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The Republican Jewish Coalition announced its endorsement of Mazi Pilip for the February 2024 special election in New York’s Third Congressional District. The special election is to fill the seat vacated by the expulsion of disgraced George Santos from the US House of Representatives.

RJC CEO Matt Brooks said:

Mazi Pilip has a truly inspiring story: an Ethiopian Jew from a small village whose family was rescued to Israel in 1991, she was educated in Israel and served as a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces. Now a proud American, Pilip won election to New York's Nassau County Legislature for the 10th district, where she has served admirably and inspires Long Island residents with her dedicated public service. Just last month, she won reelection by a 20-point margin in the Democrat-majority district.

Pilip is a remarkable candidate whose strength of character and firm principles are clear to anyone who looks at her life story and her work. This stands in stark contrast to her Democrat opponent, career politician Tom Suozzi, who focuses on himself rather than the people of NY-3.

Winning this battleground seat is critical to maintaining the GOP majority in the House of Representatives, and as antisemitism continues to spike across the country, electing candidates like Mazi Pilip is more important than ever. The RJC is proud to endorse Mazi Pilip in the special Congressional election and looks forward to working with her long into the future.

Niall Ferguson examines "the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of 'woke' progressives, adherents of 'critical race theory,' and apologists for Islamist extremism." He writes:

Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill ethical values has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich. A university degree, far from inoculating Germans against Nazism, made them more likely to embrace it.

…The lesson of German history for American academia should by now be clear. In Germany, to use the legalistic language of 2023, "speech crossed into conduct." The "final solution of the Jewish question" began as speech—to be precise, it began as lectures and monographs and scholarly articles. It began in the songs of student fraternities. With extraordinary speed after 1933, however, it crossed into conduct: first, systematic pseudo-legal discrimination and ultimately, a program of technocratic genocide.

The Holocaust remains an exceptional historical crime—distinct from other acts of organized lethal violence directed against other minorities—precisely because it was perpetrated by a highly sophisticated nation-state that had within its borders the world's finest universities. That is why American universities cannot regard antisemitism as just another expression of "hate," no different from, say, Islamophobia—a neologism that should not be mentioned in the same breath.

Liel Leibovitz writes at the Wall Street Journal about the timeless meaning of Hanukkah and the hope it offers American Jews today:

Mattathias' war wasn't merely a rebellion against the empire. It was a reminder to his generation of sophisticated Jews, eager to fit in, that assimilation wasn't an option. The Greeks weren't interested in a gorgeous mosaic of diverse peoples and cultures. They demanded submission and the erasure of anyone who insisted on the dignity of difference. Most Jews were too entranced by the empire's promise to appreciate this. It took a shocking war to remind them that they were Jews, forever standing outside of history, resented for refusing to replace their ancient ways with something more modern, slick and ephemeral.

Two millennia later, American Jews are learning the same lesson.

...American Jews, as a consequence, are having their Mattathias moment. Though they aren’t picking up the sword, they’re becoming much more comfortable than ever setting themselves apart. You can see them filing into synagogues they’d never visited before, or buying Star of David necklaces to make sure they’re easily identified as Jews, even though or precisely because they may pay for it with a nasty look or worse. You can hear them at Shabbat dinners and read their posts on social media helping one another recover from the betrayal of so many people they once considered friends. Last month nearly 300,000 of them marched on the National Mall in Washington—the largest pro-Israel gathering in American history—to make sure they were counted as Jews.

The men and women who followed the ancient priest to victory never looked back. The dynasty Mattathias founded, the Hasmoneans, governed over a proud and independent Jewish community for more than a century. They witnessed and nurtured a religious and cultural awakening—much like what we’re seeing today. May it burn bright for decades to come.

Since October 7, antisemitic incidents, including violence, have been on the rise. On college campuses and in city streets, radicalized people - often young and ignorant of the facts – shout "Free Palestine" and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" without any idea of which river, or which sea.

The halls of American government are also experiencing this antisemitic "self-expression" by malicious or clueless people who are effectively supporting Hamas's attack on Israel. Here are few recent examples:

• Breitbart: A congressional staffer shouted “Free Palestine!” on Wednesday at Republican Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), in a hallway on Capitol Hill. Miller, a Marine veteran, is Jewish and pro-Israel.

• Epoch Times: A group of Biden administration staffers held a vigil outside the White House on Wednesday night, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas conflict. The vigil, organized by a self-described interfaith group of political appointees, administration staffers, and civil service career staff, featured a banner reading, "President Biden, your staff demands a ceasefire," and what appeared to be candles arranged to spell out "ceasefire."

• NBC News: A group of White House interns joined the growing list of administration officials applying internal pressure to President Joe Biden to call for a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, sending him a letter late Tuesday that accuses him of having "ignored" the "pleas of the American people."

• PRESS-TV (Iran): Nearly 140 staffers from the United States Department of Homeland Security have denounced the DHS over its lack of support for Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

• Washington Free Beacon: On Nov. 8, for example, more than 100 congressional staffers walked out of their jobs to demand a ceasefire against Hamas. While the staffers wore masks to conceal their identities, the Free Beacon identified one participant—Yousof Omeish, who serves as a staff assistant to Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.).

House launches email address to report college antisemitism

The House Education and the Workforce Committee, chaired by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), announced Wednesday it was launching an email address that could be used to report antisemitism on college campuses. The announcement says college students, faculty and other community members can email [email protected] to file reports of antisemitism on campus.

Orthodox Jewish city council candidate ‘hopes to ignite the flame of Yiddishkeit’

Last week, RJC Arizona State Co-Chair Adam Kwasman, Scottsdale resident and former Republican state legislator, announced his intention to run for the Scottsdale City Council. Kwasman and his family are members and volunteers of Congregation Beth Tefillah in Scottsdale and Chabad of Phoenix. He is excited about the possibility of becoming the lone Orthodox Jew elected in Arizona. “I proudly wear my kippah and tzitzit in my campaign material,” he told Jewish News in an email. Kwasman also heads the Arizona chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition with his wife, Orit [Kwasman], and said that his conservative bona fides could be put to better use in one of the three council seats that are up for grabs in the next citywide election.

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