Category Archives: USA

Advancing Religion In America

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On October 28, 2011, Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, came to New York City and sat with Rabbi Meir Soloviechik at Yeshiva University. Their hour long talk touched on Lord Sacks’ book The Home We Build Together, and the role of religion in society, focusing on the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular.

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Speaks at Yeshiva University with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, October 2011

In the opening remarks (3:10), Rabbi Soloveichik shared a story about Senator Joseph Lieberman, who once observed that on Simchat Torah, Jews dance with the Torah in the streets with joy, yet often fail to carry that Torah into the world during the rest of the year. It was a reminder that religion cannot remain confined to ritual but must be brought into society.

Lord Sacks followed with a story of his own. Prime Minister Tony Blair once teased him that he had reached the “boring part” of the Hebrew Bible—the lengthy passages about the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). Why, Blair asked, does the Torah devote hundreds of verses to it, compared to just 34 for the creation of the universe?

Lord Sacks replied:

Prime Minister, it is not difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent, infinite God to create a home for human beings. But for finite, fallible human beings to create a home for the infinite God, that is difficult.

The Mishkan, Sacks explained, was not just architecture—it was a project that united the people. More than what God does for us, it is what we do for God that transforms and binds us together. “If you want to take this diverse, fractured culture of Britain and turn it into a united nation,” Sacks said, “you have to get them to build something together.”

Rabbi Soloveichik and Lord Sacks went on to describe that the decline of religious life and secularization of Europe was tied to fewer children being born. A self-centered focus weakens families, weakens faith, and weakens society. In contrast, raising children—caring for someone more than oneself—provides both the foundation of belief and the roots of charity: “having somebody whose life you care about more than yourself, that could actually be the foundation of faith for many of us.”

Washington (D.C.) and Rembrandt

Nearly fourteen years later, on September 8, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump held an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. He invited members of the newly established (May 1, 2025) Religious Liberty Commission to hear how he was advancing the centrality of religion in American public life. He said “When faith gets weaker, our country seems to get weaker. When faith gets stronger… good things happen for our country…. To have a great nation, you have to have religion.”

President Trump remarks at the Museum of the Bible, September 8, 2025

One of the members of the Presidential Committee on Religious Liberty is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik. He was unable to attend the speech by the president in Washington because he was giving a day long-lecture in New York City at the home of Mem and Zalman Bernstein and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Tikvah Fund about art, religion and western society.

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik discussing Rembrandt’s 1635 painting “The Sacrifice of Isaac” for Tikvah

Rabbi Solveichik focused on Rembrandt’s two versions of the Sacrifice of Isaac. He contrasted Abraham’s devotion to God’s command to offer his son Isaac, to the investment of love and devotion he had made in his son. The angel broke the conflict, and with it, the end of human sacrifice which was prevalent in the world at that time. From this point onward, belief in a higher power could be accompanied by protecting and investing in our children.

Religion, Children and Western Democracy

It made for an interesting sermon triptych connecting religion, children and western values: Lord Sachs, Rabbi Soloveichik and President Trump all emphasized that religion has the power to strengthen ourselves, our families, our communities and our nation.

In Lord Sacks book, The Great Partnership, published in June 2011, right before his talk at YU, he wrote:

My argument has been that contrary to the received narrative, freedom has been better served in the modern world by a religious vision rather than a secular one. The Abrahamic vision, with its insistence on the non-negotiable dignity of the human person and the importance of protected space – the families and communities that make up civil society – where relationships are not based on power, saved England and America from the worst excesses of the revolutionary politics that cost tens of thousands of lives in France and tens of millions in Russia….

Abrahamic politics, by contrast, is politics with a human face, the politics that knows the limits of power, as well as the transformative effect of free persons freely joining together to make social institutions worthy of being a home for the divine presence. Abraham politics never forgets that there are things more important than politics, and that is what makes it the best defense of liberty.”

That is the motion before Western democracies: can humble faith as embodied in “Abraham politics” lead our different faiths to help build a cohesive society of respect and growth.

Concluding Circle

The discussion of religion and democracy is being advanced passionately today because it feels abandoned.

According to Lord Sacks, democracy under secularism preached intersectionality which yielded segregation and isolationism. Rabbi Solveichik responded that “a Mayflower of persecuted religions might leave England and Europe to come to safer shores [like America].” For his part, President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission to deal with such matters, with the first group’s term ending on July 4, 2026, on the nation’s 250th anniversary.

So it was fitting that Rabbi Soloveichik should end his talk to the Tikvah Fund, a group whose motto is “Advancing Jewish Excellence and Western Civilization through Education & Ideas,” before Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, while President Trump was concluding his remarks in Washington, D.C.

Rabbi Soloveichik at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 2025

In the 1851 painting, the future president of the United States stood aboard a boat filled with a diverse crew, readying to end the rule of England and break with the British monarchy and Church of England, to establish a new democratic state in 1776. Nearly 250 years later, the Chief Rabbi of England, the president of the United States, and the rabbi leading the oldest synagogue in the United States were championing the importance of religion in strengthening democracies everywhere. A quiet revolution to return to the foundations of faith to help build a more perfect union.

Judging the Judges of Psychopaths

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A suicidal antisemite walked into a church school in Minnesota and opened fire. He left behind rants of depression and hate. He idolized the mass murderers who came before him — Hitler, Columbine, Christchurch, Pittsburgh — and fantasized about joining their ranks in death.

It is a sad story. Sad for the victims, whose lives were cut short. Sad for the shooter’s family, who must live with the legacy of his murders. Sad for society, which must add another notch to the ledger of preventable carnage.

But I pause on the judges. Not the judges in robes who preside over courts of law — this menace took his own life and will only face a real judge in the afterlife, if you believe in one. The judges I mean are the self-appointed arbiters of truth on social media, the pundits with millions of followers who rush to craft a narrative before the blood on the church floor has dried.

Narratives Over Facts

Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, quickly posted on X that the killer “hates Israel and Muslims.” Two deliberate misdirections.

First misdirection: He didn’t hate Israel in the abstract. He hated Jews — which is precisely why he hated Israel. On his weapon magazine he scrawled, “6 million wasn’t enough.” That wasn’t about Israel. That was about Jews. In his journal he wrote “If I carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” before calling Jewish people “entitled” and “penny-sniffing” and adding “FREE PALESTINE!”

writings on the Minneapolis killer’s weaponry

He even called for destroying HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that helps resettle refugees in the U.S. His antisemitism and anti-Israel animus were inseparable. He loved Nazis and he loved Palestinian Arabs who killed Jews. Cenk only loves the latter, because it allows him to hang his “anti-Zionist, not antisemitic” credentials where he cannot with the former.

Second misdirection: The shooter never expressed hatred of Muslims. He praised mass murderers — including some who targeted mosques — but not because he despised Islam. His adoration was for the act of mass killing as a pathway to glory. He wanted to die a martyr in the suicide-mass murder cult, to etch his name in the pantheon of psychopaths and inspire the next one, just as he inscribed their names on his gun, as well as “mashallah,” meaning “Gd has willed it” in Arabic.

The Sanitizers

So why did Cenk say what he said? To refit the crime into his own comfortable narrative. To launder the reality that this shooter’s rants — about Jews, Israel, HIAS — were fueled by the same demonization that Cenk himself mainstreams daily.

Cenk published this rant about Israel controlling the US government around the same time as misdirecting people about the Minnesota killer

This is how today’s judges operate. They aren’t rendering justice to take the wicked off the streets. They are sanitizing their own crimes by placing their incitement onto a scapegoat and pushing it off a cliff. They hope you will move on, and not notice their bloody handprints on the crime scene of young children dead on a church floor.

But be clear, Cenk and others like him are inciting the next mass shooter. They just hope the murderers come for Israel supporters.

Conclusion

There are no winners in these tragedies. The dead are buried, the families are broken, the shooter is gone.

But the lies linger. The venom feels less poisonous once imbibed and cleansed by the antisemitic judges.

When influencers and media stars twist a killer’s words into their preferred stories, they are not exposing truth — they are covering their own complicity.

The Minneapolis shooter’s manifesto was clear enough. It will likely be on the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) book-of-the-month club reading. The world is sad and unjust and we must burn it down. Ideally, start with the Jews. If you can’t, make sure your manifesto reads like a modern day Mein Kampf that would make Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) proud.

The killer’s sphere of desecration was relatively small. Tragic, but limited. But the shrill antisemitic rants atop social media and infiltrating politics grossly widen the diameter of the damage.

The lingering tragedy is that the loudest voices have become the judges, and that will mark our entire society for collapse.

New Jersey’s Double Standard: Protecting Sunday Rest While Promoting Abortion

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New Jersey prides itself on being “progressive,” but its legal framework reveals a hypocrisy that should make any thinking citizen bristle. On one hand, the state enforces Blue Laws in Bergen County — a set of regulations rooted in 17th-century Christian Sabbath observance that still ban most retail sales on Sundays. On the other hand, it boasts some of the most radical abortion laws in the country, permitting the ending of a pregnancy at virtually any stage.

If New Jersey is going to use the force of law to protect Christian values, then be consistent and protect life. If not, stop pretending by maintaining antiquated religious impositions like the Blue Laws.

The Blue Laws: Christian Morality Enforced by Penalty

Bergen County’s Blue Laws are codified in N.J.S.A. 40A:64-1 et seq., prohibiting the sale of clothing, furniture, appliances, and most retail goods on Sundays. Violators face fines up to $1,000 and potential jail time of up to 90 days (N.J.S.A. 40A:64-6). The intent? To preserve Sunday as a day of rest, explicitly tied to the Christian Sabbath.

Supporters of the laws admit their religious roots. Bergen County County Executive James Tedesco “has been a steadfast supporter of the Bergen County blue laws, long recognizing their vital role in enhancing residents’ quality of life and guaranteeing retail employees at least one day off each week,” echoing the original moral intent of honoring Sunday as a sacred day.

Abortion: Unfettered Access, Zero Protection for the Unborn

Contrast this with New Jersey’s abortion statutes. In 2022, Governor Phil Murphy signed the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act (P.L.2021, c.375), enshrining the right to abortion at any stage of pregnancy with no parental notification for minors, no mandatory waiting periods, and no limits on late-term procedures. Clinics openly advertise this reality: “No gestational limit” (Planned Parenthood of New Jersey, 2023).

For Christians and countless others who believe life begins before birth, this isn’t neutrality — it’s the state actively rejecting Christian morality in the most profound area imaginable: the protection of human life.

Bergen County abortion clinic – closed Sundays

A Call for Coherence

New Jersey cannot have it both ways. Either the state should abandon religiously grounded laws like the Blue Laws — which literally fine people for shopping on Sunday in deference to Christian tradition — and let people lead the lives they choose, or it should acknowledge that Christian moral values still have a legitimate place in public law and extend them consistently, particularly to protect the unborn.

It’s time for New Jersey legislators to stop hiding behind selective morality. If the state truly believes in secular governance, repeal the Blue Laws and let commerce run seven days a week. If it still believes Christian moral heritage has value, then apply it where it matters most — to the defense of life itself.

Van Hollen’s Mainstreaming War on Israel

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Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics in the U.S. Senate. Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, he has pursued a campaign that reframes Israel not as a besieged ally but as a war criminal state, worthy of sanction and censure. His playbook has five coordinated elements: a starvation narrative, a focus on Christian persecution, a drive to restrict U.S. arms, an effort to criminalize Israeli “settlers,” and to demonize the Israeli government while legitimizing the Palestinian Authority.

What began as fringe rhetoric has steadily migrated into the Democratic mainstream. In Washington’s political war over Israel, Van Hollen has positioned himself as the lead general, and he is increasingly turning to enact laws to enforce his worldview.

The Starvation Narrative

The turning point came in February 2024, when Van Hollen escalated from criticism to criminalization.

On February 13, 2024, he declared on the Senate floor:

“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”

Just two weeks later, his office issued a statement reinforcing the charge:

“People are starving in Gaza. And civilians are dying every day. There is no excuse for this situation.”

At the time – just weeks into Gaza’s war on Israel – few international observers had made such claims. By labeling Israel’s blockade as “deliberate starvation,” Van Hollen provided the framework for others to follow. Within months, humanitarian agencies, U.N. officials, and fellow senators adopted the same language.

Christian Persecution: Expanding the Field of Victims

On trips to the region in June 2024 and August 2025, Van Hollen, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) made highly publicized visits with Christian patriarchs in Jerusalem. They highlighted declining Christian communities and implied Israeli responsibility for their plight.

The narrative was selective: minimizing Hamas’s role and Palestinian Authority corruption while amplifying claims that Israel’s policies drove Christians from the Holy Land. Slowly, this angle began echoing in European diplomacy and American church politics. Van Hollen helped mainstream it.

Restricting U.S. Arms

Beyond rhetoric, Van Hollen has worked to curtail U.S. arms transfers to Israel. He joined resolutions to block certain sales, pushed for GAO investigations into Israel’s use of U.S. weapons, and demanded conditioning assistance on humanitarian compliance.

By mid-2025, other Democrats had joined him, showing his success in normalizing the once-fringe notion that America should starve Israel of weapons in the midst of its war for survival.

Criminalizing Settlers: From Rhetoric to Sanctions

Van Hollen has also targeted Israeli settlers, pressing for visa bans, sanctions, and financial restrictions.

In November 2024, nearly 90 Democrats, led by Van Hollen, urged Biden to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers tied to settler violence. In August 2025, he worked with Senator Peter Welch on a sanctions bill, declaring:

“The Netanyahu Government – driven by racist extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir – continues to fuel settler violence and support the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The United States must not turn a blind eye to these acts.”

The progression from criticisms to sanctions is becoming a hallmark of his activities.

Boycotting Netanyahu, Embracing Abbas

The hypocrisy of Van Hollen’s diplomacy was laid bare in July 2024, when Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. Van Hollen loudly boycotted the speech, denouncing Netanyahu’s government as extremist and refusing to “be a rubber stamp” for what he called a “political prop.”

Yet, just weeks earlier in Ramallah, Van Hollen had gladly sat down with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—a man who: wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial; maintains laws banning the sale of land to Jews, punishable by imprisonment or death; and funds stipends to terrorists’ families under the “Pay for Slay” program.

This willingness to shun Israel’s elected leader while legitimizing Abbas exposes Van Hollen’s double standard. The boycott was staged as a moral stand, yet his embrace of Abbas—authoritarian, corrupt, and antisemitic—revealed a deeper hostility directed not at extremism but at Israel itself.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on a August 2025 trip to the region in which he does not meet any Israeli officials (photo from WAFA)

The Legal Framework: Turning Criticism into Punishment

Van Hollen’s strategy is deeper than speeches. He has worked to institutionalize anti-Israel positions into binding U.S. law:

  • Leahy Laws & Foreign Assistance Act: He invoked these statutes in May 2025 to argue that Israel’s restrictions on aid are a “commission of gross violations of human rights” which would trigger U.S. legal violations.
  • GAO Investigations: He formally requested audits to prove U.S. complicity, aiming to tie Israel’s actions to American liability.
  • Codifying Executive Orders: By reintroducing sanctions legislation in 2025, Van Hollen sought to ensure that settler bans would not depend on a future president’s discretion but become permanent U.S. law.

This layering of legal levers shows the depth of his campaign. Van Hollen is not merely criticizing Israel. He is trying to build the legal scaffolding that forces America to punish it.

Summary

Van Hollen as a multi-front war on Israel:

  1. Starvation narrative → turned humanitarian debates into accusations of Israeli war crimes.
  2. Christian persecution → expanded moral indictments beyond Palestinian Arabs.
  3. Arms restrictions → reframed U.S. support as conditional.
  4. Settler criminalization → sought to enshrine punitive measures into U.S. law.
  5. Boycott of Netanyahu, embrace of Abbas → pivot America’s ally from Israel to the Palestinians.

Each step has nudged Democrats further away from the historic bipartisan consensus supporting Israel, tarring the Jewish State as racist and criminal, and unworthy of support.

Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel – a longtime Van Hollen fan – bemoaned and warned about the “deleterious consequences of his [Van Hollen’s] actions,” as he watched the Democratic party follow Van Hollen’s lead. It has not slowed the senator down.

Chris Van Hollen has become the lead general in mainstreaming anti-Israel narratives and a Democratic political war against Israel—a campaign whose consequences extend from Washington to Jerusalem, and into the very legitimacy of Jewish life in the Holy Land.

Villains Of Preference

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In 2001, a Palestinian Arab jihadist blew up 21 Jewish teens and young adults at Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium disco. In 2016, a radical Muslim pledging allegiance to ISIS massacred 49 young people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. Both killers declared why they killed: Jews and gays had no right to live.

But read today’s news, and the stories have been rewritten. The jihadists are airbrushed out. In their place, new villains are supplied: Israel, Republicans, conservatives. Hamas’s October 7 slaughter becomes “anti-colonial resistance.” The Pulse massacre becomes proof of “alt-right bigotry.” The killers vanish; scapegoats stand in their stead.

The New York Times article on August 24, 2025 essentially blaming Republican anti-gay attitudes surrounding the Orlando nightclub killings. Nowhere does it say that the murderer was a radical Islamist who was interviewed several times by the FBI for involvement with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

This is the age of villains of preference.

A Hamas gunman disappears, Netanyahu is written in.

An ISIS bomber is scrubbed out, Trump takes his place.

Jihad becomes invisible, conservatives become the menace.

This isn’t sloppy reporting—it’s deliberate redirection. Our society, already awash in the viral toxicity of social media, is being pushed to focus obsessively on politics and demonizing your neighbors. It’s red vs. blue, right vs. left. The situation courses with the ultimate stakes: life and death. The reframing empowers a radical socialist agenda that uses a domestic enemy to mobilize its base. Jihadists don’t fit the script, but Republicans and Zionists do.

The real clash—radical Islam against democracy and freedom—is inconvenient to acknowledge. So it’s erased. In its place we’re told the true battle is internal: conservatives are dismantling democracy; Israel is committing genocide with American support; capitalism is the ultimate evil that threatens the world. The foreign killers who target Jews, Christians, and gays are excused, while the West turns on itself.

Anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist politicians-in-waiting, Jamaal Bowman and Zohran Mamdani

The creed is simple: protect the victims of preference, attack the villains of preference—Jews, conservatives, capitalists. They are being lined up for your bilestorm. Your retweets. Your ire. Your protest. Your vote.

It is a purposeful rerouting of outrage, weaponized by radicals who despise capitalism and democracy, and cheered on by regimes like Qatar and China that profit from the West’s collapse.

The jihadists told us why they killed. Our media tells us to look away. Because in the new faith, truth is expendable while villains of preference are eternal.

There is a subtle subtitle to mainstream news articles today. It is a chorus that is growing louder and closer, lifted from killers’ manifestos: “There is only one solution: Intifada Revolution.”

A Million for Gaza While Jewish Life In America Burns

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The United States is experiencing the worst wave of antisemitism in modern memory. Jews are attacked in the streets of New York, vilified on college campuses, and shunned in social circles simply for being Jewish or supporting Israel. Synagogues and community centers are fortifying themselves like military outposts, while families weigh whether their children are safe wearing a Star of David in public.

In the middle of this siege on Jewish life, the UJA-Federation of New York proudly announced it would send $1 million in aid to Gaza as a “Jewish imperative.” The money will be funneled through an Israeli rescue nonprofit, ostensibly to provide humanitarian relief.

The federation’s leadership points to precedent: they’ve sent funds abroad before—to Turkey after an earthquake, to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. But this is not Turkey. It is not Ukraine. It’s also not Canada and Australia undergoing horrible antisemitism.

Gaza is not a neutral disaster zone. Its people have elected and support leaders who openly call for the murder of Israeli Jews. Its ruling terror group, Hamas, slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, and still holds hostages. Polling has long shown majority support among Gazans for killing Jewish Israeli civilians and to destroy Israel. This is not a passive bystander to tragedy; it is a society that has gone to war against the Jewish state again and again.

The difference matters. When the federation sends aid to a country struck by natural disaster, it’s an act of humanity. When it sends aid to a population whose political and militant factions seek Jewish extermination – while in the middle of a war – it’s an act freighted with moral confusion.

The leadership may believe that giving to Gazans proves Jewish compassion “even to our enemies,” or helps with global optics. But for Jews watching their own safety erode daily in the United States and in other communities around the world, it looks like a failure to stand with their own community. It risks alienating the very donors who built the federation in the first place.

Charity is not limitless. Every dollar has an opportunity cost. And while Jewish students are harassed on campus, Jewish businesses vandalized, and Jewish institutions desperate for security funding, this million-dollar gesture to Gaza sends a clear message: in our hour of greatest vulnerability, the suffering of those sworn to kill us will be prioritized alongside, or even above, our own survival.

The empathy swamp is drowning us, blessed by community leaders.

American Jewry had managed with peacetime leadership for decades but it is time to replace them as the environment has shifted, and leaders have proven that they are not up to the moment.

Lanternflies and the Spread of Antisemitism

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From nowhere they came — and now they’re everywhere. The spotted lanternfly, with its colorful delicate wings and destructive path, has infested the American landscape. It’s believed to have originated from China and, in just a few years, has spread across states, devastating crops and trees like the “tree of heaven,” its favorite host. The government seems incapable of containing it. Few natural predators exist. The infestation has become a symbol of bureaucratic failure and public resignation.

Spotted lanternfly

But some wonder: does this pestilence reflect something deeper, more corrosive — a cultural infestation?

In the wake of October 7, when thousands of Gazans crossed into Israel in a massacre they proudly broadcast around the world, antisemitism in America, Canada and Australia exploded. Synagogues were vandalized. Jewish cars were firebombed. Campus protests called for a “global intifada.” And the institutions tasked with standing guard — universities, governments, media — offered excuses, silence, or, worse, justifications.

Many point again to China, not just for the lanternfly, but for feeding antisemitism into western culture, especially through TikTok — a powerful delivery system for ideological poison. Others blame Qatar, which has poured billions into American universities that now shelter hatred under the guise of “free speech.” The Gaza war may have triggered the firestorm, but the kindling was laid long ago — through foreign influence, academic corruption, legal systems reluctant to confront hate when it wears the right colors and intersectional culture intent on vanishing Jews.

The response has been toothless. Protesters shut down airports and bridges with impunity. Cities release vandals hours after they’re arrested. Politicians decry antisemitism in speeches while voting to defund the very police tasked with protecting vulnerable communities. Universities who once claimed to be safe spaces now protect the mob instead of the beleaguered minority.

Like the lanternfly, antisemitism has become endemic. And just as officials tell us to stomp on the bugs as a civic duty, people now post videos taking down “protest” signs and washing off graffiti — not to eradicate the hate, but to vent helplessness.

We’ve reached a tipping point. Many have chosen to watch the wave rather than swim against it.

But Jews are not trees. Unlike the “tree of heaven,” the Jews have a history of moving, surviving, rebuilding. As America shrugs at the firebombs and broken windows, and as elected leaders dismiss Jewish fear as overreaction, a quiet migration begins. New York, Toronto, and Melbourne may look the same in ten years — but they will feel different. Not because the skyline will change, but because of the absence. The absence of a people whose presence once animated these places with faith, culture, and conscience.

Vienna was no longer Vienna after the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered, and French leaders know that France will no longer really be French if Jewish frustration and fear makes them move. But America has no such institutional memory. And as Americans elect younger and more inexperienced radical politicians, the destruction will accelerate.

Jews were forced to wear distinctive clothing in the Middle Ages and in Nazi Germany, and were tattooed in concentration camps before the annihilation was manifest. But it’s the moral corruption of the cities themselves that marks Jews for extinction; black sooty mold as the lanternflies feast and kill.

The last Jews will be those who see fellow Jews’ fears as fantasies, constellations drawn from a few distinct points like ancient mariners and pagans lost in heavenly thoughts. Perhaps those survivors will be the only Jews the West wants anyway: hearty crops which withstood the plague may have more in common with the new natural order.

Why WESPAC?

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When IsraelAnalysis.com first reported an act of anti-Israel vandalism on the streets of White Plains, it pointed to the possibility of WESPAC—a long-standing left-wing activist group with a record of anti-Israel rhetoric—as being behind the hate-fueled attack. While no individual has been arrested or charged, the suspicion is not without reason. The question arises: why WESPAC?

Let’s start with timing. The graffiti appeared around 5:00 p.m. on the Ninth of Av, the somber Jewish fast day that mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. WESPAC planned a “urgent vigil for the children of Gaza” at the same time the next day in Peekskill. That city lies further north in Westchester, while many of WESPAC’s most vocal “activists” live in southern Westchester, including White Plains. “Solidarity” for these comrades in southern Westchester may have brought them out on a sunny Sunday.

WESPAC ad for a vigil for Gaza in northern Westchester

Moreover, the vandalized site itself—a street decorated with American and Israeli flags—was an obvious magnet for anti-Israel agitators. What better canvas for those hoping to make a statement on a Jewish day of mourning than one visually celebrating the very state they protest?

But the context runs deeper.

WESPAC has long used the veneer of social justice to cloak its deeply anti-Israel agenda. In neighboring Hartsdale, the group confronted Jews filled with virulent anti-Israel rhetoric. And the current chair of WESPAC, Howard Horowitz, isn’t just a local—he’s a paradoxical figure leading the Israel Action Committee at Temple Israel of New Rochelle, even while aligning publicly with radical anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow.

Horowitz’s own writings are telling. He lashed out at Jewish residents of New Rochelle who had the temerity to run for school board seats, accusing them—and by extension the broader Jewish community—of racism against people of color. He has taken aim at “the vast majority [who] repeat the “I stand with Israel” declarations, disregarding the horrific facts on the ground” in Gaza, making the banner-lined street in White Plains a perfect target for his vitriol. He further believes that such pro-Israel proclamation “denigrates the Jewish tragedies” like the Ninth of Av, making the fast day an appropriate moment to attack Israel supporters.

Horowitz makes no bones about mocking Jewish “nationalism” as evil and “antithetical to Yiddishkeit,” even while he advocates for Arab nationalism. That’s his right, but it doesn’t put him or his group beyond the sphere of suspicion.

As reported by Lohud, the media site covering the lower Hudson Valley, ADL reported that in 2024, Westchester was unique among the suburbs of New York City, to have an increase in antisemitic incidents, a rise of 22% from 2023. Rockland, Nassau and Suffolk counties had declines of 11%, 36% and 26%, respectively. The disparity had much to do with anti-Israel groups including JVP, Palestinian Youth Movement and Democratic Socialist of America – all groups aligned and supported by WESPAC.

Lohud article on rise of antisemitism in New York and Westchester County

To be clear: no direct evidence has emerged tying WESPAC—or Horowitz—to this act of vandalism in White Plains. But in a county like Westchester, where anti-Israel rhetoric has become increasingly normalized in certain activist circles, and where groups like WESPAC operate openly with impunity, the suspicion is understandable.

This wasn’t random graffiti. It was a calculated message, timed for maximum symbolic effect. It struck at a street display of solidarity, and a people commemorating thousands of years of trauma.

And when neighbors ask: Who would do something like this?—it’s not hard to see why eyes turn toward the radical group operating, quite literally, just down the street.

Inching Antisemitism: Hate Hits Close to Home in White Plains

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White Plains, the county seat of Westchester just north of New York City, is no stranger to civic pride and Jewish community life. But as the election of anti-Israel Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani looms in NYC, many moderate Jews are finding that antisemitism isn’t just brewing in politics — it’s staining the streets right outside their homes.

On the quiet and sunny Sunday afternoon of August 3, 2025, residents of Coolidge Avenue — a peaceful, flag-lined street known for its American and Israeli banners — were shocked to discover the words “F*ck Israel” scrawled in red spray paint across the pavement.

Vandalism on the quiet streets of White Plains, NY on August 3, 2025

“It’s a slap in the face,” said Joseph Block, a senior at Columbia University who was home for the weekend, observing the Ninth of Av, the somber fast day mourning the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem. He had just returned from paying a condolence visit to a Holocaust survivor whose wife had passed away when he saw the fresh vandalism.

Police were quickly called. Officers initially attempted to power wash the graffiti, but the paint had seeped deep into the concrete. Rather than risk further damage, they placed heavy steel plates over the words — a temporary fix for an all-too-permanent feeling.

It wasn’t the first such incident in the area. In January 2024, nearby Scarsdale saw Jewish-owned stores defaced with the phrase “Genocide supporters.” But this time, it struck at the heart of a tight-knit neighborhood known for its pride, unity and neighborliness.

“I thought we were done with this kind of disgusting anti-Israel venom,” Block said. “Unfortunately, the attacks just keep coming.”

His brother Isaac who attends Yeshiva University echoed the sentiment: “This neighborhood — the Highlands — is one of the most pro-Israel places in the county. We’ve got Jews and non-Jews, all patriotic, all proud of our connection to Israel.”

The Highlands is home to five synagogues representing the full spectrum of Jewish observance — Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and two Modern Orthodox – all within walking distance of each other. While their approaches to religion and politics may differ, the congregations often collaborate on shared causes, including pro-Israel activities.

Dean Ungar, one of the volunteers with the Five Synagogues of White Plains Israel Action Committee expressed deep concern over the attack. “We’re literally about to launch a program called Healing Arts to help Israeli children cope with trauma from the last two years,” he said. “And here we are, facing hate on our own streets.”

Just days before the vandalism, two of the Blocks’ front-yard pro-Israel lawn signs were stolen. “It’s escalating,” said Joseph. “From theft to vandalism in just one week. I’m scared to think about what might come next.”

In January 2023, Westchester County adopted the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism for “identifying acts of antisemitism,” which include some types of attacks on Israel. It was signed by then-County Executive George Latimer, who now is the area’s congressman, having defeated anti-Israel Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary last summer.

Less than three miles from the graffiti is the headquarters of WESPAC, a virulently anti-Israel organization that has protested in front of Jewish elementary schools about Israel. The group has also tried to recruit Jewish students for a new anti-Israel school. Several White Plains residents wonder whether members of the organization were behind the defacement.

Neighbors think that the latest targeted hate crime will unlikely yield any arrests. It will, they believe, produce many more American and Israeli flags.

The solid US-Israel alliance that existed in 2012 is floundering

Discrimination: Religion and Sex; Israel and the USA

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In 2020, the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, filed a lawsuit against Gett, a popular Israeli taxi-hailing service. The offense was offering a “Mehadrin” option for riders who wanted drivers who observed Shabbat. The IRAC said the offering discriminated against Arab drivers who didn’t qualify under that label, and ultimately, the case was settled in June 2023. Gett paid out $1.6 million (NIS 6 million) in compensation to Arab drivers and to two NGOs that promote Jewish-Arab coexistence.

The clear message was that religious preferences in ride-hailing services are a form of discrimination. No special preferences would be tolerated.

Yet, here we are, in the United States.

Uber, the global ride-hailing behemoth, has quietly introduced a service in various markets that allows female drivers to opt into picking up only female passengers. It’s being billed as a safety measure—one that empowers women to feel more comfortable driving and riding in liberal cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: this is gender-based discrimination, plain and simple. A man hailing a ride and seeing it canceled because the driver opted for a woman-only ride is, quite literally, being excluded based on sex.

How is allowing female drivers to exclude picking up male riders making life “better for everyone?”

Where is the outrage from liberal groups? Where is the Jewish Reform Movement? Why hasn’t a lawsuit been filed on behalf of male riders who must be put in the back of the line to get home? Why no amicus brief filed in solidarity with equality under the law?

The silence is telling. Discrimination only seems to bother rights advocacy groups when it’s associated with religious practice or victims of preference. If Arab drivers are excluded from rides, liberal groups in Israel convinced the courts that it’s discrimination. But if male passengers in the United States are excluded to create a woman-only safe space? That’s empowerment.

The hypocrisy is glaring. If the principle is equality, then apply it. If the standard is fairness, then be consistent. And if the cause is justice, then justice should not be contingent on whom it implicates.

Is there a red line of equality under the law that differentiates between religion and sex? Or is Israel more progressive regarding equality than the United States?