Pro-Palestinian groups to rally against synagogue ‘buffer zones’ during NYC vote

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🪧 Activists to rally against synagogue ‘buffer zones’ during NYC vote

• A coalition of pro-Palestinian groups plans to rally on the steps of City Hall tomorrow while the City Council votes on two measures that would restrict protests around houses of worship and educational institutions. Activists previously protested outside the first hearing in February.

• The rally’s organizers include Jewish Voice for Peace NYC, the New York Civil Liberties Union and PAL-Awda NY. They say the bills are “anti-speech” and would “prevent protests against the sale of stolen Palestinian land outside places of worship,” reported the Jewish News Syndicate.

• The NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America also urged members to call City Council representatives in protest against the bills. “These bills expand the capacity of the NYPD to police and surveil Black, brown, and immigrant New Yorkers, jeopardizing the safety of protestors exercising their first amendment rights and students attending school,” the party said in a call to action.

• Julie Menin, the first Jewish speaker of the City Council, proposed the legislation in response to pro-Palestinian protests outside synagogues holding Israel-related events. PAL-Awda was an organizer of those protests.

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not commented on whether he will sign the legislation, saying he would await a legal review.

✍ Senator threatens NYC health funding over pro-Palestinian group

• Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote another letter to Mamdani on Monday about his investigation of the mayor’s handling of antisemitism, according to The New York Post.

• Cassidy, who last month launched a probe into Mamdani’s repeal of his predecessor’s executive orders related to Israel, accused the NYC health department of “prioritizing a political agenda” and said it “risks both federal funding and the public health of New York City residents.”

• Cassidy referenced the health department’s “Global Oppression Working Group,” whose members have accused Israel of genocide. He also criticized a comment from NYC Health Commissioner Alister Martin, who recently said the department would not stop “the work that we’re doing on equity” even if the Trump administration “comes and messes with our money.”

🏆 Claire Valdez endorsed by pro-Palestinian PAC

• Queens Assemblymember Claire Valdez has been endorsed for Congress by the Peace, Accountability and Leadership PAC, or PAL PAC. The group was created last month with the goal of counterbalancing the influence of AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbies.

• The endorsement signals Valdez’s plans to leverage her support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel in her campaign. She is running against two other progressives, Antonio Reynoso and Julie Won, in a competitive primary to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez in a district spanning parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

• Valdez has also been endorsed by Jewish Voice for Peace Action, NYC-DSA and Mamdani. As a colleague of Mamdani’s in the Assembly, she co-sponsored his “Not On Our Dime” bill, which sought to block New York charities from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

💰 Terror victims get $318 million settlement from Iran-linked skyscraper

650 Fifth Avenue, a 36-story office tower near Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, is seen on April 20, 2014. (Cem Ozdel/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

• Victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism, including Jewish and Israeli families, will receive $318 million in a settlement with a Manhattan skyscraper that concealed its Iranian government interests.

• For nearly two decades, the tower on 650 Fifth Avenue generated tens of millions in rental income for Tehran through shell companies, in violation of U.S. sanctions. The settlement on Monday, amid the Israeli-American war on Iran, will direct funds from the sale of the building to hundreds of terror victims and their families.

• Those being compensated include families of victims of the 2001 bombing of a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, one of the deadliest bombings of the Second Intifada, as well as victims of other Iran-backed attacks from Israel to New York.

🤝 Interfaith summit meets about immigration

• Dozens of faith leaders and community members met at the Flatbush Jewish Center on Sunday for an interfaith summit on immigration, reported the Brooklyn Paper. They discussed how to mobilize against the ICE raids and mass deportations in NYC’s immigrant neighborhoods.

🫓 Tisch stocks up on matzah

• NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, joined Orthodox leaders at the Satmar Matzah Bakery ahead of Passover. Rabbi Moshe Indig thanked Tisch on X for her “leadership and dedication to the safety and security of our city and Jewish community.”

🗓 What’s on?

• “Giant,” the new Broadway play about Roald Dahl’s antisemitic outbursts in 1983 starring John Lithgow, opened this week. Read our Andrew Silow-Carroll’s take on the play’s complicated questions about Israel, Jewish solidarity and Diaspora responsibility.

• The Jewish Museum has launched “Paul Klee: Other Possible Worlds,” an exhibition dedicated to the German artist who wasn’t actually Jewish but was persecuted by the Nazis as a “Galician Jew.” The artist’s most famous work, “Angelus Novus,” has not arrived — a reproduction serves as its placeholder while the original, housed in Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, is delayed by “current conditions affecting international transport.”