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The Israeli origins of Amitai Etzioni’s big ideas about community
(JTA) — “Although I was born in Germany, my formative years were spent in the early, idealistic days of the cooperative Jewish settlements, in pre-Israel, Palestine,” wrote Amitai Etzioni in his 2003 memoir, “My Brother’s Keeper.”
In writing about his early years in a cooperative settlement called Kfar Shmaryahu, the Israeli-American sociologist and polymath provided the origin story for the big idea that made him famous: communitarianism.
When Etzioni died May 31 at age 94, the obituaries noted how he came to Israel as a young refugee from Nazi Germany and fought in Israel’s war for independence. But few noted his early life in Israel shaped his life’s work. Nor did they note how far Israel had come — for better and for worse — in the years since he lived on a kibbutz, battled as a Palmach commando and studied at the Hebrew University.
Communitarianism is a social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of society, as opposed to the individual, in articulating the good.”[W]hile individual rights surely matter, these rights must be balanced with commitments to the common good — for instance, by protecting the environment and public health,” Etzioni explained.
He also held that the various liberation movements of the 1960s went too far in undermining authority figures and what he called “the accepted standards of upright conduct.”
Because it proposed a “third way” between liberalism and conservatism, communitarianism was also embraced — and ridiculed — on both sides of the aisle. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were fans. Some labeled George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” communitarian.
Etzioni left Israel in his mid-twenties for a teaching job at Columbia University. He opposed the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race, activism that propelled him beyond the academy and into the role as a “public intellectual.” He taught ethics for two years at the Harvard Business School before launching into a hybrid discipline he called “socio-economics.” Hired by the Carter administration in 1979 as a senior adviser, he joined the faculty at George Washington University, where he taught international affairs for more than 30 years.
The theories behind communitarianism weren’t new, but Etzioni’s articulation came to wide public attention on the eve of the Clinton presidency, when, according to one profile, it was “supposed to be the Big Idea of the ‘90s, the antidote to ‘Me Generation’ greed and the cure for America’s cynicism, alienation and despair.”
“We need an awakening of values, of caring and commitment,” Etzioni told an interviewer in 1992. “The Communitarians are saying this is possible; in fact, it is inevitable.”
“It was as if I were growing up in a high school of communitarian theory and practice,” wrote Etzioni about his youth spent on an agricultural cooperative in Israel. (Courtesy of Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi)
Although communitarianism never did live up to the hype, Etzioni became a reliable commentator and theorist in a host of fields and causes, including just war, bioethics, national security and privacy.
Although he occasionally wrote about Israel, his roots there were rarely front and center in his work or public image. In his memoir he notes that a lot of readers thought he was Italian. (“Amitai” comes from the Hebrew word for truth; he took “Etzioni” from a folk tale about a boy who learns to protect nature from a tree – “etz” in Hebrew.)
In his memoir, however, he delves deeply into his youth in Israel. “In those days, the country was quite different from what it has since become,” he writes. “[I]t was strongly imbued with the spirit of community (from which the term communitarian arises); most people were dedicated to serving the common good and to erecting a home for Jews escaping Nazi-dominated Europe. It was in that pre-Israel that I first knew the high that one gains when serving a cause greater than oneself.”
His parents were among the founders of the small farming community; a young Etzioni would attend co-op meetings with his father, where members would debate how cooperative they needed to be – a question, he writes, that was never settled.
“It was as if I were growing up in a high school of communitarian theory and practice,” wrote Etzioni.
He also discovered the limits of that practice after a year as a teen on Kibbutz Tel Joseph. He found the kibbutz “excessively communal,” with little tolerance for individuality or privacy. Communitarianism itself would often be attacked on the same grounds: Etzioni would later have a fierce antagonist in the American Civil Liberties Union, which felt some of his calls for limiting privacy and suspending individual rights in the name of the common good went too far.
Etzioni wrote movingly about watching friends die in the fighting for Israel’s independence. Although he never wavered in feeling the war was justified, he lamented that the Jews and Arabs might have avoided the bloodshed had they agreed to the two-state partition that, in 2003, he still felt was inevitable. Nor did he regret Israel’s founding: “The Jewish people require a homeland to protect them not merely from physical annihilation, but also from cultural devastation,” he wrote in 1999.
But perhaps the most fascinating influence on Etzioni’s thinking was the year he spent in a Jerusalem institute set up by Martin Buber, the Vienna-born social philosopher. The formidable faculty included Gershom Scholem on Kabbalah, Yeshayahu Leibowitz on biology and Nechama Leibowitz on Bible.
Etzioni imbibed Buber’s ideas about “I and Thou” relationships – the “unending struggle between the forces that pushed us to relate to other human beings as objects, as Its, rather than as fellow humans, as Thous.”
Etzioni would call this “moral dialogue,” as in his definition of democracy: “[O]ur conception of right and wrong are encountered through moral dialogues that are open and inclusive. It is a persuasive morality, not a coercive one.”
Etzioni’s memoir and his obituaries recall a more hopeful political climate, when right and left could briefly imagine common ground around the common good. They also recall a different Israel, before it largely embraced the free-market economics of the West and let go of many of its communitarian values.
In 2013 Etzioni wrote about his own seeming irrelevance – he called it his “gradual loss of a megaphone” — after his brief flurry of influence. He had no regrets, nor loss of confidence: “Until I am shown that my predictions or prescriptions are ill-founded, or not of service, I will try to get out what must be said. I’ll keep pulling at the oars, however small my boat, however big or choppy the sea.”
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Why Trump was able to succeed with a Gaza peace plan where Biden failed
If Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal delivers, American Jews and supporters of Israel will get what they have yearned for since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — the return of the hostages, an end to Palestinian suffering, and a credible plan to remove Hamas as a military and governing force in Gaza.
What complicates the possible resolution is that the plan’s authors, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are deeply unpopular figures among liberal Jews.
As news of the deal spread, Orthodox and politically conservative Jews, already among Trump’s strongest supporters, said they were vindicated. The Republican Jewish Coalition said that Trump not only merited the Nobel Peace Prize he has long sought, the award should be renamed for him. Netanyahu also called for Trump to win the Nobel.
Rabbi Ari Berman of Yeshiva University, who delivered the benediction at Trump’s inauguration in January, thanked God for “raising up” Trump to bring the hostages home.
Jewish groups affiliated with the Democratic Party avoided effusive praise for Trump, describing the deal as a “momentous” first step in a broader goal of creating the conditions for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and lasting peace.
When liberals mentioned Trump, it was begrudgingly. “Trump gets what he wants because he is a bully. Period,” Elana Sztokman, an Israeli American on the left, wrote. “And apparently, bullying was what was necessary to get this ceasefire done.”
The response reflected a Jewish community supportive of Israel’s security, exhausted by the ongoing war and deeply skeptical of its current leadership. A recent Washington Post survey of 815 Jewish Americans found that only 46% approved of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and 68% rated Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel as poor or fair. It mirrored polling after the joint Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites earlier this year: cautious approval of the outcome and concern about escalation.
Recent polls show Democratic voters generally are increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians. Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in the race for New York City mayor is prompting mainstream Democrats with national ambitions to mimic his sharp criticism of Israel.
The 20-point plan — relief first, reconstruction and governance later, backed by Arab regional partners — gives both leaders a much-needed win. Trump can claim he succeeded where former President Joe Biden could not, securing his legacy and fulfilling a key campaign promise to both Arab American voters and his MAGA base to end the conflict. Netanyahu, meanwhile, deeply unpopular among Israelis who blame him for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 massacres, enters an election year with a diplomatic win, his right-wing coalition intact for now, and tangible results to show for what he called a seven-front war of redemption.
In Israel, there was unfettered jubilation. Across the political map, from Netanyahu loyalists to his harshest critics, Trump was hailed as the leader Israelis had longed for. A farmer who has used his land to send political messages in the past plowed the words “Nobel 4 Trump” into his fields. A town in Israel’s north said it was renaming its soccer stadium for Trump.
In his first interview after the deal was announced on Wednesday, Trump said that he told Netanyahu his post-war plan would enhance Israel’s standing in America and globally.
Why Trump succeeded where Biden failed
The Trump plan closely resembles the three-phase plan Biden outlined in April 2024, which called for postwar rebuilding, the removal of Hamas and a long-term regional strategy. The ceasefire-hostage deal signed in January, with the backing of both Biden and Trump, collapsed after just 42 days.
Gershon Baskin, a veteran Israeli hostage negotiator and an early conduit between U.S. envoys and Hamas, argued that Biden’s insistence on partial ceasefires rather than a full end to the war weakened America’s hand. Biden, Baskin said, was weakened by his concessions to Netanyahu, who feared that a long-term ceasefire would collapse his far-right coalition.
“To me, it was clear that President Biden projected American weakness while President Trump projects American power,” Baskin wrote in a Substack post. “From that moment, on December 26, 2024 it was clear to me that the only way that the war would come to an end is when President Trump makes the decision that it has to end.”
Trump also entered negotiations with advantages Biden never had.
First, there were no “daylight” theatrics. Biden’s public clashes with Netanyahu — over the judicial overhaul and Israel’s operation in Rafah — created visible friction. When Biden called for protections for Palestinian civilians and increased humanitarian aid, Netanyahu openly defied him. Trump, by contrast, backed Israel’s war goals, praised Netanyahu’s leadership and kept most disagreements behind closed doors.
Second, Trump focused on outcomes, not empathy. In her memoir 107 Days, former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote that Biden often appeared “inadequate and forced” when addressing Palestinian suffering, constrained by his strong emotional attachment to Israel.
Trump didn’t dwell on empathy. He was blunt. He called the war a “public relations disaster” and said his goal was simple: stop wars and bring peace. For an anxious Israeli public, that direct language resonated.
Finally, Trump’s transactional style and focus on results made his approach more effective. Netanyahu, who has over the last decade all but abandoned any pretense at cultivating Democrats, placed all his eggs in the Republican basket: He could not defy Trump.
Trump’s envoys — Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — enjoy deep ties with governmental and business elites in Qatar and Turkey, two governments that are close to Hamas. Democrats had strained those relationships over human-rights disputes. The countries returned to the negotiations now as regional powerbrokers.
Another spur for Qatar: Trump enhanced the already expansive U.S. security relationship with the Gulf monarchy and pressured Netanyahu to apologize for an Israeli strike on the country’s capital targeting Hamas leadership.
That left Netanyahu no choice but to oblige. Trump, who plans to visit Israel and address the Knesset, will likely reward the embattled Israeli leader with the political backing needed to push the deal through and to jump-start a reelection bid.
JTA contributed to this report.
The post Why Trump was able to succeed with a Gaza peace plan where Biden failed appeared first on The Forward.
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How hostage families responded to learning that a ceasefire deal would return their loved ones
When the news broke in Tel Aviv that Israel and Hamas had, at long last, reached a deal that would return their sons, Einav Zangauker and Michael Ilouz embraced. Then Ilouz picked Zangauker up and danced, his unbridled joy commanding his body.
It was one of dozens of displays of jubilation captured on video of families who have rarely, if ever, had reason to smile in the public eye.
The families were all thrust into grim fraternity on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and abducted 250 people. At first, there were thousands of family members lobbying for the hostages’ release, but over the course of two ceasefires and as more information emerged about the conditions of the hostages, only 20 families still faced
Many of them have become well known within Israel and beyond for their indefatigable efforts to bring their sons, husbands and fathers home. Now, their glee is going viral.
Talia Berman, mother of hostages Gali and Ziv, was seen in a video posted to Instagram breaking down in tears and dancing in the arms of Emily Damari, their best friend who was released in a temporary ceasefire in January.
“Hugging Mama Talia and seeing her smile is the best thing that has happened to me since I returned,” wrote Damari in a post on Instagram.
Several hostage families and former hostages on a lobbying trip in Washington, D.C., were captured embracing and grinning ear-to-ear while learning the news of the ceasefire. They shouted a chorus of “thank you” to Trump on the phone as they met with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, in a video posted by the Hostage Families Forum.
Within the group were the freed American-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel and Arbel Yehud and Iair Horn, former hostages who were released earlier this year without their loved ones — Yehud’s partner Ariel Cunio and Horn’s brother Eitan.
And Alana Zeitchik, an American relative of the hostage David Cunio, Ariel’s brother posted a triumphant WhatsApp from her cousin Sharon Alony, David’s wife. Alony and her twin daughters were released from Hamas captivity in November 2023.
“It’s official – DAVID IS COMING HOME,” Alony wrote. Zeitchik responded with more than 30 emojis signifying crying.
Other former hostages also expressed their relief at the release of those still in captivity.
“I can’t believe it. Elkana, Yosef, Segev, Bar, Maksym, you’re coming home to your families,” said former hostage Ohad Ben Ami in a video posted on Instagram. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m going to see you, hug you…wow, I’m so excited.”
Former hostage Omar Wenkert wrote on Instagram: “Finally you’re coming back to life, can’t wait to hold you. My heart’s wish is coming true! Guy, Evyatar and all the kidnapped. Is this how it feels when dreams come true?”
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Who needs a Reichstag fire when you can just pretend Portland’s burning?
Here in Portland, this supposed city of darkness, happy kids splash around in a fountain next to the sparkling Willamette River, senior citizens practice tai chi in a park, bald eagles and ospreys soar past office building windows, chefs and bakers win national awards, world-class jazz musicians draw locals into clubs, and hiking trails course through the largest urban forest in the country, with glacier-draped Mount Hood as a backdrop.
It’s hardly the hellscape depicted by Donald Trump. What the city is, however, is a primary target in Trump’s scheming to militarize American cities — at least progressive ones like Portland, my home for the past 25 years.
Demonstrations have continued outside an ICE facility in Portland since the summer. The protests have been small, overall peaceful, occasionally tense, but often cheery — such as the time when a group of elderly Portlanders sang “This Land Is Your Land.” But Trump is using the protests as an excuse to launch what local officials and residents fear could be a major military intervention in the city, turning Portland, in essence, into a domestic battleground.
Trump is employing a playbook that’s eerily similar to ones that have been used by despots, including Adolf Hitler, who consolidated his control over Germany by deploying Sturmabteilung shock troops to spread fear across the populace.
Trump has effectively weaponized ICE as his own personal police force, and is using it to bait protestors into clashes and create a pretext for exerting military-style control over cities led by Democrats. From the very beginning of Trump’s second term, federal agents’ pursuit of undocumented immigrants has been marked by the spread of fear and terror. Trump says ICE’s heavy-handed tactics are necessary to fulfill his promise that undocumented immigrants “will not be tolerated.” But the scale and spectacle of ICE actions suggest another motive: to manufacture war-like images that justify crackdowns on leftists, whom Trump routinely portrays as domestic terrorists.
So far, no ICE raid has been more chilling than its assault last week on a five-story apartment building in Chicago. In the dead of night, armed federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters onto the roof. Others stormed the building from the ground, kicking down doors, throwing flash-bang grenades, and zip-tying screaming children and elderly residents. The target of the raid was a Venezuelan gang. But Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said many of those who were arrested were U.S. citizens with no criminal record — which has been disputed by the Trump administration.
Two weeks earlier, a pastor praying outside a Chicago ICE processing center was struck in the head by a pepper ball fired from a roof and then sprayed with tear gas as he lay on the ground. He has since sued ICE, alleging violations of religious freedom and free speech.
After weeks of threats, Trump has federalized 300 Illinois National Guard troops and ordered hundreds more to deploy from Texas — using protests against immigrant detention as a pretext for putting soldiers on the streets. The move defies the spirit of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the use of federal military forces to enforce civilian law without explicit congressional authorization.
At a press conference, Pritzker voiced angry defiance toward what he called “Trump’s invasion.”
“The state of Illinois is going to use every lever at our disposal to resist this power grab and get (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi) Noem’s thugs the hell out of Chicago,” Pritzker said.
Portland might well be next.
Over the weekend, a federal judge in Oregon, appointed by Trump in 2019, issued two rulings temporarily blocking his attempts to deploy National Guard troops to Portland. In a blistering decision Saturday, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut wrote that Trump’s claims of a “war zone” were “simply untethered to the facts.” She added: “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
When Trump tried to circumvent her ruling by ordering California National Guard troops into Oregon, Immergut blocked that maneuver too, writing: “The executive cannot invoke emergency powers based on manufactured chaos.”
Trump responded by claiming that “Portland is on fire,” and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which legal experts note would effectively amount to imposing martial law.
Trump’s description of the situation in Portland is grossly exaggerated, and intentionally so. The protests have occurred in a very small area around the ICE detention center. There have been clashes involving pepper spray, but no ongoing battles. The scene is actually more like an episode of the TV show Portlandia. During Kristi Noem’s visit to the facility on Tuesday she was mocked by activists wearing inflatable animal costumes, including a dinosaur, a raccoon and a chicken. An activist in a giant toad costume has become a social media sensation, especially after an ICE agent shot pepper spray into the air vent on the costume’s back side. Another image making the social media rounds shows protestors using donuts dangling from fishing poles to taunt ICE agents — “ICE fishing,” as they call it.
Portland wears its progressivism on its sleeve, which does not always work in the city’s favor. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests downtown, city officials faced accusations of being too lenient on leftist agitators. Riots during those protests, coupled with COVID, led to the closure of numerous downtown stores. Leftists who relish confrontation with right-wing counter-protesters have posed another challenge. During one protest in late August 2020, Trump supporters rode their pickup trucks into downtown Portland and picked a fight with leftist demonstrators. That night, a right-wing counter-protester was shot and killed by a self-described anti-fascist activist, who was later tracked down and fatally shot by federal agents in neighboring Washington state. Before fleeing, the shooter said he was defending himself.
Even before Trump, Portland has had a rocky relationship with federal authority. The city was the site of massive protests against President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2019, Portland became the second U.S. city — after San Francisco — to withdraw its police officers from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, citing concerns over civil liberties and lack of transparency. In the 1990s, staffers for the first President Bush dubbed Portland “Little Beirut” in response to raucous anti-war protests that greeted his visits.
During his visit to Quantico Marine Base, Trump told top military commanders, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” He singled out Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. For now, Portland’s resistance may resemble a surreal episode of protest theater—complete with inflatable dinosaurs and the viral “anti-fascist” frog. But there will be no cause for chuckling if the city becomes a proving ground for martial law, with federal troops rehearsing the suppression of dissent.
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