Barney Frank, for years the progressive conscience of his party who died on Tuesday night, had one last piece of advice for Democrats as he entered hospice care earlier this month: Repudiate litmus tests – except for Israel.

The United States should cut off weapons sales to Israel as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not relieve Palestinian suffering, Frank told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this month, using his imminent death to state bluntly what he believed other Democrats could not.

“It’s what the Democrats should be doing, it’s what America should be doing, and it should be what the Democrats are advocating, is giving an ultimatum that [Netanyahu] either changes things substantially in Gaza and the West Bank, or we cut off any aid,” the onetime congressional powerhouse said in a May 8 phone call from his home in Ogunquit, Maine.

“I’ve been talking about the importance of repudiating positions from the left and from the far left, but the Israel one is almost 180 degrees” different, he said. “It’s the one area where we are not doing enough in terms of making our position clear.”

Jewish lawmakers criticizing Netanyahu’s Israel was extraordinary a decade or so ago but has become commonplace. Frank’s plea, however, came from a lawmaker who grew up in a Zionist household and who was throughout a decades-long career in the U.S. House of Representatives solidly pro-Israel, albeit with occasional deviations from the pro-Israel lobby’s orthodoxy.

In one of his final interviews, he acknowledged being heartbroken by Israel under Netanyahu, recalling his family’s support for the struggle to shuck off the British mandate and create a Jewish state.

“We had a ‘boycott Britain’ bumper sticker on our car,” he said. His older sister, Anne Lewis, brought the family into the Zionist fold after a summer at a Habonim camp. “During my congressional career, I was very supportive, emotionally as well as politically and for a while earlier in this century, I volunteered and traveled at the request of Hillel to a couple of college campuses to defend Judaism and Israel.”

That would be hard to do in the current moment, he said. “I guess I held on longer than I should have to, ‘Well, we can work with them, etc’,” he said. “But it’s become clear to me, particularly due to what they’re allowing to happen in the West Bank, that it is important morally and politically to repudiate the policy of supporting Israel’s military activity.”

From the home he shared with his husband in Ogunquit, Frank in his final days took calls from the media well ahead of the scheduled publication of his book, “The Hard Path to Unity.”

He freely admitted he was doing a virtual publicity tour because his survival until the September launch date was unlikely. He knew he was leveraging his decline to be heard, and he didn’t mind that at all.

“Frankly, if I weren’t dying, people wouldn’t be paying as much attention,” Frank told The New York Times earlier this month.

His message in many of those conversations: Don’t make or break viable Democratic candidates on issues like transgender rights or Medicare for all.

“The key to liberal democracy being able to come back is to get rid of the perception, that we have allowed to grow, that the entire Democratic Party is committed to a series of very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable,” he told the Times.

Asked at the outset of his interview with JTA if that advice extends to the pressure from some of the Democratic base on candidates to pledge to cut assistance to Israel, he offered a vigorous “almost the opposite” because of his conviction that the party should be more vocal in its opposition to the current Israeli government.

Frank was a fighter during his congressional career from 1981 to 2013. The leadership made him the lead antagonist to Newt Gingrich during Gingrich’s consequential speakership in the 1990s. Frank ascended to the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee at a key time, during the late 2000s financial crisis. He coauthored the last major banking reform bill, 2010’s Dodd-Frank.

He was a progressive lion, championing the battles against income inequality and for civil rights. He came out in 1987 as gay, the first sitting member of Congress to do so. He had a reputation as a curmudgeon, once silencing a Holocaust survivor for exceeding his time in congressional testimony.

Frank believed that incremental moves are more likely to bring about change than full-on advocacy for far-reaching changes. He had noted in interviews that the same-sex marriage he enjoyed with his husband came about because of a slow roll of change in LGBTQ rights, including ones he championed, like allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

The onetime leading progressive endorsed moderates in this year’s elections, backing AIPAC-supported U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate primary. In his own state’s Senate race, he also backed Gov. Janet Collins, who recently ceded the primary to Graham Platner, an ascendant figure on the party’s left.

Frank believed anti-Israel orthodoxies could be as damaging as the far-left orthodoxies he decried. He remained appalled at voters disgruntled with the Biden administration’s pro-Israel policies who stayed away from the polls or even voted for President Donald Trump, and he used their example as one of two to illustrate why purity tests backfire. (The other is voters who faulted President Joe Biden for not doing enough to address climate change.)

“People who voted against [Kamala] Harris because they thought the administration had been too supportive of Israel achieved exactly the opposite of what they wanted,” Frank said, referring to the former vice president who faced Trump in 2024. “She would have begun by now to have cut back substantially on aid to Israel.”

He made clear in his interview that he rejected the extremes of Israel criticism emerging among Democrats, including accusations it has committed genocide in the war Hamas launched in 2023, and the argument that it should not exist as a Jewish state.

“Genocide is trying to wipe out the whole people,” he said. “The Holocaust was killing every Jew. Israel is not trying to kill every Palestinian. What they’re doing – I do not think its genocide, but it’s certainly unacceptable, morally and very damaging, politically.”

But he argued that in order to effectively confront the anti-Israel left in the party, Democrats must address what he says is the main enabler of its rise: Netanyahu and his policies.

“Netanyahu has been their enabler,” he said of prominent anti-Israel Democrats, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate primary candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Frank was especially exercised by attacks by some settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank, attacks he said are enabled by Netanyahu and his coalition partnership with far-right patrons of the extremist settlers.

“My recommendation to Democrats would be to say, if Netanyahu does not reverse the harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank and substantially cut back on the military attacks, America should announce that we are no longer going to supply him with arms or be otherwise supportive,” he said.

“We’ve now gone to the point where supporting Israel has become unpopular, and that’s all Netanyahu’s doing,” Frank said. “No question that what he’s done is legitimize opposition to the whole notion of Israel, beyond disagreement with the specific actions.”

He sympathized with Jewish voters who feel alienated by Democrats and who could never bring themselves to vote for Trump (whom he reviled — he told reporters that his one regret is that he will not live to see Trump implode.) But he said the way forward is to cut off Netanyahu.

“I understand the dilemma people face if the choice is supporting Israel and everything that Netanyahu is doing and repudiating that,” he said. “We should make it clear that the right position here is to support Israel’s right to exist, but to be unwilling to facilitate what they’re doing militarily and to give them an ultimatum.”

Frank said the United States should actively support Netanyahu’s opposition as a means of leverage. He cited as an example the campaign he helped lead for the release of the spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard.

Frank spearheaded congressional pressure on President Barack Obama in 2010 mostly because he believed Pollard’s sentence was unjust. But he also thought that it would serve as an incentive to Netanyahu to cooperate more closely with the Obama administration on other issues. (The Obama administration engineered Pollard’s parole in 2015 and he now lives in Israel.)

Instead, Netanyahu became even more confrontational and moved further to the right. Now, Frank said, he would dangle the prospect of Pollard’s release before the Israeli electorate as a means of ousting Netanyahu.

“I now think America’s effort should be to support the opposition to Netanyahu,” he said.

Barney Frank, the Jewish Democrat who advocated for LGBTQ rights in Congress and who coauthored the last major finance reform bill, has died at 86.

The former Massachusetts representative died in hospice care at home in Ogunquit, Maine, where he lived with his husband, Jim Ready, close family friends told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Frank served in Congress for 32 years as a progressive until his retirement in 2013. Among his signature accomplishments were co-authoring the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 in response to the banking crisis and pushing for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. military.

In fighting for gay rights, Frank was motivated by his own experience as a gay man. When he came out in 1987, he was the first member of Congress to choose to do so. He became the first member of Congress to enter a same-sex marriage in 2012.

In his last weeks, Frank made an effort to share his warnings for the Democratic Party at a time of change. To JTA, he said party leaders should join with the progressive wing in pressing to cut off aid to Israel until Israeli leaders change their policies — a decision that he had been hard to reach given the liberal Zionism with which he was raised in New Jersey in the years surrounding Israel’s creation.

“I guess I held on longer than I should have to, ‘Well, we can work with them,’” Frank said about the current Israeli government. “But it’s become clear to me, particularly due to what they’re allowing to happen in the West Bank, that it is important morally and politically to repudiate the policy of supporting Israel’s military activity.”

This obituary will be updated.

The only Republican to refrain from supporting Israel in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack will exit Congress following a decisive primary loss on Tuesday.

Rep. Thomas Massie, who has represented Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since 2013, lost to Ed Gallrein, an endorsee of President Donald Trump who drew support from pro-Israel PACs.

Massie conceded the election on Tuesday night — but not without a dig at Gallrein’s purported relationship to Israel.

“I would’ve come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv,” he said in his concession speech.

With almost all ballots counted on Tuesday night, Gallrein had drawn 55% of the votes.

The result means that Massie, the most anti-Israel Republican in Congress and the only Republican to vote at times with far-left Democrats on measures opposing Israel, will leave Congress at the end of the year.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, which long opposed Massie, congratulated Gallrein in an extensive statement that cast the primary as a referendum on the Republican Party’s recent divide over Israel. The party is increasingly split between acolytes of Trump and those who believe Trump has been too accommodating to Israel.

“Kentucky Republicans sent an unmistakable message: there is no place in the Republican Party for those who turn their back on the MAGA agenda,” said CEO Matt Brooks.

He added, “We know that Ed Gallrein, a 5th-generation Kentucky farmer, decorated Navy SEAL, and true MAGA patriot, will serve with honor and distinction, as he has his entire career.”

Brooks criticized both Massie’s record in Congress and his behavior as a candidate, saying, “Notably, Massie’s conduct throughout this campaign — trafficking in antisemitism and bottom-of-the-barrel nativism at a time when Jew-hatred is on the rise — was wildly unacceptable and outrageous from an elected member of Congress.”

A widely condemned pro-Massie campaign ad last week claimed that a Gallrein win would bring “trans woke madness” to Kentucky at the behest of billionaire Jewish Republican donor Paul Singer. The ad placed a rainbow Star of David next to a photo of Singer’s head.

The ad came amid a blitz that watchdogs say made the race the most expensive congressional contest in U.S. history, with an estimated $32.6 million spent according to the advertising tracking firm AdImpact. That includes $5 million from a PAC affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition and a reported $2.6 million from PACs affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby.

Massie’s record in Congress has placed him far outside the Republican mainstream. In October 2023, he voted with the progressive “Squad” against a resolution expressing support for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack. The next month, he was the only member of Congress from either party to vote “no” on a resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist. Last year, Massie called for ending all U.S. military aid to Israel.

Major U.S. Jewish organizations are calling for the quick passage of new bipartisan Senate legislation aimed at protecting Jews and Jewish institutions from antisemitism.

The Jewish American Security Act is sponsored by James Lankford, a Republican from Oregon, and Jacky Rosen, a Jewish Democrat from Nevada. It would require the federal education department to adopt a civil rights strategy to fight antisemitism and would force social media platforms to share more details about how they handle antisemitism online.

The legislation also proposes $1 billion in security funding for houses of worship and other at-risk nonprofits, a key demand in a six-point security proposal that Jewish Federations of North America has been promoting on Capitol Hill.

The legislation was announced Tuesday as hundreds of Jewish advocates traveled to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to promote the call for the $1 billion allocation, which would triple the amount appropriated by Congress this year for security at houses of worship.

“Jewish Americans are being targeted, attacked, and killed simply because of who they are. This alarming trend demands a comprehensive, bipartisan approach that addresses both the seeds and the impacts of this vile hatred,” Rosen, who is famously a former synagogue president, said in a statement.

The bill follows several other recent attempts to advance antisemitism legislation in Congress.

In December, four progressives in the House of Representatives introduced the Antisemitism Response and Prevention Act, which calls for fully funding the federal Office of Civil Rights while also repudiating the Trump administration’s tactics around antisemitism that progressives say “weaponize” antisemitism in support of a repressive agenda. It has not advanced in the Republican-led House.

A Senate bill sponsored by Chuck Schumer, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, meanwhile, failed to advance despite intense advocacy by Jewish groups. It would have enshrined the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which is contested on both the left and the right for its citation of some forms of Israel criticism as antisemitic and examples that some conservative Christians say would constrain their religious expression.

A wide swath of Jewish groups are endorsing the Jewish American Security Act, including JFNA, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Organizations affiliated with the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements of Judaism — which are often split politically — also signed on.

“At this perilous moment of violent antisemitism experienced by congregants, clergy, and congregations in our own Reform Jewish community and beyond, the need for meaningful steps to bolster security and the fight against hate is vital,” Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said in a statement. “The Jewish American Security Act strengthens the government tools and funding that will be available to help us meet this moment and uphold the American commitment to religious freedom.”

One group that opposed the Antisemitism Awareness Act is listed among supporters of the new legislation: the Nexus Project, which launched to fight antisemitism and simultaneously “speak out when fears of antisemitism are cynically exploited to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel or US policy.” It is a critic of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

The Nexus Project did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Unlike the Antisemitism Awareness Act, the new legislation does not seek to enshrine IHRA into law. While the legislation’s prognosis is not clear, the omission could prove to be one less hurdle in a Congress where appearing to support Israel is increasingly a third rail.

Lankford said in a statement that Jewish Americans are facing “an unprecedented surge in antisemitism” and that action was needed.

“These are not just numbers, these are real stories impacting real people,” he said.

Chris Rabb — a progressive state lawmaker who is staunchly critical of Israel — is poised to become the newest member of Congress’ “Squad” after winning a Democratic primary Tuesday in Philadelphia.

Rabb had made opposition to Israel and AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, a focal point of his campaign in Pennsylvania’s Third Congressional District. 

He also recently made headlines when it was reported that his Instagram account had shared a post saying the Bondi Beach massacre was a false flag by “Zionists”; he disavowed the post and said it was shared by a former staffer.

NBC News called the election on Tuesday night.

“They told me this wasn’t possible. That’s what they said,” Rabb said during a victory speech. “I don’t know who they are, but I know who we are. I’m looking at we the people. And I’m not talking about we the people 250 years ago. That was a much smaller we. I’m talking about the aggressive fabulosity of this we.”

Rabb’s top two opponents were Sharif Street, a state senator who garnered support from J Street and figures in the political establishment, including Philadelphia’s mayor and Sen. Cory Booker of N.J., and Ala Stanford, a pediatric surgeon who has faced scrutiny for being boosted by a group that’s alleged to be a shell organization for AIPAC.

With about 84% of expected votes in, Rabb held a strong lead with 44% of the vote; Street received 29.5% of counted votes, and Stanford was in third with 24.1%.

Rabb will be the Democratic nominee for a November general election that he is almost assured to win in the country’s “bluest House district.”

At a time when Democratic voters are overwhelmingly sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis, the turnout for Rabb, who has centered pro-Palestinian advocacy in his bid for Congress, may very well have signaled how those sentiments translate to electoral results.

Before Rabb, efforts to elect a new “Squad” member had fallen short this cycle, though those candidates — like Nida Allam in North Carolina — were up against incumbents, or, as in the case of Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois, lacked Rabb’s experience in elected office.

Rabb’s campaign picked up momentum in recent weeks. He was endorsed by a number of left-wing House representatives including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and Summer Lee, who is also from Pennsylvania. He also rallied alongside the progressive streamer Hasan Piker, a staunch critic of Israel who has been accused of antisemitism, in Philadelphia.

If elected in November, Rabb’s platform would make him one of the harshest critics of Israel in Congress. He supports a complete embargo on arms sales to Israel. He posted on X last week that “the Nakba never ended,” and said he would co-sponsor a resolution with Omar and Tlaib to “recognize the Nakba and reaffirm Palestinian refugees’ right to return.” 

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is Jewish and has sponsored the Block the Bombs to Israel Act, endorsed Rabb. He was also endorsed by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, and a slew of left-wing groups including Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party, as well as groups that explicitly work to counter AIPAC such as Track AIPAC and PAL PAC.  

“We will be with Congressman Rabb every step of the way in the fight to abolish ICE, free Palestine and win Medicare for All,” the DSA wrote on X Tuesday night.

The super PAC American Priorities, which seeks to be a counterweight to AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $400,000 boosting Rabb, according to FEC filings.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish and supports a continued U.S.-Israel relationship, was reportedly rumored to be working behind the scenes to quietly derail Rabb’s campaign; Shapiro has not publicly weighed in on the race and did not respond to a request for comment.

The latest polling data to come out of this race was collected in early April, and had Stanford leading with 28% with Rabb trailing by 5 percentage points and Street in third at 16%. But much has changed in the weeks since those polls, including a significant mobilization from the left to back Rabb.

The poll was also conducted by 314 Action Fund, a political action committee that endorsed Stanford. A few weeks after the polling was released, Drop Site News, which has an anti-Israel bent, reported that the group is operating as a shell organization for AIPAC, the way other groups did in Illinois races earlier this year. AIPAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stanford’s reported support from AIPAC thrust her into the spotlight on Israel. During a tense moment at a candidates’ forum last month, Stanford was pressed by an audience member on whether she believed Israel was committing a genocide.

She refused to use the term to describe Israel’s military actions, and said, “For Israelis who have been accused of committing it, it’s hurtful for them.”

Stanford has been endorsed by the district’s representative, Dwight Evans, who is retiring at the end of this term, and a handful of other U.S. House representatives including Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan from Pennsylvania. Hawaii’s Jewish governor, Josh Green, also endorsed Stanford.

Meanwhile, Street had the chance to become Pennsylvania’s first Muslim member of Congress. He has been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he should be prosecuted for war crimes, but is far more moderate on Israel than Rabb and made the subject less central to his campaign messaging. Like Stanford, he has not referred to Israel’s military actions as a “genocide” and advocates for a two-state solution, as well as continued U.S. aid to Israel.

Booker traveled to Philadelphia on Monday to stump for Street.

Street is the son of former Philadelphia mayor John Street and has the support of a number of state legislators and City Council members, as well as the Philadelphia City Democratic Committee. Rue Landau, the only Jewish member of the City Council and its first openly LGBTQ member, endorsed Street. 

Street was listed as “primary approved” on the website of liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J Street, which has recently drifted to a position that advocates for continued weapons sales, but a phasing out of military subsidies, to Israel.

Irish novelist Sally Rooney, who drew headlines in 2021 for refusing a Hebrew translation of one of her books, is now publishing her latest novel in Hebrew through an Israeli publisher approved by boycott activists.

The Hebrew translation of “Intermezzo,” due out next month, will be published by November Books in collaboration with the left-wing Israeli news sites +972 Magazine and Local Call. The arrangement was announced this week alongside an interview Rooney conducted with Palestinian Irish activist Samir Eskanda in The Guardian.

Rooney’s decision marks an unusual but not unprecedented attempt to work within the framework of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which has long called on artists and cultural figures to avoid working with Israeli institutions it considers complicit in Israeli government policies toward Palestinians.

In 2021, Rooney declined to sell Hebrew translation rights for her novel “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” to the Israeli publisher that had previously released her books in Hebrew. At the time, she said she supported the BDS movement and would not work with an Israeli publisher unless it is willing to “publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”

That move prompted backlash in Israel and beyond, including calls to boycott Rooney’s work. Israeli bookstore chains reportedly removed some of her books from shelves.

Now, Rooney, 35, says she believes publishing “Intermezzo” in Hebrew through November Books is compatible with the boycott campaign because the publisher does not operate in West Bank settlements, does not receive Israeli government funding and has endorsed Palestinian rights.

“Though my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language,” Rooney told The Guardian. “I’m very pleased that ‘Intermezzo’ will soon be available in Hebrew with November Books.”

Rooney added that she had stayed in contact with PACBI, a founding arm of the BDS movement that advises artists on cultural boycott issues, “to try to ensure that I was upholding both the letter and the spirit of the institutional boycott.”

Haggai Matar, the executive director of +972, said BDS is willing to work with Israeli publishers if they express that they are not “complicit” with the Israeli state, do not accept government funding nor operate within the settlements.   

BDS also demands that its targets recognize the rights of Palestinians under international law, including the right of return of Palestinians seeking to reclaim their former homes in modern-day Israel. While Israel and many of its supporters consider such claims an existential threat, Matar said it “can be implemented in all sorts of ways.”  

Asked why +972 was eager to help publish Rooney’s book, Mattar told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was an opportunity to “dispel myths that BDS is antisemitic or aimed at all Israelis.”

“To take someone as famous as Sally and as outspoken on the Palestinian issue was a great opportunity to say, ‘Look, Israelis aren’t outcasts. This is not about our identity.’ It is an attempt by Sally and the BDS movement to not be involved with organizations that are complicit with apartheid or war crimes. Once you [act and say that you aren’t] you are not subject to boycott at all.”  

Since Oct. 28, 2024, more than 7,000 writers have signed onto a boycott of “complicit” Israeli literary institutions. The boycott said it had evaluated 98 Israeli publishers and found that only November Books met its conditions for exemption.

November Books is a small Israeli nonprofit that distributes its books mostly through independent bookstores. It has previously published Hebrew translations of works by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Naomi Klein, both of whom support the boycott. 

“Our task as a movement is to channel anger at Israel’s genocide in Gaza into the most meaningful initiatives,” said Rooney. Israel denies that the war in Gaza is a genocide, and supporters have called the war in Gaza a proportionate response to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 251 were taken hostage. 

Rooney also acknowledged what she described as inconsistencies in her earlier decisions. Rooney said that while she had supported BDS as a consumer, she had initially sold Hebrew translation rights for her first two novels to an Israeli publisher before concluding that mainstream Israeli cultural institutions were implicated in state policies she opposed.

“By the time it came to selling the rights for my third book in 2021, things had changed,” Rooney said. “I had come to a better understanding of the complicity of the Israeli culture sector in that apartheid system.”

Rooney’s novels, nearly all global bestsellers, have been translated into more than 40 languages and adapted for television by the BBC and Hulu.

The literary world has become a nasty if bloodless battleground since Oct. 7. Jewish writers say they have been targeted as “Zionists” even when their views on Israel aren’t public, bookstores have cancelled publicity events for Jewish authors, and that it has become more difficult to publish works with Jewish themes.

Meanwhile, Rooney asserted that “people” had warned that her decision to boycott Israel would harm her career, suggesting to her that she “had no idea what I was up against.”

“In reality, I have gone on writing and publishing happily since 2021,” she said.

Matar rejects the criticism that the cultural boycott, by targeting the literary and artistic community, only harms politically liberal voices and their ability to shape public opinion.

BDS, he told JTA, is a “nonviolent tool asking a publisher ‘to stand by us and not participate in our oppression.’ These are very minimal demands, not silencing or too heavy a burden.” 

A Jewish man says he was assaulted early Monday morning in Golders Green, a heavily Orthodox neighborhood of London where residents are on high alert after recent antisemitic attacks.

In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, London’s Metropolitan Police said the assault was being treated as an antisemitic hate crime and said the victim received hospital treatment for injuries to his face and back. No arrests have been made.

The victim, identified as Shalev Ben Yakar, 22, told YNet that he was attacked after he stepped out of an apartment in the heavily Jewish neighborhood at around 2 a.m. Monday local time to take a phone call.

Ben Yakar claimed that, after hearing him speaking Hebrew, a group of five or six men began chasing him and shouting insults at him in Arabic. The group eventually caught up with him, he said, dragging him across the road and tearing his clothes.

“They kicked me like an animal and didn’t stop,” Ben Yakar told the BBC. “They were shouting ‘Are you Jewish’? I was thinking they could kill me.”

The incident comes as Jews are on high alert in Golders Green, where two Jewish men were stabbed on the street last month and four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service, were set ablaze in March.

“Incidents like this underline the very real dangers facing Jewish communities,” the Community Security Trust, Britain’s main antisemitism watchdog, said in a statement about Ben-Yakar’s assault.

The Jewish Leadership Council, a British Jewish umbrella organization, wrote in a post on X that the incident marked “yet another appalling attack in the heart of the Jewish community in Golders Green.”

“There must be a robust response from law enforcement which demonstrates that those who violently attack Jews will face the full force of the law,” the post continued.

The Metropolitan Police have rolled out a host of new initiatives meant to keep Jews safe, including forming a team of 100 officers to patrol Jewish communities specifically. The announcement of the special team earlier this month followed an emergency meeting convened by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has denounced the spate of antisemitic attacks.

Two new polls of American voters have found declining public support for Israel and growing discontent among Republicans over President Donald Trump’s direction on Israel.

According to a New York Times/Siena poll published Monday, 38% of potential Republican voters said they would like to see the next Republican candidate for president move “in a new direction” on Israel, as opposed to following Trump’s lead.

Nearly a third of potential Republican voters also said they believed Trump had been “too supportive of Israel,” according to the poll of 1,500 U.S. voters this month, which has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

The poll adds to growing signals that Israel is becoming a fault line within the Republican Party as well as on the left, where it has been increasingly divisive for years. In a sign of tensions surrounding the split by Republican leadership, Congress’ most anti-Israel Republican is facing a steep primary challenge from a Trump-backed Republican on Tuesday.

MAGA-aligned Republicans who support Trump in particular are more likely than other Trump voters to back the Israeli government, according to a different poll released last week by Politico.

The survey asked respondents who voted for Trump whether they identified with the president’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Just over half said they identified as MAGA.

The Politico poll, which was conducted in partnership with Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, found that nearly half of MAGA Trump voters say they back Israel and approve of the actions of its current government, while just 29% of non-MAGA Trump voters say the same.

The Politico poll found that 41% of MAGA Trump voters believe that Israel is justified in its military campaign in Gaza, compared to 31% of non-Maga Trump voters. The poll surveyed 2,035 U.S. adults online from April 11 to 14 and had an overall margin of sampling error of ±2.2 percentage points.

Trump voters were also split over the perceived influence of the Israeli government over U.S. foreign policy, with 22% of MAGA voters saying they believed the Israeli government had too much influence, compared to 32% of non-MAGA voters.

When asked about the spending of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby, on U.S. elections, a topic that has increasingly split American Jews, 20% of MAGA Trump voters said they oppose the group’s “efforts to influence US elections,” compared to 31% of non-MAGA voters. AIPAC has increasingly emerged as a bogeyman in U.S. politics.

The New York Times/Siena poll found Trump’s overall approval rating had sunk to 37%, with 64% of American voters saying they believed Trump made the wrong decision entering the Iran war. Among Republicans, support for Trump’s decision to enter the war was much higher, at 70%.

The Times poll also also found that Americans are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians  over Israelis, with 37% saying they sympathized more with Palestinians compared with 35% who say they sympathize more with Israelis.

The finding is in line with a growing number since the beginning of the war with Gaza that have shown growing sympathy for Palestinians among American voters.

When asked whether the United States should provide additional economic and military support to Israel, 57% of American voters overall said they opposed doing so, compared with 37% who supported it.  Among Republicans, 66% said they supported additional support to Israel versus 30% who opposed.

On the opening night of his world tour beginning in Amsterdam on Saturday, global superstar Harry Styles backed a brief pro-Palestinian chant from the crowd. It was his first public comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after years of expressing an affinity for Jewish culture.

The Amsterdam concert Saturday was the first of his Together, Together tour, held at the Johan Cruijff Arena.

Following Styles’ remarks about “changing the world together,” in between songs, an attendee shouted, “Viva, Viva Palestina” (meaning, “Long Live Palestine”), to which Styles replied, “Correct.”

Harry Styles responds to fan yelling “Viva Palestina” at his concert in Amsterdam:

“Correct”

(https://t.co/fIg4X3XDfO) pic.twitter.com/NpHKGfFMUl

— Pop Base (@PopBase) May 18, 2026

It’s the first time the 32-year-old has made any public remarks on the conflict, but one of Styles’ tour charity partners is Choose Love, a humanitarian organization that works with displaced communities around the world, including those from Gaza.

Styles is newly engaged to actor Zoë Kravitz, who is Jewish, and as a teenager, he often tweeted transliterated Hebrew well wishes for various Jewish holidays. While competing on the British talent show The X Factor in 2010, where he rose to stardom, Styles stayed with the Orthodox Jewish Winston family, with whom he became close and considers mentors. In 2014, Styles announced that his New Year’s resolution was to learn Hebrew.

Saturday’s show was the latest demonstration of pro-Palestine solidarity in the concert space since the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Some performers have integrated pro-Palestine activism into their concerts by creating large displays with flags and visuals accusing Israel of genocide. Others have called for an end to the war in Gaza, and some have dedicated entire concerts to raising funds for Palestinian charities.

Other articles, including some who are Jewish, have faced hecklers making pro-Palestine comments who were later removed by security. In Britain, a member of the Irish band Kneecap faced terrorism charges for holding a Hezbollah flag, though they were later dropped. Kneecap has been vocally pro-Palestine since they formed in 2017.

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, took aim at the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street on Monday, calling the group “duplicitous” and a “cancer within the Jewish community.”

Speaking at the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism meeting at Museum of the Bible in Washington, Leiter decried J Street’s recent opposition to continued U.S. military subsidies to Israel, a position that has been echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent months.

“How can you be pro-Israel and advocate for an arms embargo on a state that’s fighting a seven-front war against Iranian proxies?” Leiter said.

Leiter, a Netanyahu appointee and former settler leader, also criticized the group’s self-description as “pro-Israel, pro-peace and pro-democracy,” telling those gathered in Washington D.C. that “if they said that they were pro-Palestinian, I wouldn’t have a problem meeting with them.”

“But when you come and say in such a two-faced manner, ‘We’re pro-Israel, we’re pro democracy,’ there’s a democratically elected government in Israel,” Leiter continued. “You don’t like Netanyahu, make aliyah, vote in the next election and express yourself. Don’t say you’re ‘pro-democracy’ and decry and defy the position of the democratic government of Israel.”

Leiter’s criticism of the pro-Israel lobby comes as the group has increasingly departed from the positions of other mainstream pro-Israel groups. Last year, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said that he had been “persuaded” by arguments that Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza.

Ben-Ami shot back at Leiter’s remarks in a post on X Monday, writing that the Israeli ambassador should be “engaging seriously with us” instead of “calling us names.”

J Street is a longtime target of the Israeli government. In early 2023, Diaspora minister Amichai Chikli called the group a “hostile organization that harms the interests of the state of Israel” after it criticized him online.

Ben-Ami wrote Monday that the group represents a “large and growing segment of the American Jewish community that supports and cares deeply about Israel but opposes policies we believe are making it less secure and more isolated.”

“Serving effectively as Israel’s ambassador to the US requires engaging with those disagreements, not attacking the patriotism or integrity of fellow Jews,” Ben-Ami added.