Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.
Sam Kestenbaum
By Sam Kestenbaum
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Fast Forward White Supremacists Praise Nation of Islam’s Message Of Separatism
A prominent white nationalist website re-tweeted Louis Farrakhan last week and invited the Nation of Islam leader to speak in a public forum. “This is the sort of self-determination we and the broader Alt-Right support,” wrote American Renaissance, a self-described “race realist” magazine. Farrakhan’s original tweet urged black people to “be more convinced that it…
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Fast Forward Philadelphia May Crack Down On Cops With Nazi Tattoos
The Philadelphia City Council president introduced a bill last week that would prohibit local public employees from displaying symbols that could be seen as promoting hate speech. This comes after a BuzzFeed News story about a Philadelphia police officer who faced no discipline for displaying a tattoo on his arm that appeared to be a…
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Fast Forward Trump Tells Evangelicals: ‘We’re Saying Merry Christmas Again’
Speaking at the Values Voter Summit on Friday, an annual gathering of Christian conservatives, President Donald Trump said that under his presidency, he wanted people to proudly say “Merry Christmas” during the holidays. “We are stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values,” Trump said to applause. “As we approach the end of the year —…
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Fast Forward Charlottesville Mayor Backs Legal Fight Against White Nationalist ‘Freelance Armies’
Business leaders, elected officials and residents in Charlottesville, Virginia, are going to court to try to prevent a repeat of the violence at a white nationalist rally that ripped through town this summer. Mike Signer, the Jewish mayor of Charlottesville, said he supported the legal campaign to prevent future white nationalist violence — decrying what…
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Fast Forward How To Decipher Cryptic White Nationalist Slogans Like ‘Jew Will Not Replace Us’
In a useful new guide, experts from the Southern Poverty Law Center explain the meaning behind popular white supremacist slogans — from the perhaps obvious, like “White lives matter,” to the more cryptic, like “Harry Potter isn’t real.” The slogan “You will not replace us” — which morphed into “Jew will not replace us” during…
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Fast Forward Al Jazeera Undercover Reporter Was Intern At The Israel Project
The man suspected of working undercover for Al Jazeera to make a documentary film about Israel activism in Washington, D.C. managed to become an intern at the Israel Project, a leading pro-Israel advocacy non-profit, a new Haaretz report reveals. Al Jazeera has acknowledged sending an undercover reporter in 2016 to infiltrate pro-Israel organizations in the…
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Fast Forward Black Israeli Woman Bombarded With ‘Crude’ Racist Slurs On Bus
A black Israeli woman was bombarded by racial slurs while riding a public bus in the southern town of Be’er Sheva in a widely-shared video. “This kind of racism I have never experienced,” Hasedia Bat Israel, a member of the Hebrew Israelite group, told Channel 2 News in Israel, according to the Times of Israel….
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Fast Forward White Nationalists Launch Campus ‘Siege’ For School Year
White nationalist group Identity Evropa is ramping up its university outreach during the first weeks of the new school year, continuing what the group calls “Project Siege.” According to Identity Evropa’s social media channel, the white nationalist group is targeting schools in a dozen states, including California, Virginia, Massachusetts and New York. The white nationalists…
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