The withdrawal ends a round of lawsuits over the legality of such a demand, which alarmed Jewish groups on campus and beyond.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is overseeing the probe, did not explain its decision to drop the subpoena in its Thursday court filing. A representative for the agency declined further comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

In its own statement, Penn, which had been engaged in a legal back-and-forth over the school’s refusal to compile such a list, said it had “protected its employees’ rights.” The school had shared the names of Jewish staff who had consented to the probe, but resisted sharing the names of all Jewish staff.

“Penn remains committed to fighting antisemitism and all other forms of discrimination, to ensure everyone it serves can learn, work, and thrive,” a university spokesperson said.

The unusual demand, first made in November, came as the Trump administration has aggressively targeted a handful of elite schools accused of failing to curb antisemitism on campus. Most of the time, its intervention has come through the education and health and human services departments, which have cited civil rights violations in seeking to yank billions of dollars in federal funding.

But the EEOC has gotten involved, too, arguing that Penn, in particular, had failed to protect its Jewish and Israeli employees from discrimination. Its case against Penn originated in 2023, and its subpoena had included demands to reveal members of “all clubs, groups, organizations and recreation groups” that were “related to the Jewish religion, faith, ancestry/national origin.” The subpoena also targeted the school’s Jewish studies personnel.

Jewish groups, including Penn Hillel, had argued against the demand, as did free-speech organizations. In an email, Penn Hillel’s director, Rabbi Gabe Greenberg, told JTA the organization welcomed the news.

“Over the past year, I have spoken with hundreds of students, faculty, and staff across the University of Pennsylvania regarding this issue. Every single person expressed objections to the EEOC’s attempt to compel the University to surrender data on Jewish identity and affiliation,” Greenberg said.

He continued, “While many in our community share Penn Hillel’s conviction that campus antisemitism requires urgent, sustained action, demanding ‘lists of Jews’ was a fundamentally incorrect and inappropriate way to address it.”

Earlier this year the agency chair, Andrea Lucas, defended the list-of-Jews demand during an antisemitism conference at Harvard. Lucas told the roomful of Jewish professionals that her office needed the list to identify “potential victims,” including as a means of distributing potential payouts.

(L-r) Andrea Lucas, chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, speaks with Brandeis Center founder Kenneth Marcus at an antisemitism conference held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 16, 2026. (Dillon Meyer Media)

“At some point, either the government will know information about individuals related to their religion or we will not be able to enforce the laws on their behalf,” Lucas said at the time.

A federal judge had ruled in March that the request was reasonable, dismissing efforts by Penn and Jewish groups to declare the ruling unconstitutional. However, the judge delayed the deadline by which Penn would have been forced to comply, giving the university more time to appeal.

The EEOC’s larger antisemitism inquiry into Penn continues.

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A representative for the Hillel parent organization told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the original 22-page brief filed on Wednesday “was filed without having gone through our internal review process.” They did not elaborate further.

The whiplash further complicated institutional Jewish efforts to address campus antisemitism while sounding alarm about some of the government’s aggressive enforcement mechanisms. 

In its since-withdrawn brief, Hillel had argued that Harvard has improved in its response to antisemitism, also asserting that the Trump administration’s moves to defund the school “do not help Jewish students or improve the campus climate.” 

“To the contrary, they disproportionately impact the very Jewish students and Jewish researchers the government purportedly seeks to help,” the brief continued. It followed Harvard’s own brief in the case, which revolves around federal efforts to cite antisemitism as a reason to freeze more than $2 billion in U.S. Health and Human Services contracts and grants.

Jewish legacy groups have sought to straddle their demands for a crackdown on campus antisemitism with concerns that the Trump administration’s threats of massive cuts could harm research and students.

The brief had been signed by Mark Rotenberg, Hillel International’s general counsel and head of its Campus Climate Initiative, as well as by attorney David Zimmer. Neither Rotenberg nor Zimmer immediately returned requests for comment.

Harvard Hillel, which is independent from Hillel International, told JTA in a statement that it had nothing to do with either the decision to file or withdraw the brief.

“We hope that this dispute between Harvard and our government soon comes to a resolution that safeguards the rights of Harvard’s Jewish students and faculty, strengthens the university’s academic mission, and advances the preeminence of American research and industry,” a Harvard Hillel spokesperson said.

Shabbos Kestenbaum speaks on stage on the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, July 17, 2024. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Hillel’s defense of Harvard in the case had immediately proved controversial. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish Harvard alum turned conservative campus activist, had castigated Hillel for the brief and urged Jews to stop donating to the organization on social media Wednesday evening, shortly before the group announced it was withdrawing the brief.

“I encourage Jewish donors to pull their funding and support from Hillel and instead support organizations that positively impact the Jewish future,” Kestenbaum wrote on Facebook in response to the amicus brief. “It’s clear that Hillel does not want to reform.”

Kestenbaum later told JTA, “It’s increasingly obvious to any donor who wants to have an honest conversation with American Jewish students that a significant amount of the Jewish establishment is failing in that mission.”

He also had harsh words for Harvard Hillel, accusing the organization of having discouraged an undergraduate student from flying an Israeli flag, among other allegations. 

In response, a Harvard Hillel representative did not address Kestenbaum’s specific allegations. The representative told JTA that the organization “decisively improves the lives of Jewish students, and Harvard as a whole. For anyone who cares about defeating antisemitism at Harvard — there is no better allocation of your resources than supporting Harvard Hillel.” 

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The deal signed Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had set off alarm bells in Jerusalem and Washington.

Critics feared the deal lacks appropriate oversight to prevent the plants from enriching weapons-grade uranium and to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The statement announcing the deal, for instance, does not say it would require Saudi Arabia to abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s Additional Protocol, which allows for snap inspections.

Washington’s and Saudi Arabia’s announcement of the deal on Wednesday also did not mention a normalization agreement with Israel. 

A U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear deal had been one of the key incentives Washington and Jerusalem had hoped would sway the Kingdom to normalize ties with Israel under the Biden administration. Those efforts were scuttled by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that sparked the Gaza war.

Trump pushed back at criticism of the deal on Thursday, stating: “The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

Trump pushed back against reports Wednesday that the deal would allow enrichment of fissile material. “The United States is not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office notably only referred to the prospect of normalization, and not the nuclear deal, in a statement about the kingdom issued Thursday.

“The joint American and Israeli military action against the genocidal regime in Tehran and Israel’s crushing of Iran’s terror axis have created the possibility to expand the circle of peace,” Netanyahu’s office said. “Saudi Arabia’s joining of the Abraham Accords would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East.” 

Netanyahu’s colleagues were more critical.

“A civilian nuclear program isn’t what Israel wants to see, but it seems that it doesn’t have the ability to prevent it,” Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, who formerly headed Israel’s Security Agency, wrote on X. 

Laura Rozen, an independent journalist covering foreign policy, quoted a Saudi source as saying the deal was not subject to alteration.

“It was signed. So nothing to renegotiate,” Rozen quoted the source as saying. “Tweets don’t overturn signed agreements.”

Netanyahu has long sought a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia and to include it within the rubric of the Abraham Accords first brokered by Trump in 2020, normalizing ties with Muslim nations. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco are among the countries which have signed the Accords.

Saudi Arabia insists that a prerequisite for it joining the accords is recognition of Palestinian statehood or at least significant progress toward that goal. 

Netanyahu, who is now running for re-election, has opposed Palestinian statehood as has his government. Support for two states has plummeted among the Israeli public since the Oct. 7 attacks.

Speaking to reporters earlier today in the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the deal, explaining that it was better for Saudi Arabia to build civilian nuclear plants with the United States than with other countries.

Any agreement the United States makes on civilian nuclear energy has safeguards in place, “and one of the best safeguards is to make sure that American technology and American companies are the ones involved in doing that,” he said. If Saudi Arabia moves forward with another country, it would be difficult to ensure that the plant produces only civilian energy, he said.

Rubio said that the issue of safeguards would be addressed during the Congressional review of the deal. 

Democrats were already taking aim at the proposed deal. Rep. Brad Sherman, a Jewish Democrat from California, said Tuesday during a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the deal compared unfavorably with a similar agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which has agreed to not enrich fissile materials and allows visits by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Saudi Arabia’s reported failure to agree to these conditions was “outrageous,” Sherman said.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed. Markey took to X to call the deal “reckless.” “This deal will make us all less safe. We must stop a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” he said.

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The settlement was announced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which jointly filed the complaint, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at any institution receiving federal funds. It comes as campuses across the country, facing threats of losing federal funding under the Trump administration, have demonstrated willingness to negotiate new antisemitism protections.

As part of the agreement, the private Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school says it will insert language into its discrimination policy asserting that “for many Jewish people, Zionism is integral to their religious, ancestral and/or ethnic Jewish identity,” and that “targeting Jews on the basis of their Zionist identity” will be considered discriminatory.

The school will also contract a third-party consultant to monitor and report on its effectiveness in adhering to antisemitism protections, role that is unusual in similar Title VI agreements. The agreement says Reed will “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticisms of Israel, and implement antisemitism training for faculty and staff.

“We take concerns about antisemitism, and all forms of unlawful discrimination, seriously, and we will continue to support the well-being, safety, and success of every member of our community,” a Reed College spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement acknowledging the agreement. Reed declined to comment further.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and Brandeis Center officials praised the agreement in a release as a potential model for other colleges.

“We believe it should serve as a model for other schools,” Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandeis Center, told JTA about the agreement. The required language in Reed’s discrimination guidelines, she said, is “very clear about what constitutes anti-Zionist conduct in violation of civil rights and in violation of the policy.”

“This outcome demonstrates how the Title VI process can work to effectively protect Jewish students,” Greenblatt said in his own statement.

Around 100 students at Reed College are Jewish, or about 7% of the total student body, according to estimates from Hillel International. After this article’s publication, Greater Portland Hillel, which serves multiple area campuses including Reed, issued a statement saying it “welcomes” the settlement, adding that it would open up “new opportunities for collaboration” with the Hillel.

“This agreement represents an important step toward ensuring that Jewish and Israeli students at Reed College receive the same protections afforded to every other student under federal civil rights law,” Lisa Hendricks, the Hillel’s executive director, said in a statement to JTA.

The resolution stems from two anonymous Title VI antisemitism complaints from Jewish former Reed students, both filed in 2024 under the Biden administration. One of those cases related to a student whose dorm-room mezuzah was vandalized, and who herself was later pelted with rocks, during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in spring 2024. The student later left the school out of concern for her safety.

Both of the described acts would have already been considered violations of school policy for reasons unrelated to the student’s Jewish or Zionist identity. Brandeis’s Katz-Prober argued both should have also been considered in the context of her targeting by anti-Zionist activists.

“It might be difficult for someone to, at first glance, understand whether it was simply an assault or an assault motivated by bias,” she said. The case, she said, demonstrated how in some cases, “‘Zionist’ is merely a codeword for Jew.”

Katz-Prober also touted the agreement’s mandate that the school bring on a third-party compliance consultant, separate from its Title VI coordinator. While she insisted that such a role would be “independent” and free of bias, she noted that both the ADL and the Brandeis Center would have a role in their selection.

“Both sides get a say,” she said.

This article has been updated with comment from Greater Portland Hillel.

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Critics are concerned that the deal, through which U.S. companies would help Saudi Arabia build civilian nuclear energy plants, could allow Saudi Arabia to eventually develop nuclear weapons. The proposed plants would have the capacity to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel without pervasive oversight.

The arrangement removes one of the key incentives to encourage Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. The Biden administration had been in the process of exchanging such nuclear access for Saudi acceptance of open ties with Israel when the Hamas-led attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, upended the efforts.

A statement announcing the deal by Energy Secretary Chris Wright did not mention Israel. The two agreements signed Wednesday, one allowing U.S. companies access and a bilateral safeguards agreement, “advance U.S. and regional security by upholding high standards of nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation,” Wright said.

The nuclear deal will be given to Congress for review, but according to Reuters, it can only be blocked by a two-thirds majority.

When quizzed by Army Radio on the deal, Likud Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar said Israel has been clear with the United States about its red lines but would not say if such a deal crossed that line.

These are conversations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is having with security experts, he said.

Israeli opposition politicians were blunter about the potential danger ahead of the deal. Former Israeli Defense Ministers Avigdor Liberman and Benny Gantz both warned that a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal could spark a regional arms race.

That could happen because a nuclear Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, could spur its Shi’a rival, Iran, to take even more aggressive steps toward building a nuclear bomb. Iran already possesses enrichment capabilities, and the point of the current war launched by the United States and Israel is to keep it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Liberman, who heads Yisrael Beytenu, wrote on X that “a civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia will end with nuclear weapons [production] and lead to a mad arms race across the entire Middle East.” 

Yair Golan, a former IDF major general who was a deputy chief of staff and now heads the opposition Democrat Party, said that the long desired Israeli-Saudi deal would have created important diplomatic ties and anchor a regional strategic alliance against Iran.

To give Saudi Arabia nuclear capabilities “without stringent monitoring requirements and without a framework of relations with Israel as a condition creates a dangerous reality for the State of Israel,” Golan wrote on X.

Wright in his statement sought to assuage such concerns. “Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation,” he said.

At the White House on Tuesday, Trump spoke broadly about other countries joining the Abraham Accords, the regional normalization agreements he brokered at the end of his first term in 2020, but did not mention Saudi Arabia. 

The accords created a regional rubric under which Israel normalized ties with some Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Both Trump and former President Joe Biden had sought to bring Saudi Arabia into the pact.

Tensions throughout the region following the Oct. 7 attack and the Gaza war, however, pushed Saudi-Israel normalization further out of reach. The Saudi demands for normalization sharpened in the subsequent years and include Palestinian statehood or, at the very least, progress toward that goal. The Netanyahu government has adamantly rejected such a condition in the wake of the attack, and the Israeli public has increasingly opposed the concept as well.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who died last week, was an ardent advocate for an Israeli-Saudi deal. He had pushed Trump not to make nuclear concessions to Saudi Arabia without the kingdom moving closer to Israel. 

Graham had continued to work on normalization in the months leading up to his death. He told CBS News in June, “We’re going to try to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords to end the Arab-Israeli conflict in 2026.”

Dan Shapiro, who worked during the Biden administration as a senior adviser on Middle East regional integration for the State Department, said Wednesday that a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal would make such normalization more difficult.

The plan originally was for a civil nuclear energy agreement with sufficient safeguards against proliferation to be part of a package that would include normalization with Israel, he said. 

“It appears that the Trump administration has given it away without normalization,” Shapiro told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Trump’s deal “seems to have abandoned a very important point of leverage to advance another important regional goal of the United States,” he said.

“This was supposed to be a major carrot for Saudi Arabia if they were to normalize with Israel, and now that carrot has been provided without it.”As a result, he said, “the whole incentive structure would have to be redone.”

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Mamdani had promised during his campaign to detain Netanyahu if he set foot in the metropolis but on Tuesday night settled for lacerating Netanyahu in a two-minute video he posted to social media. In it, the mayor exhorted federal authorities to enforce the International Criminal Court warrant issued against Netanyahu in November 2024. There have been no ICC proceedings against Netanyahu since it was issued, let alone a finding of guilt.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,” Mamdani said to kick off the video, which contained a litany of allegations about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. 

But after conducting a legal analysis, Mamdani noted, “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.” He continued, “The federal government, however, does, and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant.” 

The mayor added, “I want to be equally clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large.”

Mamdani’s comments come days after he said he was investigating ways to arrest Netanyahu if the Israeli prime minister visited the city. Netanyahu is expected to travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, which opens this year on Sept. 8.

The mayor’s efforts reignited criticism from Israel supporters in the city and beyond and caused President Donald Trump to throw cold water on Mamdani’s ambitions.

Mamdani’s video is drawing sharp criticism from Jewish leaders who say he is abusing his office to advance his intense anti-Israel views.

“Engaging in brinkmanship with the federal government is not a game,” tweeted Mark Treyger, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. “It risks inviting greater federal intervention on the streets of New York City, places the NYPD in an untenable position, further inflames tensions in the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel, and distracts from urgent local responsibilities.” 

“Mayor Mamdani did not simply express a personal political opinion. He used the authority, symbolism and credibility of the mayor’s office to issue what amounted to an official public address declaring that the democratically elected leader of the world’s only Jewish state is a ‘war criminal’ who is ‘not welcome in New York City,’” the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement. “That is a profound misuse of the office entrusted to him by all New Yorkers.”

On Wednesday morning, UJA-Federation of NY condemned the video and said Mamdani is making New York Jews unsafe. (UJA is a funder of 70 Faces Media, the parent company of New York Jewish Week.)

“Mayor Mamdani: New Yorkers elected a mayor to lead this city — not to make Israel the centerpiece of your political grandstanding. Your video is rife with distortions and disinformation,” the federation said. “And at a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singling out and vilifying the world’s only Jewish state for perceived political benefit is repugnant, puts Jews at greater risk — and leaves many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome in the city we call home.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called the video “a dangerous dereliction of duty” that underscored Mamdani’s “obsession” with Israel. “That obsession reveals two things: First, an antisemitic worldview that doesn’t merely distort his judgment—it drives it,” he said in a statement. “Second, the play-acting instincts of a perpetual student activist who’s never actually run anything, learning on the job at our expense.”

The American Jewish Committee and Orthodox Union, too, issued statements decrying Mamdani’s “obsessive” attention to Israel.

The saga over whether and how to try to arrest Netanyahu adds to a growing list of instances in which Mamdani’s vociferous anti-Israel views have come into tension with his legal responsibilities as the city’s top leader and his stated belief in the rule of law. 

This spring, he responded to protesters targeting Israeli real estate events held in synagogues by saying that he agreed with the content of their criticism while deploying police to prevent clashes, emphasizing that New Yorkers must be safe while entering their houses of worship.

On Tuesday, responding to questions about his Netanyahu announcement, Mamdani indicated that protest would be an appropriate response to the prime minister’s visit. “If anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect,” he said during a press conference.

In the new video, Mamdani accuses Netanyahu of “the killing of more than 73,000 people, for the maiming of tens of thousands of children as those who survive undergo amputation without anesthesia, for the targeting of neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborns even the chance to live.”

Mamdani also accused Netanyahu of blocking aid to Gaza, saying he was responsible for “the countless people he starved” and “for the gunning down of hundreds of aid workers and journalists.”

The video represents an inflammatory description of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where its military operations launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel yielded widespread devastation and a steep death toll. 

Israel rejects allegations of starvation and the intentional killing of aid workers and journalists.

Its ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, responded swiftly to Mamdani’s video, posting on X, “Zohran Mamdani, ENOUGH. Enough with the blood libels. Enough with the attacks on Jewish organizations. Enough with the outreach to the Iranian regime. You were elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas’ propaganda. Do your job!”

Netanyahu has yet to comment on Mamdani’s video, but last week he responded to the mayor’s attacks against him, calling the ICC a “kangaroo court,” and that Mamdani, like ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, “appears interested in diverting public attention from his follies and attacking the leader of the Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Mamdani’s critics on the left, meanwhile, have accused him of inadequately pressing the case against Israel since becoming mayor. Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the radical pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, responded to the video by sharing a list of actions she believes Mamdani has the capacity to take, including shutting down the real estate events and investigating nonprofits that support West Bank settlements. 

“The question isn’t just whether Mamdani can arrest Netanyahu,” she tweeted. “It’s whether he’ll use every power he does have.”

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“Before there were the Jews, there was … ‘The Odyssey,’” said the marquee at the Lake Theater and Cafe in Lake Oswego.

Local Jewish clergy, as well as Portland’s Jewish federation, have sharply objected to the message even as many admitted that, initially, they didn’t understand its intention.

The manager, Jordan Perry, whose theater has a history of provocative messaging, didn’t respond to Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment. He told the Portland Tribune he would remove the signage — and said he intended it as an “intentionally subtle” commentary on what he believes is an overemphasis on antisemitism.

“Through the media I consume, I believe modern-day antisemitism is exaggerated, mostly as a defense for Israel’s actions in the Middle East and its involvement in our politics,” Perry told the Tribune. “My intention in referencing Jewish people on the marquee was to prod at everything being seemingly antisemitic with a statement that couldn’t possibly be construed as antisemitic.”

Perry also said he wanted “to push back culturally back on what constitutes antisemitism, to signal, in solidarity, that it’s not about ‘the Jews,’ that it’s about Israel, and Palestine, and Lebanon, and Iran, and AIPAC,” the pro-Israel lobby that has become a flashpoint for political criticism of Israel.

Portland’s Jewish federation has received more than 40 complaints about the marquee, according to its chief community relations officer. 

“Any reference to ‘the Jews’ at this point in time, with the climate of antisemitism, makes it suspect already, not to mention of course that it was historically inaccurate,” Bob Horenstein said in an interview. (Historians have traced the Jewish community’s existence to ancient times predating Homer’s authorship of “The Odyssey” in the eighth century BCE.) 

Horenstein asked the theater to change the marquee; the reaction from local Jews, he said, was largely “unsettled” and “unnerved.” Perry ignored him, he said. “And our suspicions proved positive because he made it very clear what his intention was.”

Perry’s fuller comments were even more offensive, Horenstein said, particularly his assertion that claims of modern antisemitism are exaggerated. “It’s not for anyone outside of our community to tell us whether we’re overreacting to antisemitism,” the federation leader said.

The marquee was later reportedly altered, with a reference to the navigation app Waze replacing “The Jews” — a possible joke about the meandering nature of Odysseus’s journey, though Horenstein noted the app was also created by Israelis. 

Eventually the messaging was removed altogether, replaced with a simple advertisement for the film.

Eve Posen, a rabbi at Conservative Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland, wrote on Facebook before the revelation of Perry’s motives that the marquee had distressed her. She saw it as of a piece with the recent U.S. House of Representatives vote on ending military aid to Israel, which none of Oregon’s five Democratic members of Congress voted against, as well as a recent account of a local Jew whose car was recently been vandalized with swastikas.

“It raises a painful question: why invoke Jews at all?” Posen wrote. “In a moment when antisemitism is already at historic levels, casually inserting Jews into a narrative where we do not belong doesn’t feel harmless.”

The theater’s peculiar sense of humor has raised eyebrows in the past. Upon the recent release of the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” the marquee made a reference to the singer’s child sexual abuse allegations. And earlier this year a marquee message about the First Lady documentary “Melania” led that film’s distributor, Amazon Studios, to pull the film from the theater.

This story has been corrected to reflect that historians trace the existence of Jewish communities in general, rather than in Greece, back to ancient times.

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In a statement posted Monday, J Street said its campus arm, J Street U, spent “a couple thousand dollars for an exhibit table” and had “no role in choosing speakers, no approval over the program and no say in who was invited to address the conference.”

“J Street disagrees with much of what Hasan Piker says and with the way he says it. We won’t hesitate to say so,” the group wrote on social media in a statement first authored by its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami. “But we also reject the notion that the right answer to his invitation is to abandon the very spaces where the next generation of Democratic leaders is debating these issues.”

The convention, which was held in Washington, D.C., from Thursday to Sunday, featured a host of speakers, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Jewish Democrat in Maryland; Randi Weingarten, the Jewish president of the American Federation of Teachers; and the democratic socialist Colorado congressional candidate Melat Kiros.

The statement followed blowback from several pro-Israel commentators, including author and podcaster Dan Senor, former Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl and Israel historian Sara Yael Hirschhorn, who all said it was inappropriate for a Jewish group to share a tent with an anti-Israel figurehead.

“If J Street knew that he is one of the key speakers and still sponsored this event it’s a new low,” Nadav Pollak, a lecturer on Middle East affairs at Reichman University, wrote in a post on X. “An organization that claims to be ‘pro-Israel’ sponsors an event with one of the most anti-Israel speakers. Shameful.”

Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat and pro-Israel stalwart, also took aim at J Street in an interview on Fox News Sunday.

“Even Jewish kinds of organizations like J Street are doing events with people like Hasan Piker,” Fetterman said. “Hasan Piker, I mean, how can you embrace people like that?”

The online row came amid a growing divide over whether Jewish groups should engage in progressive spaces where anti-Zionist voices have become increasingly influential, or withdraw from them altogether.

J Street U, the group’s college arm, has faced resistance from both directions in recent months, including at Sarah Lawrence College, where the student senate rejected an application for a college chapter over its Zionist identity, even as J Street faced criticism from the right for newly endorsing an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.

Piker, who has drawn fierce condemnation for his rhetoric on Israel and campaigned alongside democratic socialist congressional candidates across the country, used his remarks at the convention to call for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.

“No more to the Democrats who compromise, who conciliate, and who betray us,” Piker told the crowd during his remarks. “No more to the fascist reactionaries, but no more to the Democrats who will collaborate and cooperate with the fascists, who will fund ICE, who will fund Israel, who will help poison the planet, who will stiff workers and help bosses.”

In a livestream Sunday, Piker defended J Street from the blowback, saying, “While I have my disagreements with J Street, they’re not insane. Okay, they’re not as insane as like the AIPAC-backed Democrats are. They can read the room.”

“Ultimately, J Street understands that there is a a much wider diversity of opinion on the issue of Israel on the Democratic Party side, and … if they want to continue to maintain a level of support for Israel amongst Democrats, they have to allow people like myself to be a part of this equation because I’m far closer to the average person’s perspective than they are,” Piker said, adding that he had been trying to have a “conversation” with Ben-Ami.

J Street said it was committed to advocating for its perspective in ideologically diverse spaces and characterized its presence at the College Democrats convention as a bulwark against extremism.

“Our mission is not to preach to the converted. It is to ensure that a pro-Israel, pro-peace voice is heard wherever the future of American politics is being shaped,” it said. “If we leave those conversations to others, we shouldn’t be surprised when the loudest and most polarizing voices dominate them.”

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The last time the Pew Research Center checked, in 2020, 17% of American Jewish households include a child or adult who is non-white or multiracial. While many teenage Jews of color cherish these identifies, they also speak of challenges, from having to “prove” or explain their Jewishness to feeling excluded or unwelcome in synagogues and other Jewish settings. 

Some teams find friends and allies across the siloed communities of high school, while others find it more difficult to navigate their fragmented identities.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently asked four multiracial Jewish teens to talk about traversing spaces where other people expected them to fit into one single identity. They shared experiences of having their personal identity questioned, and  finding pride in celebrating multiple cultures and traditions all at once.

The as-told-to remarks are based on conversations with the authors. They have been edited for length and clarity. 

Raiva Lessing, 17, Indian and Ashkenazi Jewish, Francis W. Parker High School, Chicago, Illinois

When I was younger, I was confused about what the difference between religion and race was. So I’d be like, “I’m Indian and Jewish.” But, kind of exploring that more, I’ve seen that your ethnicity, your race, and your religion are all separate things. So now I will just be like, “I’m half Indian, half white,” or I’ll be like, “I’m half Hindu, half Jewish.” I don’t like that people just assume; they don’t really ask.

Freshman year, I tried to go to the Jewish affinity group because I was exploring the school. One of the kids was like, “You can’t be here, you’re Indian.” And I was like, “I’m literally Jewish.” And they’re like, “Recite a prayer.” So I recited a prayer, and then they were like, “Translate it.” I’m like, ‘Could you translate it? I don’t think so.’ Also, why do you need to question me?” 

Whenever I’m eating, they ask me, “Oh, is that kosher?” I feel like I’m being tested all the time, which is kind of weird. 

A lot of people say, “You’re not actually Jewish, your dad’s Jewish,” but that’s so old-fashioned. And you’re allowed to identify how you want to identify.

My grandpa is a Holocaust survivor, and he did a talk at my school, and that’s kind of when people were like, “Oh, come to the Jewish Student Union.” But before, they weren’t really accepting me as much. 

I told my grandpa about this, and he said, “I didn’t go through all that for them to just say that. My mom was in a concentration camp, and I was in hiding for four years. They can’t take that away from you — that’s history, that’s ancestry.

I get being curious, like those who ask me, “What do you practice?” But a lot of people, because I’m Hindu and Jewish, will say, “How can you practice two religions?”  I don’t know. I just do. It’s not really anyone else’s business how I choose to identify. And I don’t think it’s a problem celebrating two religions. That’s the beauty of religion, that you know, it can be whatever you want it to be. 

My grandpa actually didn’t know he was Jewish until the Holocaust started. He was 8 years old and didn’t even know what Judaism was because they weren’t religious. He became very religious after the war. Through his stories, I’ve connected a lot more and try to identify more with that culture. When I was younger, we would go to synagogue, and I noticed that my brother and I were the only brown kids in the entire room. I feel looked at, even if I’m not being looked at.

I’ve never felt like I’m more one identity than another. I wrote an essay about having two races and two religions, and I kind of ended it with an analogy that being biracial is like walking on a tightrope. You kind of swing from side to side. You can lean more towards one side, but you’re still like balancing, and you’re still like walking on the tightrope, and that’s kind of how I think of being biracial and having two religions.

Gabriel, 17, Hispanic and Jewish, New Jersey 

Gabriel is in the process of a formal Orthodox conversion, which he fears could “introduce unnecessary complications and scrutiny from the rabbinical court” if his full name were used.

None of my parents is Jewish, but I was raised with an uncle who was a convert. I was raised practicing Shabbat, practicing all the holidays, and since I was a kid. I’m not  Jewish according to halacha [rabbinic law], but in the process of converting right now. 

I feel I have become more observant over the years [since I moved from Venezuela to America four years ago].

There was a Jewish community in Venezuela before the dictatorship came. But then President Chavez came to power, and was really, really antisemitic.

He wasn’t persecuting people directly, but many said his rhetoric was responsible for attacks on synagogues. I was just [practicing Judaism] with my uncle. My uncle lived right next to my house, so I started going to Shabbat and all the holidays all the time.

I went to The Walden School summer camp in New Hampshire. Like 40% of the kids were Jewish, but they never practiced Judaism. And since I was becoming more observant over time, I took candles and personally hosted these Shabbat gatherings and Havdalah ceremonies. I invited many of my fellow campers to join, and a large majority of them attended. It was a wonderful, fun experience where we brought people together, rather than a standard event run by the camp administration. It was beautiful.

There’s not a large Jewish population at my school; the majority are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Korean, and Indians. They say, “Is your mom Jewish?” Or “Why are you brown?” So it’s kind of crazy. 

My dad lives in Spain, so most of the [Jewish] things I put on my mom. She’s really supportive. She helps cook for Shabbat dinners. Sometimes my mom has to go shopping on Saturdays. I have to be like, “Mom, I can’t help you today.” 

It’s good that I get to invite my family to Shabbat dinners. It’s family time that usually doesn’t happen because everyone is busy, so I feel like an attempt to slow down.

Rania Levin, 15, Indian and Jewish, Francis Parker High School, Chicago

My mom is Indian, and my dad is Ashkenazi Jewish. I was raised in a multicultural household where we celebrate a bunch of Jewish holidays and high Holy Days, but also some Indian traditions, and we eat a lot of Indian food. 

I’ve been to India and Israel, and I think that it’s really cool to see how both parts of my identity are celebrated. I felt very connected with both parts of my identity when I was in both of those places. 

At school, I go to both meetings — the Jewish Student Connection meeting and the South Asian Student Alliance meeting. I don’t want to choose one over the other, because I see them as equal.

Broadcaster Malika Andrews, who recently hosted ESPN’s Wimbledon coverage, is a role model for other Jews of color. (Tim Heitman/Getty Images)

Abby Zarahn, 16, Chinese and Jewish, Burlingame, California 

My mom is Chinese, and my dad is Ashkenazi Jewish. So I grew up celebrating many different holidays, like Lunar New Year, Passover, the High Holidays, and practicing various traditions. This meant that I got to eat a lot of various and delicious food, which is one of my favorite parts about being Chinese and Jewish. 

My parents always just taught me that you’re not half and half. You’re Chinese and Jewish, not half Chinese, half Jewish. If you think of yourself as half, then you kind of force yourself into the mindset that only half your friends can be Jewish and only half your friends can be Asian, and you can only experience half of the things Asian kids do and half the things Jewish kids do. They made it very clear, you can think of yourself as half and half, because, genetically, you are, but you know, when you’re out there in the community, think of yourself as a part of both communities.

I was talking to this one kid in my class last year, and when he found out that my mom wasn’t Jewish, he was like, “Wait, so you’re technically not Jewish.” And I was like, “What do you mean? I went to a Jewish summer camp. I go to the temple almost every Sunday. I chose to come back and be a [teaching assistant] even though I didn’t have to anymore. So that was a little scary for me at first. It wasn’t until then that I found out that [Jewish identity] is traditionally passed down through the maternal side. That’s kind of shaped how I’ve seen myself and also how other people view me.

In my area, among the Jewish population, a lot of the people are Reform, [which considers a child Jewish if either parent is Jewish]. So I find that a lot of kids don’t have a Jewish mother. It changes your perspective a lot. 

I go to Camp Newman in Northern California. It was super fun. And it was nice because my cabin was pretty diverse. There were some white kids, but then there was another Asian Jewish girl, and there was a girl who was Black and Jewish. I didn’t think about it then, but when I came back from camp, I realized I was among this really cool, diverse group of Jewish girls.

There’s a sports broadcaster named Malika Andrews. She’s Black and Jewish. This is someone who’s a woman in sport who’s also breaking into the male sports industry, which is very male-dominated. She’s a trailblazer. It’s really cool to see someone who’s a multiracial Jew. 

Then there’s Rabbi Angela Buchdahl. She’s a famous Korean Jewish rabbi-cantor. Her mom actually isn’t Jewish. She lived in Korea for a few years, and then came to the US, and she currently works at this big synagogue in New York [Central Synagogue]. I’ve been reading her book, “Heart of a Stranger,” and it’s a really interesting story. She talks about the challenges of being a multiracial Jew, but also being a multiracial Jewish woman, and talks about the struggles I think a lot of us face in our lives, and she does it through a Jewish lens, so it’s super cool. Seeing someone who is Asian and Jewish in a position that’s so highly recognized in the Jewish community is really cool for me. 

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Orthodox Jewish groups say a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent could upend that routine by pushing winter sunrises — and the earliest permissible time for some prayers — an hour later.

Agudath Israel of America is among the groups urging the Senate to reject legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, arguing that the change would create both public safety risks and significant challenges for Orthodox Jewish religious life.

The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act on Tuesday by a wide bipartisan margin. In a statement issued after the vote, Agudath Israel said it understood the appeal of ending the twice-yearly clock changes but opposed making daylight saving time permanent.

The Orthodox advocacy organization warned that permanent daylight saving time would push winter sunrises past 9 a.m. in some parts of the country, forcing many children to travel to school before dawn. It also said the later sunrise would make it difficult for observant Jews to attend morning synagogue services and still arrive at work or school on time, because Jewish law prohibits reciting key morning prayers before prescribed times tied to sunrise.

“The extension of DST will create an extreme hardship on observant Jews,” the organization said. “It would be extraordinarily difficult — if not impossible — to arrive on time for a job and will affect the start time of our schools.”

The Orthodox Union and the Coalition for Jewish Values have also come out against the measure. 

In a column for Chabad.org that didn’t take a position on the bill, Menachem Posner also wrote that the change would present a challenge in parts of the country for morning minyan, the 10-person prayer quorum. But he also noted an upside to the extension of daylight saving: a later start time for Shabbat on short winter Fridays. 

Shabbat begins at sundown, which during the winter can fall before 4:00 p.m. in parts of the country. “With DST, however, this will be shifted one hour later, so that even on the darkest day of winter, Jews will have one more hour to prepare for Shabbat,” Posner wrote.

Orthodox parties in Israel have also made an issue of changes to the daylight saving calendar. In 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet unanimously approved extending daylight saving time until the first Sunday after Oct. 1, despite objections from haredi parties. The change brought Israel’s clock closer to European practice while still acknowledging Orthodox concerns about morning prayer and a later start time to Yom Kippur that they argued would make the fast more difficult.  

This week Agudath Israel also pointed to the brief U.S. experiment with year-round daylight saving time during the 1970s energy crisis, when Congress repealed the policy after widespread public dissatisfaction over dark winter mornings.

The organization said it hoped the Senate would weigh the broader consequences of permanent daylight saving time, including alternatives such as permanent standard time or retaining the current system of seasonal clock changes.

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Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia’s Fairmount neighborhood, was an active prison from its founding in 1829 until its closing in 1971. For many years after that, it was essentially in ruins before it was revived in the late 1990s as a museum and attraction. 

While founded by Quakers and long Christian-oriented (it was the world’s first true “penitentiary,” a word derived from Christian notions of repentance and reflection), Eastern State hosted Jewish prisoners as early as the 1800s. 

Dedicated in 1929, the Alfred W. Fleischer Memorial Synagogue was the first known Jewish worship space established in an American prison. It was named after the real estate tycoon and supporter of the institution who died the year before.

The Jewish community had supported the creation of a synagogue in part because of fears that Jewish inmates, who had previously prayed in the prison’s hospital, would be converted while inside. Jewish prisoners helped build the synagogue, with some support from Fleischer and others in the outside community. The inmates themselves led a renovation of the synagogue in the 1960s. 

The synagogue was unearthed during excavations in 2004 and, following a philanthropic effort, restored in 2009.

In early July, Eastern State debuted a new permanent exhibition called “Freedom through Faith: Judaism at Eastern State and Beyond,” which examines the Jewish history of the institution and the synagogue, as well as the broader history of religious freedom for incarcerated Americans. 

The exhibition, the product of more than a year of research, was developed by the consultant Beth Tinker. It’s part of a series of programs for the nation’s 250th anniversary, called “A Time For Liberty.” 

The exhibition has an online component as well. 

Interior of the synagogue at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, before its restoration in 2009. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division/Wikimedia Commons)

Fleischer “pooled his sort of power to really help the Jewish congregation here, and help get architects in. But the congregants themselves also helped to get this built,” Tinker told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during a visit to the exhibition.

Built in the early 19th century by the Quakers, Eastern State was founded on “the idea of rehabilitation through faith and solitary confinement,” as Tinker described it, although the solitary aspect was dropped in 1913.  The synagogue, she added, provided a respite from that difficult existence for the Jewish prisoners, many of whom landed there not long after immigrating to the United States. 

“We really wanted to focus on the congregants and their humanity as people rather than their mug shots and what crimes they had committed,” Tinker said. 

The research, Tinker added, unearthed some fascinating stories. One was that of  Joseph Paull, a Jewish circus strongman who visited the synagogue as an entertainer in the 1920s and then, like a proto-Johnny Cash, became a supporter and advocate for the prisoners he had met. 

“We found all his letters, and that gave us information from prisoners and family members who are writing to him, saying, ‘Hey, can you help me find a job when I come out? Can you help with parole, or do you just need some more kosher meat?’” Tinker said of Paull, who later worked as a butcher. 

The exhibit tells stories of Jewish life at the prison before the synagogue was built. The Italian-born Rabbi Sabato Morais was the first Jewish chaplain at the prison, starting in 1893. Researching his story, the museum discovered that Morais has a descendant who currently works as a prison chaplain in Pennsylvania. 

The restored ark of the synagogue at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, whose history is explored in the new exhibit “Freedom Through Faith.” (Stephen Silver)

Also, the first bris at the prison took place in the 1850s, after a baby was born to a Jewish woman prisoner. 

The exhibition also includes information on case law related to freedom of religion, including for incarcerated people. 

“That’s part of what makes it really amazing that there’s a synagogue here in 1922, having High Holidays in 1913, when legally there was no obligation,” Tinker said. 

A hulking structure located in what is now a mostly upscale urban neighborhood, Eastern State stood in ruins for many years until restoration efforts began in the 1990s. The museum hosts a haunted house attraction at Halloween time, which serves as a fundraiser. Its exhibits, especially since 2020, have put greater emphasis on mass incarceration and the inequities of the prison system. 

Also playing a part in the exhibition was Josh Perelman, the senior advisor for content and strategic projects at Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. 

“‘Freedom Through Faith’ reveals the leading role Eastern State Penitentiary played in establishing religious rights in American prisons,” Perelman told JTA. “Moreover, it demonstrates what becomes possible when the communities inside and outside the prison’s walls — in this case Philadelphia’s Jews — collaborate both during imprisonment and afterward.”

Advising the project, Perelman added, entailed “bringing my expertise in American and American Jewish history to the project and advising how the Eastern State’s story intersects with the broader history of Jewish Americans in Philadelphia and beyond.”

Tinker said the reception has been positive so far, and that despite the rising climate of antisemitism, she’s seen no negative reaction to the exhibition. 

“This should not be contentious,” Tinker, who is not Jewish, said. “This is a place where we’re finding humanity in a place where it was very hard to find it.”

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The unusual public dispute between the Jewish Council of Public Affairs and the Anti-Defamation League brought to the fore a simmering tension over how to fight antisemitism within schools and unions. Should Jewish groups promote collaboration with the institutions on solutions — or prioritize confronting them over their failings?

Two days before the assembly, the JCPA and the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus heralded new rules and policies it had developed in collaboration union leaders to “ensure the safety of Jewish members and educators at the [Representative Assembly] without undermining the union’s vital commitment to free speech and democracy.”

A day before the assembly, the ADL, which had worked with caucus members over the past year, told Jewish Insider in an unusual line of attack that it was “extremely frustrated about a so-called ‘agreement’ with JCPA that was reached without all NEA JAC leadership and delegates at the table.”

It also took aim at union leaders: “NEA’s inconsistent enforcement of its own protections has sent an unmistakable message: Jewish educators are not a priority. That must change now.”

Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, responded to the ADL’s criticism in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“When you can’t criticize substance, you find reasons to criticize process,” Spitalnick said in an interview. “In this case, we’re both very proud of the substance and the process, and the results underscore that.”

JCPA has emphasized working directly with school leaders and public officials to combat antisemitism, and opposed the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus pro-Palestinian protests.

“It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism — on campus, in our communities, and across the country — without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive,” the group wrote in an April 2025 joint statement with the Union for Reform Judaism and a host of other denominational groups condemning the crackdown.

That letter spurred behind the scenes pushback from another legacy group, the Jewish Federations of North America.

The ADL, meanwhile, has taken on a more confrontational approach to universities, assigning them “report cards” for campus antisemitism and also empowering Jewish educators to advocate for themselves.

Notably, progressive-leaning groups like the JCPA and centrist groups like the ADL and the JFNA flip strategies when it comes to addressing Trump administration policies that undercut Jewish civil rights advocacy. The centrist groups have at times retreated from confrontation with the government, while the JCPA has been more directly critical. In one instance, the JCPA was more outspoken about a Trump administration attack on the ADL than the ADL was.

“There are absolutely those on the right who think that we should just be burning it all down, and that is not an approach that’s going to make Jews safer or democracy safer,” Spitalnick said. “We believe deeply that the only path forward is one that confronts antisemitism wherever it exists, and does so in a way that recognizes our safety as Jews is tied to our democratic institutions, which includes unions and public education.”

Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick (C), speaks at an event held by Jewish and Muslim leaders on Capitol Hill on December 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The ADL and the JCPA found common cause last year after the NEA delegates narrowly passed a measure barring the union from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the ADL, which boasts a comprehensive library of anti-bias education materials. (The measure was ultimately rejected by the NEA’s board of directors.)

The JCPA at that time signed onto a letter led by the ADL describing “deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions,” including reports that Jewish teachers were verbally accosted during the proceedings.

The harassment, including a reported case of NEA members appearing to cheer at a mention of the 2025 attack on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, during the convention last year, last month sparked a new antisemitism investigation into NEA by the Trump administration.

Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of advocacy, said in an interview the group “immediately had to take an adversarial advocacy position to address” last year’s conference.

The ADL centered its approach on engaging with Jewish teachers who had sought their help, including the incoming president of the Jewish Affairs Caucus. Goodman said that while the ADL had “some ongoing conversations with leaders at the NEA,” the bulk of its advocacy had been to “support teachers who are doing their own advocacy.”

“Working just with leadership wasn’t going to do it, but we also wanted to be there to support grassroots folks who felt like they wanted to be and remain within their union,” Goodman said.

Goodman added that she did not feel that JCPA and the ADL were working “in tandem.”

“JCPA has said publicly that they have relationships with AFT, with NEA. Different organizations in the Jewish community have different lanes and do different things,” Goodman said. “I just want to make sure that the teachers are represented, and that if somebody is speaking for the teachers, that the teachers have been part of that.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaks onstage ADL’s Never Is Now at Javits Center on March 03, 2025 in New York City. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Anti-Defamation League)

Spitalnick said JCPA had engaged with JAC leadership and other Jewish organizations, including the ADL, throughout the negotiations with NEA. Last and this year, JCPA also led a workshop at NEA’s annual convention about antisemitism.

“All I could speak to is our approach, which has been to — instead of hammering the union with constant critique and framing a sort of zero sum dynamic in which it’s the union versus the Jewish community — making clear that the union’s success and Jewish safety, inclusion, are one in the same, and that has led to the partnership we have with NEA,” Spitalnick said.

The ADL and other legacy groups have in the past expressed qualified support for Trump administration disciplinary actions targeting educational institutions. Spitalnick was adamant that was the wrong course, including in the most recent government investigation into the NEA.

“The question that everyone should be asking is what is motivating this, and at a time when we’re seeing – whether it be Republicans in Congress or others — use our real fears of antisemitism to fundamentally try to kill the unions by going after their charter and their fundamental existence, I would ask real questions about the motivation for this investigation,” Spitalnick said.

The ADL, meanwhile, wrote in a post on X that the federal government’s investigation “underscores what many Jewish educators have been saying for the last two years: no union member should be made to feel excluded, targeted, or unwelcome because of a core part of their identity.”

Alyson Brauning, the outgoing chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus, who had collaborated with JCPA ahead of the convention, said the difference between this year’s conference earlier this month and last was “night and day.”

“I actually got to enjoy parts of the [Representative Assembly],” Brauning said. “Our table did not experience any harassment or intimidation in the hall at all. It was actually enjoyable and fun, and we got to do the business of the RA on the floor.”

Naomi Rodriguez, the incoming chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus who had participated in the ADL’s “Hazak” program, said she “wasn’t aware” of all the work that JCPA had done behind the scenes ahead of the assembly.

“Maybe Alyson was, and she is the chair of the caucus,” she added. “As the incoming chair, I’ll be more on top of those things.”

Rodriquez, who is currently participating in a JCPA cohort to support teachers, said that as the incoming chair she would “accept support from anybody who wants to support us.”

‘This issue with antisemitism is a huge problem, and it’s only getting worse, and I really think we all need to work together, and collaborate and coordinate to ensure that we are as effective as possible in fighting it,” Rodriguez said.

National Education Association President Rebecca Pringle speaks during the Get Out the Vote Rally in Detroit in 2022. (Dominick Sokotoff/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In a statement to JTA, an NEA spokesperson said that the union had “enhanced our work to counter antisemitism and ensure all of our members are respected and supported.”

“That effort included extensive consultation with the Jewish Affairs Caucus, Jewish NEA members, and partners in the Jewish community, including the JCPA,” the spokesperson said.

Following the assembly, which took place in Denver from July 3 through 6, the ADL as well as several other prominent Jewish groups that had also lent support to the Jewish Affairs Caucus published a joint statement saying that the results of the assembly “provides reason for optimism.”

“We commend the important steps the NEA took to foster a more inclusive Representative Assembly this year,” the groups wrote.

They added a caveat: “Yet that experience does not yet reflect the reality facing many Jewish educators in their own communities. We continue to hear from educators across the country who report marginalization within their unions, hostile rhetoric, intimidation, and exclusion…That reality requires continued attention and action at every level.”

The ADL, American Jewish Committee, Hadassah and StandWithUs joined the letter by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which did not include JCPA.

The JCPA “chose to have their own press release in the beginning,” said Stephanie Hausner, the Conference of Presidents’ chief operating officer. The JCPA, like the ADL, is a constituent member of the conference.

Hausner said she felt the differences between the organizations ahead of the conference “took away from the real issue at hand, which is how do we support Jewish teachers.”

“For the last year I’ve been working with all the organizations on this work, and I really thought we were in that place, and I hope that tomorrow we can get back to that place where everyone’s working together because I do think that it is better for the Jewish community,” Hausner said.

The ADL and JCPA “sometimes reach out to different audiences,” she said, but “in an ideal world, we all speak from the same notes and be able to to move together and work together on a regular basis, and we wouldn’t have some of this going on, some of this back and forth.”

“There are no two organizations that operate in this space and do things exactly the same,” Hausner added. “Hopefully, some of their efforts can complement each other moving forward.”

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The lawsuit is “about exposing the network of organizations, political actors, and institutions that work together to criminalize solidarity with Palestine,” Khalil, who became the face of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism when he was arrested by immigration officers in March 2025, said at a press conference at New York City Hall.

“For decades, the state of Israel and the Zionist organizations in this country that operate on behalf of Israel have understood that their conduct cannot survive honest scrutiny,” he said. “So rather than defend or change their conduct, they resorted to make scrutiny itself impossible. They brand criticism of a government as hatred of a people. They rebrand documented atrocities as debates.”

Khalil spent 104 days in a Louisiana immigration jail following his arrest before being released in June 2025. His fight against the federal government’s deportation case remains ongoing. He was awarded a stay in his federal case in May, blocking the Trump administration from deporting him until his case proceeds to the Supreme Court.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that the government’s actions violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a 1871 anti-conspiracy law intended to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups. The act was also used to prosecute the 2017 Charlottesville march’s organizers for planning to incite racist violence.

The complaint alleges there had been a “conspiracy” among private pro-Israel entities, including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar USA, and senior Trump administration officials to target and prosecute pro-Palestinian activists. The lawsuit names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, former DHS secretary Kristi Noem, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“After the Oct. 7 attacks and the beginning of the Israeli genocide, these entities were appalled and scared about the burgeoning Palestine rights movement occurring on campus and the cratering support for Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza,” Baher Azmy, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the complaint on behalf of Khalil, said during the press conference.

He continued: “Because they could not defend their support for the Israeli government’s actions…they sought to do what cowards and bullies do, which is to repress, to punish speech that they disliked.”

Inquiries from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar USA were not immediately returned.

The lawsuit comes after Betar USA, a militant pro-Israel group, agreed to halt its operations in New York after reaching a settlement with state Attorney General Letitia James, whose office found that the group had committed a “campaign of violence, harassment, and intimidation against Arab, Muslim, and Jewish New Yorkers.”

Azmy claimed that Project Esther, a 2024 plan for combatting antisemitism written by the conservative Heritage Foundation that outlined many policies undertaken by the Trump administration last year, had created a “blueprint for the conspiracy.”

He alleged that Betar and Canary Mission then worked to identify and “nominate” campus pro-Palestinian activists for the Trump administration to target.

“It’s not like the State Department was using any reasoned judgment or deliberation,” Azmy said. “They were taking these nominations and, within a day or two, sending DHS and ICE officials to arrest Mahmoud and others and send them to faraway prisons, and so today we’re here demanding accountability.”

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The alleged arson broke out early Friday morning, damaging a historic home in Zionsville, Indiana, where Pence lives, and causing an estimated $150,000 in damages, according to the Zionsville Police Department.

Zionsville Mayor John Stehr said during a press conference on Friday that officials believed the fire began when an individual set fire to an Israeli flag that had been displayed outside the building alongside an American flag. The town later announced that the FBI had joined the investigation and that officials were examining whether the arson “may have been motivated by bias” but said no determination had been made.

“Absolutely despicable,” Pence tweeted on Sunday. “There can be no tolerance in America for Antisemitism or political acts of violence, and it is heartbreaking to see in our adopted hometown of Zionsville, Indiana. We thank God no one was hurt and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”

Pence has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, including after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, and has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism in the conservative movement and beyond.

Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks also condemned the alleged arson in a post on X Saturday. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated. Not in Zionsville. Not in Indiana. Not anywhere,” Banks wrote. “Thank you to the federal, state, and local officials working to bring the perpetrators of this despicable arson attack to justice.”

On Sunday, the Jewish community in central Indiana hosted a rally condemning the alleged arson attack, chanting, “We will stand up,” according to local outlet Fox 59. While Zionsville does not have a large Jewish community of its own, other suburbs of Indianapolis have significant Jewish populations, and Zionsville is also the longtime home of a Reform movement summer camp, the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is in session now.

“The founding fathers founded a country where we have the ability to resolve differences among each other; we don’t do it by firebombing homes,” rally organizer David Schiller told Fox 59. “It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.”

The Zionsville Police Department did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the status of the investigation on Monday.

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The poll, which surveyed 1,022 Jewish adults from June 11 to June 17, found that 62% answered “less safe” when asked if they felt “more safe as a Jewish person in the United States, less safe, or about as safe” than they did before the Oct. 7 attacks.

Asked separately if they feel safe living in the United States today, 34% said they did, while 36% felt somewhat or very unsafe, and 29% said neither.

Roughly 1 in 10 Jewish adults say they or someone else in their household was the victim of physical assault or property damage due to their Jewish identity in the past year, while about 2 in 10 have faced verbal or online harassment. The margin of error for Jewish respondents is +/- 5.0 percentage points.

About 4 in 10 Jewish adults said that they are now “less likely” to wear, carry or display things that might identify them as Jewish than they were before Oct. 7.

The poll comes after the American Jewish Committee released a survey in February that found that one-third of American Jews reported being the target of an antisemitic incident in 2025. The February survey also found that two-thirds of respondents believed Jews in the United States were less secure than a year prior.

The AP poll found that there was no partisan split among Jewish Democrats and Republicans regarding the severity of prejudice against Jews in the country, with 65% of Jewish Democrats and 67% of Jewish Republicans saying that prejudice against Jewish people is a serious problem.

Jewish Republicans and Democrats were divided over other forms of bias, however. The survey found that while 83% of Jewish Democrats consider racism a serious problem, only 26% of Jewish Republicans agreed. Roughly two-thirds of Jewish Democrats said that Islamophobia and sexism are serious problems, while only 22% of Jewish Republicans agreed.

The survey showed splits over what qualifies as antisemitic actions.

Two-thirds of Jews agreed that saying Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state was antisemitic, and 60% believed that saying American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the U.S. is antisemitic.

Some 20% of U.S. Jews said that criticizing Israel for any reason was antisemitic, while a quarter said that criticizing Israel for its military actions was antisemitic. Additionally, 38% of U.S. Jews said that protesting an event that is supportive of Israel was antisemitic.

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The survey, released last week by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, found that 43% of Jewish adults said they identified as Zionist, while 42% said they did not. A much higher share — 69% — said they feel somewhat or very “emotionally attached to Israel.” At the same time, 52% of respondents agreed that “Israel regularly violates the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

The results join a growing number of similar data points generated by Jewish groups that point to evolving, and at times seemingly contradictory, views about Israel among American Jews. A survey released in February by Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group, found that 37% of Jews identified as Zionist even as 88% believed that “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic state.” 

The findings cut across North American Jewish communities of different regions and sizes and are prompting Jewish leaders to reexamine their assumptions at a time when Israel is shedding support among Americans of all backgrounds.

Miryam Rosenzweig, president and CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation (Courtesy)

“A year ago I really would have had a knee-jerk reaction where I was stuck on the word, because I am a Zionist,” Miryam Rosenzweig, the Milwaukee federation’s president and CEO, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about her views on the survey. “What I needed to overcome and understand is that, as a brand, it’s tarnished.” The word, she said, “is tainted.”

Yet, Rosenzweig insisted, for her Jewish community, “the values are still there.”

The Milwaukee area is home to an estimated 27,500 Jews who attend more than a dozen synagogues and six Jewish schools. The local federation operates a number of programs directly and supports a wide range of education, cultural, religious and security initiatives meant to strengthen the Jewish community. (It also gives to a number of national Jewish organizations, including a small grant to 70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company.)

The local survey, completed by 980 families, was conducted between December 2024 and March 2025, at a time when criticism over Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza was sharply mounting. More than 100 hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the war, were still in captivity at the survey’s start, while dozens were released during a temporary ceasefire midway through the survey period.

Conducted by researchers at Brandeis University and the University of Chicago’s NORC social research firm, the survey is the federation’s first deep dive into its Jewish population since 2011. It was conducted by email, mail and phone, with options to complete the survey online or over the phone, and has an overall margin of error of 6.5%.

The survey asked about a wide range of topics and, Rosenzweig said, has illuminated unique challenges for the federation, including the region’s aging Jewish population and its relatively lower average household income when compared to similarly sized Jewish communities. 

The data also offered unique bright spots, such as high levels of what Rosenzweig classified as Jewish “participation.” Three-quarters of Jewish children in the area’s interfaith households are being raised Jewish, for example, and nearly one in four of all Jewish children in Milwaukee are enrolled in a Jewish day school or yeshiva, higher than the national average.

Golda Meir, the Milwaukee native who would go on to become Israel’s Prime Minister, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 13, 1973. (Martin Athenstädt/picture alliance via Getty Images)

But it is the Zionism question that has seized public interest — in part because it was asked at all. 

For decades, according to Matthew Boxer, a researcher at Brandeis’s Cohen Center for Jewish Studies who led the Milwaukee study and has worked on many others, local federations conducting population studies would ask about topics such as emotional attachment to Israel — but largely refrained from directly asking their communities whether they identified as Zionists. 

That changed with the 2020 Chicago federation survey, also led by Boxer’s team, which found that 40% of the region’s Jewish adults self-identified as Zionist while 80% agreed with the statement “It’s important for Israel to be a Jewish state.”

Since then, Boxer said, around a dozen federations have opted to ask some version of the Zionism question on their surveys. Recently released findings from the federations in Boston and St. Louis found similar results to Chicago’s and Milwaukee’s; new survey results in Austin, Texas, and Orange County, California, are expected later this year. (Some have decided against including the question, too.) 

The findings have functioned as something of a Rorschach test for American Jews. Those who are deeply critical of Israel say the fact that a minority of American Jews identify as Zionists prove that American Jewish groups should roll back their support for and engagement with Israel. Those who want to preserve the historic relationship urge looking beyond the label and focusing on the fact that a significant majority of Jews are aligned in their support for traditional tenets of Zionism.

In an essay for JTA published after the national federations group released its survey, Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact officer, concluded that most Jews still believe in the “historic definition” of Zionism, while conceding that the term has gone through “definition creep.” She urged federations to “open pathways for learning and belonging,” and avoid “responding with anger when the moment calls for steady leadership.”

For Rosenzweig, who came to Milwaukee in 2019 after years working with Jewish young professionals at Detroit’s federation, polling her community about Zionism was a no-brainer even when they were first conceiving the survey before Oct. 7. “We have to ask the question,” she said. 

“The demographic study is not meant to answer what we want to hear,” she said. “We need to know where they stand, where do people agree and disagree?” 

While the survey found a split on Zionist identification, it found broad consensus on other issues — sometimes ones that are in tension with each other. For example, 84% of Milwaukee Jews somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement, “I consider it important for Israel to be a Jewish state.” At the same time, 88% agreed that “Israel should be a democratic state for all of its citizens, regardless of religious identity.” 

Rosenzweig said she believes the two ideas could coexist. “Our community can support Israel and support Israel’s right to exist and be a Jewish state, and they’re concerned for the human dignity of Palestinians. It’s not binary,” she said. “And I think that’s really an important message about who American Jews are.”

Rabbi Noah Chertkoff, who leads the Reform Congregation Shalom in the suburb of Fox Point, said he wasn’t surprised by the survey results on Zionism but cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from them.

“I proudly identify as a Zionist, but I also recognize that the word itself has been badly distorted and, at times, deliberately defamed by people more interested in vilifying Jews than engaging seriously with Jewish history, Jewish belief and the Jewish people’s own understanding of our story,” he wrote in an email to JTA.

Chertkoff added that his own congregants have expressed both “real anguish” over Oct. 7, as well as concerns for democracy in Israel and “the suffering of civilians on all sides of the conflict.” He added that the survey should be read as a “mandate”: “If we want the next generation to inherit a durable connection to Israel and Zionism, we cannot rely only on inherited labels.”

Rabbi Lex Rofeberg, a Milwaukee native who runs the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound from his current home in Rhode Island, said he believed the survey is surfacing more than mere confusion over the word Zionism. 

“As a person who would self-identify as ‘not a Zionist,’ I hope that Jewish organizations in Milwaukee — and beyond — would respond to this finding not by trying to shift my beliefs, or by insisting that I don’t really know what I’m opposing,” he wrote in an email. “I’d hope instead they’d recognize the reality that ‘I’m not a Zionist’ is a sincere, deeply-held belief for a lot of Jews all around the world — and that includes just over 40% of Jews in the greater Milwaukee area.” 

Jewish institutions, he suggested, “should respond to lower support for Zionism not with ‘how do we re-brand Zionism’ but rather ‘how can we create meaningful Jewish experiences for folks who are actively not Zionists?’” 

Jewish Milwaukee, which Rofeberg calls “awesome” and credits with having “shaped me as a person and a Jew,” could achieve this, he insists. 

What the federation does with this new information is still to be determined. Rosenzweig is currently drafting “a very extensive strategic plan,” she told JTA, but said it was too early for specifics. She does hope to focus on points of commonality, rather than trying to convince half of the local Jews they are, or should be, Zionists.

For inspiration, Rosenzweig has been dusting off Milwaukee’s community survey from exactly a century ago. (Meir had already moved to Palestine by way of Denver at the time.) Back then, she said, the community was roughly the same size it is now, and its Jewish funding arms were raising roughly the same amount of money, adjusted for inflation.

“It was talking about the ‘Campaign for Palestine,’ in 1926, because the Jews of Eastern Europe had nowhere to go,” Rosenzweig said. “They were worried about it then. And so today, we’re responding to the moment. And yes, it looks dark. There were dark days, and we survived because we came together. We know how to do this.”

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The survey, which surveyed 12,574 U.S. adults from May 4 to May 17, 2026, found that 52% have a favorable opinion of the Israeli people, compared with 42% who held an unfavorable opinion.

A similar share held a favorable view of Palestinians, with 50% saying they held a favorable opinion while 44% had unfavorable views. The margin of error for the full sample was plus or minus 1.3 percentage points.

The survey found that Americans’ views of Israelis have grown increasingly negative in recent years, while views toward Palestinians have remained steady. In 2022, 67% of U.S. adults held a favorable view of Israelis, dropping to 52% this year, while views of Palestinians have dropped from 53% to 50%.

Unfavorable views of Israelis rose from 25% in 2022 to 42% this year, while unfavorable views of Palestinians rose from 39% in 2022 to 44% this year.

In contrast, the majority of Americans, 62%, held unfavorable views of the Israeli government, while 69% said they held an unfavorable opinion of the Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, and 84% said they had an unfavorable view of Hamas.

The Pew survey was conducted prior to Hamas’ announcement Monday that it will dissolve its government in Gaza ahead of its transfer to the Palestinian technocratic committee that was established by President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.

The survey comes as a number of recent polls show, for the first time, Americans sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.

Opinions of Israeli and Palestinian people were split among Republicans and Democrats, with 65% of Republicans holding a favorable view of Israelis compared to 43% of Democrats. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats held a favorable view of Palestinians, compared to one-third of Republicans.

Just over half of Democrats now hold an unfavorable view of Israelis, up from 31% in 2022. Among Republicans, the share that held a negative view towards Israelis also rose from 17% in 2022 to 31% in 2026.

U.S. adults under 30-years-old were also more likely to hold a favorable view of Palestinians, at 58%, than Israelis, at 32%. According to pollsters, the attitude was largely driven by young Democrats, of which 72% held a positive view toward Palestinians and just 26% held a positive view of Israelis.

Among Jewish respondents, the poll found that attitudes toward the Israeli people and government had declined in recent years. Since 2024, their favorable views of the Israeli people had fallen from 89% to 83%, and favorable opinions toward the Israeli government had fallen from 54% to 47%.

It also found that 40% of Jewish adults in the U.S. view the Palestinian people favorably, compared to 58% who said they viewed Palestinians unfavorably. Just 10% of Jewish adults said they held a favorable view toward the Palestinian Authority, and 2% said they held a favorable view of Hamas.

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“The prime minister of Israel has failed,” Rep. Haley Stevens said when asked about Iran, saying that both Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump had failed to achieve “long-term peace.”

Later, Stevens added that she supported “aid into Gaza” and reiterated that she believed Netanyahu has been bad for American Jews.

“It is very clear that Mr. Netanyahu has not made us safer, has not brought us closer to peace, and he is a danger to Jews in America and around the world,” she said.

The lines represented sharp criticism of Israel’s leadership for a candidate who, according to federal campaign records, has received more than $10 million in support from donors affiliated with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that her progressive opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, has excoriated on the campaign trail and during Tuesday’s debate. Regarded as one of Congress’ more reliable pro-Israel Democrats, Stevens made the comments as Democratic voters have largely shed their sympathies for Israel.

El-Sayed, meanwhile, said during the debate that the United States’ foreign policy “has been handed to us” by Israel and AIPAC and called Israel a “rogue state.”

The former Wayne County health director whose grassroots campaign has gained momentum as it has increasingly centered anti-Israel rhetoric, did not hold back in his criticism.

Citing “the impact of AIPAC in our politics” as the reason for the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, El-Sayed asserted that the lobbyist’s goals were “to annex Lebanon or to do genocide in Gaza.” He added that Israel was committing “human rights abuses, genocide and apartheid” and called for the United States to “stop funding the Israeli military unilateral blank checks.”

He also tied voters’ economic woes to Israel. “Ask yourself why it is that we are paying $5 gas, why it is that we can’t get out of this quagmire,” he said. “It’s because for too long, our foreign policy has been handed to us by the likes of the state of Israel and AIPAC, who has made sure that both Democrats and Republicans are doing their bidding.”

He further claimed there was no difference between his Democratic opponent and the presumptive Republican nominee, former congressman Mike Rogers, on Israel.

“If Congresswoman Stevens makes it, or if Mike Rogers wins, either way, Israel will win,” El-Sayed said. “AIPAC is perfectly fine with either of my two opponents because they know they will have a comfortable, reliable vote in the U.S. Senate.”

Stevens, who noted that she supports a two-state solution, rejected the line of attack. “No one owns my vote and no one owns my policies,” she said. “Anyone who’s contributing to my Senate campaign is doing so because of my proven record of fighting for Michigan.”

El-Sayed also suggested that Stevens’ sparring with Netanyahu, who is deeply unpopular with American voters, was ingenuine. Earlier in the day, Netanyahu told CNN that he believed Stevens’ previous comments accusing him of making American Jews less safe represented her “probably trying to excuse antisemitism.”

Sayed said he wasn’t convinced the remark was authentic. “I don’t think Benjamin Netanyahu is attacking her to actually attack her,” he said at the debate. “I think he’s attacking her to try and steer away the stink of how staunchly she stands for their policy.”

El-Sayed also attacked Stevens over a June 2025 vote she made in the House to “thank” Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers. The appreciation was embedded in a resolution condemning the firebombing of a peaceful march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado. Stevens accused Republicans of having “put in a cynical point” about thanking ICE and El-Sayed of falling into a trap laid by the GOP.

Israel has grown increasingly central ahead of the Michigan primary, set for Aug. 4, in a crucial battleground state with large populations of both Jewish and Arab/Muslim voters. A third candidate who sought to tread a middle ground between Stevens and El-Sayed suspended her campaign earlier this week, ratcheting up anxiety among American Jews around the race.

Stevens’ bid for the Senate comes four years after she ousted Andy Levin, a Jewish progressive congressman who expressed criticism of Israel, in a race that drew more than $4 million in AIPAC-affiliated spending. In the years since, she has remained in a dwindling minority of House Democrats who have voted against all measures that would block or condition military aid to Israel.

El-Sayed’s bid comes as other anti-Israel progressives have prevailed in congressional primaries, shifting campaign discourse about Israel to the left. In an interview with CNN also published Tuesday, El-Sayed took aim at the very idea of a Jewish state.

“Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one,” he told CNN. Asked if support for Israel could ever be about more than money, he responded, “Not if you’re a Democrat and you believe in human rights.”

Other Michigan races are also turning into referendums on the Democratic stance on Israel. El-Sayed has cross-endorsed two left-wing congressional candidates, state Rep. Donavan McKinney and activist William Lawrence, who have both said Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Stevens, meanwhile, has endorsed pro-Israel Jewish state Sen. Jeremy Moss for her House seat.

Further down the ballot in Michigan, Democratic activist Abbas Alawieh, a key architect of the 2024 “Uncommitted” movement designed to pressure national Democrats on Gaza, on Tuesday picked up the endorsement of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in his bid for a state senate seat on the party ticket. Alawieh has also met with former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost Michigan to Donald Trump in the general election after the state’s large Arab/Muslim population expressed strong dissatisfaction with her stance on Israel.

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The marchers in Washington wore masks and some carried Confederate flags, according to reports and video from the scene. At times, they chanted “Reclaim America!” — a rallying cry channeling the group’s nativist agenda.

While Patriot Front’s public activities mostly center on its anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ agenda, the Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly cited the group, founded in 2017, as the largest purveyor of antisemitic materials in the United States.

One of the group’s signature slogans, which members displayed on a banner in Washington in 2023, is “No Zionists in Government.”

The previous year, the group’s internal communications, obtained and leaked by an independent media collective, showed that some members used Nazi slogans and that one member was accepted on the basis of an application in which he declared that the “biggest threat to America is Jewish domination over the world.” Group leaders criticized how the chat logs had been obtained but did not challenge the veracity of their contents.

In a statement on Sunday, the ADL called Patriot Front “the most visible white supremacist group operating in the U.S. today” and noted that its previous public rallies had been much smaller.

“The size of the march is concerning,” the ADL said about the Saturday rally.

Patriot Front’s founder, Thomas Rousseau, was a leading participant in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which attendees chanted “Jews will not replace us” while carrying burning torches. The chant refers to an antisemitic conspiracy theory positing that Jews are engineering mass immigration in order to displace white people. Rousseau later testified that he heard the chant but thought attendees might have been saying “you will not replace us.”

The 2017 rally fueled criticism of President Donald Trump, who did not immediately comment on it and then placed blame on “both sides” while condemning the display of “hatred, bigotry and violence.” It also animated the presidential run of Joe Biden and spurred a successful lawsuit against the rally’s organizers by an advocacy group called Integrity First for America, whose leader, Amy Spitalnick, is now CEO of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs.

“Patriot Front is an offshoot of one of the white supremacist groups we (successfully) sued for orchestrating the Charlottesville violence,” Spitalnick said in a JCPA statement on Sunday. “They are emboldened because their extremism has been wholly normalized by the administration and others.”

Trump has not commented publicly on this weekend’s Patriot Front march, which took place during festivities to celebrate the United States’ 250th birthday. A top administration official did not directly answer when CNN’s Dana Bash asked him whether he would urge Trump to denounce the group.

“What they stand for is nothing that I could possibly agree with,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum told Bash, who is Jewish and has made antisemitism a focus of her recent coverage. “But one of the foundational principles of the United States, which makes democracy messy, is free speech.”

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