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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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Jewish library and Chabad near Buenos Aires attacked, Argentine Jewish advocates say
(JTA) — Counterterrorism officials in Buenos Aires are investigating after a Jewish library and a Chabad center in a suburb in the Argentine capital were attacked last week.
On Thursday night, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Israeli Literary Center and Max Nordau Library in La Plata, according to a statement published Friday by the center’s board of directors. Multiple individuals “threw a blunt object filled with fuel at the front of the library, breaking windows and causing material damage,” the board said, noting that the device did not ignite and no one was injured.
The library, a secular educational center founded in 1912 that promotes Argentine Jewish culture, said it is reinforcing security measures in light of the attack.
On Sunday, the Chabad of La Plata was also attacked, according to DAIA, the Argentine Jewish community group, which condemned both attacks. DAIA, which first reported the Chabad attack, did not describe the nature of the attack beyond reporting no injuries.
“We are deeply concerned about the recurrence and the short timeframe of these incidents,” DAIA said in a statement.
The Ministry of Security of the Province of Buenos Aires and the Complex Crimes and Counterterrorism Unit of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police are investigating both attacks.
La Plata’s Jewish population numbers about 2,000, and its Chabad center has existed for more than 25 years. Argentina as a whole is home to the sixth-largest Jewish community in the world and the largest in Latin America, mostly centered in Buenos Aires.
“These acts of violence threaten democratic coexistence and the values of respect and pluralism that we defend our neighbors,” La Plata Mayor Julio Alak said. “We will not allow hatred and intolerance to have a place in our city.”
Argentina is the site of some of the deadliest attacks on Jewish institutions in modern history. A 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires killed 29 people, while a 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish community center left more than 80 people dead. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, a pro-Israel and philosemitic economist, has advanced efforts to hold Hezbollah and Iran responsible for their alleged role in the attacks after years of foot-dragging by prior leaders.
The incidents in La Plata come as Jewish institutions around the world are on high alert amid a string of attacks since the start of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran in February. Several synagogues and Israeli outposts in Europe have faced arson attacks that a group seen as tied to Iran have claimed responsibility for staging. No one has been injured in those attacks.
Argentina has also faced homegrown antisemitism scandals. In September, a video of a group of Buenos Aires high school students on a graduation trip chanting “Today we burn Jews” went viral, earning condemnation from Jewish community advocates and even Milei himself. The group, from the private school Escuela Humanos, was traveling with Escuela ORT, a Jewish school.
Following the attacks in La Plata, comments on a local news outlet’s Instagram post about the attack on the local Chabad Sunday were filled with antisemitic tropes, including blood libel and false flag theories. Antisemitism watchdogs say false flag allegations, holding that an operation is staged to look like an attack in order to garner sympathy for the victim or attribute blame to another party, have flourished in recent years against Jews and Israel.
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Cornell’s Jewish president clashes with students following on-campus debate about Israel
(JTA) — Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff and student protesters are trading accusations after an incident in which protesters surrounded the president’s car following an on-campus debate about Israel.
The protesters, from a group called Students for a Democratic Cornell, released a video appearing to show that President Michael Kotlikoff had backed up into one of them while a protester shouts that the car ran over his foot.
In response, Cornell released its own video depicting what it said was a “harassment and intimidation incident,” its enhanced version of which it said offered “complete footage of the parking lot interactions, instead of clips to support a narrative.” That video shows students surrounding the president’s car as he tries to exit his parking space. After he eventually departs, the students continue to mill around with no obvious indication of injury to any of them.
In a statement of his own, Kotlikoff said that despite being surrounded by protesters who banged on his car windows, he waited until his backup camera showed a clear path before maneuvering out of the spot.
“The behavior I experienced last night is not protest,” Kotlikoff said in his statement, released Friday night. “It is harassment and intimidation, with the direct motive of silencing speech. It has no place in an academic community, no place in a democracy, and can have no place at Cornell.”
In an Instagram post, the protesters rejected Kotlikoff’s claims that they banged on his car and that they had previous records of misconduct on campus. They also reiterated their allegation that he had struck them.
The incident marks a relatively rare example of a clash between a university and pro-Palestinian student protesters two years after the student encampment movement roiled campuses across the United States, including at Cornell. The Ivy League university, like many others, enacted new rules designed to constrain protests that have kept demonstrations at bay amid pressure from the Trump administration to curb what it said was antisemitism among protesters. In November, Cornell agreed to pay $60 million to resolve federal antisemitism allegations.
Kotlikoff became Cornell’s president in early 2025, saying at the time that he was “very comfortable with where Cornell is currently” following “two relatively peaceful semesters” in which there were only isolated incidents that violated university rules around protest. He soon rejected pro-Palestinian students’ demands to cut ties with the Technion university in Israel. But he also urged the campus to foster academic debate around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The event that preceded his clash with students on Thursday represented a striking example of such debate. Sponsored by an ideologically diverse array of groups, including the pro-Israel advocacy groups StandWithUs and the Zionist Organization of America as well as the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has previously been suspended for violating university rules, the event was the second in a two-part “Israel-Palestine Debate Series.”
The series was organized by the Cornell Political Union according to a format its website says it has long maintained. The format features a lecture by a speaker followed by formal responses from students and an audience debate.
In the first event, held earlier in April, the Israeli historian Benny Morris lectured on the topic “The American-Israeli Alliance Serves America’s Interests.” Morris is a liberal Zionist critic of the Israeli government whose work has included foundational research on the founding of the state arguing that many Arabs were expelled, rather than fled, during the 1948 war.
The second, on Thursday, featured the pro-Palestinian Holocaust historian Norman Finkelstein, who lectured on the topic “Israel Was Not Justified in Its Response to October 7th.” Finkelstein, who has criticized Morris for showing a pro-Israel bias, has compared the plight of the Palestinians to that of Jews during the Holocaust, and Students for Justice in Palestine posted a picture of its members posing with him on Thursday.
Kotlikoff offered introductory remarks at the event, which promoted a no-technology policy designed “out of respect to student[s] who will be given the opportunity to speak openly on a divisive topic.”
The post Cornell’s Jewish president clashes with students following on-campus debate about Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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U of Michigan apologizes after faculty chair praises pro-Palestinian students during commencement speech
(JTA) — The University of Michigan has issued a formal apology after its faculty senate chair went off-script to praise pro-Palestinian student protesters during last weekend’s commencement address.
Derek Peterson, who also praised the memory of the school’s first Jewish professor in his speech, had drawn criticism from Michigan Hillel and from major organizations including the American Jewish Committee.
Now, a growing chorus of faculty members have signed a letter pushing back on the school president’s apology. On the right, Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott has urged the federal government to stop funding the public university over the incident, writing, “If this is what Americans are paying for, it’s time to cut them off COMPLETELY.”
“At today’s U-M spring commencement ceremony, our outgoing Faculty Senate Chair made remarks regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict that were hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community,” Michigan’s interim president, Domenico Grasso, wrote in his letter on Saturday. “We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment. For this, the university apologizes.”
Peterson, a history and African-American studies professor who is finishing a stint as faculty chair, had structured his commencement speech around pioneers in university history.
“Sing for Moritz Levi, the first Jewish professor at the University of Michigan. Appointed professor of French in 1896, he was to open the doors of this great university to generations of Jewish students who found in Ann Arbor a safe haven from the antisemitism of East Coast universities,” Peterson told the crowd at Michigan’s football field, to applause.
Shortly after, Peterson added, “Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists who have, over these past two years, opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.” Those remarks also received loud applause.
Michigan, like many campuses, was host to a critical mass of pro-Palestinian encampments and other forms of student protest. The tenor of such actions in Ann Arbor has escalated: Protesters have also cut down peonies at the university arboretum and vandalized the home of a Jewish university regent. Recently the attorney who defended the university’s encampment participants from some state-level charges received the Democratic Party’s nomination for a seat on the university’s board of regents.
Peterson’s comments, Grasso said, “were inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position,” which he said was “institutional neutrality.” (Many universities have adopted a stance of neutrality in recent years as they have sought to navigate tensions around Israel.)
Grasso added, “Commencement is a time of celebration, recognition and unity. The Chair’s remarks were expected to be congratulatory, not a platform for personal or political expression.”
Michigan Hillel also condemned Peterson’s speech on Sunday, in similar language.
“Commencement is a celebration of every graduate. It is not a stage for political statements that alienate the Jewish community,” the Hillel wrote on Instagram. “Michigan Hillel is deeply troubled that this occasion was used in that way.” The chapter also said it would “look forward to productive conversations” with Michigan administrators.
AJC head Ted Deutch, a Michigan alum, accused Peterson of choosing to “hijack a unifying moment to inject his anti-Israel politics.”
On campus, however, an open letter rebuking Grasso and defending Peterson’s speech had been signed by more than 1,100 faculty members, staff and students in less than 24 hours.
“His celebration of the students who engaged in those protests clearly connected to his discussions of past efforts by students to target injustice,” the letter said of Peterson, citing his linking of the protesters to Moritz Levi. The letter also claimed that Grasso’s apology itself violated the university’s “institutional neutrality” policy.
“Many members of our community have family members who have been killed, whose houses have been destroyed, and whose lives have been transformed by Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza,” the letter reads. “To many, protesting against the war was a central part of their University experience, and one that was an expression of the values of free speech and humanism that our institution supports when it is at its best.”
The reactions to Peterson’s speech were “totally predictable,” Karla Goldman, a Judaic Studies professor at Michigan who researches the university’s early Jewish life, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Why throw a grenade?” Goldman said. “It’s not that what he said is terrible. I don’t find what he said terrible. But you could predict what the result was going to be. So my question would be, to what end?”
Goldman said she could understand why Peterson’s brief remarks had linked Moritz Levi to pro-Palestinian protesters.
“I get the trajectory of what he’s saying: People that higher education couldn’t see, eventually they were able to see,” she said.
Commencement ceremonies have been a frontier for tensions over Israel since Oct. 7, but it has typically been students, not faculty, raising the issue. In 2024, many college graduations featured pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including at Michigan. Last year, multiple schools disciplined students who made pro-Palestinian comments in their speeches in contravention of university policies. Some schools have done away with student speeches in an effort to stem disruptions.
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