Antisemitism keeps surfacing inside movements that believe they are incapable of it. This week it wore the language of liberation, and the test that matters stayed the same: not the politics of the speaker, but the tropes coming out of their mouth.
Applying that test honestly, in every direction, is essential to Nexus’s work. A movement that cannot name hate in its own ranks cannot fight it anywhere.
California State Senator and congressional candidate Scott Wiener has attended San Francisco’s Trans March every year since it began in 2004. On Friday, on his way to a trans-led Pride Shabbat service, a crowd surrounded him, touched him multiple times, and screamed at him until he left the park for his own safety. The stated grievance was Gaza, but the words were “Zionist handlers” and “Israeli masters,” aimed at a lawmaker who opposes US military aid to Israel and calls the war a genocide. No position Wiener takes will ever satisfy people who think he answers only to handlers and is merely a puppet with no position of his own.
Our statement condemned the harassment and commended Wiener for putting his community’s safety first. California’s Senate Democrats and LGBTQ Caucus named the antisemitism plainly. The march’s organizers described it as community members confronting Wiener “about his policies.” Organizers who cannot say the word antisemitism are telling Jewish members of their movement exactly where they stand.
Carmella Charrington won a district leader position in the Brooklyn Democratic Party last week. Jewish Insider then surfaced an Instagram video she had shared promoting Henry Ford’s The International Jew, a famously antisemitic series of pamphlets. Asked about it, Charrington called the video “some facts” and repeatedly told the reporter to “get your rabbi.”
This is rank antisemitism from a newly elected official. The DSA leaders who campaigned alongside her disavowed the post sharply, writing that antisemitism misdirects the anger of working people away from systems of power and onto Jews. They’re right, and the disavowal needs consequences to mean anything. Someone who calls Henry Ford the truth should not hold party office.
The administration’s plan to fold the State Department’s Holocaust envoy office into the antisemitism envoy’s office advanced last week, after the House Rules Committee kept a bipartisan amendment blocking it off the floor.
Hannah Rosenthal, who served as antisemitism envoy under President Obama and sits on the Nexus Task Force Advisory Committee, laid out the stakes in JTA: the Holocaust office negotiates restitution for survivors, recovers looted property, and preserves archives, and survivors are running out of time. The offices are complementary, not duplicative. Folding one into the other weakens both, at a moment when the antisemitism envoy’s mandate needs strengthening.
Paramus, NJ: East Brook Middle School recalled its yearbooks the same day they were distributed after an image of Adolf Hitler appeared in the student baby photos section. The school is investigating with law enforcement. Local rabbis credited the district’s swift, unambiguous response.
Upper East Side, NY: A swastika was carved into the hood of a Tesla parked on East 85th Street with an Israeli flag visible in the back seat. The NYPD’s Hate Crime Unit is investigating. Anti-Jewish incidents made up more than 60% of the city’s hate crimes in May. (East Side Feed)
This is what we do: track real antisemitism, call out when it’s weaponized, and make clear the difference. If you’d like to support this work, you can donate here. We’d love to connect.
We’ll continue offering clear responses, frameworks, and resources as these stories develop.
