A Dublin Hotel Asks About the IDF

A Dublin hotel canceled 70 rooms booked for an antisemitism conference. Maurice Cohen, who heads the Irish Jewish Representative Council, says the Herbert Park Hotel's manager learned the World Jewish Congress event was for government envoys fighting antisemitism, asked "Will the IDF be involved?" and canceled after checking with the owners. The hotel declined to comment. ¹

Four Jewish day schools got bomb hoaxes in four days. Two Brooklyn schools, the Yeshivah of Flatbush high school and the United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, were evacuated October 9. On October 12 the Donna Klein Jewish Academy preschool in Boca Raton was evacuated and Milken Community School in Los Angeles locked down. All four threats were fake. ²

Kamala Harris says the Biden administration should have restrained Israel "sooner and more forcefully." Speaking in Seoul, the former vice president criticized the Israeli government's "horrific conduct" in Gaza and said Trump gave Netanyahu a "blank check." She is weighing a 2028 run. ³

Mark Levine broke his Israel bonds promise, and the excuse is thin. Brad Lander zeroed out New York City's Israel bond holdings last year, the first time in half a century. Levine, his successor as comptroller, "pledged many times" to restore them, according to Israel Bonds. Now he says no, citing "financial considerations" and a Fitch analysis that calls Israel's upcoming elections a stability risk. ⁴

Levine used to call the bonds "a long-term safe and secure investment." ⁴ A pension fund that sells because of one election is timing the market. Scott Stringer, comptroller before Lander, said as much: "We're not investors that try to game the system in the moment." ⁴ Our view: Levine got the finance wrong. If politics changed his mind, he should tell the Jewish voters who believed him.

On October 15, 1940, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator premiered in New York. Chaplin paid for it himself and played both Hynkel and a Jewish barber. He later said he couldn't have mocked the Nazis had he known about the camps. Today is 4 Cheshvan; the parsha is Noach. ⁵⁶