Uncategorized
As Israel turns 75, we should celebrate by fighting for it to live up to its ideals
(JTA) — I spent July 4, 2017, at Trump Tower protesting the ban on travel from Muslim countries, enacted earlier that year. For me, standing side by side with Muslim, Christian and other faith leaders to fight discrimination was the best possible way to celebrate America’s independence.
This month, Israel marks the monumental occasion of its 75th anniversary. There is much to celebrate: The establishment of the State of Israel is, without doubt, one of the greatest accomplishments of the Jewish people in the last century. The country has provided safety for millions of Jews fleeing oppression, helped revive Hebrew language and culture, and allowed Jews access to our most sacred historical sites.
And there is much to mourn and protest, beginning with the 56-year-old occupation that violates the human rights of Palestinians every single day; the ongoing discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews, asylum seekers and foreign workers; and, this year, the all-out attack on democracy perpetuated by the current government.
For the last four months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been in the street every week protesting the efforts by the current government to eliminate the power of the High Court to serve as a check on legislation that violates Israel’s Basic Laws, the closest thing the country has to a constitution. And yet the response by too much of the American Jewish community has been more or less business as usual. While many legacy organizations have issued tepid statements criticizing attempts to destroy the judiciary, these groups have not rallied American Jews to actively oppose this coup or taken actions that would put direct pressure on the Israeli government.
Following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, millions of Americans took to the street — many for the first time — to protest his administration’s attacks on democratic institutions and on immigrants and minorities. We did so not out of hatred for the United States, but rather out of love, and out of a commitment to build a multiracial, multifaith, multiethnic democracy for the future.
Those of us who care about the future of Israel, and who dream of a state rooted in democracy and human rights, must mark this 75th anniversary by fighting for that vision.
This anniversary comes at an inflection point for the country’s democracy. What happens this year will determine whether Israel has a chance at living up to the values enshrined in its declaration of independence, or whether it becomes a fascist theocracy that codifies discrimination against women, LGBTQ people, Palestinian citizens and other minorities and that permanently occupies another people.
On Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Member Simcha Rothman, the architect of the judiciary coup, will address the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly meeting in Israel – despite calls from Israeli Jews for JFNA to cancel their appearance. Many Jewish communities have announced Yom Haatzmaut plans that pretend that nothing is amiss — falafel, Israeli music and dancing, and celebratory visits to Israel. And in June, the Celebrate Israel parade — which bans any political signs — will proceed down New York City’s Fifth Avenue as though nothing is amiss.
I also love a good falafel, but this moment calls for much more.
Since the new Israeli government took power, I have stood on the street in New York and Washington, D.C., with hundreds of Israeli Americans and American Jews who came out to protest Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich speaking at an Israel Bonds dinner, the (temporary, as it turns out) firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the ongoing attacks on the High Court. As someone who has been working for human rights in Israel for decades, I am thrilled to see more and more American and Israeli Jews join these protests.
But we have not yet seen a call to the streets from most of our legacy organizations or synagogues. Nor has JFNA altered its regular General Assembly programming to instead take 3,000 American Jews into the streets of Tel Aviv — or even host protest organizers or civil society leaders, rather than the leaders of the coup.
Why are American Jews so terrified to protest Israeli actions, even when the country is being taken over by people whose values are anathema to most of ours?
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an influential and prophetic 20th-century Jewish thinker, warned of the danger that the nascent state of Israel would become an object of worship. “The state fulfills an essential need of the individual and the national community,” he wrote, “but it does not thereby acquire intrinsic value — except for a fascist who regards sovereignty, governmental authority, and power as supreme values.” In a 1991 lecture, he went so far as to call any religious Jews who supported occupation and settlement “descendants of the worshippers of the Golden Calf, who proclaimed ‘this is your God, Israel.’ A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.”
In Israel, the religious settler movement that Leibowitz disparaged three decades ago now runs the state, and — as he warned — its agenda puts the occupation of land first, and the treatment of people second.
Many Jews in the United States find it hard to see that reality because the State of Israel has become an object of worship, rather than a real country where real people live, and where fascist-leaning politicians are working to fundamentally change its government and culture into something unrecognizable and dangerous. American Jewish conversations about Israel too often become conversations about Jewish identity, a slippery slope that makes it easy for criticisms of the State of Israel — a political entity subject to international human rights standards — to be misinterpreted as attacks on Jews more generally. It is easier to celebrate a fantasy with no hard edges than deal with the reality of a beloved, but flawed state.
According to the Torah, Abraham was 75 when he left his parents’ house and set out on his own. At 75, Israel is a strong, modern country, more than able to stand on its own on the international stage and healthy enough for vibrant debate about its future. Real celebration of Israel demands fighting for it to live up to the highest ideals of democracy, dignity and human rights for all.
—
The post As Israel turns 75, we should celebrate by fighting for it to live up to its ideals appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Antisemitism and ‘The End of History’ That Never Came to Pass
Roses are placed on a sculpture of Mikhail Gorbachev in memory of the final leader of the Soviet Union, at the “Fathers of Unity” memorial in Berlin, Germany August 31, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
In the summer of 1989, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama published an essay that came to define a new understanding in the West.
Titled simply “The End of History?”, the piece described the defeat of fascism in World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist ideology. It appeared that Western liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had won the ultimate battle of ideas — at least for the moment.
Events in recent years have proven this thesis false. History didn’t end — and Fukuyama probably knew it never would. The battle of ideas will always return, and in many ways, it never went away.
During the last 40 years, Western civilization, capitalism, and nationalism have been under attack. Likewise, bigotry against Jewish people never went away. There is nothing new under the sun about Jew hatred except the delivery system. The traditional engines of antisemitism have largely been supplanted by a new engine: the social media algorithm.
The stark, un-sugar coated reality is that the Jewish people have been abandoned, and the illusion of modern safety is quickly eroding.
What stings the most is the profound sense of betrayal from communities that the Jewish people poured their hearts, souls, and resources into elevating.
Over the last century and a half, the Jewish community played an outsized, foundational role in championing civil rights, fighting alongside the African American community, the feminist movement, driving progress within academia and LGBTQ rights.
To watch significant factions of those exact same groups turn their backs, stay silent, or actively fuel hostility today is a heartbreaking reality to reckon with. It sends a crystal-clear message that must be internalized immediately: there ought to be a stricter balance between “fixing the world” and tending to the survival of one’s own community.
One cannot control what is outside one’s control, but one can focus on what is in their control.
The era of relying on the world’s collective conscience is officially over, and the path forward must be primarily inward, focused on self-reliance, self-defense, and resilience. It requires an unrelenting effort to tell our story and win the war for hearts and minds. We must unflinchingly call out the blatant hypocrisy of institutional and communal betrayal, as difficult as that may be.
It is no longer sufficient to excel exclusively in the boardroom or the classroom. True self-preservation demands a willingness to face physical reality. Security cannot be guaranteed by others, and protecting families and institutions means prioritizing physical fitness and the practical readiness to defend oneself on the streets, in schoolyards, and at the workplace.
With traditional institutions increasingly failing to offer protection, self-reliance becomes an absolute necessity. We must look at past fair-weather allies and actively seek new partners who offer mutual respect and reciprocal support. Survival and resilience demand that the Jewish community adapt, unite, and lead from a position of strength.
The peaceful illusion of “The End of History” never arrived; the battle of ideas has returned, and we must be ready for the fight.
Daniel M. Rosen is the chairman and Co-founder of IMPACT, a 501c3 dedicated to organizing, empowering and mobilizing individuals to combat Jew hatred on social media and beyond. He is a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post, JNS, Times of Israel, Israel National News, The Algemeiner, and other publications. Follow us at @joinimpactnow
Uncategorized
Why Do We Read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot?
Shavuot. Ruth in Boaz’s Field by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, oil on canvas, 1828; National Gallery, London. Photo: Wikipedia.
All Biblical festivals and special days relate to time — whether it is daily, monthly, annually, or seasonally. Awareness of the natural world comes with awareness of oneself, our transience, and the ups and downs of life. Who are we? Where do we belong? All of this is the core of religious life, which helps us to live in the world in the best way that we can.
Shavuot started as a harvest festival. There are three. Pesach is the first, with the earliest barley crop. Shavuot celebrates the beginning of the wheat and fruit harvests. And Sukkot is the culmination of the agricultural year and the celebration of water and rain, which are essential for a successful agricultural year.
But as we became less and less of an agricultural society, other themes emerged to add to the message of Shavuot specifically. The rabbis added the theme of Torah. But why, then, did the rabbis choose the Book of Ruth to be read on Shavuot?
It is set against a background of harvests — and how unpredictable they can be. The failed harvest caused the emigration of Elimelech’s family from Israel. Then the cycle turned, and rich harvests in Israel enabled Naomi to come back. Ruth decides to stay with Naomi and become part of the Israelite people. In Ruth’s magnificent declaration “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people are my people, and your God, my God … only death will separate us.”
The Book of Ruth illustrates the choices people make and their consequences. To leave. To come back. To change one’s religion and nation. To act with love and care. To be charitable and kind. The goodness of a person rather than genealogy or status. It displays the redemptive powers of women. But it also recognizes the drawbacks of societies, class systems, levels of wealth, and the limitations of conventions and rules.
But Naomi and Ruth are destitute. Biblical laws required redemption. When a family fell on hard times, and sold their property, the relatives had a legal obligation to redeem the loss and try to reinstate them. The poor also had legal rights to glean fields as they were being harvested, and landowners had to leave corners of fields to the poor, all the poor, even foreigners.
The Torah set the tone for a just society, one that guaranteed that the weakest and most disadvantaged would be helped. If the Torah imposed commandments that connected humanity with God, it also required, just as much, that humans connect with each other. As the Prophet Yeshayah said repeatedly, God wants kindness more than sacrifices or hypocritical prayers.
The most popular explanation of the link between Shavuot and Ruth is that Ruth actually chose to live a life according to Naomi’s Israelite customs and ideals. She made the commitment that the Israelites made at Sinai. As Boaz said to her when he met her, “May the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to trust, reward you.”
It does not matter where you come from as much as who you are. And this challenges us to think about what our commitments are today, and what we value and spend our time on.
Ruth’s story is of how life is unpredictable and often tragic. And yet, through human kindness — which the Bible stresses — we can find redemption and build a better world.
That’s true no matter what is happening around us; the Torah’s messages for us and our people are as important today as ever.
Happy Shavuot and Chag Sameach.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
Uncategorized
The Limits of Campus Solidarity: Why Are Some Issues Seemingly Ignored By Campus Activists ?
University of East Anglia in Norwich.. Photo Credit: .Martin./ Flickr
Student activism on university campuses often presents itself as part of a broader global struggle for human rights and liberation. Students organize campaigns and protests under the belief that they are standing on the side of justice. Universities themselves have also long been spaces where political movements grow, and where students engage with wider global issues.
But if campus activism is truly rooted in the goal of human rights, it is worth asking why some movements receive enormous attention while others receive little to none.
Activist movements often present themselves as universal movements for justice, but in practice they are shaped by ideology and institutional campaigns. This does not necessarily invalidate these movements, but it does challenge the idea that campus activism is merely a neutral response to injustice.
An example of this contrast can be seen through the differences between campus mobilization around Gaza, and the relative absence of sustained activism in support of issues like the situation in places like Sudan — and also in Iran, including supporting Iranian students who actively protest their own government.
At the University of East Anglia (UEA), as at campuses across the UK, the past number of years has brought visible and sustained pro-Palestine organizing with protests, encampments, and marches of more than 400 students calling for divestment. It also involves motions brought before the Students’ Union resulting in a longstanding institutional boycott policy against Israel.
Over the same period, Iranian students and civilians have protested against the political repression and government-sponsored violence in Iran, most noticeably during the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. This past January, it’s reported that tens of thousands of innocent protestors were murdered by the regime, and many more were jailed.
Yet at UEA, as at most British universities, this did not translate into encampments, sustained protest weeks, or motions to the Students’ Union. The same is true for many other conflict areas around the world — and the contrast is difficult to ignore.
The point here is not that students should protest every global issue equally. That would be unrealistic. Student movements naturally focus on certain causes more than others. But this contrast does raise an important question: what determines which global issues become campus movements and which do not?
I believe part of the answer lies in activist infrastructure. Some causes already have established student organizations and national campaigns with clear institutional mechanisms. At UEA, campaigns related to Palestine, for example, often involve established movements such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which provide students with clear actions to take, such as lobbying student government and hosting annual protest weeks where official language is promoted. There are funding networks and experienced organizers behind the scenes who help translate political concerns into sustained campus activism.
By contrast, Iranian dissident movements do not have the same level of organized support. There are fewer established student campaigns, fewer institutional demands directed at universities and fewer organized networks translating concern into campus activism. A student at UEA who wanted to organize meaningfully around Iran would find considerably less infrastructure available to them than one organizing around the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Another factor may be related to how students interpret global politics more broadly. On many campuses, political activism tends to be framed through narrow ideas like decolonial theory and the history of Western imperialism. Within this framework student activists tend to focus on issues where Western powers are seen as solely responsible for global injustice. Whether this is introduced or sustained in classrooms or in college group meetings is a subject for another piece, but in this context it doesn’t really matter.
What this contrast suggests is that campus activism is not guided by moral principles alone, but is instead shaped in large part by the existing political frameworks.
Recognizing this does not require assuming bad intentions on the part of student activists. Many student movements are motivated by genuine concern. But like all political movements, individuals must be wary of manipulation and groupthink.
Individual action and anger become tools for someone else’s ideas, so it’s important that we are all responsible with what we choose to put our energy towards. If campus activists at UEA claim to stand for universal human rights, then they must also be willing to ask the difficult question of why some struggles seem more important than others.
Skye Phillips is a final year International Relations and Modern History student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. She is a 2025/6 fellow for CAMERA. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CAMERA.