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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News ‘Irresponsible’ Jewish DNA Test Sparks Backlash In Nigeria
Among the Igbo, a large ethnic group in Nigeria, there is widespread identification with Jews and Israel. But a recent genetic test carried out by an American missionary group searching for “Jewish roots” came back negative — prompting fierce backlash from activists who called the project faulty and irresponsible. Amidst waves of social media outrage…
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News With Bannon Out Of White House, Is Sebastian Gorka Next?
With Steve Bannon officially out of the White House, some insiders say controversial deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka could be next on the chopping block. Multiple White House officials are saying that Gorka’s fate is up in the air now that his boss, Bannon, has been ousted by President Trump, according to reports from Tthe Daily…
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Fast Forward What HuffPo Meant With ‘Goy, Bye!’ Headline On Bannon — And Why Twitter Hated It
Huffington Post hailed the departure of Stephen Bannon from Trump’s White House with a provocative homepage headline of “Goy, Bye!” — and not everyone thought it was a great choice of words. The headline is a mash-up of several viral internet memes. It references “boy, bye” a dismissive line from the Beyonce song “Sorry” (delivered…
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Fast Forward Maryland Raises $10K And Counting To Help Ugandan Jews Amid Famine
The Maryland Jewish community has raised thousands of dollors in an emergency fundraising campaign to help Uganda’s small Jewish community amidst an ongoing famine in East Africa. Members of the Jewish Federation of Howard County, Maryland, partnered with the Howard County Board of Rabbis and raised more than $10,000 in less than a week, the…
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Fast Forward Trump’s Evangelical ‘Prayer Warriors’ Call Him ‘Prophet’ After Charlottesville
Frank Amedia, a former Christian policy liaison for the Trump campaign who believes the president is an instrument of God is sticking by his cherished leader in the wake of a violent white nationalist gathering in Virginia — and says Trump himself is acting as a prophet. “Bad on both sides, wake up church,” Amedia…
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Fast Forward Associated Press Updates Definition Of ‘Alt-Right’ To Include Anti-Semitism
The standards department of the Associated Press is updating their internal definition of the “alt-right” to include anti-Semitism — after an earlier version made no mention of the white nationalist movement’s particular prejudice against Jews. “We are adding ‘anti-Semitism’ to the definition of ‘alt-right,’” the vice president of standards wrote in an update to a…
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Fast Forward Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer Sued By Comedian Amidst Internet Crackdown
The comedian and writer Dean Obeidallah filed a defamation lawsuit against the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer on Wednesday, just as the site has been booted from a series of online hosts over the last two days. The site’s publisher Andrew Anglin falsely claimed in June that Obeidallah, an American Muslim who hosts a Sirius…
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Fast Forward Richard Spencer Touts Himself As ‘White Zionist’ In Israeli Interview
In an interview on Israeli TV, Richard Spencer said that Israelis should ignore the anti-Semitism of the “alt-right” and instead respect and empathize with his desire to create a whites-only ethno state. “You could say that I am a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people,” Spencer told Dany Kushmaro, the…
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