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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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California Democratic primary pits AIPAC-backed candidate against progressive Israel critic
(JTA) — AIPAC and its allies have poured millions of dollars into a California special election, transforming a race between two Democrats into a battleground over the pro-Israel group’s place in Democratic politics.
The spending in the Bay Area’s 14th congressional district is aimed at boosting Melissa Hernandez, a moderate Democrat and president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board, over Aisha Wahab, a progressive state senator who supports ending U.S. military aid to Israel.
Wahab replied “yes” during an April debate when asked whether Israel’s war in Gaza constituted a genocide. In contrast, Hernandez declined to give a yes-or-no answer, instead saying that Israel had a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, but that the “destruction into Gaza has gone too far.”
Wahab remains the favorite heading into Tuesday’s election to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell, a reliable supporter of Israel in Congress who resigned in April amid sexual misconduct allegations that he has denied. Wahab finished ahead of Hernandez in the election’s June 16 special primary, receiving 42.8% of the vote compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%.
The United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s main super PAC, has poured close to $2.5 million into boosting Hernandez and attacking Wahab this election cycle, while Bold America, another group that has received funding from the United Democracy Project, has spent roughly $1.8 million, according to The Hill.
When asked about the AIPAC spending in the race by the Pleasanton Weekly, Hernandez replied, “I have no say over independent expenditures. That is the law, and I see them when you do.” She added: “I have thousands of donors and not one of them sets my agenda.”
But while the Bay Area race has become one of the the latest focuses of the pro-Israel lobby, following a costly defeat by Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, Israel has hardly been a defining issue in the contest, and Wahab has not neatly fit the mold of other progressive candidates the group has targeted this election cycle.
Wahab, who is the child of Afghan refugees, has centered her campaign on affordability issues and civil rights. While her campaign website calls for “No More Wars!” it does not specifically reference the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Citing the civilian toll in U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, her site reads, “We cannot bomb our way to lasting peace.”
Hernandez, who previously served as the mayor of Dublin, California, has focused her campaign on lowering costs and her commitments to fighting crime and increasing public safety.
Wahab, 39, has drawn endorsements from a host of labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. Hernandez, 51, meanwhile, has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
During a Thursday appearance on the livestream of Hasan Piker, who has faced accusations of antisemitism, Wahab said that she would have voted for the Stop the Bombs Act and supported ending all U.S. aid to Israel, though she stipulated that “humanitarian aid is important to me too.”
During the livestream, Wahab also touted a September 2025 resolution she co-authored with Jewish state Senator Scott Wiener, which called for the “end to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the immediate release of all hostages.” The resolution was also signed by members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.
In 2021, Wahab also collaborated with local Jewish leaders on a fundraiser for Afghan refugee resettlement in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from the country.
“I work well with the Jewish community. I’m very proud to support them. They’re my constituents,” Wahab said on the livestream.
“As an Afghan, you know, I really deeply want to ensure that all people feel welcomed and safe and secure in this nation. And we know that there’s a rise in antisemitism. We know all of that,” Wahab continued. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t criticize a foreign nation. You can’t criticize their leadership.”
Wahab attributed the volume of AIPAC spending in the race to “pure racism and prejudice,” saying that her “Jewish Senate colleagues are literally confused as to why they are spending this much money against me.”
As Wahab pushes back on the attack ads, she has also garnered $200,000 in support from American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC that formed as a counterweight to AIPAC.
The liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street Action Fund also announced Thursday that it was spending $100,000 to support Wahab.
Tali deGroot, the group’s vice president of political and digital strategy, said in a statement that AIPAC’s spending against her marked another “cynical attempt” to “defeat a candidate who won’t rubber-stamp their agenda.”
“AIPAC’s super PAC has failed time and again this cycle, and we expect this latest attempt to take Republican billionaire dollars and buy a Democratic primary to fail as well,” said deGroot. “Voters in the 14th deserve better, and they deserve a Member of Congress who will bring the kind of clear-eyed, nuanced and compassionate leadership that Dr. Wahab has shown throughout her career.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Samuel Beckett’s characters may have seemed inert, but he didn’t wait to fight antisemitism
A newly published diary of Samuel Beckett’s extended trip to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s helps to explain why the Nobel Prize-winning Irish author became active in the Resistance movement in Occupied France. Already discussed and cited by Beckett scholars in such studies as Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937, the new book explains how the creator of Waiting for Godot, that dramatization of stasis and futility, could turn out to be a man of action opposing the Holocaust and the downfall of German culture.
At a time when only an estimated 1% or so of French citizens dared to assist the Resistance, Beckett was from neutral Ireland, where sympathies were often skewed to the enemies of the much-loathed British. But he risked his life to participate. Notoriously, after Adolf Hitler died in 1945, Irish Prime Minister Éamon de Valera visited the Reich ministry in Dublin to express official condolences at the demise of Der Führer. By contrast, Beckett scorned the Irish politician W.T. Cosgrave in a letter to a friend. Cosgrave, whose 1930s followers donned so-called Blueshirt uniforms and saluted superiors like worshipers of Mussolini and Hitler, was simply a “cockatoo” arrayed as a “Fascist,” according to Beckett.
Beckett spent time in almost three dozen German cities listening to fascists describe the appeal of the New Order, as well as radio broadcasts by Nazi leaders and other believers in the Third Reich. Yet unlike youthful foreign aesthetes who dallied in Fascist Europe, like the American architect Philip Johnson, who became a vocal advocate of Nazism and antisemitism, Beckett was never seduced by German propaganda. Possibly due to his close ties to Jewish friends and family members, Beckett refused to accept Nazi beliefs on race. Also, his finely honed artistic taste did not permit him to discard creative spirits because of their family origin.
Not limiting himself to reading about and discussing such persecution with sympathetic Germans as well as devotees of Nazism, he also spent time with Jews who had already suffered from the regime’s racial laws. One example was the painter Gretchen Wohlwill, a student of Matisse who was forbidden to paint by German authorities. Murals by Wohlwill at a public high school in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel named after women’s rights and education advocate Emilie Wüstenfeld were painted over by a Nazi-approved artist. Beckett met with Wohlwill repeatedly during his extended stay.
Beckett also dined at The Halali, a well-known Jewish-run wine restaurant and bar in the central Altstadt district of Hamburg. Ironically, the establishment’s name in German refers to a traditional cry or signal played on a horn to announce the successful end of a hunt. By the time Beckett patronized the place, Jews had already become the prey of Germany’s fascist rulers. His guest was Ilse Schneider, a German teenager on whom he had an unrequited crush. In romantic matters, Beckett was typically cool.
Indeed, a few months after returning from Germany, he had an affair with the American Jewish heiress and art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who found Beckett so languid and lethargic that she nicknamed him Oblomov, after an indecisive character in a 19th century Russian novel. An inert nobleman, the book’s eponymous hero rarely leaves his room or bed; in the first 50 pages, Oblomov only manages to move from his bed to a chair. Yet the inaccuracy of Guggenheim’s gibe was proven a few years later, when France awarded Beckett medals for working as a courier for a French Resistance network and assisting in sabotage operations against German occupation forces in the Vaucluse mountains, evading imminent arrest by the Gestapo. And all the while, he continued his literary output, polishing his much-admired 1944 novel Watt.
In his diary, just as the Polish Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum’s Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto were intended to preserve traces of daily life soon to vanish, Beckett carefully, even pedantically, noted details of his experience in Germany, even specifying the streets he walked along during outings in Hamburg and elsewhere, as if expecting them to be destroyed in an upcoming apocalypse.
The result is evocative, if not always compelling, reading. But an apparently dry extended list of paintings and monuments seen, noting when works by Jewish artists were missing or stored out of sight, had a documentary value in response to exalted rhapsodic Nazi tomes. Beckett carefully read (with frequent underlinings) Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf as well as “Der Stürmer” (Stormtrooper) a weekly German antisemitic tabloid newspaper. These doubtless made him reject lofty pro-Hitler advocacy which he persistently heard from others during his visit.
Although Beckett would always demur if interviewers asked about the philosophical content in his work, during his German visit and afterwards, he was drawn to Jewish philosophers in an attempt to puzzle out how Germany, whose culture and language he admired, could self-destruct through racist inhumanity. To address this mystery, Beckett pored over Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics; works by Edmund Husserl and Fritz Mauthner; and Ernst Cassirer’s biography of Immanuel Kant. Mauthner concluded with a prefiguration of Nazi devastation: “In his negative thinking, Kant is already the destroyer of everything.”
Similarly, soon after his arrival in Germany in 1936, Beckett realized that war was inevitable. Enthusiasm for Hitler, stoked by Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, was such that Germans “will soon have to fight: a war, or “they will explode.” With omnivorous energy akin to that of his mentor James Joyce, Beckett also consumed popular schlock like Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer’s novel about Spinoza, Amor Dei (Love of God), an antisemitic polemic that likens Jewish scholarship to a spider’s web spun over a “cup of joy,” to the “disgust of the thirsty.” Or Hans Grimm’s People with No Room (Volk ohne Raum), a fictional account justifying German invasion of East Europe to acquire land and wealth.
Beckett absorbed this deleterious material, but also read works of banned Jewish authors like Franz Werfel and Stefan Zweig. While mostly remaining discreet in public about his convictions, Beckett nevertheless marveled about the political obliviousness of Karl Ballmer, a painter whose canvases he admired. Ballmer would return to his native Switzerland in 1938 after blithely ignoring foreshadowings of the destruction of European Jewry.
The newly published diaries, which will appear next year in the U.S. and will be dramatized on Deutschlandradio, a public broadcasting corporation in Germany, understandably have less literary verve than Beckett’s missives to friends. Jotted down in a crabbed handwriting and not intended for publication, his diaries were preserved in a cellar storage space of Beckett’s Paris apartment and later donated to an archive at the University of Reading. Always one to belittle himself, the modest Beckett termed the journal “absurd” because it “serves no purpose” and is merely “the act of an obsessional neurotic.” On the contrary, as documentary evidence of how fascism can take hold of a population, its significance is ever-more timely and powerful for Jewish readers in America and elsewhere.
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Can an anti-Zionist Democrat win in a heavily Jewish South Florida district?
(JTA) — Democratic primary voters in Florida’s newly drawn 25th Congressional District are choosing on Tuesday between an anti-Zionist member of the Democratic Socialists of America and one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress.
The race offers a test of whether the Democratic Party’s progressive insurgency can extend to a district that includes Delray Beach, Boca Raton and Miami Beach and an electorate that is roughly 25% Jewish, highlighting the party’s widening divisions over Israel.
Redistricting has transformed what had been solidly Democratic territory into a district President Donald Trump would have carried in 2024. The new lines pit Oliver Larkin, a DSA member who has accused Israel of genocide and called for ending U.S. military aid to the country, against Jared Moskowitz, a two-term congressman who backs continued U.S. military aid even as support for it has eroded within his party.
Polling from Moskowitz-aligned firms has shown him with a lead of 30-plus percentage points, while a more recent poll from a Larkin-aligned outlet this month put the two in a statistical dead heat.
Larkin’s language has alarmed some Jews, including his labeling of modern-day Israel as a “religious supremacist” country and his call for Israel to become a “secular” state. “I do not support a religious supremacist regime, whether it be in Israel or Saudi Arabia, or any other country,” Larkin told Fox News.
Larkin supports a complete arms embargo on Israel, and told JTA that that should be “the minimum standard for anyone claiming to support democracy.” Asked by Fox News if he supports selling defensive weapons to Israel, Larkin responded, “I do not make a distinction between offensive and defensive weaponry.” He also backed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goal of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Larkin doubled down after Mamdani backed down from the stance, saying, “I believe that the United States, any federal or otherwise law enforcement entity that has the legal jurisdiction to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for his war crimes — that should be enforced.”
Larkin has courted support from left-wing, anti-Zionist Jews who support his platform and says that he has spoken out against antisemitism on the campaign trail.
“Our campaign believes in collective liberation for all people and that includes the liberation of Jewish South Floridians and Jewish people the world over from antisemitism,” Larkin said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said that there is a rise in fascism across the U.S. and that we “must recognize the link between antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and more and build a coalition to unite together to defeat these forces.”
Larkin said he supports a “one-state solution with equal and democratic rights for all people.”
Progressive, pro-Palestinian candidates with similar platforms have won the Democratic nomination this midterm cycle in deep-blue districts around the country. Larkin, who worked on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, is betting he can match their success even in a heavily Jewish district that leans more to the center.
Moskowitz, who is endorsed by AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, outright accused Larkin of fueling antisemitism, telling the Sun Sentinel editorial board in a letter that his opponent “has embraced the support of individuals and organizations that have repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and hostility toward the Jewish community.”
Last month, a Boca Raton rabbi encouraged Republican congregants to register as Democrats so they could cast their votes for Moskowitz. The far more moderate Democrat has refused to debate Larkin, saying that his opponent is contributing to antisemitism.
Moskowitz has also claimed that Larkin is “running against me solely on my religion.” The Sun Sentinel board rated Moskowitz’s claim “demonstrably untrue” and, in an unusual move, said it would not endorse him for reelection after he declined a joint interview with Larkin. The paper decried what it described as Moskowitz’s “lack of respect for voters.” Moskowitz’s campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment.
Moskowitz has outraised Larkin 11-to-1, according to local media estimates. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has raised $667,200 of Moskowitz’s $2.5 million through June 30, according to campaign finance analyses done by the website Open Secrets.
Donna Nevel, a member of the South Florida chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, believes Larkin can win.
“There are thousands and thousands of us, from Jewish communities and all across South Florida, who are doing everything we can to make sure that Oliver will be our congressperson,” Nevel said to a cheering crowd, during a fundraiser held in New York City earlier this month.
She also said that “many Zionist organizations think that South Florida is their backyard.” She continued, “And we say, ‘Hell no!’”
In an email to JTA, Nevel said there are a “large and growing” number of Jews in the district supporting Larkin, including “well over a hundred Jewish canvassers on a regular basis.” Larkin joined a JVP-hosted Shabbat dinner with Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Florida’s left-wing U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon on Friday.
Larkin has said that we “should not be supporting or allowing AIPAC to influence our elections.” He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the group has a “corrupting influence” and that it only supports Congress members “on the condition, in my estimation, that they support wholesale U.S. military aid to Israel.”
Left-wing streamers Hasan Piker — a staunch Israel critic who’s drawn antisemitism accusations — and Michael Beyer, who was suspended from Twitch after calling Jews a “demon ethnicity,” have both fundraised for Larkin.
Asked about their support, Larkin told the Sun Sentinel that both figures have used “language that I personally have not used and will not use,” and said that as a candidate it is important “that I speak in respectful terms and based in fact.”
“But I believe that when those individuals have made those references it’s been towards members of the Israeli government,” Larkin said, as well as Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
“So certainly they’re not politicians and they don’t speak in political terms, and I don’t condone language that dehumanizes any individual,” he said. “I do think that they have legitimate criticism — even if it is rather unvarnished in how they convey it — of what the Israeli government has done.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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