Uncategorized
‘A battle of Jews against Jews’? Arab Israelis debate whether and how to join Israel’s democracy protests
TAYIBE, Israel (JTA) — Prominent figures among Israel’s Arab minority are calling on its members to join the mass protests against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul plan, arguing that Arabs will be the first victims of any weakening of the Supreme Court.
“If the government succeeds it will make our chances for equality and a just peace more remote,” said Suheil Diab, former deputy mayor of Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab city, and one of the organizers of a nonpartisan push to get Arabs to demonstrate alongside their Jewish counterparts.
“If we don’t repel the attack on the judiciary, we can’t go forward with our agenda,” Diab went on. “I want Arabs to participate and to know that participating is in their interest.”
The proposed reforms would give the Knesset — now controlled by a right-wing coalition — the power to override Israel’s Supreme Court, in a move that proponents say is needed because, in their view, the court has grown too liberal and out of step with popular sentiment. Leaders of some of the parties in the coalition have called for curbing rights of LGBTQ Israelis, non-Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis. At least one of them has openly suggested that Arab citizens who are “disloyal” should be deported.
Diab and other Arab leaders fear that without the protection of the Supreme Court, the Arab minority might face measures limiting funding, access to jobs and opportunities and even their political representation. Even expulsion feels like a realistic concern given the far-right influence in the government, he said.
”We need to convince a distinct share of the Jewish majority that both of us are threatened,” Diab told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The only way is a shared Jewish-Arab struggle.”
But while massive protests including tech entrepreneurs, army reservists, academics and others have shown the extent of determination among Jews to stop the government’s bid to legislate what it terms “judicial reform,” Arab Israelis, who make up one-fifth of the population, have hardly turned out.
This dynamic has been true in the Knesset as well as in the streets. Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Arab Ra’am Party, has said he opposes the changes, but when he was invited to participate in a press conference with other leaders of the political opposition, he declined.
Palestinian flags were seen at some of the early pro-democracy protests in Israel, such as at this one in Tel Aviv Jan. 14, 2023, but have appeared less frequently since. (Gili Yaari/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A push to get Arabs to participate in the protests began Friday with publication of a petition calling for public activism, inked by more than 200 Arab personalities, including retired judges. A gathering here on Saturday sought to work through thorny questions about what Arab participation might look like, and what demands it might make.
Getting Israeli Arabs to the protests that have become a recurring feature of life in cities across Israel every Saturday night won’t necessarily be easy. The push is likely to run up against perceived disenfranchisement on the part of Arab Israelis, whose political parties have rarely been part of governing coalitions and whose participation in electoral politics has been portrayed in the past as illegitimate by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.
Another likely obstacle is a narrow focus for the protest organizers, almost all Jewish.
In the first weeks of the protests in January, Palestinian flags raised by protesters drew criticism from right-wing and pro-government pundits. National Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for a ban on the flag in public and warned that those waving Palestinian flags in future demonstrations would be arrested. Fewer Palestinian flags were seen in the following weeks, and issues relating to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or to the new government’s attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were all but dropped from the agenda. An Israeli activist who asked to carry a Palestinian flag while speaking was declined.
The organizers do not seem interested thus far in broadening the agenda, and only a few Arab speakers have been featured in the demonstrations. Just hours after the Tayibe meeting on Saturday, Reem Hazzan, a leader of the predominantly Arab Hadash party in Haifa, was told by organizers who reviewed a copy of her planned speech to make changes to it. She refused and there was no Arab speaker.
Haaretz quoted unidentified organizers as saying the problem was that Hazzan refused to call in her speech for the Arab public to turn out for the protests. But Hazzan, in remarks to JTA, said she sees a deeper problem.
“We want to change the rules of the game, not just preserve what exists. What exists is not good,” she said. “We need to speak about the occupation and about discrimination. If you want Arabs to participate you must take into account that Arabs have an agenda.”
Exactly what that agenda should be was under debate during the gathering in Tayibe, a sprawling town in central Israel that like many Arab municipalities suffers from spiraling crime and violence.
“People say it’s a battle of Jews against Jews; others say they don’t want us there so why should we go and others point to times when the court sided against us,” said Mohammed Ali Taha, 82, former head of the Arab Writers Association, who spoke at the Tayibe gathering.
Arab Israelis cast their vote at a voting station in Tayibe, Nov. 1, 2022. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
“It’s all true,” he continued. “But still we must join the protests because we will be the primary losers. When the far right rises, it strikes against the weak. We are the weak.”
With no constitution, Israel lacks any explicit guarantee of equality for all its citizens. Some laws, including those ensuring the right for immigration, advantage Jews. To the extent that Arabs have been able to challenge discrimination in recent decades, it has been largely through the Supreme Court inferring equality on them based on liberal legislation such as the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, passed in 1992, which specifies, “Every human being is entitled to protection of his life, body and dignity.” Critics of the proposed reforms warn that they could result in the rollback of that basic law.
The court has also at times ruled against Arab Israeli interests, such as when it refused to consider petitions against the 2018 Nation State Law, which enshrines Jewish settlement as a national value, declares that national self-determination in the state of Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and demotes Arabic from an official language.
Tayibe’s deputy mayor, Malik Azzem, said that despite its mixed record, an independent Supreme Court is essential for Israeli Arabs.
“The High Court is our last defense for our rights as a minority,” he said. “The struggle for our rights is not separate from this struggle. We need to mobilize the public.”
He added that as an elected official, he fears that without the court’s oversight, the government would simply cut the budgets of Arab municipalities.
”People need to raise their voices and join,” Azzem said. “We should be at the center of the demonstrations. We are already late in dealing with this.”
Taha, the writer, whose works often focus on the Nakba, an Arabic term meaning catastrophe that is used to describe the plight of Palestinians after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and which he lived through as a child, told the gathering: ”Without Jewish-Arab cooperation we cannot achieve anything. This is an opportunity for cooperation.”
He said he believes Arab Israelis are today more vulnerable than they have been at any time since the period that they lived under military rule, from 1948 to 1966. At that time they were so restricted that they could not travel within Israel without permits. The danger today, he says, is due to the clout of far-right ministers Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have expressed anti-Arab views and, in Ben-Gvir’s case, even called for the expulsion of “disloyal” citizens.
“If they succeed it will be worse for us than military rule was,” Taha said. To avert this, he argued, Arabs need to join the protests alongside Jews even if it means not raising Palestinian flags.
”It’s not the time and place for a protest about a Palestinian state,” he said. “This could cause conflict among the protesters.”
But to others, the idea of protesting without highlighting the need to end both the occupation and inequality is akin to denying one’s very identity.
“I’m against participating in any demonstration that is embarrassed to talk about context and the occupation. I support something broader,” said Sondos Saleh, a former member of Knesset for the Arab Ta’al party.
Sondos Saleh, an Arab Israeli politician then on the Joint List Party candidate list, speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Feb. 23, 2021. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Merav Ben-Ari, a legislator for the largest opposition party, Yesh Atid, told JTA she would welcome greater Arab participation in the protests. ”Anything that strengthens the protests is excellent,” she said.
But she showed little enthusiasm for talking about many of the topics that animate Israeli Arabs in the political sphere, including the core one that liberal critics of the protest movement say is being given short shrift.
“How is the occupation connected?” Ben-Ari asked. “What is needed is to talk about the reform. Everyone who loves the country and cares about it has to fight against the reform and the harm to the Supreme Court.”
—
The post ‘A battle of Jews against Jews’? Arab Israelis debate whether and how to join Israel’s democracy protests appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Her daughter left the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration just before the shooting, then asked, ‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’
The daughter of an American expatriate living about two miles from the mass killing at a Hanukkah celebration in suburban Sydney, Australia, escaped the carnage by coming home to change clothes, her mother said.
“She’d been there earlier that afternoon, on the bridge where they were shooting. She came home, changed her clothes, and was getting ready to go again,” said Michelle Stein-Evers, a former Los Angeles resident and a co-founder of the Alliance of Black Jews in 1995.
“She and her friends were on their way back to Bondi to go to the party and have something to eat, and they were stopped by the police,” Stein-Evers said. “She found out why, and she started calling everyone to let us know. Her best friend’s cousin was killed. Another best friend’s cousin was shot in the leg.”
Her daughter, who is 22, had previously locked down her Facebook account out of privacy concerns and requested that her name not be used. As the massacre unfolded Sunday, she turned to social media to search for information.
“‘Oh my God, there’s bodies everywhere,’” Stein-Evers said her daughter told her.
She also asked where her father was, amid rumors — later proven untrue — that the neighborhood where he had gone to play tennis was also affected.
Stein-Evers said the events were unfolding within minutes of their home, where she was alone after her daughter headed back toward the beach.
“It was scary. It was nothing but sirens — sirens and sirens — and helicopters,” she said.
Stein-Evers said she knew the first victim publicly identified among the dead, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who helped organize the celebration.
“He was, by consensus, one of the nicest guys in the Jewish community in Sydney,” she said.
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Sydney and across Australia since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Stein-Evers said, adding that her daughter stopped attending the prestigious University of Sydney because of campus protests.
“She was constantly being heckled, asked, ‘Where are you from? Are you Jewish? Are you an Arab? Why aren’t you with us?’” Stein-Evers said. Her daughter would not respond to the questions and eventually enrolled in distance learning through a college in Melbourne.
Stein-Evers, who has lived in the Middle East — including in Muslim-majority countries — as well as Europe and the United States, said she now has concerns about her own safety.
“I was never scared to be a Jew in America. I was never scared in Germany,” she said — a fear she said is now shared by her daughter.
“When she came home last night, she was in tears,” Stein-Evers said. “‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’”
The post Her daughter left the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration just before the shooting, then asked, ‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Will laying tefillin make a difference? A rabbi responds to his cousin’s murder in Australia attack
The first thing I did when I heard news of the attack at Bondi Beach — at what must have been midnight Australian time — was to call my dear friend Michelle.
No response, though that’s not atypical: an American expatriate who’s lived in Sydney for a generation, she usually doesn’t get back to me for a day or two. Then I worked social media, searching for her and anyone else I might be connected to via Jewish geography — which often means a friend-of-a-friend among Facebook users.
While searching, the enormity of the horror set in. Fifteen people dead, about 40 wounded, hundreds under fire on the beach where the Chabad of Bondi, near Sydney, held its “Chanukah by the Sea” event.
If there were people I knew — one survivor had previously written for the Forward — the names of those killed weren’t released yet, except for Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who organized the celebration. His death was confirmed by his cousin, Rabbi Zalman Lewis of Brighton, England.
“My dear cousin, Rabbi Eli Schlanger was murdered in today’s terrorist attack in Sydney. He leaves behind his wife & young children, as well as my uncle & aunt & siblings,” Lewis posted on Facebook.
Lewis turned quickly from his cousin – “More about Eli later in the week” – to what to do next.
“Do a Mitzvah today,” he wrote. “Send pictures wearing Tefillin, saying a prayer, giving extra charity, lighting Chanukah candles.”
The suggestion instantly reminded me of another by a Chabad rabbi, in answer to a question by CNN’s Jake Tapper two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack. In the face of Hamas’s evil, that rabbi said, “Every Jewish woman should please before the Sabbath and before sundown light the Shabbat candles.”
I recall seeing Tapper’s baffled expression. It’s similar to what I’m sure many who saw Rabbi Lewis’s message must be thinking: There’s a major attack on Jews and all you can say is put on tefillin? How about kill all the terrorists?
At the other extreme are those cheering on the attackers — including one friend-of-a-friend (Jewish, I’m all but certain) who posted, “At this point, these random attacks are the only way to stop Israel. It should’ve never gotten this far but unfortunately the Zionists have brought us all here.”
I have to believe — or hope — the latter is an extreme minority opinion, and I’ll spare the poster’s name lest it incite any reciprocal violent reaction.
As for the former, kill-them-all reactions immediately run into the reality that it isn’t so easy to do, illustrated disastrously by the Gaza war. Measured purely in casualties and carnage, it was a military victory. Politically and morally, it was a public-relations disaster for Israel.
That reality has led some Jews to question the wisdom of celebrating Hanukkah as a Maccabean victory. Instead, many are accentuating Gemara rabbis who argued the holiday is more about the miracle of the oil than military might.
That doesn’t mean their successors have evolved into pacifists, but Chabad rabbis are largely speaking to Jews, about being Jewish, and, as they see it, things Jews can do themselves to repair the world.
“Let’s flood the world with goodness. As Jews, we know, as difficult as it might seem, that light & good will always win,” Rabbi Lewis wrote.
You don’t have to walk into a Chabad house to hear that. My own Reconstructionist rabbi in Duluth, Minnesota, said essentially the same thing, writing to congregants on Sunday, “Let us not succumb to fear or despair but rather embrace our faith that much more resolutely.”
Maybe some prayers are answered. Hours after my calls and messages — but much sooner than her usual replies — Michelle finally responded.
“Physically, we’re fine,” she said.
So she is safe. But too many others were not. And if faith prevents a similar fate for even a single human being, pray away.
The post Will laying tefillin make a difference? A rabbi responds to his cousin’s murder in Australia attack appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
New York Jewish leaders at menorah lighting call for solidarity and pride after Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack
(New York Jewish Week) — Rivkah Rothschild was on her way to a public menorah lighting in New York City on Sunday evening when she decided to recite a specific Jewish prayer to herself.
“I actually said Shema Yisrael, which is the prayer that we say before passing away, just in the taxi coming over, just in case there were any terrorists here,” said Rothschild just after the event.
An attorney in Midtown East, Rothschild was planning to skip the menorah lighting at Carl Schurz Park until Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski, the executive director of the Chabad Lubavitch of the Upper East Side, asked her and her fellow community members to come out following the deadly shooting at a Chabad Hanukkah party in Sydney, Australia.
“I think we all are very shaken. We’re devastated by the news of what happened today in Sydney, Australia. All our hearts are all broken for the people that are suffering what they’ve experienced there,” said Rothschild. “I was fearful when I made the decision that I’m coming.”
The menorah lighting just outside of Gracie Mansion, which was hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York, Chabad of the Upper East Side and Kehilath Jeshurun, was one of dozens that took place across New York city to mark the first night of Hanukkah.
Hundreds of people crowded together on the ice-covered promenade of the park, enjoying sufganiyot and latkes, as sorrow and determination hung in the air.
“It was a very unified spirit and a strong energy, a resolute energy, an energy of conviction, determination,” said Rothschild following the event. “In my study of history, when Jews are in danger, we usually do three things. None of them work. We appease, we flee and we ignore. We’re not doing any of that now.”
Despite the attack, which killed 15 people and injured dozens more, Chabad officials and Jewish leaders across the country urged for planned Hanukkah celebrations to move ahead with added security measures.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the NYPD has significantly increased security around Hanukkah celebrations, menorah lightings, and Jewish houses of worship across all five boroughs,” wrote NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch in a post on X. “New Yorkers will see an enhanced uniformed presence, specialized patrols, counterterrorism resources, and additional protective measures deployed where appropriate.”
Indeed, over a dozen New York police officers and members of Chevra Hatzalah, the New York-based Jewish ambulance service, could be seen on the outskirts of the crowd as Hanukkah songs blared over the speakers.
Prior to the lighting of the menorah, which sat raised above the crowd, several rabbis, Jewish leaders and city officials gave speeches where they urged the crowd to counter the attack in Sydney by being proudly Jewish.
The incoming comptroller of New York, Mark Levine, who urged Jewish New Yorkers to attend menorah lightings earlier in the day, told the crowd that none of the public Hanukkah events throughout the city had been cancelled and that “turnout has been off the charts.”
“We are aspiring now to be modern-day Maccabees, this is who we are in New York City,” said Levine. “To those who hate us, know that we are not going anywhere. We will not let you intimidate us, not here in this park, not in front of Park East Synagogue, not in our schools, not in our subways, nowhere.”
Julie Menin, a Jewish politician who declared victory last month in the race for City Council speaker, told the children in the audience that “this too shall pass and things will be brighter.”
“This is an incredibly difficult day for the Jewish community, and it is really only by coming together and celebrating the fact that we are Jewish, that we are lighting the menorah tonight, that we are lighting the candles in the darkness, that we are going to heal, and it is only through education that we are going to fight antisemitism,” said Menin.
Throughout the speeches, many leaders also took aim at the increase in antisemitic rhetoric that has proliferated around the globe over the course of the war in Gaza.
Some also specifically decried the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a common pro-Palestinian slogan that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declined to condemn during his campaign. He later said he would discourage its use.
“We are shocked and heartbroken about what happened, but we’re not surprised,” said Hindy Poupko, the senior vice president of community organizing and external relations at UJA-Federation of New York. “After two years of people shouting on our streets ‘Globalize the intifada’ from New York to Sydney, words have consequences. The violent rhetoric must end, and we call on all of our leaders and our elected officials to condemn that rhetoric.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, the leader of the Orthodox Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, also directed his commentary to the use of the phrase.
“I need to make this very clear, because some don’t understand it. Globalizing the intifada is not an unfortunate phrase, it’s not something to be discouraged, globalizing the intifada is a call to murder,” said Steinmetz. “It’s time for us to tell the truth that this anti-Zionism has led to the death of Jews in Boulder, in Washington D.C., in Leeds and in Sydney. It’s time to say that anti-Zionism kills Jews.”
The alleged attackers in Sydney may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, according to news reports out of Australia. No reports have suggested that they made any specific comments during the attack.
In an extensive post on X Sunday, Mamdani condemned the attack and reiterated his commitment to “work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe.”
“This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world,” wrote Mamdani. “Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside.”
Also on the stage at Carl Schurz Park Sunday night was Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York whose brother-in-law, Arsen Ostrovsky, was shot during the attack in Sydney.
“I asked him just an hour ago, what should I say to your sisters and brothers in New York as your brother? He said, darkness will never triumph. We will prevail,” said Creditor. “We have a long history of doing better than surviving, friends. We have come back from so much darkness.”
Ben Axelrod, a 30-year-old Jewish resident of the Upper East Side who was in the crowd Sunday night, said he had cried that morning when he learned the news of the attack, but did not feel deterred from coming to the menorah lighting.
“Because at the end of the day, this is not new, it is scary, but we have to keep moving for all those who passed, and we can honor their memory by continuing to be proud Jews,” said Axelrod.
Rena Tobey, a 66-year-old Jewish resident of the Upper East Side, said that she had not planned to come but decided to attend the menorah lighting after learning of the attack.
“This is about light increasing every night, and we have to know that candles are temporary, but we have to carry that light with us no matter what the darkness is in the world,” said Tobey.
Another Jewish attendee of the menorah lighting, who identified himself by his first name, Steven, said that he was not afraid to come to the event despite the attack.
“We’re a strong, vibrant community, and we’re proud of who we are, and it shows how strong and proud we are given the weather conditions that we all came out,” said Steven. “Once we start to feel fear, you’re giving in, and we don’t give in.”
The post New York Jewish leaders at menorah lighting call for solidarity and pride after Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack appeared first on The Forward.