Simone Zimmerman, an American Jewish activist, was held by the Shin Bet security service at the border between Israel and Egypt for at least three hours on Sunday evening, Israel’s Immigration Authority confirmed. Shin Bet agents asked Zimmerman which places she had visited in the West Bank and what she thought of Prime Minister Benjamin…
Days after hosting a gala attended by former Trump advisers Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon, the Zionist Organization of America’s longtime chief took to Twitter to unleash on leftist critics. In tweets this week, ZOA President Morton Klein attacked two young Jewish left-wing activists, calling one a “mindless idiot” and another a “pathetic frightened Jew”….
Simone Zimmerman, briefly the Jewish outreach coordinator to Bernie Sanders, blasted Israel’s new travel ban targeting supporters of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement. “I’m outraged there’s a chance I might not be allowed into this country,” Zimmerman said in a video by Israeli daily Haaretz. It has been shared 1,000 times. Zimmerman, an activist…
For five days in April, Simone Zimmerman was the most controversial figure in Jewish politics. The 25-year-old activist served very briefly as Bernie Sanders’ Jewish outreach coordinator, before being fired after an old Facebook post in which she used profanity against Israeli prime minister Netanyahu surfaced — and quickly ended her political stint. Since then,…
I recently found myself in a small conference room with a number of key figures of the “American Jewish establishment.” Around the table was the chief executive of one of the major Jewish defense organizations, several high-level Federation representatives, and leaders of mainstream Israel advocacy organizations. We were not conducting a secretive strategy meeting on…
Preparing this column, I thought of many “profound” things to say about Passover. I’m a rabbi, after all, as well as an ex-lawyer, writer, speaker, teacher — I know how to gab. And the holiday is a goldmine of inspiration: themes of liberation, kinesthetic rituals, DIY Jewish observances, fascinating texts and histories. But everything I…
Police arrested 17 activists denouncing the “Jewish establishment’s support of the occupation of Palestine” on April 20 in the lobby of the Anti-Defamation League during one of a series of Passover protests organized by anti-occupation group If Not Now. Before they were cuffed and shuffled into New York Police Department vans, the young activists had…
Simone Zimmerman had to be suspended. Not that I have any problem with her passion. Or, truth be told, with most of her politics. And certainly it’s hard not to be impressed by Zimmerman, the brilliant and eloquent organizer, a driving force within J Street U and IfNotNow, still in her mid-20s. (I wish Zimmerman…
