least have triggered some due diligence on the part of his office.
The scandal also raises deeper questions about how the history of the Jews in that part of the world, and especially the Holocaust that descended upon them, should be presented in the context of the region’s current turmoil. Ukraine is among the grimmer examples of the Nazi slaughter of Jews, with nearly 1 million executed by mobile firing squads—the “Holocaust by bullets” some call it—and up to 1.6 million exterminated overall, often with the active assistance and participation of Ukrainian collaborators. As Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, summarizes it: The “murder of Ukraine’s Jews was mostly carried out by the Einsatzgruppen (the special mobile units that shot Jews) and SD (Nazi intelligence service). They were helped by Ukrainian auxiliaries who gathered the Jews, guarded them, and in many instances, participated in their killing. Those who sheltered Jews were in mortal danger from the Germans as well as from some of their neighbors. Despite the danger, there were individuals and sometimes entire villages who offered Jews shelter.”
There is no excuse for downplaying or ignoring this history, even if it’s in the name of an ostensibly noble cause, like supporting Ukraine’s present resistance to Moscow’s attempts to wipe it from the map. In fact, doing so actually weakens the case because it suggests that Ukrainians and their supporters want to cover up the less savory aspects of their country’s past, and is thus a gift for Russian propaganda.
The Hunka scandal was, in that sense, a real gift for the Russians in their quest to persuade a skeptical world that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis. And without giving any quarter to Vladimir Putin’s regime, it’s important to understand Ukraine’s wartime history in all its complexity and without any whitewashing. Yes, some people will argue that the record of collaboration with the Nazis makes Ukraine unworthy of support 80 years later—logically and morally, an argument that is full of holes—but sanitizing that history is hardly the answer to them.
It further obscures the fact that the Russian regime constantly instrumentalizes and exploits the Holocaust and has been doing so since the last years of Stalin’s dictatorship. The Communist Party’s pet historians stamped upon any accounts of the Holocaust that explained it for what it was—a war of mass extermination against the Jews—in favor of a revised account that substituted the critical word “Jews” with “Soviet citizens.” The only time they were prepared to acknowledge the Jewish character of the Holocaust was when they used it as a stick to beat the State of Israel, with official Soviet propaganda depicting Israeli leaders as Nazis who had learned their trade from their own murderers.
They are still doing it. Last week, Maria Zakharova—the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesperson who once opined that if you wanted to understand how Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. election, “you have to talk to the Jews”—said she wished that “the ancestors of the current Israeli elites knew that their direct descendants were sponsoring a regime that glorifies their murderers and the ideology of the Holocaust.” And what was the trigger for this ire? A battery of Israeli anti-aircraft missiles supplied to Ukrainian forces? A delivery of tanks? No. Zakharova was angered by the speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by Israeli atomic chief Moshe Edri, in which he confirmed that Israel had supplied Ukraine with equipment to safeguard its Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant—the scene of heavy fighting—from a potentially catastrophic accident that would reverberate well beyond Ukraine’s borders.
The lesson here is clear: As Jews, we have to vocally and confidently counter Ukrainian revisionism without giving succor to the present-day Russian foes of an independent, democratic Ukraine. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. Too many countries have shown themselves willing to prettify their Holocaust-era records in order to advance their agendas today, often couching their revisionism in language sympathetic to Jewish suffering. We have been warned.
Unlike other Jewish holidays, Sukkot comes with portable accessories—the “Four Species” or “Four Kinds”—the etrog (citrus); lulav (palm frond); hadas (myrtle); and aravah (willow)—used throughout the holiday. That means that those who travel during the intermediary days of the seven-day holiday have to transport several fragile, unwieldy, and for most people, unusual-looking ritual objects.
Travelers can transport their Sukkot accessories in either their carry-on or checked baggage, which the Transportation Security Administration will screen, TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein told JNS.
Still, those who have traveled during holiday time in recent years told JNS that the experience can be uncomfortable, particularly when others aren’t familiar with the holiday and its accouterments, including at airports.
‘Offer it to fellow travelers’
Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of media relations for Chabad.org, flew from the United States to Canada on Sept. 28 and had no issue at Canadian customs, where officials seemed to be familiar with the holiday.
He advised other travelers to be kind and friendly. “You may have some people who are curious, but a quick conversation with a smile would familiarize any curious folks,” he told JNS.
“If you’re traveling with a lulav and etrog, be aware that it’s a privilege that you have one and offer it to fellow Jewish travelers, who may not have their own and didn’t have the opportunity to do the mitzvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for a ritual commandment.
Last year, Seligson had an “absolutely smooth” experience going through airport security with his lulav and etrog. (The combination of the “Four Kinds” is often referred to as just the lulav and etrog.)
“It was clear that security officials and customs officials were very aware of Sukkot and about the lulav and etrog and their significance,” he told JNS. “They were extremely accommodating.”
‘They looked relieved’
Jeffrey Kranzler, a social worker and author in Silver Spring, Md., who is Orthodox, told JNS that he flew with his lulav and etrog during the holiday shortly after 9/11. He noticed that others in the terminal were staring at him and looking uncomfortable.
“I tried to figure out what was going on and realized that my lulav could be construed as something dangerous,” Kranzler told JNS. “I walked over to a few of the people, introduced myself and explained what the lulav was for. They thanked me and looked relieved.”
“Be friendly and open if questions are asked,” he advised other travelers. “Even be ready to initiate a conversation about your lulav and etrog with curious or fearful fellow passengers.”
The social worker also advised Jewish travelers to safeguard their lulav and etrog, which can be quite fragile, with protective cases.
‘This very odd thing’
Mayer Fertig, who is also Orthodox and lives in Teaneck, N.J., flew to Dallas on Sept. 28 with a lulav and etrog. He and his wife, Chani Fertig, encountered curiosity at the airport, he told JNS.
“I think people should be prepared to answer questions out of curiosity, as certainly the security people are going to want to know what it is,” he advised. “Maybe rehearse in your head a quick explanation for this very odd thing you’re carrying onto an airplane.”
Everyone from the TSA agents to the flight crew was polite about the lulav, Fertig told JNS. An X-ray machine flagged his carry-on bag for closer inspection—Fertig thinks it was because of the silver box protecting the etrog.
The TSA agent asked Fertig to open the carry-on and wanted to see what was in the box. Fertig did so and explained the purpose of the etrog. The agent asked if it was a lemon or a lime; Fertig responded that it was a citron. The Fertigs were subsequently able to go on their way.
This was the first time Fertig experienced curiosity about the lulav and etrog while traveling, he said, though he has read about such curiosity in the past.
“This is a thing that happens every year around this time when Jews are traveling,” he told JNS. “They encounter curiosity at a minimum at the airports, primarily because of security.”
He said that his wife provided “cheerful” explanations to anyone who wasn’t familiar with the Sukkot objects.
“They were very politely curious and accepted our explanations,” he said.
Chani Fertig told JNS that the overall experience was “very pleasant.”
“People were very curious. They were accommodating, and they were very nice,” she said. “We were a little nervous about it, but thankfully, it worked out very well.”
While attention has been focused on the anti-Israel literary festival at the University of Pennsylvania, harsh critics of Israel are also being featured just across town—at Temple University’s American Jewish Studies Center, also in Philadelphia.
The line-up of speakers during the 2023-24 academic year at Temple University’s Feinstein Center for American Jewish History features one critic of Israel after another. It seems that you have to be angry at the Jewish state in order to qualify to be part of the series.
One of the speakers who already delivered their talk was Eric Alterman, whose latest book, We Are Not One, depicts Israel as an oppressor and derides American Jews for supporting it.
Speaking at Tel Aviv University last year, Alterman announced his personal break with Israel. “I’m sorry; I’m abandoning you and your colleagues,” he declared. “I’m going to devote my attention to rejuvenating American Judaism. Those are my people. I used to have in my will Israeli peace groups, I’m changing my will and I’m funding American Jewish scholarly and charitable institutions.”
In a recent issue of the Jewish Review of Books, a prominent Jewish scholar questioned some of the distortions in Alterman’s book. Alterman responded by denouncing the reviewer as “chief of [the magazine’s] pro-Israel thought police.” That kind of slur gives you a sense of his temperament.
To discuss the current judicial reform debate in Israel, the Feinstein Center chose Gilat Bachar. She’s one of the leaders of a legal initiative to reclassify Israeli anti-terror actions as “policing” (rather than combat) so that more Palestinian Arabs can sue the Israeli government.
It’s interesting to note that nine years ago, Bachar chose to serve as an intern at the extremist HaMoked center, which defends Palestinian Arab terrorists. Does that disqualify her from speaking about Israeli affairs at the Feinstein Center? No. But it does give you a sense of her orientation when she talks about Israeli legal controversies.
Another Feinstein speaker is Talia Lavin. She was forced to resign from the staff of The New Yorker after she falsely accused an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo. It was actually the symbol of his platoon in Afghanistan, where he risked his life to keep terrorists from coming to the United States to maim and kill innocent people like Lavin.
Five years ago, she wrote an essay in The New Republic titled “A Memoir of Disillusionment.” It was another one of those wearisome “I used to love Israel, but Israel’s sins forced me to hate it” confessionals. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t speak at the Feinstein Center. But it does suggest that only a certain kind of partisan seems to be welcome there.
And then there’s Sigal Ben-Porath. She has written about what she calls the “belligerent citizenship” of Israelis. Ben-Porath says she is troubled by all the “patriotic unity” that she has seen among Americans and Israelis in the face of terrorist attacks—the sentiments of “We are all in it together,” “United we stand” or in the Israeli version, “We are all Jews.” Such patriotism is “exclusionary and therefore cultivates intolerance toward various subgroups,” she claims.
Ben-Porath was also a signatory on a petition declaring solidarity with Israeli extremists “who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories” and calling for “an Israeli declaration of an end to the occupation …. beyond the Green Line.” In other words, Israel should go back to being nine miles wide in the middle, and the Western Wall should return under Arab rule.
The Feinstein Center will also host museum curator Daniel Greene, creator of an exhibit claiming that President Franklin D. Roosevelt really did his best to save Jews from the Holocaust. Greene’s extreme position flies in the face of what mainstream historians have fully documented. Is he motivated by politics or just unfamiliarity with the historical record? Does it matter?
Sadly, the partisanship of Feinstein Center speakers is not new. I have written previously about the center hosting a talk by Joyce Ajlouny, general-secretary of the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers). She used her platform to accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid,” and suggested that Israel should be replaced by “one secular democratic state” of Palestine.
One comment that Ajlouny made stands out as tragically comical. “Constant accusations against Palestinians of anti-Semitism are like the boy who cried wolf,” she declared. How does that sound in the wake of the speech by Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, claiming that “Jewish usurers” provoked the Holocaust?
The Feinstein Center was founded, and for many years directed, by the late Dr. Murray Friedman, a distinguished historian and longtime leader of the American Jewish Committee in Philadelphia. I had the privilege of attending his presentations, and I remember what a strong supporter of Israel he was. I wonder what he would think of what his center has become in the hands of his successors.
America is a free country, and everybody is entitled to bash Israel or vocalize extreme positions. But the principle of truth in advertising requires the Feinstein Center to be upfront about those it invites. It should not be asking for donations from the Jewish community on the grounds that its programs are somehow advancing Jewish life. Giving platforms to harsh critics of Israel is certainly not the best way to do that.
The office of Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, released an index on Wednesday of more than 40 international efforts to fight Jew-hatred.
“Tackling antisemitism at home means appreciating how this hatred is addressed around the world,” per the U.S. State Department. “It requires a common understanding of the urgency of countering this scourge with partners everywhere.”
The index addresses “more than 40 programs, policies and actions from around the world that counter antisemitism,” according to the department.
“Central themes” include defining antisemitism—the index recommends the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—quantifying it and identifying “effective, diverse and dynamic solutions,” the State Department stated.
Common approaches to battling antisemitism also include reliance on special envoys devoted to Jew-hatred; allocating funds to protect Jewish institutions; encouraging and promoting Jewish identity; and memorializing and educating the public about the Holocaust.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads a list of Israel’s top 50 Christian allies around the globe for their unwavering support for the Jewish state.
The Israel Allies Foundation, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that works largely with evangelical leaders globally at a time of growing faith-based diplomacy, released the annual listing on Friday, ahead of the Feast of the Tabernacles.
Pompeo is a former CIA director and, as secretary of state in the administration of former President Donald Trump, he advocated for Israel, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and supporting the Jewish state’s right to its biblical heartland.
The next on the list was Jair Bolsonaro, the former conservative president of Brazil who brought relations between Brazil and Israel to new levels.
Christian religious leaders
Among the notable Christian ministry honorees on the list are John Drew Sheard Sr. (No. 8), presiding bishop and chief apostle of the Church of God in Christ, the largest U.S. African-American Pentecostal denomination.
Last year, Sheard led nearly 150 delegates and 30 representatives of the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women on a tour of Israel, during the first official visit to the Holy Land by a top leader of the church.
The list includes Joni Lamb (No. 7), co-founder of the faith-based Daystar Television Network, who “provides significant financial assistance to the State of Israel,” per the foundation.
“My deeply held faith and conviction has aligned me to stand with and support Israel in every possible way," said Pastor Paula White, a televangelist and former White House adviser on faith, who is also on the list (No. 5).
Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, is number six on the list. (Earlier this year, he told JNS about his first visit to Israel 45 years ago.)
Mike Huckabee (No. 9), a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, is another prominent member of the list.
The publication of the fourth annual list, which comes amid burgeoning relations between Israel and the evangelical Christian world internationally, is timed to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which many Christians refer to as the Feast of the Tabernacles. The latter holds special meaning to Bible-believing Christians due to a verse in Zechariah that predicts an era when individuals from every nation will come to Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday.
Thousands of Christian supporters of Israel from around the world are expected in Jerusalem next week for the annual Feast of the Tabernacles, the largest annual tourism event of the year.
‘The impact of their support’
“We are honored every year to recognize these incredible men and women of faith from across the world,” stated Josh Reinstein, president of the foundation that publishes the list.
“It is due to their years of hard work that we are seeing embassies moved to Jerusalem, antisemitism called out and pro-Israel policies enacted at the highest levels of government," he added. "The impact of their support is truly limitless.”
Founded 15 years ago, the foundation has emerged as a powerhouse in mobilizing support for Israel worldwide through faith-based diplomacy. Its ever-growing network includes more than 50 pro-Israel parliamentary caucuses around the globe based on shared Judeo-Christian values.
“No matter where you live, you, too, can participate in what God is doing here in the land of Israel,” stated Jürgen Bühler, president of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.
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