Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security announced $94 million in federal grants to over 500 Jewish-based organizations across the United States.

I recently sat down with Rabbi Sanford Akselrad from Congregation Ner Tamid, who told me the temple spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on security.

"The fight against hate against the Jews would morph yet again, um, so when someone says that they are, they, they love Jews but they, but they hate Israel and you get a little deeper, what do they mean by that… and usually when they go into the territory not of being critical of Israel which is fair game. But they say Israel has no right to exist at all now… we get into the area of antisemitism," Akselrad said.

More grants are expected in the coming months.

  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
    12·
    5 hours ago

    Nazis during the Holocaust might have wanted Jews deported to Israel but today’s Nazis want Israel wiped off the map and all Jews destroyed.

    You can’t draw a clean ethnic or cultural boundary around Israel that’s separate from their arabic brothers and sisters

    Not an ethnic boundary but definitely a cultural one. Judaism is very different from Islam. Palestinian culture is very different from Israeli culture.

    That’s what makes the conflation of anti-zionism and antisemitism so nefarious.

    The conflation happens on both sides of the argument. The two extremes need each other to justify themselves.

    I believe both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist. The issue is that both claim the same land and neither tolerates the other at this point. It doesn’t help that none of Israel’s neighbours want Palestinian refugees so the crisis is exacerbated to such an extreme.

    • anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      21·
      4 hours ago

      Judaism is very different from Islam.

      Good thing the ME isn’t mono-religious

      Palestinian culture is very different from Israeli culture

      Insofar as they are both partially defined by being on either side of an apartheid state, sure. But Jews and arabs lived very peacefully in Palestine and throughout the ME long before Palestine was partitioned. The ME was full of arab-jewish communities living alongside Muslims before Israel began their immigration campaign and before pan-arab nationalism spread through the region. I highly recommend Avi Shlaim’s “Three World’s” book if you’re curious how those cultures developed alongside each other, and how they’ve changed since Israel’s establishment.

      I believe both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist.

      I believe both the people of Palestine and Israel have a right to exist, but neither have a right to exist as ethno-nationalist apartheid states.