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
Hezbollah rejects US-brokered ceasefire deal struck by Lebanon and Israel
(JTA) — Hezbollah appears to have rejected a ceasefire that the United States brokered between Israel and Lebanon, where the Iranian proxy is based.
The deal reportedly would have allowed Israel to remain in southern Lebanon, where it has established a buffer zone, but not permit any attacks in Beirut unless Hezbollah attacked Israel within its own borders. It would also have required Hezbollah fighters to leave the buffer zone.
A top Hezbollah leader said accepting a demand to leave southern Lebanon would amount to “surrender” for the group.
“What we are concerned about is an end to the aggression, ceasefire and Israel’s withdrawal,” Secretary-General Naim Qassem said in a televised statement on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. “We did not make any commitment to any party to stop resisting as long as there is occupation.”
Dozens of Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting, which Hezbollah is increasingly prosecuting with the use of drones.
The rejection comes as the U.S. House of Representatives voted to rebuke President Donald Trump and his war on Iran on Wednesday, narrowly passing a resolution that limits Trump’s power to continue the war without congressional approval.
Four Republicans voted with Democrats on the bill, in a sign of how opposition to the war, which Trump launched jointly with Israel in February, is crossing party lines ahead of high-stakes midterm elections in the United States.
The bill would not require presidential signoff but is seen as unlikely to substantively change Trump’s handling of the war, which he has insisted does not require congressional approval.
Trump called the vote “meaningless” in a post on Truth Social on Thursday morning.
“Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote. “Who would do such an unpatriotic thing.”
The bill now goes to the Senate, where a similar measure has advanced in recent weeks, also with support from a handful of Republicans. It comes at a delicate time, as an uncertain ceasefire struck in early April has now stretched on without a resolution for longer than active hostilities unfolded. Trump has failed to achieve the terms for a deal to permanently end the war that he said he wanted, and this week said he thought the constant negotiations had grown “very boring.” Hezbollah’s apparent rejection of a ceasefire deal is another setback.
Iran has continued to battle during its ceasefire with the United States, though not against Israel: On Wednesday, it struck Kuwait’s main airport, killing one and injuring 60.
Also on Wednesday, Trump confirmed reports that he had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “f—ing crazy” during a call on Monday in which Trump pressed Netanyahu to strike a ceasefire with Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon. Trump told a New York Post podcast that he was “a little perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon” but that he liked Netanyahu and worked well with him.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hezbollah rejects US-brokered ceasefire deal struck by Lebanon and Israel appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
A Yiddish favorite is among the top baby names in New York
Each year around this time, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names for the past year. This year, New York state’s list includes the Yiddish name Gitty, as well as five other traditional Ashkenazi names: Chana, Chaya, Rivka, Chaim and Moshe.
According to this interactive list in the Times Union, 43 of every million babies in the U.S. were given the name Gitty in the past six years.
The vast majority of these babies were apparently born in either Yiddish-speaking Hasidic families or in non-Yiddish speaking Haredi families (often referred to as “Yeshivish”) who maintain the tradition of giving their children Biblical and other traditional Jewish names, often after a deceased relative.
Although some people may be surprised to hear a Yiddish name like Gitty making the list, it lines up with the most recent statistics on language use. According to this study, in households with children aged 5 and under, Yiddish ranks as the third most common home language in New York (spoken by roughly 3% of young children), trailing only English and Spanish.
It also makes sense in light of the most recent demographic breakdown of Jewish families in the New York area. According to this 2023 UJA study, Orthodox families represent about 19% of Jewish households (approx. 430,000 individuals, including children) — a group that’s growing rapidly due to higher birth rates and younger average ages, with about two-thirds identifying as Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and the rest as Modern Orthodox.
The name Gitty is a variant of the name Gitl, which means “good” in Yiddish. Why then are these babies called Gitty instead of Gitl? This is part of a trend that began years ago, when Haredi children’s names adopted a “y” at the end, apparently mimicking the old American tradition of ending children’s names with a “y” (think Tommy instead of Thomas). As a result, Rivka became Rivky; Moshe (or Moishe) became Moishy and Gitl became Gitty.
The post A Yiddish favorite is among the top baby names in New York appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Trump’s humiliation of Netanyahu marks a sea change in the US-Israel relationship
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s carefully cultivated image as a master of geopolitics is on life support after reports that President Donald Trump on Monday cursed and mocked him in a phone call, calling him “f- – – ing crazy” and ordering him to stand down in Lebanon.
In response, Netanyahu’s opponents and even some of his former allies are accusing him of mortgaging Israel’s sovereignty and reducing the country to strategic dependence on Washington. They’re right. Trump is treating Netanyahu less like the leader of a sovereign ally and more like a subordinate expected to obey instructions.
As a result, Israel suddenly looks less like an independent regional power and more like an American client state.
A rupture long in the making
The roots of this humiliation stretch back months, to the beginning of the Iran war itself. In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the United States entered the war because Israel was preparing to strike Iran and the White House feared that Tehran would retaliate against American forces afterward.
Ever since, American officials, including Trump himself, have disseminated the narrative of the war as a preventive intervention designed partly to manage the consequences of expected Israeli escalation. But as the war has dragged on, becoming exactly the kind of open-ended Middle Eastern entanglement Trump once promised to avoid, the public narrative has instead increasingly become that Netanyahu had talked Trump into a war that backfired, making Trump look foolish.
This week came the payback.
On Monday, Netanyahu publicly threatened major strikes on the Shiite neighborhoods of Beirut if Hezbollah attacks continued. Iran responded by suspending ceasefire talks, apparently gambling that Trump wanted an exit ramp badly enough to restrain Israel rather than risk a wider regional explosion. The gamble worked.
In the Monday call, Trump reportedly ordered Israel to cease fire immediately, demanding to know “what the f – – -” Netanyahu was doing, accusing Israel of causing escalation, and declaring — incorrectly — that he had “kept Netanyahu out of jail,” a reference to his efforts to persuade President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu in his ongoing corruption trial.
Intentional humiliation
American presidents have pressured Israeli leaders before. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion withdrew from the Sinai peninsula in 1957 under heavy pressure from then-President Dwight Eisenhower after the Suez Crisis. Washington pressured Israel to stop military operations during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and again during the 1982 Lebanon War.
Yet previous confrontations unfolded differently. American presidents pressured Israeli leaders privately while preserving the appearance of mutual respect between allies. Even when Washington prevailed, both governments generally tried to avoid publicly humiliating each other.
This time the humiliation was part of the strategy — a change that bodes ill for Israel’s standing as an independent regional power.
Trump wants Tehran, Beirut, Riyadh, Doha, Cairo, and every other Middle Eastern capital to understand that he controls the pace of escalation, and that Netanyahu obeyed when ordered to stand down.
That public spectacle explains the intensity of the Israeli backlash.
“There has never been an Israeli prime minister who accepted such a humiliating demand,” former military chief and current prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eisenkot wrote on social media. Former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, whose coalition poses a major threat to Netanyahu’s control in upcoming elections, effectively slammed Netanyahu as allowing the U.S. to dictate Israeli military policy, with Bennett accusing Netanyahu of running “a government that has lost control of Israeli sovereignty.”
Even the conservative Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm. Israel had “found itself in the humiliating position of having to seek American approval to defend its own citizens,” the paper argued in an editorial. “The United States is now actively restraining Israel from taking decisive military action.”
Netanyahu’s image in tatters
For years, Netanyahu cultivated an image of himself as uniquely capable of managing Israel’s relationship with the U.S. while preserving Israeli strategic independence. His supporters portrayed him as a geopolitical virtuoso who understood American politics better than any rival and who could navigate complex power dynamics while defending Israeli interests.
Now that image lies in ruins.
Over the last decade, Netanyahu systematically alienated nearly every pillar of Israel’s traditional support structure aside from the American right.
He offended European governments through relentless settlement expansion, confrontations with the European Union, and contempt in response to liberal Western criticism. Europe remains Israel’s largest trading partner, yet Israel now faces the growing possibility of sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and even challenges to its associated nation status with the European Union.
Then came the rupture with the American Democrats.
In 2015, Netanyahu traveled to Washington to campaign openly against then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran before a joint session of Congress. Strategically, that marked a turning point. Netanyahu transformed support for Israel from a matter of bipartisan American consensus into an increasingly polarized issue.
Afterward, he tied himself even more tightly to the Republican right, and especially Trump. He cultivated the impression that he exercised unusual influence over Trump himself, encouraging supporters to believe that he had effectively turned the White House into an extension of his own political operation.
That illusion has now collapsed spectacularly.
The final and perhaps most reckless step came when reports emerged that Netanyahu sought Trump’s intervention regarding his corruption trial. Even without confirming those reports’ accuracy, the perception that an Israeli prime minister already dependent on Washington for military and diplomatic backing was now personally dependent on an American president for political survival was devastating.
This week confirmed that dependence now defines the U.S.-Israel relationship. Netanyahu, the supposed master statesman, has maneuvered himself — and Israel — into a strategic cul-de-sac. Now the question is: Is there any way out?
The post Trump’s humiliation of Netanyahu marks a sea change in the US-Israel relationship appeared first on The Forward.