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This Week:

• Lifelong Jewish Democrats in Michigan: We Won't Vote for El-Sayed
• Brooks: Since 10/7, the Jewish People Have Risen Like Lions
• Mamdani Attacks Israel on 10/7 Anniversary

• Rubio to Europe: "We Are at an Inflection Point for Our Civilization"

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• Week's Best Tweets
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Lifelong Jewish Democrats in Michigan: We Won't Vote for El-Sayed

The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund released two new ads in the Michigan US Senate race featuring lifelong Jewish Democrats who will not vote for Abdul El-Sayed after he made excuses for the terror attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield.

See the ads here: Ad #1   Ad #2

Jewish Insider reports:

[T]he Republican Jewish Coalition on Wednesday announced a $2 million ad campaign targeting Jewish voters in Michigan, highlighting Jewish Democrats who refuse to support El-Sayed.

Ads from the group call out El-Sayed's response to the terrorist attack earlier this year on Temple Israel, featuring several self-described lifelong Democrats saying they will not vote for El-Sayed, including a woman who says in the ad that her grandson attended preschool at Temple Israel.

… The RJC campaign is targeting Jewish Democrats and independents in Michigan through digital advertisements, mail and get-out-the-vote efforts, with a focus on Oakland County and other areas of the state with sizable Jewish populations.

JNS adds:

The Republican Jewish Coalition announced on Wednesday that it is spending $2 million in the Michigan Senate race in an effort to defeat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee.

Matt Brooks, RJC's CEO, said that the money will fund TV ads, mailers and get-out-the-vote efforts among the Michigan Jewish community.

Polls suggest that El-Sayed, the former health director of Detroit, has a narrow lead in the race over former congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee.

Jews make up a little more than 1% of the state's population and have historically leaned heavily towards the Democratic Party, but may be in play in the race given El-Sayed's views on Israel and comments about the Temple Israel synagogue attack in West Bloomfield, Mich.

Michigan is one of the most closely contested Senate races in the country and may determine control of the chamber after the November elections.

RJC National Political Director Sam Markstein appeared on Newsmax Sunday to say that RJC is "all in to defeat El-Sayed in Michigan". Watch the interview here.

Brooks: Since 10/7, the Jewish People Have Risen Like Lions

In an op-ed at the Washington Reporter, RJC CEO Matt Brooks writes:

This week marks three years since the dark day of October 7, 2023. The hatred and barbarism unleashed that day ignited attacks against Jews in the U.S. and in European countries beyond anything we've seen in recent decades. And yet, in the shadow of the worst day in modern Jewish history, the Jewish people did not break; we rose.

… That is who we are: Jews who fight. Jews who won't let evil triumph. Jews who will never, ever give up.

…Hamas terrorists believed October 7th would break us. Instead, it reawakened an entire generation [in Israel and in the US] to be louder and prouder in our Judaism and the shared values that built and sustain the West.

For thousands of years, the Jewish people were defenseless, marched to the slaughter as the victims of history's horrors. Not anymore. Today, the Jewish people have a nation in our ancestral home, and a generation of lions with boundless courage to defend our homeland and our people everywhere.

On this anniversary of October 7th, let us continue to be Jews who fight and win against the darkness. Am Yisrael Chai.

See the full article here.

Mamdani Attacks Israel on 10/7 Anniversary

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani published a disgusting anti-Israel message on the third anniversary of the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023.

In his public post on X, Mamdani wrote that "we grieve alongside our friends" remembering "the horrific war crimes of October 7", followed immediately by an attack on Israel:

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government's devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza… Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

The mayor included a litany of familiar lies about Israel's operations in Gaza – in the war that Hamas started. The whole thing was vile.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, like many Republicans who champion the US-Israel relationship and are great friends to the American Jewish community, stood with us on 10/7 this year.

Read the Speaker's statement on 10/7 and what he had to say about Mamdani's terrorist-sympathizing message.

Rubio to Europe: "We Are at an Inflection Point for Our Civilization"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a remarkable, historic speech from Greece this week, in which he said that the West must rediscover the ancient Greek spirit of ambition, excellence and duty, and be proud of it, if it is to meet today's threats. Speaking to an audience of Greek officials, member of the international diplomatic core, and others, with the majestic Parthenon as his backdrop, Sec. Rubio said that America has chosen its path into the future::

And now, today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.

Under President [Donald] Trump, the United States has made its choice. We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power: to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.

We choose to reach for new frontiers: in advanced manufacturing and super intelligence; in drones, weapons, and warfare; in chips, minerals, cyber, and every other domain of human possibility. To unleash our energy, to rebuild our factories, to return our astronauts to the moon and launch a new age of exploration in space.

…We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.

Secretary Rubio declared that Europe must step up now as well:

…We are at an inflection point – an inflection point not only in the history of my nation, but an inflection point in the whole of our civilization.

The threats we face today are every bit as real as they were on the dramatic stage of antiquity.

National interests did not vanish in the face of international institutions. War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace. Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory, and technology, and resources, and markets, and energy, and power.

And now, there is war again. There is new competition between great powers again. There is vulnerability, aggression, terrorism, a whole universe of new threats and attacks again.

And so we must rebuild our institutions and our alliances to face these threats together – understanding that the purpose of these things is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that constitute them; it is to defend them. And that nations need not abandon their distinct identities in order to recognize their common interests.

Full video and transcript here.

Short Takes

Gerber & Kontorovich: That groundswell of outrage on social media? It might be fake.

RJC Board of Directors member Sander Gerber and law professor Eugene Kontorovich write at the Washington Post about what the US government can do to protect Americans from "the rampant problem of covert foreign influence operations using social media platforms to give users a false impression of public opinion." They offer suggestions for how current law can be used, and for new potential remedies.

Tobin: The vacation from Jewish history is over for Americans

The essence of being Jewish has always been a refusal to bow down to the idols of popular culture, whether it was Hellenism, the Roman Empire, the universal church, Marxism, Islamism and the current popular cult of "wokeism."

Above all, it will force Jews to fall back upon their own resources and realize, like their ancestors, that the factors that will preserve their peoplehood don't come from the acceptance of non-Jews, but from their own traditions and beliefs. Faith, Jewish texts and loyalty to their brethren will sustain them, just as did their predecessors who survived more formidable challenges and foes than Mamdani, El-Sayed and their allies on the far right like Carlson.

The post-Holocaust vacation from Jewish history may be over, but the Jewish story is still unfolding. And those who have the courage to stand up and stay strong, rather than to join their enemies or to hide, will ride out this dismal chapter of the saga of their people with the same honor and ultimate success as those who went before them.

JINSA: Open Letter From 75+ Military Professionals Rejecting Genocide Allegation Against Israel

JINSA released a statement on October 7: "Over 75 senior retired U.S. generals, admirals, and military lawyers have signed a new open letter rejecting claims that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

"The signatories include those who have commanded U.S. armed forces in combat, applying the laws of armed conflict.

"Their conclusion: based on the facts and applicable legal standard, the conduct of Israel's war against Hamas does not constitute genocide."

Read the letter here.

Some Democrats Pull Away from Radical Candidates

More high-profile Jewish Democrats are expressing their discomfort with the radical anti-Israel and antisemitic candidates running for office under the Democratic Party banner:

• The Jewish Democratic mayor of one of the biggest cities in Michigan said he can't support Abdul El-Sayed's (D) Senate bid because he is too "uncomfortable" with the progressive candidate bashing Israel... Lansing Mayor Andy Schor [said] his Jewish heritage makes it hard for him to vote for El-Sayed — and he's not planning to, less than one month before the election.

• Montebello, N.Y., Deputy Mayor Stacy Caridi is the second local Jewish Democratic official in New York's Hudson Valley to announce that she endorsing Republican Rep. Mike Lawler for reelection to Congress, in part citing his record on antisemitism and Israel policy. Ally Chemtob, who serves on a town council in Lawler's district, backed him last month.

• Anti-Trump "Will & Grace" actress Debra Messing is snubbing Democratic incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul and instead backing Republican Bruce Blakeman's gubernatorial campaign.

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