Ynon Kreiz, the Israeli-American former CEO of Mattel, is joining the company as Ellison’s co-CEO. The merged entity will be known simply as Skydance – the name of Ellison’s production company – which previously merged with Paramount, Ellison announced Friday.

“We have big goals for Skydance, and we intend to pursue them with passion, imagination and a willingness to take smart risks,” Ellison announced Friday in his inaugural post on the social network X.

The mogul’s entertainment and media ambitions have attracted considerable negative attention over the last few years — attention that, in some instances, has been directed at his pro-Israel beliefs and connections as the entertainment industry writ large has also weathered growing accusations of anti-Jewish bias.

Most recently, the actor Mark Ruffalo has drawn accusations of antisemitism – and some support – for suggesting that Ellison’s planned $110 billion merger would be a boon to Israel’s “apartheid system of oppression” via Oracle, the tech surveillance company owned by Ellison’s father Larry that does business in Israel.

Paramount under Ellison’s leadership has long shown signs of pro-Israel leanings. Last year the company was the only major American studio to issue a public rebuke of a petition to boycott Israeli film institutions, circulated by many big-name actors, while distributing multiple documentaries about Israelis in the shadow of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Ellison also attracted scrutiny for appointing Bari Weiss, the Jewish and pro-Israel media innovator and pundit, as editor in chief of CBS News.

Weiss’s tenure at CBS has been marked by controversy, with mass walkouts of top talent and a ratings nosedive. Initial industry speculation that Ellison would ask her to also take the reins at Warner-owned CNN has been tamped down in recent days, with the Wall Street Journal and other outlets now reporting that Ellison has asked the news network’s CEO Mark Thompson to stay put for at least the next year.

Kreiz, the former Mattel CEO behind the smash-hit “Barbie” movie, has been known to support pro-Israel causes as well. In 2023, he attended a screening of footage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks organized by Israeli actress Gal Gadot at Los Angeles’s Museum of Tolerance. Outside, brawls broke out between pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators.

--
The post David Ellison slots Israeli Ynon Kreiz into executive role at merged Paramount-Warner studios appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

At just 7 acres, the etrog grove at Lindcove Ranch in Exeter is a speck in Tulare County, where about 40% of California’s citrus crops are grown. But by another measure, the grove is giant: Lindcove Ranch is the only major commercial grower of kosher etrogs in the United States. 

“This is my life — I really feel a calling to do this,” said Greg Kirkpatrick, 65, whose family has owned and operated Lindcove Ranch for more than 60 years. 

The fruit looks like a strange lemon, with a knobby exterior, thick rind and oblong shape. It exudes a sweet, fresh, lemony fragrance. It’s not a fruit that shows up in grocery stores. But for Jews, the etrog is crucial for fulfilling the commandments of Sukkot. During the holiday ritual, which includes a blessing, an etrog is held in the left hand while a bundle of palm, myrtle and willow, called a lulav, is held in the right. Brought together, they are shaken in the four directions as well as upward and downward.

The Kirkpatrick family, who are not Jewish, began growing etrogs 46 years ago, when an Orthodox distributor from the East Coast reached out looking for a domestic grower. He wanted to avoid the costly import process of bringing in etrogs from any of the three major growing regions around the world: Israel, Italy and Morocco. 

Greg’s father, John, who was already a successful citrus farmer, decided to give the specialty crop a chance, and soon citrons became an important part of the ranch’s annual income. Its citron orchard is part of a larger specialty-citrus operation, which includes yuzu, finger limes, makrut limes and sour oranges on about 30 acres. The citron, however, has been the ranch’s top-earning crop.

The citron business is a difficult one that Kirkpatrick likens to the diamond industry, with single pieces of fruit selling for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. 

“It’s not so much how many we can grow. It’s the quality of the fruit,” he said.

An etrog must meet stringent requirements to be considered kosher for ritual use. It must be largely unblemished, retain its natural stem, called a pitom, and come from a documented lineage of trees that have never been grafted or crossed with another variety.

The requirements make growing them different from growing ordinary citrus, according to David Karp, a pomologist, citron expert and citrus researcher at UC Riverside. 

“Many people have tried to grow citron in California,” Karp said, noting the financial allure of an etrog’s price tag. “But just because you can grow a lemon well doesn’t mean you can grow an etrog that’s right for Jewish ritual use. You can grow them, but you’ll end up selling them for $5 each, or feeding them to the cows.”

Karp said little in horticulture can compare to the scrutiny that etrogs undergo for physical appearance, all for the sake of religious ritual.

“There’s nothing remotely like this,” Karp said. “In Japan and perhaps other countries in Asia … there’s a cultural predilection for perfect, extremely expensive fruit that would be given as a gift. But there’s nothing quite like the citron for Jewish ritual use.”

A typical crop may begin with 10,000 to 15,000 pieces of fruit, but perhaps only half will be suitable to bring to market, according to Kirkpatrick. His harvesters are trained to pick citrons carefully after inspecting them on the tree.

“Being able to judge on the tree if the fruit’s good enough to bring into the packing house or not is important, so we don’t have to spend hours wading through and washing and dealing with fruit that’s not going to make it to the market,” Kirkpatrick said.

Once picked, each fruit is placed in its own spot in a foam tray. The citrons do not touch one another through the picking or packing process because even minor bruising or scratches can reduce their value.

There are multiple grades of etrog, ranging from cheaper, wholesale stock sold in mail-order sets to exceptionally large and blemish-free fruit sought by elite buyers.

For decades, Kirkpatrick mostly sold his etrogs through a specialized marketing network to Orthodox Jewish customers on the East Coast, who seek citrons that are not only kosher but exceptional in size, shape and color.

“My partner sells to a very select group of Orthodox Jews in Lakewood, New Jersey, by appointment only,” Kirkpatrick said. “And if you don’t have appointment-grade fruit, they won’t come to buy your fruit.”

In 2023, the ranch received about 22 inches of rain and failed to get much of a crop. That same year, John died, leaving the grieving Kirkpatrick family to navigate the business without him. Then, in 2025, the ranch produced what Kirkpatrick thought was a successful crop, but his marketing partner was unable to sell enough of the fruit to recoup the $250,000 it cost to produce. Those years were the two worst for etrogs in the ranch’s history.

Distributors simply want more top-grade etrogs than the Kirkpatrick operation is able to supply. 

Rabbi Menachem Sirota, a longtime etrog distributor based in Lakewood, New Jersey, who has purchased Lindcove Ranch citrons in the past, said he has opted to buy from larger growers who can supply more of the highest grade of the fruit. 

“Personally, as a wholesaler, I need a very large quantity of nice ones,” Sirota said. “For a while I was getting them from California, but in recent years I was not so satisfied with the quality.”

As a result of the huge financial loss from this shift, one of the family’s homes on the ranch ended up in foreclosure earlier this year, Kirkpatrick said. With labor being one of the ranch’s biggest expenses, Kirkpatrick has had to cut back from eight full-time employees to five part-time workers. 

The family is even thinking of selling the ranch. 

But for now, Kirkpatrick is trying to save his business by becoming more of his own wholesaler.

“We’re reinventing ourselves,” he said.

The ranch is focused on selling bulk orders directly to congregations. Just before Sukkot began on Sept. 25, for example, Kirkpatrick delivered a shipment to Congregation Beth Emek in Pleasanton and Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley, California. 

Kirkpatrick is also courting a new customer base with a pitch built on a genuine difference between his etrogs and those grown abroad. His etrogs are grown without pesticides or other chemical treatments, so after Sukkot they can be eaten or made into jam, candied peel or liqueur. 

That sets them apart from etrogs grown overseas, according to Karp. 

“Because a citron is of little worth unless it’s cosmetically perfect, they spray the heck out of these trees and fruit,” he said, adding that he wouldn’t advise eating etrogs grown outside the United States. “It wouldn’t be my first choice for a marmalade, let’s put it that way.” 

Whatever Kirkpatrick’s hopes, the fate of Lindcove Ranch, and of California-grown etrogs, will depend on several factors, including the weather and how the next growing season plays out.

“I’m a farmer, I’m always optimistic,” he said. “You have to be in the farming business.”

This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

--
The post America’s only major etrog grower is in survival mode amid global competition appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Steve Leder, the former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, served as a consultant on depictions of Judaism for Season 1 of “Nobody Wants This,” a rom-com in which Brody plays a rabbi who falls for an agnostic non-Jewish podcaster. 

Leder denounced Brody on Wednesday over recent comments in which the Jewish actor for the first time publicly expressed his views on Israel’s actions in Gaza. Brody told GQ, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”

Leder said in an Instagram video that Brody’s statements were “truly shocking,” “flippant” and “disgusting,” asserting his own view that “there is no genocide in Gaza.” 

“You, by your own admission, are a relatively ignorant Jew, and your ignorance really showed the other day,” said Leder. “If you’re going to use a word like genocide, you ought to know what it means.” 

Leder appeared to be referring to Brody’s previous descriptions of his limited Jewish education. Brody has said he is an atheist who “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it,” adding that he prepared for the role of rabbi Noah Roklov in “Nobody Wants This” by attending a Shabbat service and working through books, podcasts and documentaries about Judaism.

Brody played high-profile Jewish characters including Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” and Seth Morris in “Fleishman Is in Trouble” before “Nobody Wants This,” which returns for a third season on Oct. 22. 

The show itself has conspicuously avoided the subject of Israel. “Nobody Wants This” creator Erin Foster — who converted to Judaism in Leder’s synagogue — told The Free Press last year that she made a deliberate choice not to deal with the issue.

“We never say Israel or Palestine in the show, and that’s intentional because I think it would be a distraction and that this is just not the show to tell that story,” said Foster. 

Brody told GQ that the Gaza war, alongside other national and global crises in recent years, revealed that he and his Hollywood peers were not as “like-minded” as he previously believed. 

“Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by,” he said. 

Israel’s actions in Gaza have divided the entertainment industry — and Jewish stars. While celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer have voiced support for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, other Jewish actors have said that Israel subsequently committed genocide, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn. 

The genocide accusation is heavily disputed. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, along with international and Israeli human rights groups, has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit that description. However, the International Court of Justice has not yet issued a final judgment on allegations of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel. Israel rejects the accusation.

--
The post Rabbi who coached Adam Brody for ‘Nobody Wants This’ calls him ‘ignorant Jew’ over Gaza ‘genocide’ comments appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The reports, which the ADL calls its “State of the Arts” initiative, were shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in advance of their publication and come as Jews have expressed alarm about their treatment in a post-Oct. 7 cultural landscape. They include: 

• Grades for 40 museums on Jewish and Israeli representation that the ADL says “reveal a pattern of erasure by omission,” including comparatively few recognitions of Jewish American Heritage Month.
  
• A “trend report” based on interviews with more than 30 Jewish authors and publishing professionals alleging boycotts and exclusions from the publishing industry based on their identities.
  
• A survey of 65 incidents of “Jewish, Israeli and openly Zionist artists fac[ing] growing scrutiny, protest, disruption and cancellation” from performance venues or pressure from pro-Palestinian groups since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel.
  
• ADL-approved guidelines for how venues should host and engage with Jewish artists.

The reports will be accompanied by a launch event Thursday evening at the Jewish Museum in New York, to be attended by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt as well as Jewish entertainers including actor Selma Blair and author and influencer Alyssa Rosenheck.

“We started to hear from patrons of the arts and artists and other people connected to museums that there was a real problem,” Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of public affairs and special initiatives, told JTA in an interview about the genesis of the project.

As a result, the ADL started tracking Jewish and Israeli artists who had been targeted by protests. The group also heard from Jewish authors about the publishing industry, leading to an expansion of the project. Goodman said the team was motivated by the chance to leverage “boards of trustees and boards of directors, and donors, who might be able to have influence.”

“By shining a light on some of this, we might be able to have an effect and an impact,” she said.

The project follows the ADL’s campus antisemitism report cards, which launched in 2024 and assign letter grades to dozens of universities based on how well the group feels they have combated anti-Jewish sentiments. Criticized by many in higher education, and by some major Jewish groups including Hillel International, the report cards have nonetheless prompted several campuses to change or update their policies around Jewish issues.

That success led to the formation of a new ADL unit focused on ratings and assessments. Now, the watchdog’s attention is turning to the art world — at a moment when many eyes are trained on Jews and Israelis in those spaces.

Over the summer, a report from the literary free-speech group PEN America reached similar conclusions to the ADL on the exclusion felt by some Jewish and Israeli authors. The report led to deep internal divisions within PEN and the resignation of its president, who argued that the organization was not standing up for the free-speech rights of boycotters. New Jewish publishing initiatives aim to counteract what they say is the exclusion of Jewish voices in mainstream publishing.

Since Oct. 7, several pro-Israel Jewish artists, ranging from Jerry Seinfeld and Mayim Bialik to Matisyahu, have seen their events targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ADL’s report catalogs all these incidents and more, including demonstrations staged by neo-Nazis against Jewish-themed theatrical shows, which the ADL’s staff said they see as equivalent to pro-Palestinian protests.

“They’re equally disruptive and exclusionary of Jewish voices,” Luda Isakharov, associate director of the ADL’s Ratings and Assessments Institute, told JTA. “We treat them the same in our grading.”

In recent weeks, two Israel-related arts controversies have further complicated the picture of how Jews in the cultural landscape orient themselves around the issue. Jewish mogul Robert Kraft pressured Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from his tour over the latter’s onstage rhetoric about Israel. And the Israeli documentary “NAZA” is being targeted by right-wing Israelis over the film’s detailing of the conduct of war in Gaza.

ADL researchers had no involvement in PEN’s publishing report, Goodman said; their own report argues that PEN didn’t go far enough. And while Greenblatt himself posted approvingly of Kraft’s role in the Macklemore dust-up, Goodman said the ADL has not yet thought through how it would record incidents like the Kraft controversy or the “NAZA” disputes, in which Jews or Israelis are the ones leading the protesting. 

“We’re encouraging people to let speech go forward, to let concerts go forward,” she said. “Typically we have not been supportive of boycotts.” The report’s incident catalog, the ADL said, instead focuses on Jewish or Israeli artists targeted on the basis of their identities.

Goodman added, “We do speak out because we want celebrities to know how painful their language is, and the examples that they can set and what the impacts are.”

Both the Kraft and “NAZA” incidents occurred after the ADL had finalized its report. An earlier example of attempted cancellation directed at the “NAZA” filmmakers, when the mayor of Miami Beach briefly threatened to evict a theater showing the directors’ previous movie in 2025, failed to make the ADL’s catalog, although the directors are Jewish and Israeli.

One conclusion to draw from entertainment spaces’ relationship to Jews and Israelis, the ADL told JTA, is that many often cite heightened security concerns as a reason not to engage with the topic.

The museum report, similar to the campus report cards, assigns ratings to each of the 40 surveyed institutions, including major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. Grades range from “Gold Standard,” which the ADL assigned only to the Berkeley Art Museum, to “Critically Deficient,” which it gave to 12 museums, including the Whitney and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The criteria include the number of Jewish and Israeli artists in each museum’s collection and whether or not they are presented with “Jewish framing.” Among those approvingly cited as representative of Jewish or Israeli art are left-wing Jewish artists such as Nan Goldin, as well as Arab-Israelis whose “art was very critical of Israel,” according to Isakharov. Goldin’s name does not appear in the early copy of the report shared with JTA, though other Israel-critical Jewish artists do.

The ADL also recorded whether a museum had been the site of a pro-Palestinian protest, and whether it had a process in place for identifying art that had been stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families.

Museum ratings also factor in an institution’s policies around anti-discrimination for Jews and Jewish programming — including for Jewish American Heritage Month, which ADL researchers said only one of the surveyed museums currently observes. Meanwhile, according to the ADL, 60% of the same museums observe other ethnic heritage months.

Some museums have already reached out to the ADL to say they would be sharing more of their policies related to anti-Jewish discrimination, Isakharov said.

Meanwhile, the ADL’s publishing report, similar to PEN’s, relies largely on anecdotal evidence about Jewish authors and subjects reportedly being passed over by agents, publishers or literary venues after Oct. 7. 

“Much of what’s going on is happening below the surface,” Isakharov told JTA. “It’s oftentimes a last-minute drop, a gut feeling that authors have, and that makes it so hard to prove.”

One of the authors the ADL plans to spotlight prominently is Rosenheck, a photographer, influencer and author of the memoir “White. Blond. Jew.” She will be speaking at the ADL’s launch event Thursday. Rosenheck has a previous relationship with the ADL, having appeared at its “Never Is Now” summit last year, and has also spoken at the Republican Jewish Coalition. 

Rosenheck’s book launch event in Nashville was canceled by an independent bookseller earlier this year citing security concerns, an incident condemned by the local federation.

“This is what literary antisemitism looks like,” Rosenheck is quoted as saying in the ADL report, referring to her experience with the bookstore as well as negative posts about her book online. 

Some Jewish scholars of publishing trends are critical of reports that suggest Jewish authors and subjects are facing discrimination. Such conclusions, they say, fail to make the case that Jews have been treated unfairly outside of industry norms.

Wellesley College professor Josh Lambert and Emory University professor Dan Sinykin, in a joint report also published Thursday, accuse the ADL’s study of being promoted by “political motivations.”

“The ADL’s report features quotes by a handful of right-wing activists (without acknowledging them as such), conflates Jews and Zionists, and opposes boycotts — all familiar strategies to suppress leftist Jewish and pro-Palestinian expression,” Lambert and Sinykin write in the left-wing magazine Jewish Currents. 

The two present their own data suggesting that Jewish- and Israeli-themed fiction, after declining in 2024, actually entered an upswing in 2025. They also challenge some of the claims made by the PEN report’s key interview subjects, including the number of Jewish books one Jewish agent claimed to have signed since Oct. 7. Their story has prompted a correction on the PEN report.

--
The post ADL alleges ‘systemic’ anti-Jewish bias in cultural spaces appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The sugar-coated gummies will be on shelves in early 2027 following an outpouring of “overwhelming support and enthusiasm shown by Sunkist Fruit Gems fans in recent days,” Sunkist confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

The company said it will collaborate with CandyRific, a Kentucky-based confectionery company, to continue the legacy of Sunkist Fruit Gems days after reports of the gummies’ demise. 

The fruit gems tick crucial boxes for being hurled at bar and bat mitzvahs, wedding celebrations and other happy occasions: They are kosher, soft enough to avoid injuring celebrants and individually wrapped so they don’t get stuck on the floor. 

Those attributes will be preserved in their relaunch. “Consumers can expect the same key product characteristics they know and love, including individually wrapped pieces, a soft texture, fruit flavors, and kosher certification,” Sunkist said. 

EJewishPhilanthropy first reported Thursday that the fruit gems were being discontinued by Ferrara, a Chicago-based candy company, prompting memorial tributes in Jewish communities throughout the United States. 

Ferrara told JTA that Sunkist Fruit Gems were cut from their Jelly Belly brand to “focus resources on future growth and innovation,” saying the company appreciated “the enthusiasm many consumers have shown for Sunkist Fruit Gems.”  

The fruit gems have been a staple at synagogues for generations. They were born from an overabundance of citrus in the 1930s, when the citrus harvester Sunkist began transforming surplus fruit into byproducts. The candies evolved from Christopher’s Fruit Gems to take the Sunkist name in the 1960s. 

Protests against their disappearance included an appeal in eJewishPhilanthropy by Sara Fredman Aeder, the executive vice president of programming at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, headlined “Save the Fruit Gems.” 

Sunkist’s announcement on Instagram that the fruit gems were “not going anywhere” was met with grateful replies.

“I panic-bought in bulk for my wedding next year,” said one commenter. “Now I feel foolish lol. But enjoying a bunch of very yummy gummies.” 

--
The post Sunkist Fruit Gems return after panic over loss of synagogue staple appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

What did the only Jew serving in the Texas state house do to earn this distinction? It’s more what he didn’t do: run for statewide office with a track record of spewing racially charged and antisemitic comments.

Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas Railroad commissioner, has a history of rhetoric targeting people of color, Muslims and Jews, including a social media poll last year asking whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.” 

He also faced bipartisan blowback for a recent post targeting college students of color, and this week a CNN investigation revealed that French, in since-deleted posts, had called for public executions for former President Barack Obama, Jewish California Sen. Adam Schiff and government workers targeted by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency last year.

The controversy has elevated the race for an obscure statewide office – albeit one that regulates the state’s all-important energy industry – into a larger referendum on the GOP’s tolerance for bigotry, including antisemitism, among its nominees. 

Rove, for one, has made it clear where he thinks the party should stand.

“The GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches — and not only in Texas,” Rove wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month in explaining his decision to back Rosenthal. 

Rove singled out growing antisemitism in the party: “There are ‘just asking questions’ Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.”

Rove isn’t the only GOP stalwart to turn on French. 

“Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized,” outgoing Texas Sen. John Cornyn wrote in condemning French’s social media musings. “This is how great political parties self-destruct.” 

Cornyn has stopped short of backing Rosenthal, instead saying he might leave the ballot blank.

Rosenthal and French have agreed to a debate on Oct. 22. French leads the race in polling released last week from Texas Southern University, but by a much slimmer margin than GOP candidates are accustomed to in Texas. Rosenthal’s campaign could also see a boost from fellow statewide Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is polling neck-and-neck with his opponent in the U.S. Senate race.

On social media, Rosenthal celebrated Rove’s endorsement, writing, “When GOP architect Karl Rove breaks a 30-year voting streak to endorse our campaign, it proves this race isn’t about party lines, it’s about competence vs. chaos.”

A former county Republican Party chair who defeated the incumbent GOP state railroad commissioner in a runoff primary, French spurred widespread backlash earlier this month after posting a photo of students of color at the University of Texas celebrating a football win to the social network X. 

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it,” French had captioned the photo on Sept. 13. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” He has since doubled down on the sentiment, replying, “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans,” and using the backlash to solicit donations. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state House Speaker Dustin Burrows were among the other Republicans who criticized French for the post, though neither formally rescinded their support, and French continues to list Abbott’s endorsement on his site.

It was not French’s first brush with bigotry. In 2025, during his stint as Tarrant County GOP Chair, French posted an online “poll” asking his followers whether “Jews” or “Muslims” pose “a bigger threat to America.” In a follow-up post, he argued, “You may not like Jews, but to suggest they are a bigger threat to Americans is Jew Derangement Syndrome.”

French later deleted both posts, and has few visible tweets about Jews today. In later posts, he claimed, of himself, “There has never been any evidence of antisemitism. It would certainly be surprising to my Jewish partners.” 

Jewish Republicans in the state and beyond are largely keeping their distance from French, with one exception. His campaign site currently touts an endorsement from American Jewish Conservatives, whose only listed chapter is in Dallas. 

Neither French nor the group, formerly Dallas Jewish Conservatives, responded to JTA requests for comment on the endorsement. A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition also did not return a request for comment on French.

Last month French cited a desire to combat antisemitism when arguing that Texas should not use mosques as polling places. In other posts, he accused a university in the state of “harboring radical left/antisemitic professors,” identified himself as both pro-Israel and pro-Tucker Carlson, the talk show host who has platformed antisemites and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, and told one follower, “I have never served Israel. Don’t be a retard.”

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was among the GOP officials who condemned French’s tweet about Jews last year, calling on him to resign as county chair. “Antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas,” Patrick said then. French ultimately resigned months later in order to run for railroad commissioner.

Today, French lists Patrick as one of his endorsements. A spokesperson for Patrick, who recently told JTA he supported Texas schools assigning books on the Holocaust after public remarks apparently to the contrary, did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.

French’s other listed endorsements include Texas congressional candidate Brandon Herrera, who has made jokes about Hitler and the Holocaust in YouTube videos. 

Rove’s essay led to President Donald Trump wading into the controversy, calling Rove “so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” in a post on his social network Truth Social. Trump’s post did not mention French, nor address his past post about Jews.

The Texas railroad commission, composed of three members, oversees the state’s large and powerful oil and gas industry. It has no oversight into immigration or religion. Even so, French’s campaign has drifted far afield from energy issues: One of his pledges is “Stop the Islamic Invasion of Texas.”

French’s controversies have elevated the profile of Rosenthal, who was raised a Reform Jew in an interfaith household and whose Houston-area district is home to large Muslim communities. This year Rosenthal marked Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur by sharing links to Chabad-Lubavitch webpages about the holidays.

Rosenthal’s campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment, but he told the Forward last year that he identifies as agnostic and “multireligious,” and attends synagogues as well as mosques and churches. 

Rosenthal is also a trained mechanical engineer, a background he has drawn on in his bid for railroad commissioner: one campaign ad, quoting a conservative radio host, approvingly calls him “a ‘drill, baby, drill’ Democrat.” He has accused French of “overt racism,” while French has dubbed his opponent “Radical Rosenthal” and posted images, generated using artificial intelligence, of cross-shaped Texas oil wells to promote his blending of energy policy with Christian iconography.

Last year, Rosenthal cited his Judaism in response to legislation that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. Rosenthal introduced an amendment that would have required a “Jewish” version of the commandments to be displayed alongside the “Protestant” one. The amendment failed, and the bill passed.

--
The post Why is Karl Rove supporting a progressive Jewish candidate in Texas? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine,” Brody said in a new interview with GQ. “It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago.” 

Brody said he has spoken about his opinions on Israel privately, but until now had not “spoken much about it publicly.” He added that he hoped for another presidential administration to “correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”

The Jewish actor plays Los Angeles-based rabbi Noah Roklov in the hit Netflix show, which returns for a third season on Oct. 22. It’s the latest in a string of Jewish roles that made him famous, including Seth Cohen in “The O.C.” and Seth Morris in “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” In real life, Brody has said he is an atheist who “barely got bar mitzvahed and retained nothing from it.” 

Brody told GQ that the Gaza war, alongside other national and global crises, has revealed “more conservative” views among his Hollywood peers in recent years. 

“Between COVID, a second Trump term, Israel-Gaza, it’s really brought out some different beliefs that I was ignorant to, and then disheartened by,” he said. 

Israel’s actions in Gaza have divided the entertainment industry. While celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gal Gadot and Amy Schumer have voiced support for Israel since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, other Jewish actors have said that Israel is guilty of genocide in the retaliation that followed, including Hannah Einbinder and Wallace Shawn. Einbinder was among about 100 people arrested during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

The genocide accusation is heavily disputed. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry, along with international and Israeli human rights groups, has concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza fit that description. However, the International Court of Justice has not yet issued a final judgment on allegations of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel.

Israel has strongly rejected the accusation. Netanyahu in his U.N. address last week called it “the greatest lie of the 21st century,” saying that Israel “prevented genocide” by protecting Palestinians in Gaza while Hamas “used Palestinian civilians as human shields.”

Brody, Netflix and representatives from “Nobody Wants This” did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

--
The post Jewish star Adam Brody calls Israeli actions in Gaza ‘genocide’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

In response to a J. inquiry, a university spokesperson said the delay was caused by “internal miscommunication.” The university now promises that the scholar, Yael Nativ, will receive the job offer she was guaranteed in the December 2025 settlement “no later than the week of Sept. 28.”

“We deeply regret this unfortunate delay and look forward to welcoming Dr. Nativ back to our campus,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement. 

Nativ said she received an apology for the delay and the promise of an imminent job offer in a Sept. 21 email from a university administrator. 

“It’s always a surprise when I get emails from them because the correspondence was so little to none,” Nativ said. “I’m so tired of this case.”

Nativ, a sociologist specializing in Israeli dance, taught in UC Berkeley’s dance department during spring 2022 as a visiting professor through the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. Her course focused on contemporary dance in Israel through social, political and cultural perspectives.

The institute invited Nativ to reapply for another year of teaching. But after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, SanSan Kwan, chair of the dance department, informed Nativ that she would not be rehired. In November 2023, Kwan told Nativ in a WhatsApp message: “My dept cannot host you for a class next fall. Things are very hot right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”

The university’s civil rights office investigated the matter and concluded that Nativ was discriminated against based on her Israeli identity. 

Nativ sued the university, with representation from the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, in August 2025. When the two sides settled the lawsuit in December 2025, the university acknowledged its wrongdoing and committed to apologizing to Nativ and inviting her back to campus. 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons apologized to Nativ over Zoom on Feb. 3, but no job offer arrived. 

The lapse was publicized by Malcolm Feeley, a retired UC Berkeley Law professor, who wrote about Nativ’s case in a Sept. 16 article in the Jewish Review of Books.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. This is justice delayed in the extreme,” Feeley said in an interview. “It takes a concerted effort of badgering to get [the university] to move an inch.”

In a statement to J. following the publication of Feeley’s article, Mogulof said the university hadn’t sent Nativ a job offer due to a misunderstanding among administrators about who was responsible for doing so. 

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Ben Hermalin will personally ensure the offer will come within the next two weeks, according to Mogulof. 

Nativ went on to work as a research fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Israel after she left Berkeley. She said her main goal since the lawsuit has been to hold UC Berkeley accountable, not to land a job. 

“It wasn’t urgent for me to go [back to campus]. It’s more about making a point, getting my justice,” she said. “But if they invite, I will consider.”

This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

--
The post In a legal settlement, UC Berkeley offers a dance scholar a position it denied her because she’s Israeli. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Hannah Gann posted confessions and apologies to social media this week, following confrontations from local pro-Palestinian groups she had worked with. In her apologies, she identified herself as “a white woman with significant privilege and wealth” who has “no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage.”

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment to Gann was not immediately returned.

Two local activist groups Gann had been involved with, Philly Educators for Palestine and Racial Justice Organizing Committee, said in their own statement that Gann was also “of Jewish heritage and [part of] an Israeli settler family.” They further accused Gann of falsely claiming to be Black at various points, until they confronted her about her background days ago.

Comparisons to Dolezal, a white woman who posed as Black for years, taught Africana college courses and held a leadership role with a local NAACP branch before being exposed in 2015, spread over the Internet on Wednesday. 

“I hid the truth or outright lied about my background to everyone in my life,” Gann, a teacher at West Philadelphia’s The Workshop School, said in her own Instagram video message on Monday. “I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.”

Neither of Gann’s visible social media apologies mentioned Jewish heritage. But the Philadelphia Inquirer, citing internal documents from the activist groups, reported that she had identified herself in college as a “Jewish woman with family in the occupied West Bank.” 

Gann had also told colleagues her grandfather was born in Palestine, when he was reportedly born in Baltimore, according to documents cited by the Inquirer. Fellow activists accused her of having darkened her skin using makeup and fake tanner and adopting a Black American accent after returning from a stint in the Peace Corps in Rwanda.

As with Dolezal, commenters accused Gann of posing as a member of a marginalized group of color to gain clout.

“When marginalization becomes a form of social currency some people will always do this,” one account under the name “regretmaxxing” wrote in Gann’s comments.

Gann had made the pro-Palestinian cause central to her identity over the years, including a teach-in at her school in 2024 to protest “scholasticide” in Gaza, the Inquirer reported. That year she also told a local media outlet that the right-wing group Accuracy in Media had displayed her name on a truck calling her “Philadelphia’s Leading Antisemite.” 

Accuracy in Media, which has targeted activists in other states using similar methods, confirmed to JTA that they had also done so to Gann. 

“Hannah Gann remains one of Philadelphia’s leading antisemites,” the group’s founder, Adam Guillette, said in a statement, linking to a video of his group’s truck displaying the message outside the school where Gann worked.

Delivering testimony to the Philadelphia Board of Education in December 2025, Gann, wearing a keffiyeh, urged them to “treat Islamophobia, anti-Black and anti-Palestinian racism just as seriously as you treat allegations of antisemitism.” 

“Why are Jewish staff members’ experiences immediately assumed to indicate systemic failures, while Black, brown and Muslim students’ testimonies are treated as isolated incidents?” she continued, shortly before a board member cut off her mic.

A fellow teacher of Gann’s said on Instagram that Gann had told her, following a trip to Israel in 2023, that she had both Jewish and Palestinian people in her family, later claiming that her grandfather had been an anti-Zionist Jew born in Mandatory Palestine who left over disagreements with the direction of Israel. 

“We will no longer work with Hannah, and she will no longer be welcome in any of our organizing spaces,” the pro-Palestinian groups said in their own statement.

A biography of Gann still visible on the West Philly Participatory Defense Hub, a different local organizing group, describes her as having “loved ones directly impacted by the criminal (in)justice system” and notes that she is a member of The First Unitarian Church.

In her apology, which she posted on Yom Kippur, Gann argued that her advocacy was genuine even though her persona was not. 

“The fact that I lied about who I was does not mean anyone else who speaks up for Palestine is lying and does not erase the urgency of listening to voices on the ground,” she said. She added that she would be “deleting anything posted by Zionists.”

--
The post A Jewish teacher in Philadelphia pretended to be Palestinian for years appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Kaploun has been pushing for the merger for months, and his efforts have divided Jewish leaders over the future of Holocaust diplomacy. Supporters of the move claimed that it would improve efficiency, while critics said it would flatten the attention given to Holocaust-specific issues, and criticized it as a power grab by Kaploun. 

Opposition to the plan escalated Wednesday when 19 members of Congress, in a letter shared exclusively with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, called for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to preserve the Holocaust envoy as “a distinct, permanent office led by a dedicated career State Department official.” 

The officials, who are all members of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, wrote that the two offices “are complementary, but they are not interchangeable.” Kaploun’s office is “responsible for confronting contemporary antisemitism around the world,” the letter reads, while the Holocaust envoy’s office “focuses on Holocaust-era restitution, historical justice, remembrance, and accountability.”

Signatories on the letter include moderate Democrats such as Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Josh Gottheimer, and progressives including Reps. Jamie Raskin and Jan Schakowsky. 

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, who co-led the letter with Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, said back in June that the potential move was “abominable” and a “vain attempt to consolidate power by Yehuda Kaploun.”

“If supporting Holocaust victims and their families was a priority to this Administration, they would seek further opportunities to support SEHI, not to eliminate it,” said Nadler, the House’s longest-serving Jewish member, using the acronym for the Holocaust envoy office. 

Wednesday’s letter called for Rubio to not only preserve the role, which is currently vacant, but also to “immediately appoint a new Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.” Rubio has not named a successor to Ellen Germain, whose term ended on July 31 after she took over in August 2021. 

Germain notably emphasized the need for European nations to sustain remembrance of the Holocaust and their roles in its perpetration; top Trump administration figures, including Vice President JD Vance, have said that the current intensity of Holocaust commemoration in Europe is counterproductive.

A group of Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and B’nai Brith International, had called on Rubio to fill the impending vacancy back in April. Doing so, the groups wrote, would “demonstrate the prioritization that the United States ascribes to preserving the uniqueness of the Holocaust through this special office,” and “ensure that its critical work continues.”

A separate host of Jewish groups, including the Combat Antisemitism Movement, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the World Jewish Congress and Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, had called for Rubio to go ahead with the merger in June to increase efficiency and avoid “duplicative efforts” by the two offices.

The Jewish Democrats’ letter this week refuted that argument.

“Combining them would not streamline efficiency or eliminate any meaningful duplication; it would risk diminishing the focus, experience, and institutional capacity necessary for each,” the letter reads.

--
The post Jewish Dems in Congress oppose plans to merge Holocaust and antisemitism envoys appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Each of them will be required to complete 100 hours of community service and pay a combined $52,000 in restitution to the university as part of a deal reached on Sept. 21 with California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office. The AG’s office confirmed that the restitution has been paid.

In addition this week, prosecutors in Seattle are preparing to settle charges in a similar case involving the University of Washington. According to the student newspaper, local prosecutors have reportedly entered agreements with all 33 defendants charged with first-degree criminal trespass stemming from a 2025 Gaza protest that also occupied a campus building. The initial charges were filed in March, but prosecutors agreed to drop them if the defendants complete community service and commit no new legal violations.

Two prominent Bay Area Jewish groups decried the outcome of the Stanford prosecution as a “miscarriage of justice,” saying in a joint statement that it “sends the troubling message that politically motivated destruction of property carries minimal legal consequences.”

The statement, released by the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area and Jewish Silicon Valley, also lamented that the court hearing at which the students agreed to the offer was held on Yom Kippur, precluding many Jews from attending. 

“That a hearing so closely connected to debates over rising antisemitism was made inaccessible to many in the Jewish community demonstrates a lack of sensitivity and cultural competency,” the joint statement reads.

Stanford Hillel’s director, Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, also decried the resolution.

“These students aren’t heroes. They committed serious acts of vandalism and intimidation against the University community,” Kirschner told Haaretz. “They are fortunate that the court gave them a second chance, and I hope that they use this time to reflect on what it means to be a constructive member of a community.”

The Stanford charges were originally brought by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, led by Jeff Rosen, who is Jewish. A judge declared a mistrial in February. In May, the defense successfully argued that Rosen and his office should be removed from the case over concerns that he had crossed a legal line when suggesting in campaign messaging that the protesters were antisemitic. California’s attorney general then assumed control of the case. 

The case was one of the highest profile prosecutions of students during the 2024 wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

In the early morning of June 5, 2024, protesters broke into Building 10, which houses the university president’s office, shattering a window to gain entry to the building. Once inside, the protesters barricaded entrances to the building using tools and furniture, covered security cameras and spattered fake blood around the building. 

Thirteen people were arrested following the incident, and 12 were charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. Seven of them accepted plea deals or diversion programs, leaving the last five to face trial.

Bonta’s office defended the outcome of the case, saying in a statement that the defendants were appropriately held accountable for their actions. 

“We believe this outcome serves the best interests of the community and all parties involved,” the statement said.

Following the outcome of the UW resolution, university spokesperson Victor Balta said in a statement to media, “We appreciate the work and attention from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on this matter.”

This story was first reported by J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission.

--
The post Stanford Gaza protesters avoid felony charges in community service deal appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The condemnation that followed the Aug. 29 event was aimed in a number of directions: at Paul Miller, the fighter who performed the Hitler salute after his win; at the attendees who returned the salute and displayed the Nazi flag; and at the Kia Center, the city-owned arena best known as the home of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, which hosted the fight night. 

Politicians were shocked by the display and wrote statements condemning the event — but the Nazi symbols were nothing new for Duel, the online cryptocurrency casino behind the promotion.

Founded last year and billing itself as “the first casino that gives a f–k,” Duel has used Nazi symbols and racist language in its gambling programming. And its owner, Ossi Ketola, a Finnish high-stakes poker player, is himself a self-described First Amendment absolutist with his own history of racially charged comments. He celebrated his free speech devotion just one week after the Orlando event, in a social media post featuring a photo of himself with Donald Trump Jr.

One of Duel’s blackjack dealers, Nelli Levonyan, has worn a Nazi outfit with a swastika armband on multiple occasions while dealing cards on the blackjack stream. In a skit from the blackjack table that circulated online, a man, dressed up as an Orthodox Jew and holding an Israeli flag, attacked Levonyan by throwing coins at her. Levonyan’s character then sprayed something at the Jewish man — “Gassing!” he yelled — and said, “Go away from me, you dirty kike.” 

In another blackjack stream, the dealer imitated one of the two San Diego mosque shooters, who killed five people in May. Levonyan has sung the lyrics to “Heil Hitler,” the Ye (formerly Kanye West) song, during a stream. She has also appeared alongside Miller while hosting the card game.

Earlier this month, Ketola joined a neo-fascist rally in Helsinki staged by the far-right party Sinimusta Liike, or the Blue-and-Black Movement. Ketola, who was dressed in a Spongebob costume, livestreamed the rally and posted the footage with the title “Saving white Finland.” Speaking about immigrants, he said that people “need to be educated about how the genes work, and how these people realistically cannot be integrated here.” 

He then attended an anti-fascist rally held elsewhere in Helsinki simultaneously, prompting left-wing demonstrators to chase him and his video crew back to their car. Ketola could be heard off-camera yelling “Sieg heil” as they drove away.

“What f–king violent pussies. Imagine what f–ing leftists,” Ketola said after taking off the Spongebob costume. “You see? These right-wing people, white people, the most friendly people. I just walked there, we didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything — we go to these leftists and they try to f–ing attack us. F–ing dumb stupid f–ing n–ers.”

The following night, Ketola attended the dinner with Trump and about a dozen others in Tallinn, Estonia, hosted by Studioworks, a company that develops software for online casino sites. Ketola posted a photo of himself and the U.S. president’s son on Instagram, and wrote that he discussed “Duel, the state of the world and current political climate with him and his staff.”

“The political situations in our respective countries have become increasingly similar, with a rising tide of violence and radical leftism in both America and Finland,” Ketola wrote. “As a firm 1st amendment absolutist and an individual with many values that coincide with Republicans and Donald Trump himself, this was a great chance to align on many things important to both.”

Neither the Trump Organization, Miller, Ketola nor Levonyan responded to requests for comment.

Duel was founded last summer and has featured some prominent personalities on its streams, including boxing great Mike Tyson — who told Levonyan, “You dumb b–h, you like Hitler” — and the “looksmaxxing” influencer Braden Peters, who is known as Clavicular. 

The fight night that it organized and promoted in Orlando was its first foray into combat sports, and made for the company’s biggest splash yet. It also caught the attention of at least one watchdog and a local lawmaker.

“Right after the event there was a lot of criticism put on the venue, which didn’t have much responsibility in this, and not enough eyes on the people who actually made it happen,” Mark Pitcavage, senior fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. (The city had said that, as an operator of public venues, it “cannot deny access because we disagree with the political ideology, opinion or perspective, regardless of the message.”)

State Rep. Anna Eskamani called for the Florida Athletic Commission to revoke Duel Arena’s license. The commission’s members were appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not commented on the event. The governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from JTA. 

DeSantis’ immediate predecessor and fellow Republican, U.S. Senator Rick Scott, posted that the event was “utterly disturbing” and that “Antisemitism has NO PLACE in Florida.”

Pitcavage said that combat sports are “a draw for far-right extremists and white supremacists” who often view themselves as “white warriors.” He noted, however, that they make up a small portion of the participants and fans. 

“It’s not at all surprising that some of them will get into various types of what they would consider manly, or warrior-like athletics,” he said.

Duel’s involvement in the Orlando event put the intersection of online gambling sites and far-right ideologies on his radar. “It’s something we’re starting to look into,” Pitcavage said. He noted that Duel is registered and licensed offshore on the autonomous island of Anjouan, making it more difficult to investigate. 

Eskamani, who is running for mayor of Orlando, told JTA that Duel should not be allowed to operate in Florida, citing reasons that she says would beat the city’s First Amendment defense.

“These offshore cryptocurrency — I mean, there are so many red flags in how this entity is operating that from a purely financial security position for a public venue, I would not want to accept a reservation,” Eskamani said.

Duel set and promoted the matchups on the fight card, which included the kickboxing match between Miller, who goes by the moniker “Gypsy Crusader,” and his fellow influencer Ben “King” Azoulay. 

Miller, who has made numerous appearances on Duel’s casino games streams, has been known to use racial slurs and denigrate minority groups in his online content. He was convicted in 2021 of felony weapons charges, and sentenced to 41 months in federal prison. He had posted about initiating a race-based civil war.

During a livestreamed conversation with Adin Ross, a Jewish streamer who has interviewed or maintained friendly relationships with controversial figures including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, Miller said there are no exceptions in his feelings toward Jews.

“I respect you for having an opinion that is different from the Jews,” Miller told Ross. “But that doesn’t mean that I would not laugh if I see you in a gas chamber.”

Clips from the Orlando event showed Miller performing the Nazi salute twice after his victory — something he has done after winning previous fights — prompting a number of attendees to do the same. One fan brought a Nazi Germany flag and waved it in his seat. 

“He’s not a tough guy, he’s not an alpha male. He’s a short little f–ing Jew prick,” Miller declared about his opponent Azoulay in his post-fight interview, eliciting some cheers from the crowd. 

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican firebrand whose district includes Palm Coast and Daytona Beach, posted a video of the Nazi flag being unfurled and wrote, “This is not a joke and it is not edgy. The guy who did this is old enough to know exactly what that symbol means and to know that it’s not funny. We will make an example out of him.”

Asked what he meant by making an example of the attendee, Fine told JTA, “We put the video out so he would be recognized and be held publicly accountable. Most folks are unwilling to associate with Nazis.”

Cheering Miller on ringside was Jake Shields, a former mixed martial artist-turned far-right influencer who has espoused conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel. Shields wore a shirt reading “FCK ISRL.” Myron Gaines, a prominent streamer who has spread similar conspiracy theories and performed Nazi salutes, was in the stands, and told Miller before the fight, “You fight for the goyim,” according to clips shared on social media.

Pitcavage said he has been tracking a trend of the far-right getting involved in combat sports since the late 1990s, as mixed martial arts and UFC became a more mainstream phenomenon and amateur gyms became widespread and increasingly accessible. 

The ADL has flagged that in recent years “active clubs,” or “localized white supremacist crews” that gather for fight training, have become more common. The ADL writes that these groups “see themselves as fighters training for an ongoing war against a system that they claim is deliberately plotting against the white race.”

As news outlets covered backlash to the Orlando fight night, Duel issued its own statement saying it was horrified “to learn that a group of viewers were displaying symbols of hate at our event.” The company criticized the city’s “shocking remarks that the ‘First Amendment’ applies and that ‘free speech’ is permitted at their arena,” and pledged to “work with local activist groups to push back on this and ensure that this kind of hate does not fester ever again.”

The statement appeared to be an example of Duel trolling with deadpan, buttoned-up language. Before the fight, Ketola had similarly released a promotional video that appeared to be condemning Miller’s views. “Paul Miller is a Nazi. Being a Nazi is bad,” Ketola narrated, over footage of him shaking his head. “We cannot support this. The only reason we are allowing him to fight is to ensure the good guys get to add another victory to their record.”

Then, after Miller’s win, Duel’s Instagram account left a comment that told a different story.

“The good guys won,” Duel wrote.

--
The post Nazi imagery is nothing new for crypto casino behind kickboxing event that sparked outrage in Florida appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

It was the tour’s first stop since Macklemore was dropped following pro-Palestinian remarks and the display of images from the Gaza war during his opening set.

“I’ve tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind because I want my music and shows to be about unity not division, about humanity not politics,” he said in a speech before the music began.

“But this is a humanitarian issue and I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel at a … music festival on Oct. 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” he added.

“I am already speaking to people across the spectrum to work out how to make a contribution that helps victims of these terrible times, and listening and learning because I do not know enough,” he continued.

His views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took center stage after the rapper Macklemore declared “Free Palestine!” in front of graphic Gaza war imagery during his opening performance for Sheeran in East Rutherford, New Jersey, earlier this month. 

Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where another stop was scheduled, said Macklemore would not be allowed to perform there, and other stadiums threatened to cancel Sheeran’s shows unless Macklemore was removed from the bill.

After Macklemore was dropped, Sheeran’s other support acts and touring band withdrew one by one in solidarity.

Sheeran didn’t mention Kraft or any other venue owners by name in his remarks. But he said, “I am deeply worried about the idea of venues pre-approving content of performers. This happens in so many places I perform around the world, but it should never happen in the free world.”

Kraft’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Israeli-American Council, which organized a boycott against Macklemore following the New Jersey was also not immediately available to comment on Sheeran’s remarks.

Sheeran spoke more personally at the end of the show, saying that the last week was one of the worst of his life. “I didn’t know if this tour would be carrying on. I really didn’t know if I’d even be getting on stage again, or if I wanted to be an artist at all,” he said to the concert attendees.

“Everyone is telling me to cancel and I’m feeling all my friends and family and people I know abandon me and I look at the end of the week. And I see 50,000 people who haven’t abandoned me,” he said as at least some portion of the crowd roared their approval.

“This wasn’t the easy option tonight,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if I’d be safe or you’d be safe or if things would be thrown at me or if people would boo. But I’ve felt so much love from you guys. I’m so grateful.”

--
The post Ed Sheeran expresses sympathy for both Jews and Palestinians at first tour stop since Macklemore was dropped appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The suspect, Jonathan Kramer, said in an online forum using the pseudonym “Hamza Al Rashid” that “i wish to inject ricin or cyanide into places such as grocery stores inside water/food with a syringe, or going to food events, preferably synagogues and putting the chemicals in their food and drink…,” according to a sworn FBI affidavit.

The prospective poisoning was part of a broader plot of mass violence that included “repeated attempts to encourage and coordinate violence through encrypted platforms, such as advising others on attack methods, discussing chemical poisons, arson, vehicle attacks, drone delivery explosives and firearm based assaults,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Evanchec said at a press conference last week.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said in a security update on Friday that no synagogue had been specified by the FBI. “We are in close contact with our law enforcement partners and federal prosecutors, and if we learn of anything concerning, we will share that immediately,” the organization noted.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg announced last Tuesday that Kramer was “preparing for a mass shooting that could have taken many lives, having already secured a rifle and approximately 190 rounds of ammunition for what he called his ‘mission.’”

Efforts to reach Kramer’s public defender Jake Morrison were unsuccessful.

FBI agents arrested Kramer in a hotel parking lot in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said. They seized a semiautomatic rifle, five rifle magazines, a rifle bipod and scope, a total of 190 rounds of rifle ammunition and about 30 knives following a search of him, his house and his hotel room.

Kramer was charged with receiving a firearm and ammunition believing they would be used to commit terrorism. He appeared in court last Wednesday to waive a preliminary hearing, according to CBS News. A court date has not been set for Kramer’s next proceedings, the network reported.

Kramer had been on the FBI’s radar since 2023, when he was charged by Pennsylvania state authorities “for his role in a plot to commit a mass casualty incident” and sent to a juvenile detention facility, FBI special agent Gregory Battaglia said in a sworn affidavit. 

Nearly eight years ago, 11 worshippers were killed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

--
The post Attacks on synagogues were part of massive ISIS-inspired plot by Pittsburgh-area man, FBI says appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Dan Patrick’s statement, provided exclusively to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday, comes after a month of confusion following a press conference in which he and a conservative Christian activist threatened schools with potential loss of state funding if they did not comply with his directive to purge their libraries. 

“I believe Texas students must learn about the Holocaust, and that includes reading books such as ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and other books about the Holocaust,” Patrick told JTA, singling out two books on the removal list he had promoted – one of which, “Night,” that he previously explicitly called for removal from middle schools. 

Patrick added that his initiative was “focused on age-inappropriate, sexually explicit books in public school libraries across Texas.” At his earlier press conference, he had directed viewers to an online list compiled by an activist group that features several books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.

Patrick’s threats have teeth. In Texas, lieutenant governors are more powerful than in many other states, playing central roles in shaping the budget and determining the legislative agenda.

Patrick also appeared to walk back some of the harsher proclamations from his Aug. 19 press conference, at which the Republican had stated, “We’re coming for the books.” 

“As the law states, local communities have the right to make their own decisions about their public school libraries,” he told JTA Friday.

The lieutenant governor, who is up for reelection this fall, appeared at the conference with Bonnie Wallace, the head of the activist group Recover America, and told viewers to “go to RecoverAmerica.com.” That group has circulated a list of more than 2,100 “Harmful Books in Libraries.” Its list, which it describes as “books with harmful, sexually explicit, and vulgar content,” includes more than a dozen titles of particular import to Jewish readers. 

Recover America’s flagged books include both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a comic-book adaptation of Frank’s diary and Bernard Malamud’s novel of a blood libel “The Fixer” — all books that have been removed from school districts in Texas and other states in the past amid broader conservative-led library culture wars. In some cases those books were restored to the districts following public outcry, but spurred deeper dialogue about the state of Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness in public schools.

Patrick’s latest push would go much further than a handful of districts, affecting the more than 5.5 million students in public schools across the state.

One book of particular contention on Recover America’s list was “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s bestselling memoir of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which has been taught in schools for decades. After a Houston Chronicle story noted the book’s inclusion on the Recover America “harmful” list, Patrick initially doubled down on “Night,” saying that it was not appropriate for middle schools owing to its “violence.” 

“If ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, were made into a movie, it would likely be rated R,” Patrick wrote on the social network X on Aug. 26. “‘Night,’ which includes depictions of graphic violence and the machine-gunning of babies, should not be available to sixth graders in middle-school libraries. High school is more age-appropriate.”

His tweet appeared to contradict the state’s own K-12 required reading list, passed this summer, which mandates that “Night” be taught in the eighth grade beginning in 2030. 

Now, in response to questions from JTA, the lieutenant governor said he would defer to the Texas State Board of Education on the appropriate grade to teach “Night.” 

“The State Board of Education decides the appropriate grade level for books and will determine whether ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, is at the appropriate grade level,” Patrick told JTA in his statement. 

He continued to insist that books in schools should be held to “FCC standards,” referring to the Federal Communications Commission, an agency that governs broadcasting content and does not regulate publishing.

The head of the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, a governor-appointed panel which advised the state on the inclusion of “Night” and other Holocaust texts on its required reading list, did not return a JTA request for comment. 

In a statement, the Texas Educational Authority, which drafted the required-reading list, told JTA, “When Texas students learn about the Holocaust, they will be exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. That is why the SBOE placed the book in 8th Grade to ensure age appropriateness for students.”

At the Emmys this week, when “The Librarians,” a documentary about librarians facing book removal threats, won an award, retired Texas librarian Carolyn Foote joined the producers on the stage and held up a copy of “Night” in protest.

“I felt like it was very symbolic to bring ‘Night,’” Foote, a subject of the film and a co-founder of the librarian activist group FReadom Fighters, told JTA. “Having read it, I just know the importance of not forgetting our past. And that’s part of Elie Wiesel’s whole legacy, is remembrance, and so it just felt very important for me to carry that book, coming from Texas.” Another librarian onstage for the win held up “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”

Elisha Wiesel, Elie’s son and chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, told JTA that “Texas deserves credit for recognizing that Holocaust education belongs in the eighth-grade curriculum.” Yet, the younger Wiesel suggested, Patrick’s concerns about the book’s violence were misplaced.

“‘Night’ contains violence because the Holocaust was violent; its purpose is not to shock young people, but to help them understand where hatred and indifference can lead,” he wrote in an email. “With context and guidance, students should not be shielded from this history. They should be equipped to confront it.”

Despite having directed viewers to Recover America’s book list during his press conference, Patrick’s new statement to JTA said, “I do not have a book list.” He pointed instead to a law passed in the state legislature in 2025 regulating school books that he said districts were required to follow. 

Yet some districts in the state have removed every book on Recover America’s list from their own libraries out of fear of losing funding, Foote told JTA. While the list nominally contains a ratings system, many of the books do not have a rating.

Besides “Night,” “Maus,” “Anne Frank’s Diary” and “The Fixer,” other books about Judaism and the Holocaust on Recover America’s list of “Harmful Books” include:

• “Annexed,” a young-adult novel about Peter van Pels, who hid in the Amsterdam annex with Anne Frank
• “The Berlin Boxing Club,” a young-adult historical novel based on German boxer Max Schmeling, who helped young Jews during Hitler’s rise to power
• “Black, White and Jewish,” a memoir by Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race Jewish daughter of author Alice Walker
• “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” a nonfiction book analyzing the “caste systems” of Nazi Germany. “Caste” had been included on an earlier, Wallace-spearheaded list of books for removal from a Texas public library in a case that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear in 2025, allowing the removals to proceed.
• “Kasher in the Rye,” a memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher 
• “Pride: the story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag,” a children’s picture-book biography of the pioneering Jewish LGBTQ legislator
• “Sophie’s Choice,” the bestselling Holocaust novel for adults
• “The Violin Maker’s Daughter,” a historical novel about a Jewish family of musicians during the Holocaust
• “White Bird,” a young-reader graphic novel about a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France

In response to JTA sharing a list of the above books, Patrick’s statement mentioned only “Night” and Anne Frank by name. The Recover America list is largely made up of romance and fantasy novels, many with an LGBTQ element, while also including classics such as “The Glass Menagerie” and “Cat’s Cradle” and some picture books for children.

Recover America did not immediately return a JTA request for comment Friday on Patrick’s new statement. Wallace, the group’s leader who has also appeared on Patrick’s podcast, previously told the Houston Chronicle that she had “thought long and hard” about including “Night” on her list. 

She ultimately did so, she said, because “an eighth-grade student is 13 years old. Do they need to read about soldiers massacring, throwing up babies, and killing them with machine guns?”

She added, “It’s not to say this doesn’t happen in life. And the Holocaust was maybe the worst tragedy in the history of the world.”

For Cameron Samuels, a Jewish alum of Texas public schools and founder of the activist group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, such efforts do not help Jewish students.

“Non-Jewish people are deciding for us what’s best, and making this public policy,” Samuels said. “We can’t readily access these books and stories. And that makes students feel alone. It also means that our classroom peers are not learning authentic Jewish narratives.”

--
The post After outcry, Texas lieutenant governor says schools should teach Holocaust books ‘Night,’ ‘Anne Frank’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

That was May 2014, when Macklemore wore an onstage costume featuring a large hooked prosthetic nose, black wig and bushy beard, prompting many commentators to say that he was indulging a Jewish stereotype.

Since then, the Gaza war has driven a deep chasm between Macklemore and Jewish pro-Israel advocates. Macklemore says that he is obligated to pro-Palestinian activism, while his critics say he that he crosses lines into antisemitism.

Macklemore is not apologizing for the pro-Palestinian comments that got him cancelled from opening for Ed Sheeran at stadiums, but doubling down, and has garnered support in the entertainment community. The ADL, a pro-Israel Jewish advocacy group, has called his actions “unacceptable.” 

Robert Kraft, the pro-Israel billionaire who this week blocked Macklemore from playing at Gillette, the Boston area stadium he owns, appeared to reference the 2014 controversy in a statement about his decision. He said the rapper had “a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.” 

In 2014, Macklemore apologized for the costume that drew accusations of “Jewface,” saying that he intended to “surprise the people at the show with a random costume” and acknowledged that it could be “ascribed to a Jewish caricature.” 

Abe Foxman, the late director of the ADL whose absolution once was the ticket for celebrities wanting out of pariah status, forgave the rapper. “We take him at his word that he did not have any ill intent and unreservedly accept his apology,” Foxman said at the time. 

“Out of a negative can come a positive,” Macklemore said in his own 2014 statement. “Through this situation I’ve got hip to some incredible groups like the ADL and I encourage people to check the great work they, and others like them, do.” 

The war launched by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s destruction in Gaza, spurred Macklemore to pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Almost exactly 10 years after the costume incident, in May 2024, Macklemore released his song “Hind’s Hall.” The song was a tribute to pro-Palestinian protesters who took over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall and renamed it for Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl who was killed in the Gaza war and whose death is being investigated by the Israeli military, which has admitted to killing several other passengers in the car in which Rajab was traveling. The protesters also draped an “Intifada” banner from the second-floor window.

Released at the height of the pro-Palestinian college campus movement, the track praised student protesters and denounced former President Joe Biden’s military support for Israel along with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby. 

The lyrics also dismissed accusations of antisemitism against Israel critics, saying that “lies” claimed “it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist” and lauding the “Jewish brothers and sisters” who stood in solidarity with Palestinians.

The Jewish reggae singer Matisyahu told TMZ at the time that he believed the song invoked stereotypes about Jewish people controlling the world. 

Since then, Macklemore has repeatedly come under fire from high-profile Jewish and pro-Israel figures for accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid. 

The criticism followed him abroad. In June 2024, he said to an audience in Germany’s western city of Mönchengladbach that “there will never be reparations” for the Holocaust, but “the only way that we can atone for our past is by today standing up against apartheid, against occupation, against genocide, for a free Palestine.”

The Central Council of Jews in Germany, the country’s umbrella Jewish organization, condemned Macklemore’s invitation the following year to Germany’s Deichbrand Festival, saying it signaled that “antisemitism is welcome on the big stage” and the festival was “no longer a safe place for Jews.” 

In February 2025, Macklemore released a follow-up to “Hind’s Hall” called “F—ed up.” The song celebrated protests against President Donald Trump, his then-adviser Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The lyrics also drew a connection between U.S. military aid to Israel and income inequality at home, saying, “Killin’ Palestinian kids and we gettin’ hit with the cost / “Why the f— you think you can’t afford the rent in your building?”

In the music video, one frame juxtaposed a photo of a Palestinian child in the West Bank city of Jenin with an infamous Holocaust image of a child raising his hands in the Warsaw Ghetto. 

David Draiman, the frontman of the band Disturbed and a vocal supporter of Israel, said on X after the release of “F—ed up” that his fellow Jews were “noticeably absent during this explosion of antisemitism.”

But after Macklemore repeated his views this month to some of the largest crowds of his career, the backlash was fiercer. Opening for Sheeran at New Jersey’s MetLife stadium, Macklemore performed “Hind’s Hall” and declared the phrase “Free Palestine” while displaying images of Gaza.

Once again, he also sought to distinguish his criticism of Israel from antisemitism. “To all of my Jewish brothers and sisters: Criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you,” Macklemore said on stage.

Macklemore announced online that Kraft ultimately barred him from performing at Gillette and rallied other stadium owners to boycott, telling Sheeran that he could not play in their venues if Macklemore remained on the tour. 

Kraft acknowledged the decision, saying in a statement that Mackemore had advanced “divisiveness and hate” by “only sharing selective information and ignoring the actions of Hamas.” 

“Much of my time and attention for the last decade has been focused on the fight against antisemitism and hate of all kinds, and I feel a responsibility to stand up when I believe that line has been crossed,” said Kraft.

Jewish figures including the singer Pink and Barstool Sports mogul Dave Portnoy criticized Macklemore or defended Kraft’s decision. The move was also celebrated by the Israeli-American Council, which petitioned Sheeran to drop Macklemore. 

But Macklemore, this time around, is hardly a pariah. Sheeran’s remaining opening acts quit in support of him. He was backed outside of the music world by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two of the nation’s foremost progressives. 

The ADL, now far from pardoning Macklemore, accused him of “performative, biased and hateful anti-Israel ‘activism.’”

“This isn’t new for Macklemore,” the group said on X. “He has a record of demonizing Israel and Israelis, falsely accusing Israel of genocide and engaging in antisemitic rhetoric and behavior.” 

Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect that the IDF has not taken responsibility for the killing of Hind Rajab but is investigating the circumstances of her death.

--
The post What you need to know about Macklemore and accusations of antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Macklemore challenged the Jewish pro-Israel billionaire to make a donation in support of the Palestinians days after pressuring singer Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from his tour over the latter’s pro-Palestinian comments. Kraft responded by announcing that he would donate $2 million to “fight this humanitarian crisis” in the Middle East.

“I have dedicated much of my life to building bridges between all people,” Kraft wrote in a statement posted by Gillette Stadium, which he owns and where Sheeran and Macklemore had been scheduled to play. “I believe deeply that all lives are worth protecting.”

Kraft’s statement Wednesday came in response to challenges from both artists: a public call from Macklemore to match his own $1 million donation to a group of six pro-Palestinian organizations; and what Kraft described as private conversations with Sheeran to commit twice that amount to unspecified groups. Kraft said his own donation was meant to match Sheeran’s. 

Kraft’s gift comes as the controversy has prompted questions about how pro-Israel Jews in positions of power choose to wield their influence to combat what they see as antisemitism. His pledge carries additional, politically fraught implications, as Jewish groups have been divided on whether, or how, to donate directly to Gaza relief efforts.

In his public comments, Kraft has insisted that he does not object to pro-Palestinian advocacy or aid as long as it does not cross the line into advocating for Hamas.

But where will Kraft donate? The New England Patriots owner didn’t specify in his public statement, and a representative didn’t immediately respond to questions from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

In Macklemore’s own post issuing the donation challenge, he said the $1 million he was giving constituted his entire net earnings from Sheeran’s tour. He named six beneficiaries: the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, HEAL Palestine, Medical Aid for Palestinians, American Near East Refugee Aid, Gaza Soup Kitchen and UNRWA USA, a nonprofit supporting the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees. 

UNRWA itself has proven particularly contentious among the Jewish community. After an investigation revealed that agency members had participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel,  the Trump administration led a successful effort to slash the agency’s funding.

In his posts, Kraft offered clues to where he has given in the past. 

“I’d like the people who are speaking in support of the Palestinian people to know that for decades, I have supported efforts that create opportunity for Palestinians and have brought young Palestinians and Israelis together to build businesses, create jobs, and forge relationships,” he wrote on Wednesday. In an earlier statement, Kraft said he has “created athletic and entrepreneurial opportunities for Palestinians who I admire and respect.”

One well-known organization that fits Kraft’s description of bringing Palestinians and Israelis together, Seeds of Peace, has a documented relationship with the businessman. In 1994, the year after the peacebuilding initiative launched, Kraft hosted more than 100 teenagers from Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco at a Patriots game. 

After this story’s initial publication, a Seeds of Peace representative told JTA that Kraft’s involvement with the group ended after 1994 and that they had not received any recent communications from him.

Kraft has also invested heavily in a push to bring American football to Israel via the Kraft Family Israel Football League. In that context, Palestinians have played for league teams — including for the Judean Rebels, a team based in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Steven Koltai, a Jewish onetime entrepreneurship liaison for former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and author of “Peace Through Entrepreneurship,” said he welcomed Kraft’s commitment.

“I would love to see, as a Jew who believes in the two-state solution and particularly in humanitarian relief to the millions of Gazans who are completely blameless, if we could show that side of who we are,” Koltai told JTA. “I think that he would be doing an incredible mitzvah for the whole Jewish world, especially the American Jewish community, if he could leverage his money towards something like this.”

Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, told JTA that Kraft “deserves kudos for leaning in with his philanthropy.” Prior to the pledge, Burton had praised Kraft’s actions against Macklemore, saying in a statement that Kraft “drew a clear moral line in the sand about the demonization and offensive conduct that he will not allow in ‘his home’.”

“One can work to end Palestinian suffering without being antisemitic,” Burton wrote to JTA in a text Thursday.

Kraft has said he pressured Sheeran to drop Macklemore because he thought the latter’s conduct at a recent show, in which the rapper had accused Israel of genocide and broadcast footage from Columbia University’s encampments, crossed the line into “hate speech.” According to The Wall Street Journal, other NFL team owners had also voiced objections to Macklemore performing in their stadiums after witnessing one of his sets. 

The Journal also reported that Kraft, in his conversation with Sheeran, recalled that Macklemore had performed in a costume with antisemitic signifiers in 2014. Sheeran, whose tours have grossed nearly $2 billion since 2008, and Kraft are friendly: The singer performed at Kraft’s 2022 wedding. 

Backlash has been swift, with Sheeran distancing himself from the decision to drop Macklemore, and the singer’s other opening acts and supporting band leaving the tour in protest. Some of them named Kraft specifically in public comments. Figures including children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, have also defended Macklemore, with Ocasio-Cortez additionally criticizing Kraft. 

“When you see what Robert Kraft did to line up all of the stadiums to censor speech in that one specific way, it’s become clear that this is not just about one music artist or two music artists, but this is about how just a handful of stadium owners and the elite can prevent an entire massive issue, in this case, the genocide in Gaza,” the congresswoman told TMZ.

Others, including singer Pink and Barstool Sports mogul Dave Portnoy, have criticized Macklemore or defended Kraft’s decision. 

Much of Kraft’s philanthropy has gone to fighting antisemitism and to Jewish organizations. He recently gave $10 million to Brandeis University to endow a new center for Jewish life at the school.

Koltai, who himself has not worked with Kraft, said it’s possible for Jewish donors to distribute money to Gaza through “vetted, kosher organizations” that are “clearly not Hamas.” He suggested that Kraft look beyond his past donations to peacebuilding and sports efforts in order to address the current need. 

“Sewage, water, housing, medical care and child care are all much more important than a summer camp or a football team,” he said.

This story has been updated with comment from Seeds of Peace.

--
The post Robert Kraft pledged $2M to aid Palestinians amid Macklemore row. Where will he donate it? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Also on Monday, the daughters of Holocaust survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt sued the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum to recover watercolors of Roma victims she was forced to paint for Josef Mengele, the physician who tormented and experimented on inmates at Auschwitz. The artist died in 2009.

The two lawsuits were filed at the end of the filing window under a 2024 California law that permits claimants in previously dismissed lawsuits to refile for the retrieval of looted artworks. The law permits claimants to recover personal property stolen as the result of “political persecution” when earlier lawsuits were dismissed on procedural grounds.

The federation is suing the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the retrieval of a life-sized oil diptych of Adam and Eve by the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. In 1940, the Nazis seized the pair of paintings from their Jewish owner, the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The art wound up in the hands of Göring, the Nazi air force commander and convicted war criminal, along with about 800 other pieces from Goudstikker’s collection. The paintings eventually made their way to the Norton Simon in 1971.

In a press release, the Jewish federation said it would use the majority of the proceeds from the sale of the art to care for Los Angeles-based Holocaust survivors living in poverty. (A 2018 study from the Jewish Federations of North America found that one-third of Holocaust survivors in the United States are living below the poverty line.) 

“By pursuing the recovery of the Cranachs, we are seeking to reverse a great injustice perpetrated by the Nazi theft of a Jewish family’s property, and securing the resources that will enable us to provide for the many needs of thousands of impoverished Holocaust survivors in the greater Los Angeles area so they can live in dignity for the remainder of their lives,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Los Angeles federation, said in a statement. 

Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law, Marei von Saher, first sued the Norton Simon Museum in 2007, claiming the paintings belonged to her family. A 2018 ruling determined on procedural grounds that they belong to the museum.

In addition to the 2024 California law, Congress passed a law earlier this year that eliminated “state doctrine,” the principle that acts committed by foreign countries within their territory are immune from lawsuits, strengthening the cases for the heirs of Goudstikker and Babbitt. 

Also in 2024, 21 countries agreed to updated guidelines for restituting Nazi-looted art, which specifies that works sold to the Nazis under duress are also considered looted or stolen property.

“I am grateful to the Jewish Federation Los Angeles and its Chairman Daniel Gryczman for taking up this cause and pursuing the recovery of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder,” von Saher said in a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This effort represents a meaningful step toward justice for Holocaust survivors and victims of Nazi era atrocities.”

Jewish federations rarely file lawsuits as the plaintiffs in a Nazi-looted art restitution case. The San Diego Jewish Federation was a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit in 2015.

JTA has reached out to the attorneys for the Jewish federation for comment.

The Pasadena museum held onto the Cranachs even as other works that had been looted from Goudstikker’s collection were restituted by the Dutch government in the decades since their seizure. 

“After decades of litigation, court after court including the United States Supreme Court ha confirmed that the Norton Simon Art Foundation has proper title to Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder,” a spokesperson for the Norton Simon Museum told JTA in a statement. “We will continue to make these important artworks accessible to the public, as we have since 1971.”

The spokesperson said the museum is reviewing the complaint, and referred to a 2016 court decision that placed the artworks in their possession.

Goudstikker first acquired the paintings at a 1931 Berlin auction hosted by the Soviet authorities, which also included many works previously owned by the Russian Stroganoff family. In 1940, after Jacques Goudstikker’s death, his collection was sold to the Nazis under duress — but no cash ever came to his family.

In the Norton Simon Museum’s online catalogue, provenance cards for the works say they were “[s]aid to have been in the Stroganoff Collection” and describe the transfer from Goudstikker to Göring as “appropriated 1940.”

The quest to restitute Goudstikker’s artwork began in 1946, when his wife Désiree, an opera singer, filed a claim in the Netherlands that was initially rebuffed. Though she was able to retrieve one painting just a few years later, all of the pieces that had been seized by Göring were kept in the Dutch national collections. In later years, more than 200 artworks were returned to von Saher’s possession.

But in 1961, George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, a descendant of the aristocratic family whose works were sold en masse along with the Cranachs, claimed the diptych from the Dutch government. He later sold the works to the Norton Simon Museum for $800,000.

In the case of the Gottliebova drawings, a spokesperson from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum told JTA that the memorial was their appropriate home. “The drawings of Roma victims made in the camp must remain in the Memorial as part of the documentation of the crimes of Mengele,” the spokesperson for the state-run museum said. 

“We fully understand the emotional approach of Dina Gottliebova’s family,” said the spokesperson, but “we express the deep conviction that the watercolors should remain at the Memorial.”

“The portraits of Roma victims are the few remaining fragments of the documentation made by Mengele as part of his criminal experiments,” the spokesperson continued. “Therefore, they should be treated as unique documents related to the history of Auschwitz.”

Earlier this month, an Argentine court ordered the restitution to van Saher of a looted painting,  after the painting was spotted on a real estate website advertising the sale of a home of the daughter of a former Nazi official. The painting came from Goudstikker’s collection.

Earlier this year, a judge ruled that a painting by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, once valued at more than $25 million, must be returned to the descendants of its original owner, who was forced to sell the painting to the Nazis under duress.

--
The post LA Federation sues museum for custody of looted paintings once hoarded by Hermann Göring appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Kraft, the Jewish and pro-Israel billionaire who owns the Boston-area stadium where one of the tour stops had been scheduled, said on Monday that he had told Sheeran’s team that Macklemore wouldn’t be allowed to perform there. 

Macklemore was subsequently dropped from the tour following pushback from unnamed venues that “will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup,” Rolling Stone reported on Monday.

At a Macklemore performance at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., earlier this month, the rapper declared “Free Palestine” before performing his 2024 song, “Hind’s Hall,” referring to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall. Pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the building and unofficially renamed it for Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed during the war in Gaza. Israel is investigating her killing.

Sheeran said Tuesday that he wasn’t behind the tour promoter’s decision to drop Macklemore.

“I am not complicit,” Sheeran wrote in a statement on Instagram Tuesday, saying that Macklemore leaving the tour “was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine.” It was Sheeran’s first public statement on the controversy.

Hours after Sheeran’s comments, acts began pulling out of the tour.

His backing band, Beoga, said in an Instagram post that it was leaving the tour “following the silencing of Macklemore by zionist lobbies.”

“We believe in dialogue as a means of progressing the plight of the Palestinian people,” they added. Beoga’s management did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.

Kraft’s decision to bar Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. got the backing of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

“Mr. Kraft drew a clear moral line in the sand about the demonization and offensive conduct that he will not allow in ‘his home’,” Jeremy Burton, the JCRC CEO, said, referring to the stadium. “He also showed leadership and complexity … by rejecting those who would diminish the suffering of innocent Palestine people.” 

“This decision is not about diminishing the suffering of innocent Palestinians or denying anyone the right to advocate on their behalf,” Kraft had said in his statement. “Their pain and loss are real.”

Other acts scheduled to support Sheeran on the Loop tour, including Aaron Rowe, Finneas and Lukas Graham, also withdrew Tuesday. Rowe and Lukas Graham were supposed to replace Macklemore on the remaining U.S. dates, AP reported.

It’s not yet clear what the fate of the tour is, given the withdrawal of his backing band. At least one Israeli musician joked that he was ready to put together a replacement band for “unlimited beer.”

Sheeran’s own note added, “I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” The British singer-songwriter wrote that he had been “involved in direct talks” between Kraft and various promoters “to try and find a mutual resolution for all.”

Sheeran didn’t mention Jews in his statement, but noted, “I have always used my platform and music to bring people from all backgrounds and cultures together and this won’t ever change.” 

He also had some veiled criticism of his tourmate’s methods. “Those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum,” Sheeran wrote. “I respect Macklemore’s strength of purpose to stand up for what he believes. However, there is room for multiple approaches to the same end: peace… If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change.”

The Israeli-American Council, which organized a boycott against Macklemore following his New Jersey show, criticized Sheeran in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“It’s time to take responsibility for giving a stage to antisemitic messaging,” the IAC said, of Sheeran. “This isn’t just ‘criticism of Israel.’ It’s a message that crosses the line between legitimate political criticism and antisemitism. This is Ed Sheeran’s stage, it’s the tour that carries his name — and so the responsibility for what happens on it is his too.”

--
The post Ed Sheeran’s support acts bail after Macklemore dropped over anti-Israel comments appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was “reasonable cause to believe” Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment based on their national origin, religion or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

The determination follows on media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. 

The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had “repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths” and “labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.”

“This is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world and they couldn’t get it right,” Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told the Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. “Thankfully the EEOC did.” 

Ho said Cisco had “at best failed to take their harassment seriously” and through its inaction had sent “the implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.”

The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees’ cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.

The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.

In August 2024, employees — including some concerned Jewish employees — filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian. 

The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to “reduce the mess across the board.”

Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.

Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s determination, saying it had “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.” The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings and provided coaching to multiple employees.

--
The post Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.