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Thousands of Israelis left after Oct. 7. With Netanyahu on the ballot, they’re booking flights home to vote.
Hours after Israel finally announced the official date for its upcoming elections last weekend, Israeli expats flooded social media with photos of the airline tickets they purchased to fly home and cast their ballots at the end of October.
Israel is one of the few democracies that do not allow citizens living abroad to cast absentee ballots. That leaves an estimated 500,000 Israelis overseas and eligible to vote with a choice: spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to fly to Israel, or sit out a consequential election that will decide whether Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party hold on to power.
The vote will be the first since the Oct. 7 attacks and comes after nearly three years of war, during which a surge in emigration has left an unusually large share of eligible Israeli voters living overseas. Even from thousands of miles away, Israeli expats say they have become representatives of the country and often targets of the conflict’s fallout — giving them extra motivation to help decide their nation’s future.
“Israel is at stake right now,” said Josh Drill, a social activist who hopes his vote will help unseat Netanyahu. Drill left Israel temporarily to pursue a master’s degree at Columbia University. “My wife and I, and also our broader circles, are doing everything in our power to be in Israel for election day.”
To help Israelis return, the AID Coalition, a U.S. based nonprofit organization, launched an initiative called FLY&VOTE to help expats search for flights within their budgets and navigate travel logistics. They also plan to charter flights to the country, with passengers paying their own way.
“We’re not creating voters; we’re removing logistical and informational barriers,” said Batell Blaish-Sultanik, the AID Coalition’s executive director.
Earlier this year, the AID Coalition surveyed roughly 4,500 Israelis living abroad and found that 84% viewed the coming election as one of the most important in Israel’s history. Seventy-three percent said they wanted to return to vote, while 45% said they would do whatever it took to exercise that right.
In the 36 hours after the election date was announced, Blaish-Sultanik says, more than 5,000 additional people registered with FLY&VOTE, bringing the total number of registrants to more than 25,000. The AID Coalition’s goal is to help 50,000 Israelis return to cast ballots.
“If we can’t bring the election to them,” Blaish-Sultanik said, “we’ll bring them to the election.”
Their urgency is heightened by the sheer number of Israelis now living elsewhere, with the number leaving the country in 2024 and 2025 about double previous annual numbers. Last year, 70,000 Israelis departed, with about half heading to North America. Many cited dissatisfaction with the Netanyahu government and the difficulties of living in a country at war.
According to demographer Uzi Rebhun, chair of diaspora relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, those who move abroad do not represent the average Israeli. They are disproportionately young, highly educated and secular. Rebhun says that based on these demographic characteristics, many are likely centrist voters.
But the AID Coalition is adamant that it supports any Israeli who wants to cast their ballot, regardless of political affiliation. “We don’t pick a side; we back the right to vote,” said Blaish-Sultanik.
Who gets to vote?
Beyond the cost of airfare, Israeli voters abroad also face uncertainty over which airlines will actually be flying to Israel. Several foreign carriers have suspended service during the war with Iran, with El Al being one of the few airlines that has operated consistently. A non-stop round trip El Al flight from New York around the time of the election starts at roughly $1,500 and can easily exceed $2,000 depending on travel dates.
But Israeli expats living in the U.S. told the Forward airfare isn’t the only factor that will determine whether they can make the trip.
Some worry Israel could have a second round of elections if no coalition is able to reach 61 seats, as was repeatedly the case during elections from 2019 through 2022. As the polls currently stand, neither the pro-Netanyahu bloc nor the opposition is consistently projected to win a 61-seat majority.
“There is a good chance for a second round of elections,” said Avia Liberman, an Israeli pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at Yale who plans to return to Israel after graduation to work in the public sector. “So am I spending my money now and then not affecting the next one? Am I putting my bet on the next election? Those might be during winter break, and then it will be easier to go back.”
Others cited the difficulty of taking significant time away from work or school.
For families, another challenge presents itself.
Assaf Wolff, a 45-year-old father of three who moved to New Jersey five years ago, said that while he and his wife are both Israeli citizens, only he plans to make the trip.
“There is an issue in the community because if both parents want to come to vote and they have young children, at least one person has to stay behind,” he said.
Debate about diaspora
Whether Israelis should be able to vote from abroad has long been a contentious question, with some Israelis believing that those who no longer bear the direct consequences of their vote, specifically when it comes to Israel’s security situation, should not be allowed to cast a ballot.
According to Ofer Kenig, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, one reason Israel does not allow absentee voting is because of the sheer size of its diaspora.
“Because of the Law of Return, citizenship in Israel is acquired very easily. All a Jew needs to do is just arrive in Israel, get a citizenship, and then go back to his home country. And do we want him or her to participate in the elections? I’m not sure,” he said. According to Kenig, similar laws on absentee voting exist for other democracies with large diaspora populations like Greece and Ireland.
Kenig suggests only those Israelis living abroad whose center of life is in Israel should be able to participate in elections. “The day-to-day life here, especially security-wise, makes it extremely unfair for Israelis who never lived here for long, or maybe they lived here for long, but left many years ago, to have an impact on my and my neighbors’ day-to-day lives,” he added.
According to a study done by Kenig, in the 2022 elections, approximately 36,227 votes correlated to one election seat, meaning votes from Israelis living abroad could have a substantial impact on the outcome depending on how many decide to make the trip.
The growing significance of overseas voters seems to have drawn attention from within the government as well. Haaretz reported this week that senior figures at the Transportation Ministry are discussing how to prevent or limit charter flights to Israel like the ones being organized by the AID Coalition.
For Liberman, those critical of expat voters misunderstand the reality for Israelis living abroad, especially after Oct. 7.
“Everything that’s happening in Israel deeply affects the way you experience your life in the U.S. or wherever you are,” he said. “People see us as part of the country, and we are treated as a direct response to what is happening in the Middle East.”
He said Israelis abroad find themselves “affiliated with a country that they may have a complex or distant or close relationship with,” he explained. “But they still, by the forces of life, have to represent it.”
And those who have grown up there, never truly leave Israel behind, observed Blaish-Sulatnik.
“Israelis living abroad, these are people that check Israeli news first thing in the morning. They live Israel in real time, They breathe Israel,” she said. “After Oct. 7, they do advocacy for Israel.”
Nir Paz, a 52-year-old who moved to the U.S. 16 years ago, told the Forward that even though he has not lived in Israel for years, he plans to cast his ballot. He too intends to vote for the opposition.
“The events of October 7 and everything that has followed have profoundly affected not only Israelis living in Israel but also Jewish communities around the world. The decisions made by Israel’s leadership have far-reaching consequences for all of us.”
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Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference?
Moments after Seattle rapper Macklemore led fans in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in a call to “Free Palestine” that ended his opening spot on a national tour, another notorious rapper, despite years of toxic, antisemitic behavior, played to a sold-out crowd in Chicago’s Soldier Field for the second night in a row: the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
On Monday, Macklemore paid the price for that Sept. 4 show where he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid while opening for English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran. That gig ended when Robert Kraft, owner of Boston’s Gillette Stadium, said Macklemore was not welcome there for Sheeran’s two scheduled shows.
The shutout went beyond Gillette. With 10 more shows left on the tour, eight including Macklemore as the opening act, Kraft rallied other stadium owners to bar him too. Macklemore was removed.
“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” Sheeran wrote on Instagram. “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision. It was not mine. I have spent this week trying to build bridges, to find a solution and unfortunately, was unable to do so.”
On Tuesday, Sheeran’s three other opening acts and his back-up band withdrew in solidarity.
On that list of stadiums that barred Macklemore was AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, where tickets to see Ye in November went on sale last week. But there was no mention of canceling that show.
Neither Soldier Field nor AT&T Stadium responded to the Forward’s inquiries about why Ye was still welcome there despite his escalating antisemitism over the years.
In 2025, his antisemitic conduct hit a fever pitch when he ran a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to an online store that briefly sold a $20 T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. He also released a music video on X titled “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION),” featuring the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain,” which surpassed one million views. He was banned by Twitch after appearing in a livestream giving a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”
So is hating Jews more acceptable than hating Israel?
Not exactly, said Ari Ingel, executive director of The Creative Community for Peace, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism in the entertainment industry. Macklemore has shown no signs of remorse or intention to understand why his actions were harmful.
Meanwhile, Ye has paid a hefty price for his antisemitic rants over the years, losing lucrative deals with Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and Universal Music Group. And while some still question Ye’s sincerity and he has more work to do, he did apologize, Ingel said.
“Kanye is still being held accountable for his statements,” Ingel told the Forward. “He’s not working with the biggest promoters in the industry … We have not let go of all the harm he has caused yet, but his team has put him on a better path.”
Though Ye has performed in some European shows, his headline act at this summer’s Wireless Fest in London was canceled after the U.K. denied him a visa to travel to the country. Concerts in Italy, Russia and Poland also got nixed.
Here in the U.S., his promoter has only been able to book select stadiums for this 2026 tour, including the New Orleans Superdome, San Antonio Alamodome, and two shows at Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago.
In San Antonio, Mayor Gina Maria Ortiz Jones unsuccessfully tried to prevent Ye’s July 4 show in the city-owned stadium. But backlash against pulling the plug was too intense and the show was allowed to go on. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott also sought to cancel Ye’s June shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, another publicly-owned venue scheduled to host Sheeran on Nov. 7.
Ye’s shows have featured the spectacle that he is known for – the artist performing on top of a gigantic spinning globe in the center of the stadium with billows of fog, laser light shows, fireworks and surprise guest appearances. His setlist covers the span of his career, minus the song “Heil Hitler.”
Macklemore, by contrast, commandeered what was supposed to be a family-friendly show to deliver a not-so-family-friendly, even hostile, message, Ingel said. He didn’t just speak briefly about the plight of Palestinians, which would have been within his right to do. While singing “Hind’s Hall,” his tribute to pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building at Columbia University, he projected images of war and encampments on giant screens and led the crowd in a call and response, creating an atmosphere where Jewish fans felt threatened.
“Ye, despite the previous statements, is not doing that at his shows,” Ingel said. “He’s not whipping up the crowd into a frenzy of antisemitic hatred.” If he did, his tour would undoubtedly come to a screeching halt.
“Stadiums are not going to allow their venues to turn into forums for hate,” Ingel said. “This is about bringing people together.”
And so far, ironically, that’s what Ye’s shows try to do by sticking to the music. Unfortunately, Ingel said, Macklemore did not.
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Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment
(JTA) — Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found, after employees were subjected to harassing messages — some of them posted by employees in an internal forum called the Connected Jewish Network.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was “reasonable cause to believe” Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment based on their national origin, religion or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The determination follows on media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees.
The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had “repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths” and “labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.”
“This is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world and they couldn’t get it right,” Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told the Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. “Thankfully the EEOC did.”
Ho said Cisco had “at best failed to take their harassment seriously” and through its inaction had sent “the implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.”
The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees’ cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.
The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.
In August 2024, employees — including some concerned Jewish employees — filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian.
The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to “reduce the mess across the board.”
Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.
Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s determination, saying it had “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.” The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings and provided coaching to multiple employees.
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Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University citing ‘hostile environment’ for pro-Palestinian students
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University alum who was detained by the Trump administration last year, is suing his alma mater along with an Israeli dean of the school he attended for facilitating a “hostile environment” for pro-Palestinian students.
Khalil became a national symbol of the campus pro-Palestinian protest movement when he was detained in March 2025 after the government accused him of being aligned with terrorists. On Monday, he filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court accusing the school of engaging in months-long “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of pro-Palestinian students on campus, including at the hands of right-wing pro-Israel groups.
He contends that Columbia’s alleged indifference ultimately helped to lead to his 104-day detention by federal immigration authorities, during which he missed the birth of his first child, before being released after a federal judge ruled his detainment was likely unconstitutional. He is joined in the suit by members of the School of International and Public Affairs Palestine Working Group, a pro-Palestinian student group on campus.
“Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students,” Khalil told reporters at a press conference in New York on Monday.
SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo speaks during a book talk for Fareed Zakaria’s new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on April 3, 2024 in New York City. (Shahar Azran/Getty Images)
In addition to the university, the suit also names Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, who is Israeli-American, as a defendant. The complaint says that Yahi-Milo had unfairly accused Khalil, while a student in the school, of antisemitism and harassment.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Columbia representatives defended Yarhi-Milo in general terms.
“Throughout her time at Columbia and during her service as dean, Dean Yarhi-Milo has worked with and supported students of all backgrounds, including our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students,” the statement reads. “The University is grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of our students and her commitment to a campus free of discrimination and harassment.”
Columbia representatives declined to comment further on the lawsuit but said that “creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university. It is also a responsibility we take seriously.”
A leading figure of the encampment movement that began at Columbia before spreading to schools across the country, Khalil was the first pro-Palestinian student protest leader to be detained by the Trump administration and spent months in an immigrant detention center despite holding a green card.
In the months since a federal judge ordered his release, Khalil has filed a number of lawsuits, including against pro-Israel groups that he said “conspired” with the government to target him. He has also sued Columbia before, for disclosing student records as part of a congressional investigation.
Khalil’s latest lawsuit against Columbia claims the school violated Title VI protections for him and his fellow plaintiffs based on their ethnic identity, national origin or “affiliation with Palestine.” The lawsuit invokes the same federal civil rights law that Jewish and Israeli students have used in discrimination claims against universities, some of which have resulted in settlements.
Columbia itself signed a controversial agreement with the Trump administration last year to resolve federal civil rights investigations, paying $221 million and agreeing to a number of concessions in order to free up hundreds of millions in federal funding. During his press conference Monday, Khalil called such settlements “disgraceful.”
The suit notes that, as a student, Khalil called Yarhi-Milo “genocidal” in a message to fellow students. The suit then describes a subsequent internal university investigation into Khalil as “unfounded and retaliatory,” and claims the school “repeatedly launched meritless allegations of antisemitism against Mr. Khalil” prior to his federal detention.
During the press conference, Khalil accused Yahi-Milo of being someone who “weaponizes her identity to shield herself from legitimate concerns and criticism.” Khalil added, “Her priority has never been her students, me and my fellow students here. Her priority has always been Israel.”
The lawsuit’s examples of indifference include a claim that Columbia failed to intervene when a right-wing group, Accuracy in Media, labeled some of the members of Palestine Working Group as “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” in messages on the side of trucks driven near campus for months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. The group had targeted pro-Palestinian students in a similar fashion at several campuses.
Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who is Jewish, spoke at the press conference in support of Khalil, whom he called a friend. “We all see how the university’s anti-Palestinian racism has directly endangered its students,” said Howley, who wore a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice hat and a “Not In Our Name” shirt. “I won’t be wasting any more time on town halls or listening sessions or imagining anything.”
In a statement to JTA, Accuracy in Media president Adam Guillette said his group “uses publicly available information, and we are steadfastly opposed to doxxing. We pledge to continue delivering accountability to pro-Hamas radicals across the country.”
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