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Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying
(JTA) — I started reporting on North American Jews and Israel in the last century, and for years covered the debate over whether Jews in the Diaspora had a right to criticize the Israeli government in public. The debate sort of petered out in the early-1990s, when Israel itself began talking about a Palestinian state, and when right-wing groups then decided criticizing Israel was a mitzvah.
Nevertheless, while left-wing groups like J Street and T’ruah have long been comfortable criticizing the Israeli government or defending Palestinian rights, many in the centrist “mainstream” — pulpit clergy, leaders of federations and Hillels, average Jews nervous about spoiling a family get-together — have preferred to keep their concerns to themselves. Partly this is tactical: Few rabbis want to alienate any of their members over so divisive a topic, and in the face of an aggressive left, organizational leaders did not want to give fuel to Israel’s ideological enemies. (The glaring exception has been about Israeli policy toward non-Orthodox Judaism, which is seen as very much the Disapora’s business.)
In recent weeks, there has been an emerging literature of what I have come to think of as “reluctant dissent.” What these essays and sermons have in common, despite the different political persuasions of the authors, is a deep concern over Israel’s “democratic character.” They cite judicial reforms that would weaken checks and balances at the top, expansion of Jewish settlements that would make it impossible to separate from the Palestinians, and the Orthodox parties that want to strengthen their hold on religious affairs. As Abe Foxman, who as former director of the Anti-Defamation League rarely criticized Israel, told an interviewer, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”
I read through the various ways Jewish leaders and writers here and in Israel are not just justifying Diaspora Jews who are protesting what is happening in Israel, but providing public permission for others to do the same. Here is what a few of them are saying (with a word from a defender of the government):
‘I didn’t sleep much last night’
Yehuda Kurtzer: Facebook, Feb. 8
Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, the New York-based branch of the Israeli think tank that promotes a diverse, engaged relationship with Israel. In a recent blog post, he neatly describes the dilemma of Diaspora Zionists who aren’t sure what to do with their deep concerns about the direction of the Israel government, especially the concentration of power in a far-right legislative branch.
Centrist American Jews who care about Israel are caught between “those to our right who would see any expression of even uncertainty about Israel’s democratic character as disloyalty, [and] those on the other side who think that a conversation about Israeli democracy is already past its prime,” he writes. He is also concerned about the “widespread disengagement that we can expect among American Jews, what I fear will become the absent majority — those who decide that however the current crisis is resolved, all of this is just ‘not for them.’”
Kurtzer likens Israel to a palace, and Diaspora Jews as “passersby” who live beyond its walls. Nonetheless, he feels responsible for what happens there. “The palace is burning and the best we can do is to tell you,” he writes. “It is also how we will show you we love you, and how much we cherish the palace.”
An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis: Times of Israel, Feb. 7
Three high-profile writers who moved to Israel from North America and who often defend Israel against its critics in the United States — Gordis, for one, has written a book arguing that American Jewish liberalism is incompatible with Israel’s “ethnic democracy” — now urge Diaspora Jews to speak out against the current Israeli government. They don’t mention the territories or religious pluralism. Instead, their trigger is the proposed effort to reform the Supreme Court, which they say will “eviscerate the independence of our judiciary and remake the country’s democratic identity.” Such a move will “threaten Israeli-American relations, and it will do grave damage to our relations with you, our sisters and brothers in the Diaspora,” concluding, “We need your voice to help us preserve Israel as a state both Jewish and democratic.”
All Israel Is Responsible for Each Other
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: Sermon, Jan. 27
Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of New York City’s Reform Central Synagogue, isn’t looking to Israeli writers for permission to weigh in on Israel’s political scene. In a sermon that takes its name from a rabbinic statement of Jewish interdependence, she asserts without question that Jews everywhere have a stake in the future of Israel and have a right to speak up for “civil society and democracy and religious pluralism and human rights” there. She focuses on the religious parties who are convinced that “Reform Jews are ruining Israel,” as you might expect, but ends the sermon with a call to recognize the rights of all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, “and also those living under Israel’s military control.” Of those Palestinians, she says, “We can’t feel comfortable sitting in the light of sovereignty next to a community living in darkness and expect to have peace.”
And like Kurtzer, she worries that concerned American Jews will simply turn away from Israel in despair or embarrassment, and urges congregants to support the Israeli and American organizations that share their pluralistic vision for Israel.
On That Distant Day
Hillel Halkin: Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2023
In his 1977 book “Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic,” the translator and author Hillel Halkin made a distinction similar to Kurtzer’s image of Israel as a palace and the Diaspora as passersby: Jews who don’t emigrate to Israel are dooming themselves to irrelevance, while immigrants like him are living on the stage where the Jewish future would play out. His mournful essay doesn’t address the Diaspora, per se, although it creates a permission structure for Zionists abroad to criticize the government. Halkin sees the new government as a coalition of two types of religious zealots: the haredi Orthodox who want to consolidate their control of religious life (and funding) in Israel, and a “knit-skullcap electorate [that] is hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist in its attitude toward Arabs.” (A knit skullcap is a symbol for what an American might call the “Modern Orthodox.”) Together, these growing and powerful constituents represent “the end of an Israeli consensus about what is and is not permissible in a democracy — and once the rules are no longer agreed on, political chaos is not far away. Israel has never been in such a place before.”
Halkin does talk about Israeli expansion in the West Bank, saying he long favored Jewish settlement in the territories, while believing that the “only feasible solution” would be a two-state solution with Arabs living in the Jewish state and Jews living in the Arab one. Instead, Israel has reached a point where there is “too much recrimination, too much distrust, too much hatred, too much blind conviction, too much disdain for the notion of a shared humanity, for such a solution to be possible… We’re over the cliff and falling, and no one knows how far down the ground is.”
Method to Our Madness: A Response to Hillel Halkin
Ze’ev Maghen: Jewish Review of Books, Jan. 10, 2023
Ze’ev Maghen, chair of the department of Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, is hardly a dissenter; instead, his response to Halkin helpfully represents the views of those who voted for the current government. Maghen says the new coalition represents a more honest expression of Zionism than those who support a “liberal, democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, individualist, environmentally conscious, economically prosperous, globally connected, etc., etc., society.” The new government he writes, will defend Israel’s “Jewish nationalist raison d’être, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms.” As for the Palestinian issue, he writes, “I’d rather have a fierce, hawkish Zionist in the cockpit than a progressive, Westernized wimp for whom this land, and the people who have returned to it after two millennia of incomparable suffering, don’t mean all that much.”
The Tears of Zion
Rabbi Sharon Brous: Sermon, Feb. 4, 2023
Brous, rabbi of the liberal Ikar community in Los Angeles, doesn’t just defend the right of Diaspora Jews to speak out in defense of Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights, but castigates Jewish leaders and communities who have been reluctant to criticize Israel in the past. “No, this government is not an electoral accident, and it is not an anomaly,” she says. “This moment of extremism has been a long time in the making and our silence has made us complicit.”
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At California Universities, Students Rally to Support Terrorists and Criticize Victims
University of California, Berkeley students on March 11, 2025. Photo: Reuters via Reuters Connect
Universities are supposed to expose students to difficult perspectives, not shield them from uncomfortable ones. But on many campuses, Jewish and Israeli voices are increasingly treated not as viewpoints to engage with, but as problems to manage or condemn.
Few recent incidents captured that shift more clearly than the reaction to a former Israeli hostage speaking at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
On April 14, UCLA Hillel hosted former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov to speak about his experience being held captive in Gaza following the October 7 attacks.
For most universities, hosting a survivor of mass kidnapping and terrorist violence would not seem particularly controversial. At UCLA, however, the event triggered a formal condemnation from the student government that quickly made national headlines.
Rather than merely protesting the event or disagreeing with its message, UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association Council accused the visit of promoting “one-sided narratives that erase systems of oppression and occupation.” Student leaders further expressed “concern” that having Omer on campus would somehow “marginalize” and “silence” Palestinian and Arab students.
Furthermore, the letter, which reportedly passed with unanimous consent, was drafted on Yom HaShoah, the day set apart to mourn the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. More disturbingly, the student government intentionally excluded USAC General Representative Talia Davood from discussions surrounding the letter, despite her direct involvement in organizing the event with Hillel.
This reveals that the people condemning the event had little interest in actually hearing from anyone who disagreed with them — and proves they clearly did not act in good faith.
Davood was later questioned regarding the funding for the event, even though it did not come from the student government’s budget. So what exactly was the concern supposed to be, other than hostility toward the community that she, Hillel, and Omer represent?
The students’ reaction to Omer’s appearance exposed that rather than engage with voices they disagree with, these liberal students are trying to silence any voices or viewpoints they oppose.
When UCLA organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine are freely permitted to organize activism on campus while Jewish cultural events are scrutinized and condemned, it reveals a deeply ideological and hostile climate at UCLA.
When pro-Palestinian activists on campus engage in violence, prevent Jewish students from attending class, and destroy university property, the administration drags its feet. But when Jewish students try to invite a speaker to campus, the administration refuses to support them.
For UCLA student Amit Cohen, the message communicated something much larger than disagreement over Middle East politics. “What I took from the letter is that Jewish students don’t belong on campus,” he said. “They condemned our story. They didn’t want to listen to it. It’s the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever read.”
But this hypocritical hostility extends beyond UCLA.
In the same month, UC Berkeley students hosted a convicted failed suicide bomber and justified the event using the same language about standing in solidarity with Palestinians. Of course, the event did not receive condemnation from Berkeley’s student government either.
The contrast would be laughable if it were not so revealing.
A moral inversion of reality is beginning to dominate parts of university culture. Certain forms of violence are granted moral context and institutional patience, while Israeli and Jewish suffering increasingly appears politically inconvenient to acknowledge too sympathetically.
When platforming a literal terrorist is framed as giving voice to the marginalized while a former hostage speaking about his captivity is considered beyond the pale, something is deeply wrong with the culture of those academic communities.
Students at UCLA have the power to influence the culture of their campus. They should not only speak out against this letter, but actively refuse to participate in the atmosphere that these disappointing student leaders are helping to cultivate.
The good news is that Jewish students at UCLA remain undeterred. As Amit Cohen affirmed, “We’ve been keeping our heads up. The UCLA Jewish community is going to stay strong.”
Destiny Lugo is a third year International Relations and Journalism student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is a fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA). The views expressed are the opinion of the author, and don’t reflect those of CAMERA.
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How Israel Adds Economic Value and Technological Advancement to the United States
The lobby of Tel Aviv’s stock exchange. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
In much of the public debate in the US, the relationship between Israel and the United States is often reduced to a simplistic and misleading story of unilateral American support. According to this view, Israel is portrayed as a dependent state sustained by American generosity.
Such a framing may be politically convenient for critics, but it fails to reflect the complexity and the mutual benefits of one of the most consequential alliances in modern geopolitics.
A more accurate reading shows a partnership that delivers strategic depth, military advantage, technological innovation, and economic gains for the United States, while reinforcing stability for allies around the world.
From a strategic standpoint, Israel functions as a critical anchor of stability for American interests in a region defined by volatility and shifting power struggles. It is one of the few consistent democratic partners the United States can rely on in an area where state collapse, militant movements, and authoritarian regimes often intersect. Israeli experience in counterterrorism and unconventional threats also contributes to this strategic value.
The economic dimension of this relationship is equally significant and often misunderstood. American assistance to Israel, frequently cited as evidence of imbalance, is in practice deeply integrated into the United States domestic economy. A substantial portion of defense related funding is actually a windfall for American defense contractors, supporting skilled employment across multiple states. This includes engineering, manufacturing, research, and logistics sectors that sustain high quality jobs and reinforce the American industrial base.
Beyond defense production, the technological ecosystem known as Silicon Wadi has become an important extension of global innovation networks. Major American technology companies maintain significant research and development operations in Israel, not out of symbolism but out of necessity.
Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs have played central roles in advances in cybersecurity, semiconductor development, artificial intelligence applications, and medical technology. These contributions are embedded in everyday American life, from secure banking systems to consumer electronics and enterprise infrastructure. Thousands of companies founded or co-founded by Israelis operate in the United States, contributing to job creation, tax revenues, and technological competitiveness.
Every American uses products and technologies that were developed in Israel, by Israelis.
The impact of Israeli innovation extends well beyond the United States as well. Agricultural technologies pioneered in Israel, particularly in water management and irrigation efficiency, have been deployed in countries facing severe food security challenges. India has incorporated such systems to improve agricultural yields and resource efficiency across large farming regions. Across Africa and Asia, desalination and water reuse technologies developed in Israel are helping communities adapt to climate-related scarcity.
These examples illustrate a broader reality. Israel functions as a hub of applied innovation, often developing solutions under conditions of constraint that are later adapted globally. This dynamic produces a multiplier effect that benefits not only the United States but also a wide range of international partners.
At a time when global politics is increasingly defined by technological competition, asymmetric warfare, and resource insecurity, the value of this partnership becomes even more apparent. The United States and Israel form a cooperative model that enhances both national security and economic resilience.
The suggestion that Israel represents a burden on the United States does not withstand close examination. It overlooks the strategic advantages, the economic integration, and the technological interdependence that define the relationship. Rather than a one sided arrangement, this alliance operates as a mutually reinforcing system that strengthens both nations and extends benefits to allies across the democratic world.
The partnership between Israel and the United States is not merely a matter of foreign policy tradition or diplomatic preference. It is a strategic asset that advances shared interests in security, innovation, and global stability. In an era of increasing uncertainty, such alliances are not optional. They are essential.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel
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How the Jewish People Can Unite: A Lesson From Yavne and the Mishnah
Image of the first complete Mishnah. Photo: The British Library.
On May 13, at a national conference in Jerusalem dedicated to repairing Israeli society and building a shared civic future, Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, warned that division had become the country’s most urgent internal threat.
I was surprised to learn recently that Jewish unity was elusive even in the dire circumstances of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt against Nazi Germany during World War II — when a few hundred poorly armed Jewish fighters held off a much larger and far better equipped German army for almost a month. (The uprising ended 83 years ago, on May 19.)
During the uprising, there were two Jewish rebel forces: the ZOB (members of left wing groups, such as HaShomer HaTzair and the Bund), and a parallel organization, the ZZW (made up of youth from the political right — Betar and the Revisionists). While the two organizations cooperated to some extent and fought the Germans in parallel, they were never a unified force. Of course, it didn’t really matter. The German army was far too powerful for a few hundred inadequately armed insurgents.
Obviously the current day State of Israel — and its 78 year history — proves that Jewish cooperation does happen. Another example that comes to my mind is the Jewish experience nearly 2,000 years ago at Yavne, a town on the coastal plain of the Holy Land. That was when Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai ensured Jewish continuity after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE, by establishing a Jewish academy at Yavne and reconstituting the Sanhedrin.
Jewish society during the lead up to the First Roman-Jewish war was a sectarian society dominated by two groups — the Pharisees, the group responsible for the establishment of the synagogue as a focus of Jewish life outside the Temple, and the Sadducees, the priestly caste that administered the Temple.
Both groups shared the same written scriptures and many traditions. But they differed in that the Pharisees believed in resurrection after death and in the authority of the Oral Law, as well as the Torah. The Sadducees did not.
One American scholar, Shaye J. D. Cohen, describes how the rabbis who gathered in Yavne ended Jewish sectarianism and created a society that tolerated and even encouraged vigorous debate. The result was the abandonment of sectarian labels such as Pharisees and Sadducees, and the writing of the Mishnah.
In all likelihood, most of the rabbis at Yavne were Pharisees, and the centerpiece of Sadducee life, the Second Temple, was gone. However, there is no indication that the rabbis of Yavne were motivated by Pharisaic triumphalism. The goal was not exclusivity, but rather elasticity. Cohen notes that the Mishnah is the “first work of Jewish antiquity which ascribes conflicting legal opinions to named individuals who, in spite of their disagreements, belong to the same fraternity. This mutual tolerance is the enduring legacy of Yavneh.”
A year before he passed away, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks published what he titled Seven Principles for Maintaining Jewish Peoplehood. The list includes points such as the need to keep talking, to listen to one another, and to respect one another. But most important of all, never seek victory. I think this is what the rabbis at Yavne understood very well. Rabbi Sacks’ message to the diverse factions that make up Israel’s political and social fabric would be, “Do not think in terms of victory or defeat. Think in terms of the good of the Jewish people.”
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.