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Converting to Judaism has defined my high school experience
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — During the pandemic, my mom decided to start baking; my friend Reagan learned Osage, a Native American language; my brother taught himself how to skateboard.
I decided to channel my free time and energy into converting to Judaism.
Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was only ever exposed to Christian theology. Almost everyone around me was a Baptist. Although my parents intentionally raised my brother and me without a focus on religion, I grew up going to Christian preschool, Christian summer camps, and being surrounded by other Christians–just because there weren’t other options. While this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I always knew that Christianity wasn’t right for me.
At first, the idea of eternal life and an all-knowing God provided comfort, but as I got older I started to feel disconnected from Christianity. Concepts like the Holy Trinity never made sense to me, and by age 12 I thought I had given up on religion entirely.
I first started looking into Judaism towards the end of 2020. I’m not really sure what led me to this; I just stumbled upon it and found that its emphasis on making the ordinary holy, repairing the world, and the pursuit of knowledge was a perfect fit for my already existing beliefs. My parents were a little bit shocked but ultimately supportive when I told them that I wanted to convert. My mom’s main concern was that I would become the target of antisemitism. “I’m happy for you and try not to think about the what-ifs,” she said while driving me to the Jewish community center so that I could board the bus headed to the BBYO Jewish youth group’s International Convention.
In the spring of 2021, I emailed the rabbi at a local synagogue about my potential conversion. During our first conversation, he asked me if I’d heard about the custom of rabbis turning away potential candidates three times. I told him I had, but that if he turned me away I would just keep coming back. After the meeting, I signed up for conversion classes and started attending services regularly — and I wasn’t alone.
According to a 2021 Tablet survey, 43% of American rabbis are seeing more conversion candidates than before. The reasons for conversion are diverse. Some candidates fell down an internet rabbit hole that led to a passion for Judaism. Others took an ancestry test and wanted to reconnect with their Jewish heritage. Many were raised as Reform Jews but weren’t Jewish according to stricter halachic, or Jewish legal, standards and decided to convert under Conservative or Orthodox auspices. Despite the common stereotype that Jews by choice must be converting for the sake of marriage, many rabbis said that converts are less likely than ever to be converting for a Jewish partner.
After meeting with a rabbi about the potential conversion, candidates are expected to learn everything they can about Judaism. In my case, that meant 21 weeks of hour-long, weekly conversion classes in addition to independent study on Jewish mysticism, traditions, and ideas. Candidates are also expected to become active members of their local Jewish community and attend services regularly.
Once the candidate and the rabbi feel they are ready to convert, a beit din, or a court usually made up of three rabbis, is assembled. They will conduct an interview, asking the candidate about what brought them to Judaism and basic questions about what was taught during conversion classes. When the beit din has guaranteed that the candidate genuinely wants to convert, the candidate immerses in the mikveh, a pool used for ritual purification. After submerging in the mikveh, the convert is considered to be officially Jewish and is typically called up for an aliyah, ascending the platform where the Torah is read.
According to Rabbi Darah Lerner, who served in Bangor, Maine before her retirement last year, the main difference between teens converting alone and teens converting with their family is the parental approval that’s needed, but otherwise the process is very similar. “I treated them pretty much as I did with adults,” she said. For me, the only parental approval needed was my mom telling my rabbi that she and my dad were fine with me starting the conversion process. She also noted that it was easier for teens to integrate into the Jewish community because people were excited to see young people interested in Judaism.
A mikveh, like this one at Mayyim Hayyim outside of Boston, is a ritual pool where Jews by choice immerse as part of the conversion process. (Courtesy Mayyim Hayyim)
She said that the Jewish community gave the teens a place where they could ask questions and not be shut down. “If they have a pushback, or a curiosity, or a problem we allow them to ask it and we give them real answers or resources,” she said.
“I feel extremely privileged when youth come to me with these questions and these desires,” Rabbi Rachael Jackson, from Hendersonville, North Carolina. Jackson has worked with three teens in the conversion process over the past two years. Like Lerner, she doesn’t require teens to wait until they turn 18 to begin the conversion process. However, it’s not unusual for rabbis to recommend that teens wait until they turn 18 to begin their conversion.
My conversion process has defined my high school experience. I’ve been able to connect with other Jews at my school through BBYO, which has helped me find a community at school and meet people who I might not have met otherwise. Although it’s made me feel farther from the Christian community I was once a part of, Judaism has given me spiritual fulfillment, a love for Israel, and a sense of community — both in my synagogue and my BBYO chapter.
Others who have gone through the process feel much the same way. “I wouldn’t even recognize myself,” said Haven Lail, 17, from Hickory, North Carolina. “My whole personality is based on being Jewish. That’s what I love.” Adopted into a Jewish family at age 12, Lail felt drawn to Judaism because of the loving and accepting community she found.
Raised as a nondenominational Christian, Lail attended church regularly with her biological parents, but not for the religious aspect. “It was all hellfire and brimstone,” she said. Neglected by her birth parents, she only went to church because she knew there would be food there.
Lail started the conversion process at age 12 through a Hebrew high school, and four years later, she submerged in the mikveh and signed a certificate finalizing her conversion. The process was simple, but she was shocked that so few Jews knew about the conversion process. “It was a little weird,” she said.
The Talmud says that because “the Jewish people were themselves strangers, they are not in a position to demean a convert because he is a stranger in their midst.” However, it isn’t uncommon for converts to feel alienated from the rest of the Jewish community. “There’s this fear of going to college and still being othered because you still won’t quite fit in with the people who have been raised Jewish,” said one high school senior from North Carolina.
He was shocked by how alienated he felt after making his conversion public, and wanted to stay anonymous because he worries that once people find out that he converted, they’ll see him differently. “I didn’t ever really explain it to anybody except for the people really close to me,” he said. But after his rabbi called him up for an aliyah — a blessing recited during the reading of the Torah — one woman from the congregation began to bring it up to him every time she saw him. “People don’t realize that it can be a touchy thing and very, very othering,” he said.
I usually don’t mind personal questions about my conversion, but asking someone why they converted or pointing out that someone is a convert is frowned upon by Jewish law. I used to feel like everyone could tell that I wasn’t raised Jewish, but after one of my BBYO advisors thought that my conversion was just a rumor and couldn’t believe that it was true, I realized that wasn’t the case.
All of my friends and peers who were raised Jewish have memories of Jewish summer camps, Shabbat dinners with family, and a lifetime of other experiences. I often struggle with not feeling “Jewish enough” or like I missed out, especially because so many Jewish customs revolve around the home and family. My parents will often come with me to Shabbat services, but don’t participate in Jewish customs or celebrate Jewish holidays with me. “Anything that is a ritual in the home, they don’t really have the ability to have that autonomy,” said Rabbi Rachael Jackson of Agudas Israel Congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Grace Hamilton, a student at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio, has struggled with imposter syndrome during her conversion. Ever since she started college, she’s been questioning her place in the Jewish community and hasn’t been practicing Judaism as much as she used to. “I haven’t prayed in a really long time,” she said. She used to tell herself that once she finalized her conversion she would finally feel Jewish enough, but after a conversation with her rabbi, she realized that wasn’t the case.
According to Rabbi Rochelle Tulik at Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, New York, many converts feel like they will never be Jewish enough. “That, no matter how hard they try, how many books they read or put on their shelves, no matter how often they come to services, or how many menorahs they light, somehow they’ll be caught,” she said in a Rosh Hashanah sermon she named “You Are Not an Imposter.”
Despite the struggles that many converts face, others like Rabbi Natasha Mann, who now serves as a rabbi at New London Synagogue in England, immediately felt at home within the Jewish community. “I felt like people were excited to have me there and wanted to hear what I had to say,” she said. After a family member mentioned that she might have Jewish ancestry, Mann began exploring out of curiosity. “I started looking into it, just because I felt that it was another piece of the puzzle,” she said.
Coming from an interreligious and intercultural family, she wanted to explore another aspect of her heritage, but ended up connecting with Judaism in a way that she hadn’t connected with any other religion. After two years of study, she decided to officially start her conversion process.
The Jewish community gave Mann a place where her ideas were taken seriously and she could have religious discussions, even as a teen. “I don’t know what my life would have looked like if I hadn’t found somewhere to really express and delve into that,” she said. “And luckily, I never have to.”
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The post Converting to Judaism has defined my high school experience appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Why Trump’s new ‘Red Scare’ tactics could spell trouble for Jews
If a time traveler from late Weimar Germany materialized in America today, they would instantly recognize the spiteful rhetoric pouring from Donald Trump and his lieutenants — language that echoes what Adolf Hitler and the Nazis deployed a century ago.
“The radical left is actively trying to destroy our children’s future with the disaster known as (dramatic pause) communism,” according to Trump. “This isn’t a social democrat. These are communists by another name.”
Facing a possible fiasco in the November midterms, Trump and his allies have reached for one of the oldest scare tactics in the book: trying to persuade Americans that communists — perfidiously disguised as progressive Democrats — are plotting to destroy the country.
“This new fixation on the word communist is an effort to save himself in the mid-terms by creating an emergency. Basically he’s trying to revive the old red scare tactics of the 1950s,” author Gil Duran said on a recent episode of NPR’s On The Media titled “The Red Scare, but Dumber.”
“It’s not clear that it’ll work. But they’re certainly trying,” said Duran, founder of the newsletter The Nerd Reich.
It is a dangerous strategy — one that figuratively paints targets on the backs of Democrats, especially those belonging to the Democratic Socialists of America. It also has the potential to imperil Jews by rebooting what historian Paul Hanebrink calls the Judeo-Bolshevism myth.
“Nationalist extremists and far-right movements on both sides of the Atlantic have made the idea of Judeo-Bolshevism — the belief that Communism was a Jewish plot — a prominent element in their worldview,” Hanebrink wrote in his 2018 book A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism.
The seeds of this are visible in Trump’s America — in the alarming rise of antisemitism, in attacks on synagogues and individuals, in killings, and in fascist manifestos like Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them).
Hanebrink’s book chillingly documents how the Judeo-Bolshevism myth fueled mass deportations, pogroms, and massacres from World War I through the interwar period — from Tsarist Russia’s expulsions to the White Army’s slaughter of Ukrainian Jews.
Rhetoric and propaganda from those times can sound remarkably like slogans in use by today’s extremists, including in the U.S.
“Bolshevism is striding toward conquest of the world. Bolshevism is truly the living embodiment and manifestation of the Antichrist on earth,” Poland’s Catholic bishops wrote in a globally distributed letter in 1920.
Hanebrink tells of the Judeo-Bolshevism myth being carried west by White Army soldiers fleeing the Red Army, and its influence on Adolf Hitler. “Judeo-Bolshevism made Adolf Hitler,” Hanebrink writes. “Hitler believed it was the German people’s historic calling to protect the world from Judeo-Bolshevik evil.”
Another historian, Omar Bartov, has pointed out the pivotal role of Hitler’s genocidal hatred of Jews in the Nazi leader’s decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.
“Popular memory tends to separate the Holocaust and the German war against the Soviet Union, but for the Nazi regime they were two faces of the same undertaking,” Bartov writes in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. “It was a few weeks after the invasion of the USSR in late June that the mass murder of Jews began” with Einsatzgruppen “murdering entire communities from the Baltic states to Ukraine,” according to Bartov.
The myth didn’t die with the Nazis. It resurfaced in postwar America during the Red Scare, when Sen. Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee pursued communists — and, not incidentally, Jews. Of the 10 Hollywood screenwriters and directors who were jailed after refusing to answer questioning before HUAC, six were Jews.
“The hearings that took place in Los Angeles and in Washington between 1947 and the mid-’50s were as much (some would say more) antisemitic as anti-Communist,” Michael Freedland wrote for The Jewish Chronicle in 2009.
“Hollywood was chosen for the attack because of the great publicity value the movie capital offered. It was also a great opportunity to get at the Jews of Hollywood,” wrote Freedland, author of Witch Hunt in Hollywood.
So where does Donald Trump’s efforts to foment a new red scare in America fit into this long and heinous tradition?
Trump insists he is not antisemitic — and points to his Jewish family members — yet he has repeatedly shown little willingness to confront the frightening rise in antisemitic violence. He has pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, including known white supremacists. He dined with Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, later claiming he didn’t know who Fuentes was. In 2017, after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., he declined to condemn the white supremacists responsible and instead spoke of violence “on many sides.” He has tolerated officials accused of antisemitism, and he has used antisemitic terminology, including invoking the centuries-old trope of Jews as greedy moneylenders.
The greater danger to American Jews likely comes not from Trump, but from the vast, fetid cesspool of extremists whose growing influence imperils Jews not just in the United States but around the globe.
An example of this is the aforementioned book Unhumans, in which the authors, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, essentially argue that leftists are plotting a communist takeover and do not deserve to be treated like human beings.
It should be noted that the word “unhuman” is close to the word “subhuman,” a Nazi epithet for Jews and Slavs.
“The unhumans want you dead,” Posobiec told his far-right fans on Real America’s Voice two years ago. “They want your way of life dead. They want to see your children lobotomized and converted to their mindless, lawless and godless ways. “
The words could have come from another century, another continent — and they are just as dangerous now as they were then.
The post Why Trump’s new ‘Red Scare’ tactics could spell trouble for Jews appeared first on The Forward.
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Here I’m the boss
צווישן די סיבות פֿאַר וואָס אַ מענטש פֿילט אַנגסט און דעפּרעסיע זענען אָפֿט מאָל אָבסעסיווע מחשבֿות. ווער עס לײַדט דערפֿון, אָדער קען עמעצן וואָס לײַדט דערפֿון, דאַרף נישט קיין סך דערקלערונגען כּדי צו פֿאַרשטיין וויפֿל דאָס קען פֿאַרקריפּלען אַ מענטשן. ווי אַזוי קען מען זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון אָבסעסיווע מחשבֿות וואָס פּאַראַליזירן דעם מענטש?
פֿאַרשטייט זיך, אויב עס האַנדלט זיך וועגן ערנסטע פּראָבלעמען אינעם לעבן דאַרף מען זיי נישט איגנאָרירן; מע דאַרף זיך טאַקע אָפּגעבן מיט זיי. דאָ רעדן מיר וועגן אַזעלכע מחשבֿות וואָס פֿירן נישט צו קיין שום לייזונג, וואָס פֿארדרייען דעם קאָפּ און לאָזן נישט לעבן.
מען דערציילט וועגן אַ געוויסן חסיד וואָס האָט זיך געמוטשעט מיט אַזוינע אײַנדרינגלעכע נעגאַטיווע מחשבֿות. ער איז געגאַנגען זיך באַראַטן מיטן אַלטן רבי׳ן, דעם גרינדער פֿון חב״ד. דער רבי האָט אים געשיקט זיך באַראַטן מיט אַן עלטערן, דערפֿאַרענעם האָלצהעקער וואָס האָט געוווינט אין אַ נאָענטן וואַלד.
„ער וועט דיר קענען העלפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ווי אַזוי מען קען קאָנטראָלירן אומגעוווּנטשענע מחשבֿות,“ האָט דער רבי געזאָגט.
דער חסיד, אָנגעפֿילט מיט האָפֿענונג, איז גלײַך אַרויסגעגאַנגען צום הויז פֿון דעם אַלטן האָלצהעקער. ווען ער איז אָנגעקומען, איז די טיר געווען פֿאַרשלאָסן, כאָטש ער האָט געזען אַז אינעווייניק ברענט אַ ליכט.
האָט ער אָנגעהויבן קלאַפּן אין דער טיר, אָבער קיינער האָט נישט געעפֿנט. האָט ער געקלאַפּט נאָך שטאַרקער. גאָרנישט. האָט ער גענומען שרײַען: „עפֿנט מיר די טיר! איך פֿאַרפֿריר דאָ!“
גאָרנישט.
נישט האָבנדיק קיין אַנדער ברירה, האָט ער זיך אַוועקגעלייגט אין אַ ווינקל צו שלאָפֿן.
אין דער פֿרי האָט דער בעל־הבית געעפֿנט די טיר און באַגריסט דעם חסיד.
„וואָס ברענגט אײַך צו מײַן הויז?“ האָט ער געפֿרעגט.
„איך בין געקומען אײַך עפּעס פֿרעגן,“ האָט דער חסיד געענטפֿערט. „אָבער איידער איך שטעל מײַן שאלה, וויל איך וויסן פֿאַרוואָס איר האָט מיר נעכטן בײַ נאַכט נישט געעפֿנט די טיר. איך האָב לאַנג געקלאַפּט און געשריגן. וווּ איז אײַער מיטגעפֿיל און הכנסת־אורחים?“
„זעט,“ האָט דער האָלצהעקער געענטפֿערט, „דאָס איז מײַן הויז, און אין מײַן הויז בין איך דער בעל־הבית. איך באַשליס וועמען אַרײַנצולאָזן און ווען. עס אינטערעסירט מיר נישט וויפֿל מען שרײַט, קלאַפּט אָדער מאַכט אַ גאַנצן טומל. אין מײַן הויז באַפֿעל איך. נו, וואָס איז אײַער שאלה?“
„אַ דאַנק. איר האָט מיר שוין געגעבן דעם ענטפֿער וואָס איך האָב געזוכט,“ האָט דער חסיד געזאָגט, בשעת דער האָלצהעקער האָט אים אָנגעקוקט מיט פֿאַרוווּנדערונג.
די סדרה פֿון דער וואָך, שופטים, הייבט זיך אָן מיטן ג־טלעכן באַפֿעל:
„שופטים ושוטרים תתן לך בכל שעריך“ — „ריכטער און פּאָליציאַנטן זאָלסטו שטעלן אין אַלע דײַנע טויערן.“
לויטן פּשוטן באַדײַט רעדט זיך וועגן דעם אַחריות פֿון דער קהילה צו שטעלן ריכטער בײַ די טויערן פֿון די שטעט, כּדי צו באַשטימען וואָס איז דער ריכטיקער אויפֿפֿירונגס־וועג, און פּאָליציאַנטן, וועמענס אויפֿגאַבע איז צו פֿאַרזיכערן אַז מע פֿאָלגט די פּסקים פֿונעם בית־דין.
אונדזערע חכמים דערקלערן אַז דער באַפֿעל האָט אויך אַ פּערזענלעכן באַדײַט און אַן אָנווענדונג אין יעדנס לעבן. דער מענטש איז ווי אַ קליינע שטאָט. די זיבן „טויערן“, דורך וועלכע זאַכן קומען אַרײַן אין דער פּערזענלעכער „שטאָט“ און גייען אַרויס פֿון איר, זענען די צוויי אויגן, צוויי אויערן, צוויי נאָזלעכער און דאָס מויל.
עס איז אונדזער אַחריות צו שטעלן „ריכטער און פּאָליציאַנטן“ בײַ די דאָזיקע טויערן. מיר דאַרפֿן באַשטימען וואָס מיר וועלן דערלויבן אַרײַנצוקומען אין אונדזער „שטאָט“ און וואָס מיר וועלן דערלויבן אַרויסצוגיין פֿון איר.
דערפֿאַר דאַרף מען צוויי זאַכן: „ריכטער“, כּדי צו באַשטימען וואָס מען טאָר און וואָס מען טאָר נישט זען, הערן און עסן, און וואָס מען זאָל אָדער זאָל נישט אַרויסלאָזן פֿונעם מויל; און „פּאָליציאַנטן“, כּדי צו פֿאַרזיכערן אַז די באַשלוסן פֿון די ריכטער ווערן טאַקע דורכגעפֿירט.
עס איז נישט אַזוי שווער צו באַשטימען וואָס איז ריכטיק אין יעדער סיטואַציע. דערפֿאַר דאַרף מען פּשוט אַרײַנקוקן אין שולחן־ערוך אָדער זיך באַראַטן מיט אַ קאָמפּעטענטן רב. די שוועריקייט איז דורכצופֿירן דאָס וואָס מיר ווייסן אַז מיר דאַרפֿן טאָן. יעדער איינער וואָס האָט אַמאָל אָנגעהויבן אַ נײַע דיעטע ווייסט גוט דעם מרחק צווישן וויסן און טאָן.
ווי אַזוי ברענגען מיר אין דער פּראַקטיק די מסקנות פֿון אונדזערע „ריכטער“?
מיר דאַרפֿן פּאָליציי.
בשעת אַ „ריכטער“ שטעלט פֿאָר שׂכל, טענות און לאָגיק, שטעלט דער „פּאָליציאַנט“ פֿאָר פּונקט דאָס פאַרקערטע: אַ צווינגענדיקע דורכפֿירונג, אָן טענות. אין דעם פּערזענלעכן לעבן מיינט דאָס דיסציפּלין: זיך מחייבֿ צו זײַן זיך אויפֿצופֿירן לויט דעם וועג וואָס מען פֿאַרשטייט ווי ריכטיק — לויט דער אָביעקטיווקייט פֿון דער הלכה — אַפֿילו ווען די אינסטינקטן און געפֿילן, די אייגענע סוביעקטיוויטעט, שטעלן זיך אַנטקעגן.
„איך בין דער בעל־הבית פֿון מײַן הויז, און איך באַשליס ווער און וואָס מעג אַרײַנקומען.“
עס בלײַבט נאָך צו דערקלערן ווי אַזוי מיר אידענטיפֿיצירן דעם „איך“, דעם בעל־הבית, און זײַן אמתן ווילן. אָבער דאָס איז שוין אַן אַנדער טעמע…
צום סוף וויל איך מיטטיילן דעם בליק פֿונעם ליובאַוויטשער רבי׳ן — זכותו יגן עלינו — וועגן נעגאַטיווע מחשבֿות.
אין אַ סך פֿאַלן, ווען מענטשן האָבן זיך געווענדט צום רבי׳ן וועגן דעם ענין, האָט דער רבי געראָטן אַז דער בעסטער אופֿן זיך אַן עצה צו געבן מיט די מחשבֿות איז דורך אַריבערפֿירן דעם געדאַנק צו אַן אַנדער זאַך און זיי נישט אַרײַנלאָזן. דער אופֿן הייסט „היסח הדעת“, דאָס הייסט אָפּצולענקען דעם באַוווּסטזײַן אין אַן אַנדער ריכטונג.
דאָס איז אַ גאָר אַנדער צוגאַנג ווי אַרײַנצוקריכן אָן אַ סוף אין די נעגאַטיווע געדאַנקען און אין זייערע מעגלעכע סיבות — אַ זאַך וואָס זייער אָפֿט פֿאַרשטאַרקט זיי נאָר און גיט זיי נאָך מער שעדלעכע באַטײַטונג אין אונדזער לעבן.
תכלית גערעדט:
ווען אָבסעסיווע מחשבֿות קלאַפּן אין דער טיר, דאַרף מען געדענקען אַז דער מענטש איז דער בעל־הבית און קען „אַרײַנלאָזן“ וועמען ער וויל. ווען מע קלײַבט אויס אָנצופֿילן דעם קאָפּ מיט אַ פּאָזיטיוון געדאַנק, בלײַבט במילא נישט קיין אָרט פֿאַרן נעגאַטיוון.
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Netanyahu should have said yes to Trump’s Gaza exit plan
Israel has every reason to distrust Hamas. The massacre of October 7, 2023, settled any lingering question about the organization’s intentions, and the possibility that Hamas might exploit a ceasefire, conceal weapons or rebuild its military capacity belongs at the center of Israeli security planning.
That is an argument for vigilance, for verification, for demanding that Hamas actually disarm rather than merely announce that it is willing to do so. It is a very poor argument for Netanyahu’s categorical rejection, over the weekend, of the new 15-point Gaza plan from President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.
Netanyahu likes to speak directly to his voters, sidestepping any journalists who might possess critical thinking, and anyone listening to him might imagine that Trump is asking Israel to withdraw from Gaza and trust Hamas to disarm afterward. But the plan says something quite different.
Under Trump’s proposal, Hamas’s heavy weapons, weapons factories, depots and tunnels are to be decommissioned through a “gradual, sequential and time-bound” process, monitored by an International Verification Committee and supported by an international stabilization force. Each phase depends upon verified completion of the previous phase. Israeli withdrawal is linked to that process and proceeds in stages alongside it — and essentially the details remain to be set.
In other words, Israel is being asked to trade verified steps toward Hamas’s disarmament for phased withdrawals. Netanyahu wants Hamas completely disarmed before Israel relinquishes any further territory. His position offers a certain intuitive appeal after Oct. 7. It also risks making a workable agreement impossible by demanding the final result before the reciprocal process designed to produce that result can begin. There is nothing sacrosanct or critical for security in the exact positions held by the IDF, which currently controls over 60% of Gaza, an area that has mostly been depopulated.
Israel should have said yes — coupled with an insistence on rigorous verification, clearly defined benchmarks and an immediate response to violations. That would protect Israeli security while beginning the desperately needed transition from war to something resembling a future.
There is a moral imperative here that Israel should embrace rather than evade. Gaza has been devastated. Its people need homes, hospitals, schools, electricity, water and an economy. Reconstruction should begin as quickly as security permits. The plan provides for that, under a new technocratic Palestinian administration rather than Hamas, with the Board of Peace supervising reconstruction and international financing.
There is also an Israeli interest in reconstruction. Israel cannot benefit from having two million people on its border living indefinitely amid ruins, poverty, rage and hopelessness. Every apartment rebuilt, every functioning business and every family with something tangible to lose creates at least the possibility of diminishing the reservoir of hatred from which Hamas and its successors recruit. Palestinians need a stake in what comes next. Israelis should want them to have one.
Israel also needs to reckon with the catastrophic deterioration of its international standing. Some of the condemnation has been grotesquely one-sided, and some of it stems from outright hostility toward Israel itself — even, in my view, classic antisemitism. That makes the underlying strategic problem no less real: Israel has spent enormous diplomatic capital during this war, and accepting an American plan that removes Hamas from power, disarms its militias, introduces international security guarantees and begins reconstruction would allow Israel to demonstrate that its objective is security rather than permanent occupation or endless conflict.
Netanyahu instead compounded the damage by coupling his rejection of the plan with another declaration: “As long as I am prime minister, no Palestinian state will be established — not in Gaza and not in the West Bank.”
This is especially cynical because the original 20-point Trump plan, unveiled in September 2025, explicitly envisioned the possibility of Palestinian statehood. Israel accepted that plan, because Trump proved more powerful than Netanyahu’s far-right coalition allies, who preferred continuing the war, sacrificing hostages and resettling Gaza with Jews.
That plan, indeed, said that as Gaza was redeveloped and the Palestinian Authority reformed, conditions could emerge for “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” Netanyahu accepted Trump’s plan at the time. The new 15-point roadmap carries the same concept forward, adding nothing.
This requires some honesty. Israel controls millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and cannot indefinitely combine permanent control of the territory with both democracy and a Jewish majority. Eventually, the choices converge on partition or some form of binational reality. The details of partition can be negotiated, conditioned and secured. The Palestinian leadership can be required to reform. Palestine, under any borders, should be demilitarized. Israel can demand extraordinary security arrangements after Oct. 7. But pretending the underlying demographic and political equation has disappeared is denial as strategy.
Netanyahu understands the politics perfectly well. Israelis understandably fear that a Palestinian state in the West Bank could become another platform for an Oct. 7-style attack, this time overlooking Israel’s population centers. By declaring Palestinian statehood permanently impossible, Netanyahu can try to force his domestic opponents into the politically poisonous position of appearing to champion it during an election campaign. They will presumably be too smart to accept the bait.
That is precisely the problem. A decision of enormous strategic consequence is being folded into Netanyahu’s electoral survival.
Israel needs a government capable of distinguishing between legitimate security fears and the political exploitation of those fears. It needs leaders capable of recognizing an imperfect opportunity and improving it rather than destroying it.
Netanyahu has instead reached instinctively for the categorical no.
If current political trends hold, Israeli voters will turn him out when they vote on Oct. 27. He appears determined to leave office much as he has governed in recent years: recklessly, irresponsibly and without a coherent strategy for Israel’s future. Trump should stop indulging him and lay down the law: negotiate the safeguards, enforce every provision, hold Hamas ruthlessly to its commitments — and get on with the deal.
The post Netanyahu should have said yes to Trump’s Gaza exit plan appeared first on The Forward.
