Good afternoon from the Jewish Currents news desk. In today’s newsletter, Alex Kane writes on a new bill sailing through the California legislature that would impose jail time for handing out a leaflet within 100 feet of a synagogue entrance. And, a quick question for Brendan McGeever on today’s UK elections and the spate of attacks against Jews in London.

But first, here’s what the Jewish left is thinking about today. I’m Josh Nathan-Kazis, news director at Jewish Currents.

ADL’S ANTISEMITISM COUNT: Of the 6,274 events that the Anti-Defamation League tallied in its 2025 list of antisemitic incidents in the US, 826 were included because they were Palestine-related protests.

The ADL presents its annual “audit” as a tally of “incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and physical assault,” and said that 2025 was the “third-highest year on record” after 2023 and 2024. But since the October 7th attacks, it has begun counting “certain expressions of opposition to Zionism” as antisemitic incidents. That’s meant that this latest 2025 count includes one Palestine-related protest in Boston where a protester carried a sign that read “Zohranism yes, Zionism no,” and another in New Orleans where protesters had signs that read “Zionism is antisemitic.”

As Jewish Currents has written before, when you look under the hood at the specific incidents the ADL counts in its audit, you find scores of odd and exceedingly minor incidents, plus hundreds of instances that amount to no more than anti-Zionist speech, undermining any claim of a serious effort to track legitimately concerning attacks. The 2025 ADL count includes one alleged December incident in Georgia where “an individual made antisemitic comments to their sibling-in-law and their family,” and an incident in New Jersey where “an individual called their family member and said, ‘Fucking Jew.’” In Santa Fe, a “Jewish person was mailed a t-shirt with an anti-Israel message,” and in Michigan, an art gallery displayed a painting of Yahya Sinwar.

The ADL, alongside other Jewish establishment groups, is in the throes of a campaign to drastically increase federal funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program—which pays for security measures mostly at Jewish institutions—from the $300 million Congress allocated for 2026 to $1 billion per year. The organization is also pushing a federal “buffer zone” bill for synagogues (see Alex’s report below for more). Their antisemitism tally is a key political tool to make the case for those policies. Antisemitism does seem to be a rising force in the US, pushed by figures like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens. But the ADL’s tally attempts to paint it as a problem that can be solved with crackdowns on pro-Palestine speech.

COPS EMBOLDENED: Protests against an Israeli real estate fair at Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, which advertised land sales West Bank settlements, drew a massive, aggressive police response on Tuesday. Cops barricaded entire blocks, kept protesters hundreds of feet from the synagogue doors, shot pepper spray at activists, and barred reporters, in a far more combative display of force than at a similar protest at Park East last November. The new response wasn’t directly enabled by the synagogue buffer zone bill that became law last month, which, despite its billing, didn’t change anything about police powers in New York. But the police department, emboldened by the veto-proof City Council vote in favor of the buffer zone bill, appears to have decided to use Tuesday’s protest to send a message: In New York City, the cops decide where you can protest and where you can’t.

IDF LOOTERS: Amid increasing media coverage of the rampant looting of Lebanese homes and businesses by Israeli soldiers, with the approval of their commanders, the Israeli military is attempting to crack down. The army is stationing extra military police to watch soldiers as they reenter Israel, and is demanding that battalion commanders sign a document attesting that their troops haven’t looted. On Tuesday, Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 reported that battalion commanders were infuriated by the document and were refusing to sign.

NO BOOKS: Israel’s minister of culture, Miki Zohar, stopped government funding for all book events in the country on Wednesday ahead of a planned launch event for a new book by Israel Frey, the leftist Haredi journalist who Israeli authorities arrested last summer for a social media post that appeared to celebrate the death of Israeli soldiers. Frey has been arrested and questioned multiple times for his work, and targeted with violent protests outside of his home. Better no books, it seems, than one by a dissident like Frey.

The Jewish Currents news desk is directed by Josh Nathan-Kazis, with Alex Kane, Maya Rosen, 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.

California Lawmakers, Backed by Jewish Establishment Groups, Push for Jail Time for Synagogue Protesters

Alex Kane

A bill moving through the state legislature in California would make it a crime to approach a person within 100 feet of a synagogue in order to hand out a leaflet, hold a sign, or even “engage in oral protest.” Do it once and a judge could jail you for six months, per the law. Twice, and you could be jailed for a year.

The bill, which has the backing of the Jewish establishment’s lobby group in California, Jewish California, is cruising through the state assembly, where it was approved with no opposition by two committees last month. Civil liberties groups say it’s absurd, but 11 of the 13 members of the assembly’s Jewish caucus have signed on as co-sponsors.

The California bill is the most striking in a barrage of legislative proposals introduced in response to protests outside US synagogues hosting events that market land in West Bank settlements, including one protest Wednesday night in Manhattan that drew a forceful police response. Versions of the so-called buffer zone bills, named for the no-protest zones some of the measures would create around synagogue entrances, have passed in San Diego, Nassau County and New York City, while a federal measure is up for consideration in Congress. Early Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said her budget, to be passed in the coming days, will include a buffer zone law. Since the New York proposal is bundled into a must-pass spending package, it’s likely to receive little public scrutiny, and will not be brought up for debate.

These efforts have alarmed civil liberties groups, who say the measures infringe on free speech rights and are unnecessary due to existing laws that prohibit obstruction of houses of worship. Palestinian rights advocates, meanwhile, say that the proposals are back-door efforts to protect events unlawfully marketing Palestinian land to American Jews, which the synagogue protests have targeted.

“What this boils down to is trying to squelch criticism and protect what Israel is doing,” said David Mandel, a California-based member of Jewish Voice for Peace who recently testified against the California legislation.

A Quick Question for Brendan McGeever on Attacks on Jews in London and the UK Elections

Polls close Thursday evening in local elections in England, and national parliamentary races in Scotland and Wales. The campaigns have played out against a backdrop of violence against British Jews, including arson attacks at a number of London synagogues, and the stabbing of two Jewish men late last month in the heavily Jewish London suburb Golders Green. (The attacker in the Golders Green attack also stabbed a Muslim man earlier in the day. ) A pro-Iranian Islamist group has claimed credit for some of the attacks, including the Golders Green stabbings.

The violence has reverberated through the campaign. The center-left Labour Party, which is lagging in the polls, has criticized the ascendent left-wing Green Party for social media posts by a few of its candidates that seemed to excuse the attacks. The Green Party’s leader, 43-year-old Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, has condemned antisemitic comments, but told Haaretz last month that Labour was employing antisemitism charges in a “cynical political attack.” It’s all a bit reminiscent of the fights over antisemitism in the Labour party nearly a decade ago, which ended with the defeat of the left-wing populist Jeremy Corbyn and the departure of many of his pro-Palestine allies from the party.

On Thursday, Jewish Currents spoke with Brendan McGeever, co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism in London, about the recent antisemitic violence and the UK elections.

JNK: What do you make of these recent attacks against Jews in London?

BM: Everything that’s happening in Britain just now is getting put into one box, the antisemitism box. But precisely what we’re talking about when we talk about antisemitism is not always clear. We have had these extraordinary attacks, and by extraordinary I mean they are out of the ordinary. The attack at the Manchester synagogue last year was the most deadly in modern British history. The other attacks are completely out of kilter to what we’ve come to know as antisemitism in Britain.

People are saying this is just simply a reflection of societal antisemitism. I have doubts about that. There’s evidence emerging which suggests that these attacks could be the work of proxies that have been hired to carry out attacks on the Jewish community as part of a hybrid war being conducted by foreign states. That’s very, very scary, and it will come as no reassurance to Jews that this is not some kind of organic, societal antisemitism. But it is important that we name and label this correctly: It doesn’t necessarily represent a growth in societal antisemitism. In fact, other measures indicate that antisemitism is stable, flatlining, and possibly even declining in Britain.

The government is responding to this rise in extraordinary attacks on British Jews by targeting the pro-Palestinian movement. And it justifies those moves on the grounds that pro-Palestine protest makes British Jews feel unsafe. But actually, the evidence suggests that Jews are increasingly divided on the question of Zionism and Israel, and Zack Polanski is representative of a growing split and polarization among the British Jewish community. What that breakdown in the consensus looks like is the emergence of a sizable portion of the community that is either anti- or non-Zionist, and Polanski is part of that growing constituency. Among British Jews aged 16 to 29, just 49% now identify a Zionist. That polarization has been long in the making, and it looks like it’s here to stay.