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This Week:

• RJC Leadership Summit Starts Tomorrow!
• Watching the New York’s Mayor’s Race
• NRO: A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism
• RJC in the News
• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets
• Upcoming Events

RJC Leadership Summit Starts Tomorrow!

In just 24 hours, the biggest political event of the year will kick off in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:

Republican officials are set to appear in Las Vegas later this week at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition on the Strip.

...Scheduled to run from Thursday to Sunday, the sold-out "Annual Leadership Summit" will be hosted at The Venetian.

Our great lineup of speakers includes leading government officials, including members of the Trump Administration, members of the US Senate and House, and governors.

We are honored to have Israel's ambassador to the US and Israel's ambassador to the UN on our program, as well as the US Ambassador to Israel, who will join us by livestream.

The weekend will include outstanding commentary and analysis from "The Great One" Mark Levin, radio host Sid Rosenberg, political commentator and strategist Scott Jennings, author and commentator Douglas Murray, and pollster and West Point professor Frank Luntz.

We'll also hear from pro-Israel influencers and activists like Officer Brandon Tatum,

Emmy award-winning journalist Stella Escobedo, and TV personality and pro-Israel activist Siggy Flicker.

Zvika Klein, Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post, explains why it is important to him to attend the RJC Summit:

Let’s start with coalition maintenance... Good politics is not about liking every note in a coalition’s soundtrack. It is about recognizing who shows up when it matters and giving them real work to do.

There is also generational work. The American conversation about Israel has not only polarized, but it has also decoupled from its historical context. Younger Americans, including younger Republicans, have been formed by social media and trends. They know slogans, not the long memory of 1948, 1967, 1973, or the events of the second intifada from 2000 to 2005. An organization like the RJC should function as both a political lever and a civic school.

...The third reason is so simple and a basic trait in Judaism: institutional gratitude. Movements are built by people, some of whom pay a personal price... If you value that kind of persistence, you don’t applaud from afar. You show up, say thank you, and invite more partners into the work.

...I am going because I want to empower the allies who are already with us, nudge the wavering, and complicate the minds of the young who have only been handed slogans. I am going to honor those who took the heat when writing checks and making calls was unfashionable, and to challenge them kindly, firmly to invest just as much in the long game of education as in the short game of elections.

NewsMax reports on a special element of the weekend's program:

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) will honor undefeated boxing legend Floyd "Money" Mayweather with its World Champion for Israel Award on Saturday at the group's Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas.

In an email to members, the RJC said Mayweather is being recognized for his "big heart" and "generous support for the people of Israel during the war in Gaza."

..."He has spoken out against antisemitism and anti-Israel hate here at home as well. He is a champion for Israel and the Jewish people."

Watching the New York’s Mayor’s Race

Bernard-Henri Lévy writes at the Wall Street Journal that Europeans are worried by what they see of Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year old radical leftist and Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City:

The man the polls say is the likely next mayor is a resolute supporter of boycotting the only Jewish state on the planet. He denies that the country the survivors of the pogroms and the Shoah have built over the past 77 years has the right to exist as a Jewish state.

He doesn’t hide that he came to politics through the Palestinian cause and thanks to it. He adopts as his own, without qualms, the lies that Israel has engaged in organized famine and genocide. He has said he would order the prime minister of Israel arrested if he comes to the city for the United Nations General Assembly. He compares Palestinian terrorists to the insurgents of the Warsaw ghetto.

Lévy writes that if Mamdani wins:

It would be a black day for the Jews of New York. An insult to the memory of Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel and Leonard Bernstein. A spit in the face of Emma Lazarus, the poet whose words of welcome to the humiliated, afflicted, nameless and stateless who arrived at Ellis Island are engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

It would be a beginning of rupture of the age-old pact between the world’s most cosmopolitan city and the people of the Book. It would be an earthquake in the history of Judaism: At the hour when the threat of annihilation was everywhere, New York was the last place on the planet where Judaism and Jews could not only be saved, but reinvented.

Beyond the Jews, it would be the entire Democratic Party turning its back on the legacy of Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton to rally to a faction that, under the cover of "intersectionality," confuses the green flag of Hamas with that of the workers.

Further reading:

• Hoffman: Mamdani's Democratic Socialist Party Seeks Overthrow of America—Starting with New York City

• Lake: The DSA Is More Radical Than Ever—and Winning

NRO: A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism

Tucker Carlson hosted antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes on his show this week. In a friendly interview, Carlson gave the floor - and the influence of his platform and brand - to someone who is an open Holocaust denier and admirer of Adolf Hitler. The interview is painful to watch, as each man gives free expression to hateful stereotypes of Jews and Israel.

The editors of National Review have published an important editorial in which they strongly denounced Carlson and Fuentes and called for conservatives to resist the efforts of Carlson and others to "remake the Republican Party and the conservative movement into one that is hostile toward Israel and the Jewish people."

The editors write:

In his appearance [with Carlson Tucker], Fuentes stated that the "big challenge" to unifying the country against tribal interests was "organized Jewry in America," and he expressed admiration for Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin. He did not receive any pushback from Carlson.

...Carlson stated during his interview that he thinks [Sen. Ted] Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and other figures who are Christian and support Israel have been infected by a "brain virus." About these "Christian Zionists," he said: "I dislike them more than anybody. Because it’s Christian heresy, and I’m offended by that as a Christian."

While people like Tucker Carlson are trying to mainstream this antisemitism on the Right, Republicans and conservatives at all levels overwhelmingly support Israel and the Jewish people:

...Carlson’s sway, though, is currently limited by the fact that President [Donald] Trump — who happens to like Jews and who has been the strongest supporter of Israel of any US president in history — is in charge of the Republican Party and ultimately defines MAGA.

In June, Trump ignored Carlson and joined Israel’s effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program, which was successful in neutralizing a threat that had been looming over the Middle East for decades without any US casualties. Carlson had predicted that it would trigger World War III and that it could kill thousands of Americans within a week. Trump dismissed him as "kooky Tucker Carlson."

...The idea that it should be seen as the America First position to oppose Israel and American Jewry is not only a moral abomination; it makes no sense. Israel is a technologically innovative, staunchly pro-American nation in the heart of a strategically important region. Over the past several years, with US support, Israeli actions have weakened the anti-American terrorist group the Houthis; neutered Hezbollah (the terrorist group that slaughtered 241 US servicemembers in the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing); and crippled the nuclear program of a nation that has for decades vowed "Death to America." It isn’t pro-Israel protesters in the US who are burning American flags and calling for the "total eradication of Western civilization" — it is the so-called pro-Palestine movement. It wasn’t Israelis who handed out candy to celebrate the September 11 attacks — that was Palestinians.

The whole article is worthy of your time.

RJC in the News

Markstein on KXNT Radio with Alan Stock

On Monday morning, RJC National Political Director Sam Markstein was interviewed on Las Vegas' news-talk radio station in a discussion of the release of the living hostages and what comes next for Gaza, of the upcoming RJC Leadership Summit, and the importance of defeating Zohran Mamdani and preventing him from becoming mayor of New York.

Join the Celebration! RJC at 40

From our start in 1985 to today, the RJC has been a unique, outspoken, and trusted voice for Jewish Republicans, bringing our message to Republican decision makers and the broader Jewish community.

Please consider making a gift to the RJC today in honor of our 40 years of growth and success.

We need your support to keep moving forward!

Thank you!

Short Takes

Lake: Did America have a functioning President in 2024?

According to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the republic really did not have a chief executive in the last year of [President Joe] Biden’s term.

...So this highly irregular process [of preemptively pardoning Biden family members and friends] was conducted—essentially—through a game of telephone. There is no contemporaneous record that proves the president verbally authorized the pardons. And they were not signed by the president’s hand, but rather an autopen.

Bragdon: Democrats are entirely to blame for the coming food stamp cuts

[President Donald] Trump is ready to reopen the federal government at any time. Every Republican in Congress except two (Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie) has now voted to reopen the federal government immediately. They have passed a bill through the House — which Trump is ready to sign — that would fully fund the government, including food stamps for all of the nearly 42 million people on the program. Republicans could hardly be clearer that they want to keep food stamp payments flowing without interruption.

The problem is that Democrats are blocking them. Against a bipartisan Senate majority that has voted to reopen the government, a minority composed entirely of Democrats is filibustering the Senate bill to end the shutdown. In other words, Democrats are holding food stamp recipients hostage. They’re completely to blame for any cuts that come.

The JC: Israeli professor Michael Ben-Gad remains defiant after ‘beheading’ threat

Michael Ben-Gad, a professor of economics at City, St George’s, University of London, laughed off the threats from those he characterised as "thugs" in a defiant interview, demonstrating once again that he will not be bullied or intimidated.

In recent weeks, the lecturer has faced a targeted campaign to oust him from his job – which has included posters on campus branding him a "terrorist", a masked mob storming his classroom and even a threat to behead him.

However speaking to comedian Josh Howie on his GB News show Free Speech Nation, the academic – who was conscripted to serve in the IDF in the 1980s – once again made it clear that he is not going anywhere, and far from feeling scared, he is merely angry on behalf of his students.

The professor's response to the "thugs" is terrific - watch the interview here.

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