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Israel has been an LGBTQ haven in the Middle East. Its new government could change that.
(JTA) — The minister holding the country’s purse strings calls himself a “proud homophobe.” Another minister says Pride parades are “vulgar,” while a deputy minister who wants to cancel them was just given power over some aspects of what schoolchildren are taught. And then there are the lawmakers who want doctors to be able to decline medical care to LGBTQ people.
These are all members of the new Israeli government helmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and their extreme anti-LGBTQ sentiment has unnerved LGBTQ Israelis and their allies at home and overseas.
The politicians’ positions are not new, but their positions of power and leverage within the government are. Plus, the new government’s push toward a judicial overhaul that would give lawmakers the right to overrule the Supreme Court adds vulnerability to legal precedents that have protected LGBTQ Israelis.
“The majority of the gay community in Israel is feeling very unsafe,” said Hila Peer, the chairwoman of Aguda-The Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel. “You have at least an intention to legislate laws that are dire for the gay community.”
Could Israel cease to be a haven for LGBTQ people in a hostile region? Netanyahu and others in his coalition say they are committed to protecting gay rights, but the volatile political situation means the future is hard to predict. Here’s what you need to know.
Where did LGBTQ Israelis stand before this government?
Israel is known as a gay haven in the Middle East, and Tel Aviv is frequently cited as one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world, with a Pride parade that draws hundreds of thousands of revelers from Israel and abroad. But the full picture is more complicated.
Same-sex marriage is not legal in Israel. Still, like other couples not recognized by the country’s religious establishment, LGBTQ couples can access the legal benefits of marriage.
Israel’s religious institutions control marriage for each of its constituent faiths, and the Jewish rabbinate hews to Orthodoxy. That means a slew of couples cannot marry in the country: interfaith couples; marriages between Jews in which one of the couple is not recognized as Jewish under Orthodox precepts; marriages between a man and a woman who was not divorced under religious law; marriages between a “Cohen,” or descendant of a Jewish high priest, and a divorced woman; and LGBTQ couples.
Under Israeli law, those relationships are nonetheless recognized as legal for the purposes of benefits, inheritance, parenting, adoption and other rights, if the couple is wed abroad, or in certain cases if the couple can simply prove a longstanding common-law relationship.
Israel’s Supreme Court has been essential to extending marriage rights to LGBTQ couples. In 2006, the court ruled that the country must recognize same-sex marriages performed abroad. In 2021, the court extended the right to same-sex couples to have children via surrogates, and last year, a lower court recognized marriages carried out remotely, which effectively allows same-sex marriages in which the couple, if not the officiant, is in Israel.
Other protections have come through the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, though less so in recent years. A rarely enforced ban on homosexual relations was taken off the books in 1988, and the army began allowing openly gay service members in 1993 — the same year the U.S. armed forces adopted a policy permitting gay service members only if they remained closeted.
In 1992, the Knesset passed a law banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, with some religious exceptions. In 1997, the Knesset extended to the LGBTQ community protections from defamatory language that are available to other communities. And in 2000, it passed the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law, which forbids the denial of services to any class of people, including based on sexual orientation.
Despite the legal protections, LGBTQ Israelis have long faced opposition from within the haredi Orthodox sector, where rabbis inveigh against homosexuality and politicians have vowed to run the country according to Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. Jerusalem’s smaller Pride parade has frequently attracted extremist protesters from the sector, some of them violent. One teenage participant was murdered in 2015.
What changes do members of the current government want to make?
Politicians from the religious parties in the new government have floated multiple changes to laws and regulations that would diminish the status of LGBTQ Israelis.
The Religious Zionist Party, one of three in the Religious Zionist Bloc, is led by Bezalel Smotrich, who has called himself a “proud homophobe” and has envisioned Israel as a theocracy. At least two members of the bloc, including Orit Strok, say a proposed law would allow service providers, including physicians, to decline treatment to LGBTQ people.
Another party in the bloc, Noam, is led by Avi Maoz, who wants to cancel Pride parades. He also advocates for conversion therapy, a practice shown to increase the risk of suicide for LGBTQ people who experience it. Maoz, who was given a new role in charge of “Jewish identity,” was confirmed on Sunday to a Ministry of Education position with authority over external programming in schools.
Even the minister responsible for maintaining relations with Diaspora Jews has expressed anti-LGBTQ sentiment. Amichai Chikli favors recognition of same-sex relationships but derides LGBTQ “pride,” says he finds the annual pride parade to be “vulgar” and believes that sexual expression should be “subdued.” He has also said that the LGBTQ rainbow flag is an antisemitic symbol.
For now, these proposals and ideas exist in the realm of rhetoric. But the deal between Netanyahu’s party, Likud, and United Torah Judaism, the haredi Orthodox bloc, spells out that the 2000 prohibition-of-discrimination law will be amended “in a way that will prevent any harm to a private business that withholds services or products based on religious belief, as long as the product or service is not unique and a similar product or service is available nearby geographically and for a similar price.”
Both opponents and defenders of the change say it echoes recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have allowed evangelical Christian wedding retailers to decline services to same-sex couples.
That’s a license to discriminate, said Peer. “The Discrimination Act amendment will actually state that any person in Israel can be discriminated against based on ‘belief’ and that is simply a horrible situation for us to be in,” she said.
Is Netanyahu on board with anti-LGBTQ proposals?
Not directly. Netanyahu has never made anti-LGBTQ sentiment core to his governance, and he has been critical of anti-LGBTQ expressions by his coalition partners this month. He called the idea of letting medical providers deny care to LGBTQ patients “unacceptable” and has appointed a close ally who is gay, Amir Ohana, as Knesset speaker. (Some haredi lawmakers refused to look at Ohana, and a leading rabbi affiliated with Shas, one of the coalition partners, said Ohana was infected with a “disease.”) Netanyahu also opposed Maoz’s call to cancel the Jerusalem Pride parade.
Netanyahu has pointed to LGBTQ rights when insisting — as he has done frequently — that he is in control of his government, despite the prominent positions awarded to its extremist members.
“This Israel is not going to be governed by Talmudic law,” he told opinion journalist Bari Weiss. “We’re not going to ban LGBT forums. As you know, my view on that is sharply different, to put it mildly. We’re going to remain a country of laws. I govern through the principles that I believe in.”
But Netanyahu’s concessions to the far-right parties made to smooth his path back into power have his critics concerned that he may not keep his word on LGBTQ rights. The coalition agreement about the discrimination law, while not binding, indicates that he is willing to compromise.
Peer said Netanyahu’s signed pledge to the Religious Zionist bloc held more water with her than his protestations afterward.
“Why give the man the keys if you’re not going to let him drive the car?” she said.
Furthermore, even if Netanyahu prevents anti-LGBTQ laws from reaching the books, he backs proposed changes to the judiciary that would make vulnerable protections obtained through the courts.
How does the controversial judiciary overhaul proposal factor in?
The main action taken so far by Netanyahu’s new government relates to the country’s judiciary. His new justice minister, Yariv Levin, has proposed letting a Knesset majority of 61 members to override the Supreme Court if the Court strikes down a law. Levin has also proposed letting the Knesset majority appoint the majority on the panel responsible for appointing judges.
Those proposals, which are moving through the legislative process with Netanyahu’s support, would “in the long run totally and almost surely infringe on the rights” of LGBTQ Israelis, according to Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions.
“The coalition will have total power to appoint the judges which means they will be a lot more conservative, more religious,” Fuchs said. “If the Supreme Court will have been captured by a coalition which is very religious, very nationalist, very conservative, then we cannot rely anymore on the Supreme Court to further progress the rights” for LGBTQ people, or for others at risk of marginalization. He said the changes would likely result in a majority of right-wing judges within four to six years.
The proposals have drawn criticism from nonpartisan watchdogs, international legal experts and Israel’s left, which views the judiciary as an essential bulwark against theocratic governance. An estimated 100,000 people protested against the proposals in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, and more protests are planned.
But a majority of Israelis appear to support allowing the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings, according to a poll released Monday by the Israel Democracy Institute.
Do anti-LGBTQ measures have public support in Israel?
No. Polls show the majority of Israelis back equal treatment for the LGBTQ community.
“We have an extreme right-wing group that is threatening to make changes that the vast majority of the public does not stand behind,” Peer said.
Fuchs said a backlash would likely inhibit, at least in the short term, the passage of any proposed laws targeting the LGBTQ community.
“There is a strong support of LGBTQ rights, so it won’t be easy to pass laws that bluntly and openly infringe upon LGBTQ rights,” he said.
Some backlash has already occurred. Strok’s speculation that doctors could deny service to LGBTQ people immediately spurred a social media video montage of staff for 10 medical service providers in Israel in which they repeated, “We treat everyone!” One of the speakers was a Hasidic male urgent care nurse, in a sign that even Orthodox sectors might not support extreme actions.
But Smotrich says he believes his party’s supporters are not bothered by anti-LGBTQ efforts.
“A Sephardi or a traditional Jew, do you think he cares about gays? He couldn’t care less. He says, ‘Do you think I care that you [Smotrich] are against them?’” Smotrich said in a private conversation with a businessman that the public broadcaster Kan published on Monday. (The coalition is also threatening to defund Kan.) In the comments, Smotrich outlined some limits on his activism. “I’m a fascist homophobe, but I’m a man of my word,” he said. “I won’t stone gays.”
What are LGBTQ activists in Israel and the Diaspora saying and doing?
LGBTQ Israelis are playing a crucial role in the mounting anti-government protests, activating a network that put some 100,000 people in the streets in 2018 after Netanyahu voted against a bill to allow gay couples to use surrogacy.
And even without any concrete changes taking place yet, LGBTQ activists say talk is already creating a hostile environment.
Ethan Felson, the CEO of A Wider Bridge, a U.S. organization that advocates for Israel’s LGBTQ community — and stands up for Israel within the LGBTQ community — likened the language in the coalition agreements to U.S. party platforms, which do not necessarily influence policy but set a tone nonetheless.
“It can foreshadow, or it could be words on a page,” Felson said. “But those words should never be on any page. I heard from the mom of [an Israeli] trans kid this morning just how fearful they are for their families, their security. We know all too well that when people say bad things in one place we can expect other people to act out in hateful ways in another.”
Felson, whose past is in Israel advocacy — for years he directed the Jewish Federation of North America’s Israel Action Network — suggested that the part of his current job advocating for Israel in the U.S. LGBTQ community just got a lot harder.
“I would not like to wake up and find out that Kanye West is in charge of the Civil Rights Department over at Justice,” is how he described the challenge, referring to the rapper and designer who in recent months has come out as an antisemite.
Felson’s group is urging U.S. Jews who meet with politicians from the new government to raise concerns about LGBTQ Israelis. It is also planning to call on pro-Israel funders to fill any budget gap created if the Israeli government slashes funds for LGBTQ services, as Felson expects it to be.
A Wider Bridge is also planning to forego its traditional presence at Tel Aviv Pride to instead join the Jerusalem parade, which takes place in a more fraught atmosphere, according to Felson.
“There’s a time to protest and a time to party,” he said.
Stuart Kurlander, a philanthropist who is prominent in the LGBTQ and the pro-Israel communities, said that he is consulting with LGBTQ activists in Israel, and should things take a turn for the worse, making up for lost government funds could be one avenue for his philanthropy.
“If it develops and there are impacts to the LGBTQ community, then I along with other philanthropists will look to try and fill those gaps,” he said.
Kurlander said in an interview that he takes Netanyahu and Ohana at their word that they will stem an anti-LGBTQ backlash. He said his support for Israel would not be diminished if the changes by the extremists go through, but that other donors might be negatively affected.
“It’s not going to deter me and my support for Israel,” he said. “I suspect it may for some.”
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The Hebrew word “stav” didn’t always mean the fall season
יעדעס יאָר אין נאָוועמבער, ווען עס קומט דער האַרבסט און מע האַלט נאָך אין סאַמע זומער (מיט אַ וואָך צוריק בין איך נאָך געגאַנגען אין אַ העמד מיט קורצע אַרבל), זאָגן די סקעפּטיקערס אַז דאָ אין ישׂראל זײַנען אייגנטלעך פֿאַראַן נאָר צוויי סעזאָנען: אַ לאַנגער זומער און אַ קורצער ווינטער. די ציניקערס זאָגן נאָך אַז די צוויי סעזאָנען הייסן אין דער אמתן „דער הייסער סעזאָן“ און „דער ווייניקער הייסער“ – און עס איז נישט אין גאַנצן איבערגעטריבן.
דער תּנ״ך למשל, וואָס האָט גוט געקענט די נאַטור פֿון ארץ-ישׂראל, האָט קיינמאָל נישט געשריבן וועגן די פֿיר סעזאָנען — זומער, האַרבסט, ווינטער און פֿרילינג. אַפֿילו אינעם וואָרט „סתּיו“ (האַרבסט), וואָס ווערט דערמאָנט אין שיר השירים ב, יא: „כי הנה הסתו עבר“, מיינט מען נישט דעם האַרבסט, נאָר דווקא דעם ווינטער. אויך די משנה, וואָס באַשרײַבט די פֿיר „תּקופֿות“ פֿון יאָר (מסכת ראש השנה א, א: „בארבעה פרקים העולם נידון“), דערמאָנט מען נישט אונדזערע באַקאַנטע סעזאָנען.
ערשט אין דער נײַער העברעיִשער ליטעראַטור הייבט מען אָן שרײַבן וועגן דעם „סתּיו“ מיטן טײַטש האַרבסט. דער העברעיִשער שרײַבער אליהו מרדכי ווערבעל (1880-1806) פֿון גאַליציע האָט אין זײַן בוך „לימודי הטבע“ באַניצט דאָס וואָרט „סתּיו“ ווי „האַרבסט“, אפֿשר צוליב דעם וואָס דער ווינטער האָט שוין געהאַט אַ נאָמען: חורף. דאָס איז אַ פּנים געפֿעלן די נײַע העברעיִשע שרײַבערס, וואָס האָבן אַ סך געשריבן וועגן דעם אייראָפּעיִשן פּייזאַזש. האָבן זיי אַדאָפּטירט דעם נעאָלאָגיזם און געשריבן למשל וועגן „נוּגֵה סְתָו אוֹ עַז חֹרֶף“ (אַ טרויעריקער האַרבסט אָדער אַ שטאַרקער ווינטער – ח. נ. ביאַליק); „עברו ימי החג ושמי הסתיו רבצו על הארץ“ (עס זײַנען פֿאַרגאַנגען די יום-טובֿדיקע טעג און אַ האַרבסטיקער הימל איז געלעגן איבערן לאַנד – ש.י. עגנון).
הײַנט צו טאָג איז דער טערמין „סתּיו“ אַזוי באַקאַנט, אַז מען האָט שוין פֿאַרגעסן אַז טויזנטער יאָרן האָט לשון-קודש זיך באַגאַנגען אָן אים. דאָס וואָרט „סתּיו“ איז נאַטירלעך אַפֿילו פֿאַר קליינע קינדער, און אַ סימן דערפֿון זײַנען די צייכענונגען וואָס מײַנע טײַערע פּלימעניקעס האָבן מיר לעצטנס געוויזן פֿונעם קינדער-גאָרטן: שיינע ברוינע ביימער, באַדעקט מיט האַרבסטיקע בלעטער.
דווקא צוויי ווערטער וועלכע האָבן אַ סך צו טאָן מיטן האַרבסט זײַנען פֿאַראַן אויף עבֿרית, אָבער אויף די אייראָפּשיע שפּראַכן (און ייִדיש בתּוכם) — נישט. די ווערטער זײַנען „יורה“, דער ערשטער רעגן וואָס קומט נאָך אַ לאַנגן, טרוקענעם זומער, און „שלכת“ – אַ בלעטער־אָפּפֿאַל, די פֿאַלנדיקע בלעטער פֿון בוים אין האַרבסט. „ונתתי מטר ארצכם בעתו יורה ומלקוש“ (דברים יא, יד: „װעל איך געבן דעם רעגן פֿון אײַער לאַנד אין זײַן צײַט, פֿרירעגן און שפּעטרעגן“ – יהואשס איבערזעצונג). יאָ, מיר האָבן ווייניק רעגן דאָ אין לאַנד, אָבער אַ סך ווערטער דערפֿאַר: גשם, מטר, מבול, זרזיף, טפטוף, רביבים, יורה, מלקוש אאז”וו.
דאָס צווייטע וואָרט, „שלכת“, ווערט דערמאָנט אין ישעיהו ו, יג: „כאלה וכאלון אשר בשלכת“ („װי אַ טערעבינט און װי אַן אײכנבױם, װאָס נאָר זײער שטאַם בלײַבט װען בלעטער פֿאַלן“). „שלכת“ איז אָן קיין שום ספֿק פֿון די שענסטע ווערטער אין עבֿרית. אין אַמעריקע און אין אייראָפּע זײַנען פֿאַראַן פֿאַלנדיקע בלעטער, און איר האָט שיינע לידער ווי Les Feuilles Mortes („האַרבסטבלעטער“( פֿון זשאַק פּרעווער. אָבער מיר, ישׂראלים, האָבן אַ באַזונדער פֿײַערלעך וואָרט דערפֿאַר — „שלכת“, און איר קאָנט אונדז נאָר מקנא זײַן. די ווערטער „יורה“ און „שלכת“ זײַנען געוואָרן אַ מין „מאַדלען-קיכל“, מיט אַ סגולה צו דערוועקן פֿאַרבאָרגענע טעמים און זכרונות.
דאָס האָבן גוט פֿאַרשטאַנען די ייִדישע שרײַבערס וואָס זײַנען אַהין געקומען, און געזוכט נײַע ווערטער פֿאַר די נאַטור-פֿענאָמענען אין ישׂראל. די אַמעריקאַנער דיכטערין רחל פֿישמאַן, וואָס האָט זיך באַזעצט אין קיבוץ בית-אלפֿא, נאָענט צו דער נאַטור, האָט זייער שיין געשריבן ווערן דעם יורה: „שמאָלע פּלײצעס / האָט דער יורה. / און דאָך / שמײכלען אים אַלע נאָך. / די מענער קלאַפּן אים פֿרײַנדלעך. / אױף זײַן דינעם רוקן / קינדער לױפֿן / װילן אָנרירן זײַן גרױ העמד. / ער גיט אײן בליק / מיט זײַנע פֿײַכטע אױגן / און גײט װײַטער“ („זון איבער אַלץ“, זײַט 47).
איז זײַט מיר מוחל, סקעפּטיקערס און ציניקערס: דער האַרבסט עקזיסטירט דאָ דווקא יאָ, און נאָך ווי! עס הייבט זיך אָן מיט די ערשטע טעג ווען מע בעט „ותּן טל ומטר לבֿרכה“ און עס דויערט ביז אַרום חנוכּה, ווען עס ווערט שוין עפּעס ווינטערדיק. פֿאַרשטייט זיך, עס איז נישט דער פּרעכטיקער האַרבסט פֿון צפֿון-אַמעריקע, מיט די וווּנדערלעכע פֿאַרבן; און נישט „דער גאָלדענער האַרבסט“ פֿון מזרח-אייראָפּע, וואָס מען האָט אַזוי שיין באַזונגען אין דער ייִדישער ליטעראַטור.
מיר באַנוגענען זיך מיט אַ ביסל: דאָ און דאָרטן, דער עיקר אין די בערג, לעבן ירושלים צי אינעם גליל, קאָן מען זען אַ בוים אין שלכת. יעדעס יאָר נעם איך פֿון דאָס נײַ אַ פֿאָטאָ פֿון אַ קאַרשן-בוים אין ירושלים, ווען זײַנע בלעטער ווערן סוף-כּל-סוף גאָלד; און אויפֿן וועג צווישן תּל-אָבֿיבֿ און ירושלים באַמערק איך די האַרבסטיקע ביימער. ביסלעכווײַז אין חודש חשוון אָדער כּסלו קומט צו גאַסט אַ וואָלקנדל אָדער רעגנדל, און דער עיקר: עס ווערט אַ ביסל קילער – אַ מחיה. עס איז אַ סך פֿריילעכער ווי דער פֿרילינג, ווײַל דאָ אין לאַנד הייבט זיך אָן גרינען אין סאַמע ווינטער, און אַרום פּסח זײַנען ס׳רובֿ בלומען אויף יענער וועלט, ווײַל עס קומען די באַרימטע „חמסינען“, די הייסע ווינטן פֿון מדבר.
אמת, מען קאָן אויך נישט לייקענען אַז מיטן האַרבסט קומען הײַנט אויך מעלאַנכאָלישע טענער. דעם 7טן אָקטאָבער דערוועקט בײַ אונדז די פֿרישע זכרונות פֿון דעם טראַגישן שׂמחת-תּורה 2023 און די בלוטיקע יאָרן וואָס זײַנען געקומען נאָך אים, און דאָס האַרץ ווערט פֿאַרקלעמט. דער נײַער יאָרצײַט פֿאַראייניקט זיך מיט אַן אַלטן: דאָס יאָר האָבן מיר דעם 4סטן נאָוועמבער אָפּגעמערקט 30 יאָר זינט מען האָט דערמאָרדעט דעם פּרעמיער-מיניסטער יצחק רבין. נאָך אַ סך יאָרן האָט מען באַנײַט די יערלעכע מאַניפֿעסטאַציע אין כּיכּר רבין (רבין-פּלאַץ), וואָס מע האָט אויפֿגעהערט טאָן מיט צוואַנציק יאָר צוריק. אָבער צוליב דעם וואָס די מאַניפֿעסטאַציע איז הײַיאָר פֿאָרגעקומען אַ קורצע צײַט נאָך דעם פֿײַער-אָפּשטעל אין עזה, זענען די געפֿילן געווען געמישטע: פֿון איין זײַט — פֿול מיט טרויער, צער און זאָרג; פֿון דער צווייטער —אַ פֿריש ווינטל פֿון האָפֿענונג, האַרבסטיקע גרוסן פֿון ערגעץ-וווּ.
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Jewish conservatives are looking to JD Vance to draw a line against the antisemitic right. He hasn’t delivered.
(JTA) — Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss and Dan Senor were mostly in lockstep as they condemned antisemitism on the right during an event for Jewish conservatives on Sunday night.
But despite their shared concern about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, they were divided on how to think about Vice President JD Vance, who hasn’t publicly disavowed either the influential podcast host or the white supremacist he recently interviewed.
“I’m worried, but I’m not alarmed,” said Senor, a columnist and host of the podcast “Call Me Back,” about the groundswell of antisemitic expressions on the right.
“You’re not alarmed?” interjected Weiss, the newly named editor-in-chief of CBS News.
“I’m not alarmed because I am struck that every leader that is under pressure from this online mob is still standing strong,” said Senor, who pointed out that President Donald Trump has been steadfastly pro-Israel. “Who has fallen? No one has fallen.”
Weiss pressed the issue, singling out Vance: “But what does it mean that the vice president of the United States had Tucker Carlson on his show, when he had hosted Charlie Kirk’s show?”
The question, referring to Vance’s tribute to the slain leader of Turning Point USA, drew applause from many of the more than 1,000 attendees at the 2025 Jewish Leadership Conference, held in Manhattan and organized by the conservative Tikvah Fund.
The exchange aired a growing debate within the Republican party and the right as a whole. Stoked by Carlson’s friendly sit-down with Fuentes, and Carlson’s own harsh criticisms of Israel, it has led to calls within the party that its leaders disavow the antisemites in its midst. Influential Jewish conservatives, who see Republicans as a much more reliable friend to Israel than the Democrats, are eyeing key figures like Vance as counterweights to the right’s increasingly isolationist and emboldened antisemitic forces.
But so far Vance — a likely 2028 presidential candidate — has not delivered any rebuke to Carlson, Fuentes and the growing antisemitic “groyper” movement on the right. Instead, he has drawn concern over what his critics say is a weak response: He did not push back on skeptical questions about Israel, including one laced with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, at a Turning Point USA event at Ole Miss. He also downplayed the significance of the text messages shared among Young Republicans, which included jokes about gas chambers, racist slurs and praise of Hitler. Vance dismissed the invective as “jokes” and said that critics should “grow up.”
Vance’s failure to call out what others see as troubling isolationism and blatant antisemitism has become a talking point at Jewish gatherings.
Scott Jennings, a conservative political commentator for CNN, spoke about the U.S.-Israel relationship at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington on Sunday. Jennings did not name Vance, but alluded to him as a presidential candidate in 2028. “Hopefully the people who run to replace this administration understand the benefit of this, that it’s a good thing and not something to be ashamed of,” he said, referring to support of Israel.
Meanwhile, donors at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas two weeks ago were not shy about their views on Vance.
“In 2028 you can bet, if he’s the nominee, I won’t vote for him,” said Ed Wenger, who called Vance “Tucker Central.”
The vice president, Wenger said, “sounds like he tolerates religions” other than Christianity, rather than embracing them. “Well, I don’t need Vance to tolerate Judaism or me.”
Valerie Greenfeld’s thoughts on Vance in 2028 were quick and straight to the point. “Marco Rubio for president,” said Greenfeld, an author attending the RJC summit.
Jewish activist Shabbos Kestenbaum, who spoke during the RJC’s summit, criticized Vance’s response to the conspiracy-laced question at the Turning Point USA event.
“When you have a vice president who is unable to condemn the obvious antisemitic, conspiratorial, victim-blaming mentality of young people, that is incredibly concerning,” Kestenbaum said in an interview. “And I am very concerned about JD Vance’s inevitable run for the presidency. This is not someone who I have seen has been able to show the moral clarity that a leader needs.”
Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member and former White House press secretary, did not criticize Vance, but said about the vice president’s response to antisemitism within the party, “This is going to be one of those issues that’s going to define his future.”
“The number of candidates who emerge to run for president will be significant on the Republican side, and that’s going to begin in earnest in about one year,” Fleischer said. “And I think JD’s going to have to earn it like everybody else, and be very curious to see what he has to say.”
While Vance hasn’t weighed in on the Carlson-Fuentes controversy, he did defend Carlson’s son, Buckley, in an X post on Saturday. An X user had asserted that Tucker Carlson’s brother “idolizes Nick Fuentes” and asked whether Buckley, who serves as an aide to the vice president, is “also a vile bigot.”
“Every time I see a public attack on Buckley it’s a complete lie,” Vance wrote, later adding that “*everyone* who I’ve seen attack Buckley with lies is a scumbag.” His tweets did not mention Fuentes.
Saul Sadka, a pro-Israel influencer with nearly 65,000 followers on X, recently called out Vance’s exchange about Buckley Carlson and his failure to condemn his father. The vice president has “decided that trying to impress the schoolyard bullies by performatively picking on Jews is the way to become popular as the new kid in school,” wrote Sadka.
Vance’s boss also ignored the Carlson-Fuentes tensions for weeks, only to brush aside concerns about Carlson, who joined him on the campaign trail last year. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump said on Sunday. “If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. People have to decide.”
And while Trump hosted Fuentes and rapper Kanye West for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 (Trump later claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was), some still see him as a bulwark against the anti-Israel and antisemitic waves represented by the groypers.
Kestenbaum said he is “so proud to support President Trump,” but is concerned about the power vacuum that will be created once his second term ends.
“I’m just concerned that when President Trump reaches his term limit, and when there is an open Republican primary, that we will see the nefarious far-right actors that President Trump has so clearly kept at bay, and has made clear have no room in the Republican Party — I’m concerned that they will be let in,” Kestenbaum said.
At Sunday’s Tikvah conference, Shapiro, the conservative political commentator and founder of the Daily Wire, cautioned against dismissing the threat of figures like Fuentes — whom he called a “basement dweller” — and the far-right influencer Andrew Tate, and their influence on younger, more online generations.
“They haven’t aged into the voting population yet,” Shapiro said about their audiences. “And so I think one of the things that we have to be very careful of is trying to write that off as not a problem.”
Weiss concurred, saying, “It’s a great lesson of the left over the past 15 years that everything was downstream of online culture.”
Senor, responding to Weiss, agreed that Vance should say more about the rising tides. “I am patiently waiting for the vice president to come out, like a number of other leaders have come out in recent weeks,” he said. Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell both criticized the Heritage Foundation for standing by Carlson.
Jonathan Silver, the moderator and Tikvah’s chief programming officer, cut in at that point, saying there’s “comfort to be had in the fact that elected leaders have acted in such a patriotic, American way,” before shifting the conversation more specifically to asking why Fuentes appeals to young people.
Many attending the Tikvah event seemed also to be waiting for a strong statement from Vance condemning Fuentes and Carlson.
“I’m willing to be patient — but only so patient,” said Neil Cooper, referring back to Senor’s comment that he’s “patiently waiting” for Vance to comment on Carlson.
Luke Moon, a leader of a Christian Zionist non-profit, expressed concern about an emerging “neo-isolationist” wing of Republicans who oppose supporting Israel.
Moon said he’s even noticed a recent shift in how Vance has posted about Israel on social media.
“JD went to Israel a couple weeks ago, and they didn’t post pictures of him at the [Western] Wall,” Moon said. “Now I appreciate that as a Christian he should go to the Holy Sepulchre. But he had also previously gone to the Wall.”
Others did not take issue with Vance, saying they believed the threat at hand was being blown out of proportion.
“That’s just a small little group of people. Only people involved in journalism take that stuff serious,” said Edward Shapiro, a retired professor who has moved from New Jersey to Florida.
He added, “They’re such fringe characters.”
As for Weiss, who was named to head CBS News after four years at the helm of the consistently pro-Israel Free Press, she said she hoped to use her new position to counter the voices like the ones at the center of Sunday’s discussion.
“The choices that it feels like we have sometimes — which is [the progressive streamer] Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson, or Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, the kind of people who are rising in the podcast charts — those don’t actually represent our values,” Weiss said. “And I don’t think that they represent the values or the worldview of the vast majority of Americans.”
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In Israel, she’s a national heroine — Americans are starting to understand why
Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II
By Douglas Century
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $30
In Israel, Hannah Senesh, the 23-year-old poet and paratrooper who died trying to save Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, is a national heroine. Her verses are memorized by schoolchildren and encoded in prayerbooks, her kibbutz home is a memorial, and Israeli streets and settlements bear her name.
In the United States, recognition of Senesh’s achievements has come more slowly. Roberta Grossman’s 2008 documentary, Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, told her story with archival footage, interviews and dramatic recreations. In 2010-11, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted an exhibition, Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.
Now, when the notion of Israeli military heroism seems particularly contested, Senesh has surfaced again. This fall, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene revived David Schechter’s play with music, Hannah Senesh, a collaboration with Lori Wilner that originated in the 1980s. And a major new biography, Douglas Century’s Crash of the Heavens, excavates the brilliant young woman — frustrated, lonely, headstrong, determined — long encrusted in myth.
Century’s powerful book, whose title derives from a Senesh poem, depicts both a unique 1944 Jewish rescue mission and its historical context: the chaotic final months of World War II, when Europe’s remaining Jews were both targeted victims and bargaining chips.
An emigrant from fascist Hungary to British Mandatory Palestine, Senesh was one of a cohort of Jewish volunteers — 37, including two other women — chosen to infiltrate the inferno of Central and Eastern Europe that other Jews were desperate to escape. Trained by the elite fighters of the Palmach, as well as the Royal Air Force and British Intelligence, they had a dual mission: to locate and evacuate downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war, and to save Jews. For the latter, it was almost too late, though the paratroopers did ultimately rescue an unknown number of Jews.
While Senesh is the focus, Century’s cinematic narrative alights periodically on several of her colleagues. Among the most notable was Enzo Sereni, an Italian Jewish intellectual, “a remarkable man with prodigious appetites,” who died in Dachau. The Romanian-born Surika Braverman, phobic about heights, was unable to parachute. But she did fly into Yugoslavia, link up with Tito’s partisans, and later establish the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces. Yoel Palgi, the lone survivor of the three paratroopers who infiltrated Hungary, became a key source of information about Senesh’s ordeals.
Her story, told here with great intimacy and detail, is riveting. Those who knew her underline her uniqueness, including a courage that ultimately impressed even her captors.
Born Anna Szenes in 1921 Budapest, she was the daughter of a celebrated Hungarian Jewish playwright and journalist who died of heart failure at 33. At 13, Senesh started a diary. In 1938, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law restricting Jewish participation in the economy, and her country’s growing antisemitism transformed the teenager into a Zionist.
Accepted to an agricultural school in Palestine, Senesh made aliyah in 1939. She graduated with expertise in poultry farming, but was assigned to the laundry of Kibbutz Sdot Yam (Fields of the Sea), near Caesaria. The location inspired one of her most famous poems, but the daily routine was mind-numbing. She longed to return to Budapest to inspire Jewish resistance and help her mother escape.
As luck would have it, her kibbutz connected her to a fellow Hungarian refugee involved in organizing a secret rescue mission. “I see the hand of destiny in this,” she wrote at the time. “I’m totally self-confident, ready for anything,” she later added.
The mission was delayed, in Century’s telling, by mutual distrust between the British military and the Jewish leadership in Palestine. But Senesh finally was able to train as both a paratrooper and wireless radio operator. She chose the code name Hagar, for the second wife of the Biblical Abraham, “the slave girl who’s redeemed, who speaks directly to the Lord, who is told that she must return home.” Before leaving for Europe, she was able to see her brother, Gyuri, and give him a poignant letter in which she wrote: “Will you sense that I had no choice, that I had to do this?”
After parachuting into Yugoslavia, Senesh joined Tito’s partisans. But within days, the Germans had marched into Hungary, complicating her mission. She crossed the border anyway, and was quickly captured by Hungarian gendarmes — likely because of a betrayal, or more than one, Century suggests.
He graphically describes the vicious beatings and torture she endured, and her stoic silence. One of her fellow paratroopers had declined to give her a cyanide pill, so an easy death was impossible. Her suicide attempts failed. Believing her mother had left Budapest, she finally offered her real name. That led to a heartbreaking reunion between a bruised and battered Hannah and her anxious mother, Katherine. Both spent time in a Gestapo prison, where they had occasional contact.
Katherine eventually was released, and her daughter experienced a mild reprieve: She was able to teach her fellow inmates Hebrew, distribute hand-made dolls as gifts, and counsel a pregnant Jewish prisoner on an escape route. Then came a trial for treason and espionage. In her defense, Senesh eloquently denied betraying Hungary and chastised her judges for allying with Nazism. As Soviet and Romanian troops descended on Budapest, she was abruptly informed of her conviction and an immediate death sentence, with no chance of appeal.
Integral to her legend is that the youthful Senesh went defiantly to her execution by firing squad, declining to beg for a pardon and refusing even a blindfold. She left behind a trove of diaries, letters and simple, emotionally direct poems — a dazzling literary as well as moral legacy.
One poem, from a period of torture and solitary confinement, concludes: “I gambled on what mattered most,/The dice were cast. I lost.” Another famous verse emphasizes redemption, declaring, “Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.” Century’s biography — which also recounts Senesh’s prodigious cultural afterlife — is a stirring testament to both her undeniable gifts and tragic fate.
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