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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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Hillary Clinton Warns Youth Being Misled by ‘Totally Made Up’ Narratives About Gaza, Israel
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks on the first day of the 2024 Clinton Global Initiative Meeting at the Hilton Hotel in New York City, US, Sepy. 23, 2024. Photo: MediaPunch/INSTARimages via Reuters Connect
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a stark warning this week, arguing that young Americans are increasingly turning against Israel because they are consuming misleading and often fabricated social-media content about the Gaza war.
Speaking at an Israel Hayom summit in New York, Clinton said that young people were being influenced by “totally made up” videos depicting alleged Israeli actions in Gaza, many of which she claimed were nothing more than stylized pro-Hamas propaganda.
Clinton noted that more than half of young Americans now receive their news primarily from platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, where short, highly sensationalized clips often spread faster than verified information. She warned that these platforms prioritize emotion over context, leaving users vulnerable to narratives that ignore decades of Israeli security dilemmas, Hamas terrorism, and the broader regional picture.
Clinton lamented that her attempts to have conversations with young people over the Gaza War have been fruitless, noting that students “did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”
Her remarks reflect growing concern among pro-Israel advocates and politicians about the generational shift in US public opinion. Recent polling show that younger Americans, across political lines and even within the Jewish community, are significantly less supportive of Israel than older generations. Clinton suggested that this shift is less a product of thoughtful engagement with the conflict than of a digital information culture in which Hamas and its sympathizers have gained enormous influence.
”It’s not just the usual suspects. It’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand. A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50 percent of young people in America get their news from social media,” Clinton said.
“So, just pause on that for a second. They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information,” continued Clinton, who previously served as a US senator from New York.
In today’s fragmented media environment, a single unverified video can reach millions of people within hours. Analysts have repeatedly documented how decontextualized or manipulated footage from Gaza circulates widely before fact-checkers can intervene. Meanwhile, footage that reveals Hamas’s extensive use of human shields, its embedding of military infrastructure inside hospitals, or its responsibility for repeated ceasefire collapses rarely achieves the same viral momentum. According to experts analyzing the flow of information, the asymmetry has allowed simplistic narratives portraying Israel as an aggressor to dominate the feeds of young users who lack the historical grounding needed to assess such content.
Clinton’s comments underscore a growing consensus that modern warfare is fought not only on the battlefield but also online in the domain of public relations. Israel, she suggested, faces an unprecedented challenge in countering digital propaganda that spreads farther and faster than any official briefing or nuanced reporting.
Clinton warned that the crisis extends beyond Israel to the United States and other democracies struggling to maintain informed public discourse. The result is an American youth culture increasingly swayed by unverified images and misleading narratives rather than history, context, or the realities of Israeli security, an information landscape that has reportedly been leveraged by foreign actors such as Iran, Qatar, and Russia to push disinformation.
Clinton’s remarks amounted to a call for a more robust response to online misinformation and for renewed efforts to inform young Americans about the complexities of the conflict.
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New York Governor Puts New Holocaust Memorial Project in Motion
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Photo: Reuters Connect
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday signed legislation to establish a new memorial honoring victims and survivors of the Holocaust that will be constructed inside the Rockefeller Empire State Plaza in Albany.
“With the first ever state-sponsored Holocaust Memorial, we are honoring the victims and survivors of the Holocaust while ensuring that all visitors have a place to remember and reflect on what the Jewish community has endured,” Hochul said in a statement announcing the action. “New York has zero tolerance for hate of any kind, and with this memorial, we reaffirm our commitment to rooting out antisemitism and ensuring a peaceful and thriving future for all.”
Per the legislation, Senate Bill 5784, the construction of the memorial, the first ever to be sponsored by the state government, will be managed by New York’s Office of General Services (OGS). Hochul’s office said its completion will give “visitors the opportunity to reflect on issues that touch the core of our society” and “serve as a reminder of the dangers of antisemitism, racism, and all manifestations of intolerance.”
Dan Dembling, president of the Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial, a nonprofit from upstate New York which promotes knowledge of the Holocaust, said his group is “deeply grateful” to Hochul.
“At this time when antisemitism is so high and rhetoric is reminiscent of the Nazi era, the need to remember the Holocaust is critically important,” Dembling said. “As envisioned, this memorial will have statewide impact by helping to educate people about the consequences of prejudice left unchecked and hopefully inspire New Yorkers to stand up against hate in all its forms.”
The approval of the Rockefeller Plaza Holocaust Memorial comes amid a rise in antisemitic incidents in New York, especially in New York City, where, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), hundreds of anti-Jewish acts have been perpetrated in 2025 and a record 976 struck the city in 2024.
During the hate crime wave, the Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn suffered a violent series of robberies and other attacks. In one instance, three masked men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood. Before then, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. Additionally, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Hochul’s handling of the problem has been criticized by Jewish civil rights activists and Republican lawmakers. Many lambasted, for example, her endorsement in September of the candidacy of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist who is allied with far-left anti-Zionist groups and has vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit the city. Mamdani has also supported boycotts targeting Israel and failed to denounce the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which has been widely interpreted as a call for terrorism against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
The endorsement prompted accusations that Hochul was contributing to the rising popularity and aggressiveness of political Islamism across the Five Boroughs. Days after Mamdani won his bid for mayor, anti-Israel protesters staged a riotous demonstration in which hundreds of people amassed outside a prominent New York City synagogue and clamored for violence against Jews.
Hochul’s political opponents blamed her leadership for the incident.
“This is [Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik, a leading Republican candidate running to unseat Hochul in next year’s gubernatorial election, said on the X social media platform. “When New Yorkers were looking for strong leadership from our governor, instead of standing against antisemitic hate, Hochul chose to endorse a raging antisemite for mayor of NYC putting Jewish families at risk.”
Hochul’s office has maintained that her administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism lead the nation, pointing to its constituting a new Division of Human Rights, enacting a “first ever statewide plan to combat antisemitism,” and approving legislation which requires colleges in the state to hire a civil rights coordinator.
College campuses in the state continue to see shocking incidents of antisemitism, however.
In September, law enforcement agents filed hate crime charges against two Syracuse University students who they say forcefully gained entry into a Jewish fraternity’s off-campus house during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and heaved a bag of pork at a wall, causing its contents to splatter across the floor. Just days earlier, someone graffitied antisemitic messages inside the Weinstein residence hall at New York University.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Guinness World Records Tells Israeli Charity It’s Currently Not Accepting Submissions From Israel
People stand next to flags on the day the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, are handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
An Israeli nonprofit organization had its application to the Guinness World Records rejected recently because the latter has a current policy of not accepting submissions from Israel or the Palestinian territories.
The Matnat Chaim charity, which helps people make voluntary kidney donations, said on Wednesday it contacted Guinness World Records (GWR) to discuss an event it is planning next month at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem where 2,000 Israeli kidney donors will gather in one place, which would be a world record. The charity hoped the event would be entered into the next Guinness Book of World Records. However the nonprofit’s request was rejected by GWR, which claimed that it is currently not processing record applications from Israel or the Palestinian territories.
“We deeply regretted the decision to involve politics in a purely life-saving effort. Humanity should be above all boundaries or conflicts,” the charity, whose name means “Gift of Life” in Hebrew, wrote in a Facebook post. “But the truth is, no record book can truly contain the greatness of our donors. Our true record is not measured by certificates hanging on the wall, but by 2,000 men, women, and children who got up from their sickbeds and returned to life. It is measured by thousands of families who received their loved ones back.”
“Guinness may choose not to list us in their book, but our wonderful donors are listed in the book of lif. And this is the most important record there is,” the charity added. “Next month, we will meet in the name of God, the Matnat Chaim family, at the Nation Buildings and break a record. We continue with all our might in our activities, because there are still lives to save.”
Guinness World Records said in a statement on Wednesday that the policy has been place since November 2023, shortly after the war in Gaza started following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel,
“We are aware of just how sensitive this is at the moment,” GWR explained. “We truly do believe in record breaking for everyone, everywhere but unfortunately in the current climate we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, with the exception of those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.”
GWR said it is “monitoring the situation carefully” and the record application policy is subject to a monthly review. “We hope to be in a position to receive new enquiries soon,” it added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the policy “inexcusable” in a post on X. He said Israelis “expect and demand that this twisted decision be revoked immediately.”