Good afternoon from the Jewish Currents news desk. In today’s newsletter, Alex Kane looks at a pro-Palestine super PAC that’s running the AIPAC playbook in a New Jersey Democratic primary. And, Maya Rosen flags seven big bills to watch in Israel’s Knesset ahead of the elections this fall.

But first, here’s what the Jewish left is thinking about today.

SEE YOU IN COURT: The Israeli government is blustering about filing a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times over Nicholas Kristof’s column on Monday about the systematic rape of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli prison guards and interrogators. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in full tinpot Trump mode, posted on X on Thursday that he had “instructed my legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof.” His lawyers can consider all they want, but they won’t beat the Times in a US court. “Any attempt by the government of Israel to sue The New York Times for defamation in the US would be a non-starter,” Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told Jewish Currents. Public officials and government entities can’t sue for defamation based on critical reporting, Fallow says. “Even if the op-ed in question were viewed as reporting on a particular Israeli official, that official would almost certainly not be able to clear the high constitutional threshold set for defamation suits by public officials.” Netanyahu and his allies can threaten all they want, but in the US, newspapers can still publish the news.

ANOTHER MIKE: Each time the UJA-Federation of New York picks a new chief executive, the city’s richest Jewish families use the moment to make a statement about the direction of the Jewish establishment they rule: They chose the liberal John Ruskay in the late Oslo era, and the Orthodox lawyer Eric Goldstein a decade ago, as New York’s Orthodox population was climbing. The smart money this time was on Hindy Poupko, a senior vice president at UJA who has become a major political operator. But, on Tuesday, the UJA search committee, which includes New York’s billionaire police commissioner’s billionaire mother, picked Michael Kay, who has been running a day school in Westchester for the past 13 years. He’s the second guy named Mike to be placed in charge of a legacy Jewish institution in recent weeks, after Mike Uram, the Jewish establishment apparatchik, was tapped last month to lead the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). Both are similar choices: In a moment of crisis, as the Zionist consensus collapses and their own power in the city fades, these institutions are hiring conventional communal bureaucrats who can put a friendly face on their decisions to not give an inch. Asked by Jewish Insider about his plans on how UJA spends its money, Kay said: “I don’t know that we’re coming in to change.”

LEFT LANE: Alex Bores has grabbed the progressive lane in the Democratic primary for Jerry Nadler’s Manhattan Congressional district with the endorsement of Our Revolution, the Bernie Sanders-founded PAC. Assemblymember Bores and Our Revolution are aligned on regulating AI, the central issue in Bores’s campaign. But unlike Our Revolution, Bores does not support legislation that would restrict arms transfers to Israel. Bores is dealing with the discrepancy by saying he disagrees with Our Revolution’s stance on Israel, though the endorsement is causing some Jewish establishment leaders to express discomfort with him. The question is, if Bores wins, would he stick to his position, which is to the right of Nadler, the liberal Zionist stalwart who is retiring this year? It’s possible that, protected by incumbency, he could align further with the left. Then again, he might just stay clear of the issue and focus on the robots.

RABBI ON SHIFT: The Park Slope Food Coop has entered its umpteenth round of debate over whether the fair-trade-food haven of liberal brownstone Brooklyn should adopt the principles of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. This week, Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim (CBE), a large Park Slope-based Reform congregation, emailed her synagogue’s entire listserv urging them to show up for a coop members meeting to defeat the BDS proposal. In her Shabbat sermon the previous Saturday, Timoner cashed in on her recent resumé as an increasingly vocal critic of Israel to bolster her case. She may have devoted an April 25th sermon to tentatively endorsing the end of US military aid to Israel, she said, “but if this passes, I would have to resign from the coop.” In her email to her congregation, Timoner acknowledged that “we have members that support BDS at CBE” and invited them to dialogue with her. But her vociferous neighborhood campaign shows that the liberal Zionists remain all-in on the right’s anti-BDS movement.

JERUSALEM DAY: Israeli youths rampaged through Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday, as Israel marked Jerusalem Day, the celebration of the conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967. Soldiers barred journalists from the Old City, where, in an annual event called the Flag March, crowds of young Israeli men and boys flooded the Muslim quarter, harassing and attacking Palestinian residents and shop owners. Videos from Thursday’s march, which receives government funding, show crowds of Israelis chanting “may your village burn,” repeating the word “flatten,” and singing a song about revenge based on a verse from the Book of Judges. Cardboard signs in the quarter identified property owned by Jews, with pleas not to destroy it. Teenagers threw coffee at a Haaretz reporter, and police shoved her, according to the newspaper. This happens every single year.

RSVP: Israeli president Isaac Herzog bailed out of his promised appearance next week at JTS’s graduation ceremony, citing “circumstances” in a letter to the seminary dated Tuesday. He’s likely needed in Jerusalem next week for the anticipated vote to dissolve the Knesset, but that won’t ease the sting for outgoing JTS chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz, who extended herself to defend the invitation against complaints from students and alumni. Herzog, who a United Nations commission concluded late last year incited genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, “conveyed his sincere disappointment and has graciously invited me to present his honorary degree at a later date, an opportunity I would be honored to accept,” Rubin Schwartz wrote on Thursday.

The Jewish Currents news desk is directed by Josh Nathan-Kazis, with reporting by Alex Kane and Maya Rosen, and editing by Mari Cohen and Arielle Angel. Want to get in touch? Email me at jnk@jewishcurrents.org, or message me on Signal @jnk.56. If you were forwarded this email, subscribe here so you don’t miss the next one.

In New Jersey, a Test Run for the Anti-AIPAC Super PAC

Alex Kane

In the Democratic primary for an open Congressional seat in central New Jersey, a deep-pocketed super PAC focused on Middle East politics is in the midst of dumping $2 million on its favored candidate.

Sounds like AIPAC. But in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, it’s a pro-Palestine super PAC called American Priorities that has spent around $700,000 in the past month on TV advertisements extolling the candidacy of Adam Hamawy, a surgeon and US army veteran running on a platform of ending all US aid and weapons sales to Israel. The 30-second TV ad paid for by the super PAC highlights the candidate’s military service in Iraq—and his medical work in Gaza.

American Priorities plans to spend another $1.3 million before the June 2nd Democratic primary in the ultra-blue district. It’s a test case for whether the left can lift the AIPAC playbook for themselves, pouring money into packed Democratic congressional primaries to elect their own candidate. “Just as AIPAC recognized that these crowded, formless primaries are fertile ground to come in with a blitz and define the race before anyone else can, American Priorities got there first in this race,” said Joey Fox, the DC reporter for the New Jersey Globe, who has been closely tracking the race.

Founded in February, American Priorities is bankrolled by a group of wealthy, mostly Muslim American businesspeople, many of whom work in tech. According to federal election filings, the group’s largest donations came from Omer Hasan and Mohammed Waqas, two tech workers who both made six-figure donations to a super PAC backing Zohran Mamdani during the 2025 New York City mayoral election. American Priorities recently spent $1 million to boost Nida Allam, who came close to knocking off an incumbent in a Democratic congressional primary in North Carolina, and $100,000 to support Frederick Haynes, who won his Democratic primary in Texas.

New Jersey’s 12th, where Hamawy is running, is fertile ground for anti-AIPAC, pro-Palestine messaging. The progressive incumbent, Bonnie Watson Coleman, who is retiring, has consistently won with large margins in the highly diverse, suburban-urban district. Watson Coleman has labeled Israel’s campaign in Gaza a genocide, is a co-sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, which would bar the sale of certain munitions to Israel, and last March called for an arms embargo on Israel. “This is maybe the single best New Jersey district for a progressive politician,” said Fox.

Seven Big Knesset Bills to Watch as the Netanyahu Coalition Braces for Elections

Maya Rosen

Israel’s Knesset, just back from a six-week recess, is in the midst of an abrupt political collapse. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition submitted a bill, to be voted on next week, that will dissolve the body and line up elections for October. In the interim, though, the government is racing to pass laws that will lock in its political gains and curry favor with its base. (Even if the Knesset is dissolved, the body can still meet and pass new laws until a new government is elected.)

The legislative pandering was already on display on Monday, when the Knesset passed a law to set up a military tribunal to hold livestreamed trials for some 300 Palestinians held since 2023 for their alleged roles in the October 7th attacks. The tribunal will be allowed to deviate from standard rules around evidence and will have the power to impose the death penalty. Human rights groups have warned that these trials will rely on testimony extracted through torture and will circumvent important due process measures.

More legislation is coming. Here are seven other bills to watch out for over the next few weeks.

1. The most contentious piece of legislation still on the table is a bill to formalize military draft exemptions for Haredim, a perennial point of tension in Israeli politics. Haredi lawmakers have previously threatened to bring down the coalition if the issue is not resolved. Netanyahu needs Haredi support, but draft exemptions for Haredim are broadly unpopular, especially given the Israeli military’s manpower shortage, and are not supported by other members of his coalition.

2. Another bill under consideration would form a politically appointed commission to investigate the Israeli military failures of October 7th. That would serve in place of the independent commissions some bereaved families have called for, which would notionally be less likely to shield responsible politicians.

3. One bill would split the role of Israel’s attorney general into three separate positions, which critics argue would destroy one of the Israeli system’s only checks on the power of the government.

4. A proposed bill would formalize the memorialization of October 7th in Israel. The bill already caused controversy early this year when Netanyahu ordered that the word “massacre” be dropped from its description of October 7th in an apparent attempt to whitewash his government’s failures.

5. Another bill would give the government significantly more control over the public broadcast media, which experts warn would seriously impinge upon journalistic freedom.

6. An additional bill would reduce funding to universities where protests occur in order to curb what the proposed legislation terms “the illegitimate use of political strikes.”

7. Lastly, a bill is on the table to change the law to only recognize Orthodox conversions to Judaism for the purpose of determining whether immigrants to Israel are eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return. The bill, if passed, is sure to cause upset among American Jews, the majority of whom are not Orthodox.