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This Week:

• El-Sayed's Primary Win Raises Questions
• RJC in the News

• NY Man Who Killed Cara Trager Also Charged with Vandalizing a Kosher Restaurant

• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets
• Upcoming Events

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RJC in the News

Fox News: Fetterman wins praise for 'guts' after going toe-to-toe with Jon Stewart over Israel support

The Republican Jewish Coalition commented to Fox News Digital: "Here’s some free advice, for a Democratic Party that has totally lost its mind and is hemorrhaging Jewish support: don’t be a clown like Jon Stewart, have some guts like John Fetterman."

Jewish Insider: Republicans betting Jewish voters swing Rogers' way if El-Sayed wins primary

"I think that Jewish voters and many Democrats in general feel" the party "has moved away from them," Bobby Schostak, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who sits on the Republican Jewish Coalition's board, told Jewish Insider, calling [Mike] Rogers "unconditionally and unapologetically pro-Israel and part of the fight against antisemitism in America."

He predicted that Jewish Democrats "are going to flock to" Rogers "come November if [Abdul] El-Sayed wins the nomination," referring, among other things, to the candidate's refusal to distance himself from the antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker and controversial remarks following a foiled terrorist attack against a synagogue in Michigan in March in which he said, "Hurt people do hurt people."

… Sam Markstein, a spokesperson for the RJC, which has endorsed Rogers, said that "Michigan's open US Senate seat is at the center of the political battlefield" in the fight for control of the upper chamber.

Jewish Insider: Stevens concedes and endorses El-Sayed, as GOP attacks his candidacy as 'dangerous'

Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, declared in a statement that [Abdul] El-Sayed is the "most antisemitic US Senate candidate in America" and called on Jewish Democrats, who he said could prove "decisive" in the November general election, to back [Mike] Rogers.

"Abdul El-Sayed is a direct threat to Michigan's Jewish community," Brooks said. "El-Sayed has called the government of the Jewish state as 'evil' as Hamas, 'struggled' to say that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, and empathized with a terrorist who tried to murder Jewish schoolchildren at Temple Israel in the Detroit suburbs — and yet, Michigan Democrats just picked him as their nominee for the United States Senate."

JNS: 'AP' calls Michigan primary for El-Sayed, RJC says Dems elected 'most antisemitic US Senate candidate in America' 

Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, stated on Wednesday … "Michigan's Jewish community does not need this explained to them. They lived it. They watched the smoke rise over Walnut Lake Road in March. Then they watched Abdul El-Sayed reach for a microphone and offer his rationale for why the attack happened: not to blame the terrorist but to place the blame 6,000 miles away and the burden on the Jews of West Bloomfield," the RJC leader stated. "Their own rabbi called it what it was: offensive. El-Sayed later told his own supporters that saying it was a 'risk.' It wasn't a risk, but it was a clear revelation."

The RJC referred to El-Sayed as "the most antisemitic US Senate candidate in America."

El-Sayed's "campaign's primary organizing principle is that a pro-Israel Jewish American advocacy group is a hidden hand behind everything wrong in Michigan—an argument so ugly that Haley Stevens herself called it blatant antisemitism."

"There is nothing complicated about the choice this November," Brooks stated. "Mike Rogers is a distinguished Army veteran and former FBI special agent, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee. He spent fourteen years in Congress as one of the most reliable pro-America, pro-Israel voices in the House, and he has been unflinching about confronting antisemitism wherever it appears."

"To our friends in Michigan's Jewish community, including the tens of thousands who have voted Democrat their entire adult lives and now find themselves politically homeless: this is the moment for real change and action," he said. "There are more than 100,000 Jewish voters in the Wolverine State. We are not a rounding error; we are the decisive margin. Mike Rogers has earned your vote."

NY Times: After Michigan Loss, AIPAC Weighs a Second Effort to Defeat El-Sayed

"The days when we are told to shut up and be nice are over — that's not what is going to happen here," said Sam Markstein, the political director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a national organization with several AIPAC donors on its board. "We are not going to be bullied, we are not going to be slandered. We are going to double down and we are going to do what we need to win."

"We'd rather be respected and alive than loved and dead," he added.

Washington Examiner: Jewish Democrats grapple with el-Sayed victory as Republicans seize opening in Michigan Senate race

[N]ational Republican strategists are moving quickly to expand their footprint in the state. Sam Markstein, the communications director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, said Michigan has become one of the group's top national priorities following [Abdul] el-Sayed's nomination.

"Michigan is clearly the center of the political battlefield for us this year now after this primary," Markstein told the Washington Examiner. "Historically, we have gotten very engaged when we prioritize states that are important and races that are as important as this."

Markstein pointed to precinct-level results in Jewish-heavy communities such as West Bloomfield, Southfield, Oak Park, and Bloomfield Township, where Stevens significantly outperformed her statewide margins, as evidence that moderate Democrats are open to crossing party lines.

"I think that presents a big opportunity not just for the RJC to continue to move more Jewish voters into the Republican Party, but for Mike Rogers to move more Jewish voters into his Senate campaign and for victory in November," Markstein said, calling the matchup a "binary choice."

See the full RJC press release on El-Sayed's victory here.

NY Man Who Killed Cara Trager Also Charged with Vandalizing a Kosher Restaurant

The Republican Jewish Coalition joins in mourning the death in June of Cara Trager, a beloved wife and mother, a writer for Newsday, and a prominent community leader. Her husband, Michael Trager, has been a member of the RJC leadership for nearly two decades.

Cara and Michael Trager were walking across a major street near their home when a speeding car caused a three-car chain-reaction collision at the intersection. Dawood Faisal, 22, of Fresh Meadows, NY, drove in excess of 75 mph in a 35-mph zone, ran at least two red lights and crashed into two vehicles, one of which hit the Tragers. Both were injured; Mrs. Trager tragically succumbed to her injuries. Faisal was indicted on June 17 on 10 counts, including manslaughter in the second degree. If convicted, he will face more than 15 years in prison.

Last week, the district attorney of Queens County, NY arraigned Dawood Faisal on hate crime charges for two earlier acts of antisemitic vandalism. On May 15, Faisal upended plant stands outside of a kosher bagel shop displaying Israeli flags. A week later, at the same shop, he knocked over 11 plant stands and emptied the plant pots onto the sidewalk. He was charged with several counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime.

While no direct connection has been made between the crash and the vandalism, the locations are within blocks of each other. The Times of Israel quotes Michael Trager as saying that he believed that Faisal had been "looking to do damage in a heavily Jewish area."

We extend our condolences to the Trager family. May the memory of Cara Trager be a blessing.

Short Takes

Reuters: US Supreme Court won't halt $655 million judgment against Palestinians over attacks

US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declined on Monday to halt $655.5 million in damages that Palestinian ​authorities were ordered to pay plaintiffs in a US civil lawsuit concerning attacks that killed and injured ‌Americans in Israel from 2002 to 2004.

Sotomayor denied a request by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization to put on hold the judgment while they appeal a lower court's decision to revive the case years after it had been dismissed. The lawsuit was brought ​on behalf of Americans killed or injured in those shootings and bombings in the Jerusalem area.

The Supreme Court ​last year upheld a federal law that allowed claims like those brought by the plaintiffs in the ⁠case.

Tobin: To antisemites, Israel and the Jews are the reason for everything

The least surprising aspect of last week's astonishing spectacle in a Spanish enclave on the coast of North Africa was who was blamed for it. Within hours of a crisis caused by as many as 60,000 Moroccan citizens swarming into the port of Ceuta, a technically autonomous city that belongs to Spain, Jew-haters on the right and the left, in addition to social-media accounts around the world, began spreading the claim that the entire thing was a plot hatched in Jerusalem.

Antisemites in the 21st century, just like the ones who perpetrated the Holocaust in the 20th century and persecuted Jews for two millennia before that, have the same belief system. When it comes to the world's problems, no matter what the question, the answer always lies with the Jews. This particular set of conspiracy theories about Morocco and Spain was quickly debunked and dismissed as nonsense by all but the most extreme and paranoid Israel-haters. But the exercise was nevertheless illuminating.

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