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A ‘historic’ day in Israel ends with a political compromise — and big questions about the future
(JTA) — Like hundreds of thousands of her fellow Israelis, Kelly Breakstone Roth’s instinct on Sunday was to take to the streets.
The only wrinkle: She and her family have been in Brooklyn for the last two years, part of the diaspora of hundreds of thousands of Israelis living abroad. They couldn’t just walk out the door of their apartment and join the sweeping nationwide protest that ignited after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister, who had called for a pause on proposed changes to Israel’s judiciary.
So they bought one-way plane tickets, set to take off at 2 a.m. on Monday and land in Israel that evening. “It was a very spontaneous decision,” Breakstone Roth, an entrepreneur, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Sunday evening, as she ran errands to prepare her family of five for a trip of indeterminate length. “But the sensation that we have to be there has been building up for quite a bit now.”
She likened the experience to that of Israeli military reservists who receive an emergency call-up notice, known in Israeli jargon as a “tzav shmoneh,” Hebrew for “order eight.”
“This is a tzav shmoneh moment for anybody who wants there to be a Jewish and democratic state,” she said.
By the time Breakstone Roth landed in Tel Aviv Monday evening, conditions in Israel had shifted dramatically. Late-night protests on Sunday that shut down a main highway and riveted Jews the world over had been dispersed, but protesters convened again on Monday in Jerusalem, where the parliament was waiting to hear whether it would vote on a key piece of the judiciary legislation. The country’s labor unions had called a general strike, and everything from universities to McDonald’s franchises to some departures at the Tel Aviv airport had shut down.
The Breakstone Roth family poses with protest signs in New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport en route to Israel, March 27, 2023. (Courtesy of Kelly Breakstone Roth)
Meanwhile, Netanyahu had spent Sunday night negotiating with his coalition partners, trying to keep their government together despite a mounting sense that proceeding immediately with its signature legislation could plunge Israel into unprecedented turmoil — possibly even civil war. By the evening, even the justice minister who threatened to quit if Netanyahu delayed the vote said he would respect a decision to pause — one that Netanyahu made official only as night fell.
Netanyahu did not say what he had promised his partners to sign off on the pause, but a far-right minister said he had exacted permission to launch a civilian police corps.
Earlier, breaking his public silence, the prime minister had tweeted, “I call on all the demonstrators in Jerusalem, on the right and the left, to behave responsibly and not to act violently. We are brotherly people.”
Big questions loomed: What would happen when right-wing supporters of the judiciary reform — including a notoriously racist and combative group of fans from the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club — heeded a call to take to the streets, too? Would a delay satisfy protesters who have spent a dozen weeks articulating deep-seated grievances that, in many cases, go far beyond the particular reforms? Would Netanyahu and his coalition offer any meaningful concessions before resuming the legislative process in the future? What would be the cost of the promises he offered his most extreme partners in exchange for their acquiescence?
The answers to those questions will help determine what kind of country Israel will be after this crisis ends, whenever that is. But on Sunday night and Monday, the protesters and those watching them could be forgiven for taking a moment to bask in the sense that history was being made.
Thousands of Israeli right-wing protesters rally in support of the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul bills outside of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in Jerusalem, March 27, 2023. (Gili Yaari/Flash90)
“What we witness in Israel is a historical revolution in the style of French, Russian, Iranian revolutions and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” tweeted Yossi Melman, a journalist who has covered military affairs for multiple Israeli newspapers.
“A historic night. Each of us will remember where we were tonight,” tweeted the journalist and political analyst Anshel Pfeffer. “And whoever was not in the streets will say that they were.”
The head of the country’s labor union, the Histadrut, also used the word “historic” to describe the general strike he was supporting.
Ahmad Tibi, an Arab lawmaker, tweeted in language drenched in history. He posted in Hebrew transliteration a slogan associated with the 2011 Arab Spring: “The people want to bring down the regime.”
It’s not at all clear that the Israelis who protested on Sunday and Monday will ultimately be satisfied. Revolutions don’t always succeed, as the Arab Spring and countless other examples in history make clear. Many of the social and demographic forces that brought Israel to this moment haven’t changed. Netanyahu has survived political crisis after political crisis before.
In addition, while a substantial majority of Israelis oppose the specific judicial reform legislation that is on the table now, many still say they believe some changes are merited. Israel’s far right, in particular, still views a disempowered Supreme Court as essential to achieving its vision of expanded Jewish settlement and control in the West Bank.
Supporters of the judicial overhaul were framing the stakes as historic, too, but casting the demonstrations as a threat to democracy. It is “inconceivable that the minority will force its opinion with violence and the creation of anarchy in the streets,” declared 17 leading religious Zionist rabbis in a joint statement calling on the government to push forward with the legislation on Monday.
Yet for Monday, at least, the politically diverse anti-government coalition that has solidified over the last three months could exult in the power of the people. And at a time when some liberal Israelis are so alarmed by the country’s political direction that they are packing up and moving away, the Breakstone Roths were coming home.
“This is a critical time in Israel’s history,” Breakstone Roth said before boarding. “In terms of our daughters, we felt it was really important for them to know that we’re doing everything that we possibly can to try to make an impact.”
She said she hoped to hear upon landing that Netanyahu was pulling the legislation, if only temporarily — then turned to realpolitik. “Hopefully If he does say it, he intends it, and … we’ll be able to say that the demonstrations were a success,” she said. “And if he’s just fooling, trying to do some sort of maneuver, then it’s going to be ignited once again.”
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EU-Funded NGO Backed Online Platform Targeting Jewish Businesses in Catalonia
Supporters of Hamas demonstrate outside the Israeli Embassy in Madrid, Oct. 18. Photo: Reuters/Guillermo Yllanes Gonzalez
The controversial online platform mapping Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, was promoted by an EU-funded non-governmental organization.
On Tuesday, NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released new information showing that Engineers Without Borders – Catalonia (ESF-C) and Universities with Palestine (UAP) jointly promoted the BarcelonaZ project on social media, identifying themselves as its primary backers.
First reported by the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marked over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
“Our goal is to understand how Zionism operates and the forms it takes, with the intention of making visible and denouncing the impact of its investments in our territory,” the project’s website stated.
According to NGO Monitor’s newly released report, ESF-C is a European Union–funded NGO running a Youth Internship Program subsidized by the Public Employment Service of Catalonia, with 40 percent co-financing from the European Social Fund Plus — the EU’s primary program for funding employment, education, and social initiatives.
The EU Financial Transparency System shows that ESF‑C partnered on two EU grants worth about $2.8 million from 2019 to 2023 and received at least $164,000 in funding.
Jewish leaders in Spain have strongly denounced the BarcelonaZ initiative, warning that it fosters further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
“The mapping and boycotting of Jewish businesses in Catalonia is an echo of some of the darkest chapters in history, including the prelude to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany,” the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Director of European Affairs, Shannon Seban, said in a statement.
“The organizers of this initiative put a target on the backs of Spanish Jews, at a time when Jews are being hunted across the globe, as seen so horrifically in Australia just three weeks ago,” she said, referring to the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which killed 15 people and wounded at least 40 others.
“Clear incitement to violence of this nature must not be platformed or tolerated by internet companies or government authorities,” Seban continued.
On its website, ESF-C describes its mission as promoting “a fair international society, which does not exclude anyone,” and highlights its commitment to “non-denominationalism and non-partisanship.” Yet, the NGO’s 2024 annual report also asserts that it “cannot ignore the Palestinian resistance, a clear expression of the struggle for freedom of all oppressed peoples.”
In a social media post, the NGO also accused Israel of “genocide” during its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, describing its platform as “a resource designed to inform, raise awareness, and mobilize the educational and student community in Catalonia.”
“The attacks that began on Oct. 7 have involved water and electricity cuts, the boycott of essential water infrastructure, and the contamination of Palestinian water sources,” ESF-C wrote in an Instagram post, without mentioning the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.
“The violation of these basic rights is a key weapon used by the State of Israel to perpetuate genocide,” the statement read.
NGO Monitor also revealed that UAP is a network of Catalan faculty- and student-led anti-Israel organizations that co-sponsored the BarcelonaZ project.
Last year, UAP organized a “People’s Court” at Complutense University of Madrid on what it called the “Palestinian genocide,” with attendance from several terror-linked NGOs and individuals, including Samidoun, Masar Badil, Al-Haq, and Raji Sourani, NGO Monitor reported.
Several community organizations have filed complaints with GoGoCarto, demanding the site’s removal and arguing that it violates French laws against hate speech and discrimination.
Earlier this week, GoGoCarto announced it had removed the BarcelonaZ project from its website after local groups denounced the initiative as blatantly antisemitic and dangerous.
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Knesset member from Netanyahu’s party decries ‘new enemy’: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens
(JTA) — In an address to the Knesset on Monday, Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz decried what he said was a “new enemy” rising within American politics: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
“We are used to enemies from outside. We fight terror tunnels of Hamas. We fight the ballistic missiles of Iran. But today I look at the West, our greatest ally, and I see a new enemy rising from within,” said Illouz, who is originally from Canada originally, in an English address. “I am speaking of a poison being sold to the American people as patriotism. I’m speaking of the intellectual vandalism of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.”
Illouz’s comments come as the Republican party has been roiled in recent months by debates over the mainstreaming of antisemitic influencers within the GOP.
טאקר קרלסון וקנדיס אוונס הם לא פטריוטים – הם ונדלים אינטלקטואלים. הם טוענים שהם נלחמים בשמאל הקיצוני, אבל הם בדיוק אותו דבר: אותה שנאה למערב, אותו רלטיביזם מוסרי ואותו ניסיון להחריב את המורשת שלנו ואת המערב. pic.twitter.com/ygN70WtGEw
— דן אילוז – Dan Illouz (@dillouz) January 7, 2026
In October, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson hosted far-right antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes on his platform, igniting outrage from Jewish conservatives who warned of the growing reach of antisemitic voices.
Owens has long made antisemitic rhetoric a hallmark of her YouTube channel, which has 5.7 million subscribers. A recent analysis of her content by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that three-quarters of her videos that mentioned Jews were antisemitic.
“They claim to fight the woke left. They are no different than the woke left,” said Illouz. “The radical left tears down the statues of Thomas Jefferson, Tucker Carlson tears down the legacy of Winston Churchill. The radical left says Western civilization is evil, Candace Owens says the roots of our faith are demonic. It is the same sickness.”
Carlson and Owens are among the right-wing influencers who have made opposition to Israel a centerpiece of their output, at a time when support for Israel is declining among conservatives, particularly younger conservatives.
In November, Amichai Chikli, the Israeli Diaspora minister, echoed Illouz’s concerns in an interview with the New York Post, telling the outlet that he was “far more concerned about antisemitism on the right than on the left.” The comments were notable because Chikli is himself a right-wing, anti-“woke” warrior who, in a first for Israel, has stoked relationships with far-right European parties that in some cases have ties to the Nazis.
“One of the worst moments was when a popular conservative broadcaster called one of the most vile Holocaust deniers in America ‘one of the most honest historians.’ That legitimizes hate — it normalizes it,” Chikli told the New York Post, appearing to refer to Carlson’s past praise of the Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper.
Chikli also warned against the rising influence of Fuentes and Cooper among young Americans.
“Antisemitism has become fashionable for Gen Z,” Chikli continued. “They listen to podcasts, not professors. When people like Nick Fuentes or Darryl Cooper are treated as thought leaders, that’s dangerous. These are neo-Nazis.”
The Times of Israel asked Illouz whether he was worried about appearing to interfere with American politics. “Defending the alliance between America and Israel is not interfering,” he said. “I am in touch with many pro-Israel conservatives who know that Candace and Tucker are a threat to America as much as to Israel.”
Top GOP officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have largely dismissed calls from Jewish conservatives, including Ben Shapiro, and others to draw a line against antisemitic influencers.
“Do you think you are the first to try to delegitimize the Jewish people? We are the people of eternity,” said Illouz toward the conclusion of his address, adding that “we will be here long after your YouTube channels are forgotten dust.”
The post Knesset member from Netanyahu’s party decries ‘new enemy’: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens appeared first on The Forward.
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Texas Joins Legal Action Against American Muslims for Palestine as Move to ‘Counter Hamas Terrorism’
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Cheney Orr
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday announced the state would join Virginia and Iowa in the filing of a legal brief against the nonprofit activist group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and other organizations which he characterized as “radical” in order “to combat Hamas terrorism.”
“Radical Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas must be decimated and dismantled, and that includes their domestic supporting branches,” Paxton posted on the social media platform X.
“Terrorism relies on complex networks and intermediaries, and the law must be enforced against those who knowingly provide material support,” Texas’s top legal officer added in a statement. “My office will continue to defend Americans who have been brutally affected by terrorism and ensure accountability under the law.”
In November, Texas began more aggressive legal efforts against organizations long alleged by researchers and law enforcement to be part of a domestic Hamas support network in the United States. Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Nov. 18, the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
A month later, Paxton filed a motion defending the designation in court, countering a suit by the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR. “My office will continue to defend the governor’s lawful, accurate declaration that CAIR is an FTO [foreign terrorist organization], as well as Texas’s right to protect itself from organizations with documented ties to foreign extremist movements,” Paxton said at the time.
In its latest statement, Paxton’s office described how on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, the groups AMP and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) “declared that they were ‘part of’ a ‘Unity Intifada’ under Hamas’s ‘unified command.’”
“Those who have been victimized by Hamas’s terrorism brought claims against the radical groups under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act,” the statement continued. “Attorney General Paxton’s brief is in support of the victims and was filed to ensure terrorist supporters are brought to justice.”
The legal brief references the “unity intifada” and “unified command” sentiments before stating, “They should be taken at their word. And just like their predecessor organizations — convicted or admitted material supporters of Hamas — they should be held accountable.”
The brief charges, “Defendants here are alleged to have provided material support for Hamas, the brutal terrorist regime that not only oppresses millions in Gaza but that also murdered more than a thousand innocents and kidnapped hundreds more. States have an interest in ensuring that valid claims brought under material support statutes are allowed to be litigated in court and that any violators are held accountable.”
Last year, Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares — whose name appears at the lead of the brief — sought to press AMP to reveal its funding sources, which a judge ruled it needed to do May 9, 2025.
The latest brief provides a history lesson about how AMP and NSJP “did not begin their material support for Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023; rather, their material support has been going on for decades — both as the current organizations and through predecessor entities. Indeed, AMP was founded after a predecessor organization and five of its board members were convicted of providing material support for Hamas.” The brief describes the network beginning when “first, the Muslim Brotherhood founded the ‘Palestine Committee’ in 1988 to fund the terrorist organization Hamas.”
This network included “several organizations providing Hamas financial, informational, and political support,” the legal document explained. “Among those organizations were the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), organizations founded and controlled by senior members of Hamas leadership.”