‘Hawaiians in the state’s 20th District should know that a vote for Grandinetti is one for a radical Socialist who supports a terror organization, and, if elected, will be Hawaii’s next AOC or Cori Bush-type Hamas ‘Squad’ member,’ Solomon said.

By JNS Staff

The Aloha state is nearly 9,000 miles from Israel, but Tina Nakada Grandinetti, a housing policy researcher who is running to be a state representative in Hawaii’s 20th District, accused the Jewish state of war crimes in a post on Oct. 14.

“It’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the genocide against Palestinians continues,” the Democrat wrote. “When I was 22 years old, I spent an eye-opening couple of months in Palestine. Among so many other lessons, my friends in the West Bank taught me the phrase ‘our existence is resistance.’” (The Biden administration, and some states and global bodies, refers to Judea and Samaria as the “West Bank.”)

As a proud Uchinanchu—a community of Okinawans in Hawaii—”I’ve carried that reminder with me every day,” she continued. “Nothing is a greater challenge to colonialism and imperialism than the persistence of indigenous people, the perpetuation of our cultures and the deepening of our solidarity with each other.”

“From Hawaii to Okinawa, from Turtle Island to Palestine, another world is possible, and we are building it together,” Grandinetti said, using a progressive term for North America. “Free Palestine.”

Corinne Solomon, a Jewish Republican running against Grandinetti, told JNS there has been a rise in Jew-hatred in Hawaii since Oct. 7.

“Native Hawaiians have a painful history post-outsider contact, with today’s Native Hawaiian struggles blamed on settler colonialism,” she said. “The local anti-settler colonialism activists have adopted anti-Zionism-antisemitism, which, to them, is a logical progression as they see the conflict between Israel and Gaza as ‘Jews are settler colonists’ versus Palestinians, who are the indigenous victims.”

There have been “free Palestine” and “stop the genocide in Gaza” rallies in the state, as in others across the country. And, according to Solomon, a “rabid antisemite” professor teaches at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and leads a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.

“Jewish students at UH Manoa have reported being harassed over their identity,” she told JNS. “SJP has organized Palestine rallies in Hawaii since October 2023.”

Hawaiians in the state’s 20th District should know that a vote for Grandinetti is one “for a radical Socialist who supports a terror organization, and, if elected, will be Hawaii’s next AOC or Cori Bush-type Hamas ‘Squad’ member,” she said. (JNS sought comment from Grandinetti.)

‘A strong pull towards Judaism’

Solomon, who was raised by secular parents and a Catholic grandmother, had almost no exposure to Judaism growing up. There were only two Jewish students that she knew in elementary and high school, she told JNS.

She decided to convert to Judaism in her early 30s before she met her Jewish husband. “I felt a strong pull towards Judaism since my teens—never could really explain it,” she said.

When she moved to Hawaii in 2004 for an internship, she visited Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in Honolulu, to meet the rabbi and discuss converting, a process she began in 2005. (She recently learned that the rabbi died.)

She hopes at some point to undergo an Orthodox conversion, she told JNS.

“I used to be a pretty liberal Democrat, and we belonged to the Reform temple,” she told JNS, of her and her husband. “But I’ve become much more conservative in the last eight years or so.”

Her father was born and raised in Algeria, and he and his family left in 1962 after the war in which Algeria gained its independence from France. “I’ve heard about colonialism, but from the other perspective, my whole life,” she told JNS.

“Israel is important to me as the ancestral—both physical and spiritual—homeland of the Jewish people, an ally to the United States and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East,” Solomon told JNS.

“By publicly accusing Israel of genocide, this spreads the blood libel against Jews that they are bloodthirsty indiscriminate killers and thus fosters antisemitism,” she said, noting that the keffiyeh, in which her opponent poses, “is the modern-day equivalent of a swastika.”

Solomon told JNS that an estimated 7,000 Jews live in Hawaii out of about 1.4 million people. There aren’t many Jews in the 20th state district, she said. (The district has about 27,000 people, per the state’s website.)

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat and a physician, is Jewish, as is Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

“The voters here that are concerned with the Middle East are the younger voters,” Solomon told JNS. “Voters in my district are concerned with the exorbitant cost of living, crime and homelessness, which is what I focus on in my campaign.”

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The FBI said Crooks ‘had a sustained detailed effort to plan an attack on some event, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

The US Federal Bureau of Investigations on Thursday released photos of Thomas Matthew Crooks’s firearm he used to attempt to assassinate former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and details of his attack plans, which targeted both Trump and Biden and several events.

Crooks’ internet searches indicated he was planning the attack for a while and seemed to have been considering Joe Biden as a target as well as Trump.

Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office, said Crooks “had a sustained detailed effort to plan an attack on some event, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets.”

The 20-year-old attempted assassin “became hyper-focused” on Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and considered it a “target of opportunity.”

Butler, Pennsylvania, was ultimately the location of the attempted assassination attempt on July 12, during which a bullet from Crooks’ gun grazed Trump’s ear with a bullet that missed his brain by an inch.

The attack killed Corey Comperatore, a fireman, and Crooks’ was eliminated by law enforcement during the shooting.

Crooks “searched the former president’s campaign schedule and upcoming appearances in Pennsylvania for more than a month before the incident,” Rojek said.

Between April and July, Crooks sought speaking engagements in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

The gunman didn’t express a political ideology that would have signaled a motive for the attack but made antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts on social media.

“The subject registered to attend the rally, and that same day he specifically searched for, ‘How far was Oswald from Kennedy?’ ‘Where will Trump speak from at Butler Farm Show,’ ‘Butler Farm show podium,’ and ‘Butler Farm show photos,'” Rojek explained.

“On July 8, the subject searched ‘AGR international.’ And on July 10, he searched ‘weather in Butler,’ and the 30 days prior to the attack, the subject conducted more than 60 searches related to President Biden and former President Trump.”

In early July, he searched,”When is the DNC convention?’ and ‘When is the RNC in 2024?’”

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Former classmate: ‘He didn’t seem like really weird or anything. I would have pegged him as a Republican.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald J Trump at a rally on Saturday night was “relentlessly” bullied at school and didn’t seem preoccupied with politics, acquaintances told The New York Post.

Crooks, who graduated in 2022, was known for sometimes wearing hunting gear to class.

On President Joe Biden’s inauguration day, He made a $15 donation to the liberal PAC ActBlue, yet was registered as a Republican, according to the Post.

“He didn’t seem like really weird or anything. I would have pegged him as a Republican,” one former classmate said.

He never outwardly spoke about his political views or how much he hated Trump or anything,” another Bethel Park High graduate, Sarah D’Angelo told the Wall Street Journal.

D’Angelo added that while Crooks had “friends” he didn’t have a “friend group” and often played computer games during home room.

Although Crooks wasn’t pictured in the 2022 high school yearbook, he did walk across the stage to accept his diploma that spring.

He was dressed in gray when he climbed the roof of a manufacturing plant 130 yards away from the rally and began firing with an AK-style rifle.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the rifle Crooks used to shoot Donald Trump was purchased by his father, and the car that was parked not far from the rally was filled with explosives.

The authorities investigating the matter hadn’t yet ascribed to Crooks a motive for the attack, and his father, Matthew Crooks, declined to speak to the press because he wanted to figure out “What the hell was going on.’

Secret Service agents fatally shot Crooks. The gunman attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue at a farm show in Butler, the agency said.

Not long before shots rang out, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the roof of a nearby building and warned local police, according to two law enforcement officials.

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