AJC Dispatch

Spotlight

This week on AJC Passport, Benjy Rogers, AJC Associate Director of Policy and Middle East Initiatives, shared the latest developments on the upcoming Israeli election. AJC Director of Contemporary Jewish Life Steve Bayme also joined us to discuss the growing divide in the Israel-Diaspora relationship and the importance of religious pluralism in Israel.

Must-reads

Two Deadly Mass Shootings in 24 hours; AJC Says Enough is Enough
JTA / 2-minute read
Last weekend a gunman who posted intentions online to kill Latinos fatally shot 22 people and wounded dozens more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Hours later, another gunman wielding an assault weapon went on a 30-second rampage in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people and injuring 27 others. A week earlier, a man fired on a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, killing three people and wounding 12. AJC CEO David Harris tweeted: “As a nation, we need far more than ‘heartfelt thoughts & prayers’ … We need concrete action, not a template reply.” Join AJC and urge congress to act on hate crimes and gun control. Read more

Shin Bet Foils Hamas Plot Against Israelis, Palestinians
Jerusalem Post / 2-minute read
Israel’s Security Agency says they have foiled what would have been a significant Hamas terrorist attack in Jerusalem. After the indictments of several suspected Hamas operatives this week, Shin Bet announced that a joint investigation with IDF and Israel Police broke up the West Bank cell earlier this summer and uncovered bomb making materials inside a home and school. Members of the cell had been instructed by the military wing of Hamas in Gaza to strike Israeli and Palestinian Authority targets. Learn how the military wing of Hamas is one of many ways the terrorist organization now governing Gaza masks its deadly mission. Read more

California’s Proposed Ethnic Studies Curriculum Blasted by Jewish Caucus
JTA / 2-minute read
An ethnic studies curriculum for high school students drafted by the California Department of Education “effectively erases the American Jewish experience,” according to 16 Jewish state legislators. The curriculum, which is intended to highlight minorities’ contributions to the state and the nation, also leaves out antisemitism, disparages Jews, and “singles Israel out for condemnation,” lawmakers said. “It would be a cruel irony if a curriculum meant to help alleviate prejudice and bigotry were to instead marginalize Jewish students and fuel hatred and discrimination against the Jewish community,” they wrote. The push for ethnic studies, an interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity, only affects high school students. But the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement has become prevalent on many college campuses. Its most recent target has been study abroad programs. Read more

Good to Know

The Trump Appointee Who’s Putting White Supremacists in Jail
The Washington Post Magazine / 7-minute read
As chief federal prosecutor for the Western District of Virginia, U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen is prosecuting violent white supremacists by using an anti-riot statute passed in the 1960s to curb Vietnam War protesters. He has charged four members of a white supremacist gang with conspiracy to commit violence in Charlottesville. Read about the racist “replacement theory” popular with white supremacists and cited by the El Paso shooter. Meanwhile, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson called white supremacy a hoax, to which AJC tweeted: From El Paso, to Poway, to Pittsburgh, and many more, @TuckerCarlson owes an apology to every victim of white supremacist violence in the U.S. Read more

New York Judge: University Must Recognize Pro-BDS Group
Haaretz / 2-minute read
Fordham University must recognize its campus chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine as a university-sanctioned club, a New York judge ruled this week. The Catholic university was sued in 2017 after it declined to recognize the SJP chapter as a student club despite the approval of the university’s student government. SJP promotes the anti-Israel BDS movement and chapters have organized BDS campaigns on college campuses across the country. AJC’s primer Behind the Boycott explains the history of this deceptive campaign. Read more

Lithuanian Synagogue Reopens After Government Vows to Guarantee Security
Times of Israel / 2-minute read
Amid protests from Lithuanian nationalists who object to recent acknowledgements of the country’s culpability during the Holocaust, the only synagogue in Vilnius has reversed its decision to close and has reopened under tighter security. Last week, Vilnius officials removed a plaque from the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences that honored a Nazi collaborator and renamed a street that honored a Nazi ally. AJC recently praised Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius for removing the plaque honoring Jonas Noreika, an anti-Soviet fighter who was responsible for the deportation of Jews and seizure of their property during the Holocaust. AJC tweeted: “Welcome news from Vilnius, yet it is deeply troubling that the synagogue’s leaders felt the need to shut its doors in the first place.” Read more

Tidings

Vaccine for Skin Cancer? Tel Aviv Researchers Say They Developed One (Jerusalem Post)
Is It Time to Sit Shiva for Barneys? (The Forward)
First Wonder Woman. Now Batwoman is Jewish (JTA)
What we Can Learn from Israel’s Gun Culture (Israel Hayom)

The articles featured here do not necessarily reflect AJC’s positions.

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