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After pivotal judicial reform vote, US Jewish groups unleash their newfound voices on Israeli domestic policy
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For months earlier this year, mainstream American Jewish groups waffled on how much to weigh in on Israel’s internal political debates, something many had studiously avoided in the past.
But that felt like a distant memory on Monday after Israel’s parliament approved a law that its authors and critics — including many of those American Jewish groups — alike said would reshape the country.
Reactions poured in immediately, many of them deeply critical of what Israel’s right-wing government had just done in signing off on a law that diminishes the power of the Supreme Court to review government decisions.
The American Jewish Committee had a statement ready to go as soon as the law passed expressing “profound disappointment” over the passage of the law which removes from the courts the right to judge laws against a standard of reasonableness.
“The new law was pushed through unilaterally by the governing coalition amid deepening divisions in Israeli society as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets,” the AJC said.
The Anti-Defamation League soon followed. “This initiative and other judicial overhaul proposals could weaken Israeli democracy and harm Israel’s founding principles as laid out in the Declaration of Independence,” its statement said.
The Jewish Federations of North America said it was “extremely disappointed that the leaders of the coalition moved ahead with a major element of the reforms without a process of consensus, despite the serious disagreements across Israeli society and the efforts of President [Isaac] Herzog to arrive at a compromise.”
The ADL, the AJC and the JFNA, like President Joe Biden did in a statement, urged the Israeli government and its opposition to continue to seek a compromise even in the wake of the passage of the momentous law. Groups to their left, including the Reform movement, urged American Jews to step up the pressure on Israel to make changes, and J Street said the Biden administration had a role in leveraging that pressure. The Conservative movement said that the passage of the law “represents a clear and present danger to the country’s independent judiciary, which may still come under further assault.”
The force of the pronouncements shows how much has changed since as recently as March when some of the same legacy organizations were struggling with how far to go in objecting as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared ready to ram a package of judicial legislation through with alacrity. A bid to come up with a statement uniting all the legacy Jewish groups nearly collapsed amidst last minute changes.
Speaking out forcefully against an Israeli government has never been a happy place for the legacy groups. For decades, their doctrine had been to let Israelis decide what’s best for them unless it directly impacted Diaspora Jewish communities. The years-long battle over organized non-Orthodox worship at the Western Wall was one of the exceptions that proved the rule.
But in recent months, the reluctance to speak out changed, and not just because weakening the courts undermines the branch of Israeli government that has protected the non-Orthodox. American Jews, rattled by perceived antidemocratic tendencies at home, seem more attuned to the threat the same tendencies pose in Israel, according to a poll last month by the Jewish Electorate Institute. It showed pluralities of U.S. Jewish voters concerned about erosions of democracy in both countries.
“This is our fight too – and the vast majority of American Jews believe in a Jewish, democratic Israel that lives up to its founding values of equality, freedom, and justice for all,” said Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a national public policy group, in a statement on Monday.
The Israel Policy Forum, a group with deep roots in the American Jewish establishment that advocates for a two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the changes in the law risk alienating the Diaspora.
“This move is particularly dismaying to many American Jews, who support Israeli democracy and will now have a more difficult time identifying with Israel and defending it from those who seek to demonize it, leaving Israel today more of a state exclusively for Israeli Jews and less of a state for Jews around the world,” it said.
Liberal American Jews, who have taken the lead in the past in protecting the rights of women and the LGBTQ community, have raised alarms about pledges by some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners to diminish the rights of both sectors.
“The Israeli LGBTQ community has been protesting these proposals for months because it is the Supreme Court that has helped to safeguard the civil rights of all Israelis, including the LGBTQ community,” said a fundraising appeal emailed after the vote from A Wider Bridge, a group that has advocated for Israel in the American LGBTQ community.
Not all U.S. Jewish groups expressed dismay. Some groups on the right praised the enactment into law of the “reasonableness” bill, the piece of the legislation approved on Monday.
“What’s unreasonable to one is reasonable to another,” said Mort Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization America, in a statement praising the new law. “This is an absurd basis and power the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself, which is nothing short of judicial tyranny and judicial dictatorship.”
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations maintains under its umbrella groups as diverse as ZOA and the Reform movement. It sounded alarm without weighing in on the specifics of the legislation.
“We must remember the dangers that discord and division can pose to the Jewish people,” the group said in a statement. “We call on Israel’s leaders to seek compromise and unity. Responsible political actors must ease tensions that have run dangerously high.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee declined to comment on the legislation. Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel advocacy group within the Democratic Party that often reflects policies close to those of AIPAC, took a cautious approach.
“While we believe it was a serious mistake for this government to ignore the pleading of the majority of its citizens, as well as its president, and pass this bill without significant compromise, it was done democratically,” it said in a statement. “As in any democracy, including the United States, governments are empowered to make decisions however disappointing or unwise we may believe them to be.”
Nathan Diament, who directs the Washington office of the Orthodox Union, told the New York Times that his community generally favored the legislation, but feared the repercussions of its passage.
“There are many people in the American Orthodox community whose view on the substance is sympathetic or supportive to the reforms,” he said, “but nonetheless are worried about the divisiveness that the process has caused.”
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The post After pivotal judicial reform vote, US Jewish groups unleash their newfound voices on Israeli domestic policy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Tells World Court South Africa Case Makes a Mockery of Genocide
Israeli delegation members sit at the International Court of Justice, at the start of a hearing as part of an ongoing case South Africa filed accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention during its offensive in Gaza, in The Hague, Netherlands, May 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel defended the military necessity of its Gaza offensive on Friday at the International Court of Justice and asked judges to throw out a request by South Africa to order it to halt operations in Rafah and withdraw from the Palestinian territory.
Israeli Justice Ministry official Gilad Noam called South Africa‘s case, which accuses Israel of violating the Genocide Convention, “completely divorced from facts and circumstances.”
“[The case] makes a mockery of the heinous charge of genocide,” Noam said. He called it “an obscene exploitation of the most sacred convention,” referring to the international treaty banning genocide, agreed after the Holocaust of European Jews in World War Two.
The convention requires all countries to act to prevent genocide, and the ICJ, also known as the World Court, which hears disputes between states, has concluded that this gives South Africa a right to make the case.
A woman who yelled “liars!” during Israel‘s presentation was removed by security guards, a rare protest in the “Great Hall of Justice” courtroom in The Hague.
“There is a tragic war going on, but there is no genocide” in Gaza, Noam said.
In past rulings, the court has rejected Israel‘s demands to dismiss the case and ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against the Palestinians, while stopping short of ordering it to halt the assault.
Ahead of Israel‘s presentation, several dozen pro-Israeli protesters gathered outside, displaying photographs of hostages taken by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 and demanding their release.
The South African legal team, which set out its case for fresh emergency measures the previous day, framed the Israeli military operation as part of a genocidal plan aimed at bringing about the destruction of the Palestinian people.
South Africa‘s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, requested the court to order Israel to “immediately, totally, and unconditionally withdraw the Israeli army from the entirety of the Gaza Strip.”
South Africa brought its latest request for emergency action in response to an Israeli military offensive in Rafah, the Hamas terror group’s last bastion at the southern edge of Gaza and refuge for about a million people who fled the fighting further north.
Israel‘s Noam said that Israel‘s military operations were not aimed at civilians, but at Hamas terrorists using Rafah as a stronghold, who have tunnel systems which could be used to smuggle hostages and terrorists out of Gaza.
Examples of alleged violations by Israel raised by South Africa were “not evidence of a policy of illegal behaviur, let alone a policy of genocide,” he said. Ordering Israel to withdraw its troops would sentence remaining hostages in Gaza to death, Noam said.
The war began when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel from neighboring Gaza, murdering 1,200 people and abducting over 250 others as hostages. In response, Israel launched a military campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and destroying the terrorist group.
This week’s hearings focus only on issuing emergency measures and it will likely take years before the court can rule on the underlying genocide charge. A decision on the request for emergency measures is expected next week.
The post Israel Tells World Court South Africa Case Makes a Mockery of Genocide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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French Police Kill Algerian Who Set Fire to Rouen Synagogue
Police officers work after police shot dead an armed man earlier who set fire to the city’s synagogue in Rouen, France, May 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened police in the city of Rouen on Friday in the latest antisemitic attack, officials said.
“An armed man somehow climbed up the synagogue and threw an object, a sort of Molotov cocktail, into the main praying room,” said mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, adding that nobody else was harmed in the shocked city in the northwestern Normandy region.
Police found the man on the synagogue roof with an iron bar and kitchen knife, shooting him when he defied orders to stop.
France, like many countries across Europe, has seen a huge spike in anti-Jewish acts since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s military response in Gaza.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the attacker’s bid for a residency permit had been recently rejected. He was otherwise not on the radar of police or intelligence services.
“This antisemitic act affects us all deeply,” Darmanin said after visiting the synagogue, adding that France was doing all it could to protect its Jewish community.
The synagogue‘s rabbi Chmouel Lubecki said his wife was there at the time of the attack.
“We had a great fright,” he told BFM TV.
His wife “heard gunshots and screams … and then she saw smoke coming from the synagogue, so she immediately went down, she helped the firefighters get in the synagogue.”
Such an attack was expected, he said, due to the rise in antisemitism. “We had this fear inside of us, but when it actually happens, it’s still shocking.”
Natacha Ben Haim, president of Normandy’s Jewish community, said the praying room’s walls and a lot of furniture had been blackened by fire and smoke. “It’s catastrophic. Yes, I’m upset, I’m very upset,” she told reporters.
OLYMPICS COMING
France hosts the Olympic Summer Games in two months and is on the highest level of alert given a complex geopolitical backdrop in the Middle East and Europe’s eastern flank.
Prosecutor Frederic Teillet said a police officer followed correct procedure in opening fire after the attacker ran towards him brandishing the knife and ignoring a command to halt.
“Arriving on site [at the synagogue], firefighters and police spotted a man on the roof of the synagogue, he was brandishing an iron bar in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other,” he said, describing smoke coming out of the windows.
The synagogue was later blocked off by police officers as evidence was collected. Mayor Mayer-Rossignol said it was surrounded by a series of security cameras.
France has recorded 366 antisemitic acts in the first three months of 2024, three times as many as the same period last year.
“No one can deny this antisemitic wave. No one can deny the fact that it is estimated that French Jews represent 1 percent of the French population, but that more than 60 percent of anti-religious acts are antisemitic acts,” he said.
Rabbi Lubecki urged the community to carry on as usual.
“Tonight is Shabbat. It is important to light the Shabbat candles to show that we are not afraid and that we continue to practice our Judaism despite the circumstances,” he said.
The post French Police Kill Algerian Who Set Fire to Rouen Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Does the protest encampment at the University of Toronto make Jews unsafe? Depends which side of the fence you’re on while asking the question
Two weeks ago, in the early dawn hours of May 2, pro-Palestine protesters set up 55 tents on the grassy King’s College Circle at the University of Toronto. With the number of tents growing, now up to 120 as of May 13, and discussions ongoing between protesters and the university, Jewish students and professors are […]
The post Does the protest encampment at the University of Toronto make Jews unsafe? Depends which side of the fence you’re on while asking the question appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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