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Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, a mainstay for Orthodox audiences, is gay. So what?
(JTA) — Mordechi Rosenfeld, the Jewish comedian, insists that the recent Variety article in which he reveals he is married to a man is not a “coming out” piece.
“This article is showing that I’m a veteran comedian and I’m married to a man,” said Rosenfeld, who is known to his friends and fans by the nickname Modi. “This is it. It doesn’t feel like a coming-out piece to me because I’ve been out.”
Anyone who has listened closely to Rosenfeld’s podcast in the last year would know that he and his husband have been married since 2020. The pair talk about living and traveling together, and in a recent episode revealed they would be vacationing on Fire Island, which has a famous gay scene, with prominent gay Jewish cookbook author Jake Cohen.
But the news could easily have come as more of a surprise for one swath of Rosenfeld’s core audience: Orthodox Jews from communities like the one where he grew up, where LGBTQ inclusion remains an unfamiliar and often frowned-upon frontier. Rosenfeld has delivered his signature blend of highly informed Jewish comedy, which often digs into the technical details of Jewish law, on kosher Passover cruises; at benefits for Orthodox organizations including yeshivas, Young Israel chapters and Hatzalah, the Orthodox ambulance service; and on the annual Chabad-Lubavitch movement telethon. But until recently, his routine has contained little whiff of his personal life — in fact, some of his jokes suggested to his fans that he had a wife named Stacy.
“Stacy” is in fact his manager and husband, Leo Veiga, a millennial raised Catholic in South Florida whom the 52-year-old Israel-born, Long Island-raised comedian met on the New York City subway in 2015. The split content has reflected Rosenfeld’s long-espoused belief that the only way comedy can work is to tailor the set to the crowd.
“Even though some religious organization has brought me in and people are coming to see me, I understand I’m under the umbrella of a certain demographic that I need to respect and know the audience,” Rosenfeld told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “If you put me in front of an audience, I give them what they need. And they don’t need gay material — they need the material for this audience.”
“But when I’m on the road doing my material, I can do whatever I want,” he added. “They came to see me.”
The Variety article was born of Rosenfeld’s deepening belief that it’s possible to merge his Orthodox and gay identities more publicly — something that he has long done as a congregant and sometimes-cantor at the Modern Orthodox synagogue he attends in the East Village.
“The prayers are done in an Orthodox way. And somehow, gays have been attracted to come to this synagogue,” he said. “We have a whole group of gay people and we have a whole group of trans people welcome.”
“The rabbi’s thing is no one should ever feel bullied, no one should ever feel excluded,” Rosenfeld said. “Be you. Be a proud Jew and be you.”
Rosenfeld’s “not a coming out piece” is significant and part of a broader recent pattern, according to Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the founding director of Eshel, an advocacy organization for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews and their families.
“You used to leave. Coming out meant [you] had to go. Because you could either stay and be silent, or speak up and leave,” Greenberg said. “What has begun to change the story is people insisting on not choosing between their religious identities and their queer identities and insisting on staying in Orthodox communities.”
The Variety piece comes at a time of tension around LGBTQ inclusion in Modern Orthodoxy. Yeshiva University — where Rosenfeld studied at the Belz Cantorial School of Music — has made headlines for fighting for the right not to recognize an LGBTQ student club. This month, a synagogue affiliated with the Modern Orthodox flagship also made news for its treatment of a transgender congregant; Yeshiva’s top Jewish law authority said she could no longer pray there.
The episode ignited strong feelings for Rosenfeld.
“To torture someone like that, somebody who’s religious, who’s keeping the mitzvahs, who’s teaching, who’s doing that, and to open that up and to do what they did is so terrible,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s so, so terrible. That’s the only thing I can tell you.”
For Rosenfeld, there’s no tension between Jewish observance and being gay — although his articulation of why reveals an awareness of the pain that others might feel in trying.
“Being gay, you can keep Shabbos, you can keep kosher, you can keep anything you want to do,” he said. “You can learn Talmud, you can learn Torah, the only thing you can’t do is kill yourself. You can’t commit suicide. That’s not even on the table as an option.”
When Rosenfeld shared the Variety article on his Instagram page, the vast majority of the nearly 800 comments left by fans and friends showed support for his public embrace of his gay identity.
“It’s amazing that you announce that you are gay,” one fan wrote. “You are an example to all the Jews struggling with their gayness. You are a role model to me. Cheers.”
“I think it’s great you can be out with so many of your orthodox fans,” wrote Peter Fox, a freelance writer and Jewish community advocate. “What a wonderful gift of visibility.”
But a few commenters said they would boycott his work in the future, some citing interpretations of Jewish law.
“I can’t believe you are gay,” wrote one person. “What a giant Hillul HaShem [desecration of the name of God]. I lost all respect for you. Unfollowing now. And good luck to you when it’s time to be judged by The Almighty.”
Rosenfeld doesn’t anticipate that the Variety article will lose him any gigs. If anything, he says, it might actually increase his audience. Since he has started adding gay material to his repertoire, his audiences have been increasingly LGBTQ, like at some of the “Holidazed” shows he performed in December at Sony Hall in New York.
Still, he noted, “onstage, I’m more Jewish than I am gay.”
Rosenfeld began to dabble in comedy while working on Wall Street early in his career, when his colleagues realized he was good at impressions. In the last several years, he has emerged as a leader in a wave of comedians focusing on their Jewish identities, even playing himself on an episode of HBO’s “Crashing.” Five years ago, New York City’s then-mayor, Bill de Blasio, declared June 26 as “Mordechi Modi Rosenfeld Day” in honor of his contributions to the artistic community, and last August, Rosenfeld co-hosted the first-ever Chosen Comedy Festival on Coney Island with his frequent comedy partner Elon Gold to a crowd of 4,000. The Jewish comedy show has since gone on to an audience in Miami and will head to Los Angeles in February.
Meanwhile, Rosenfeld has embarked on a steady stream of sold-out shows on multiple continents himself, while enjoying several viral moments. In one bit that was shared thousands of times last year, he pilloried the practice of taking people who have made antisemitic comments to Holocaust museums, joking, “It just gives them ideas.”
Since comedy clubs reopened after their pandemic closures, Rosenfeld has worked on new material at New York’s iconic Comedy Cellar, where patrons’ phones are kept in sealed envelopes and filming is prohibited. The absence of phones gives comedians the freedom to workshop new material — and a lot of that new material, for Rosenfeld, has been focused on living with a millennial husband.
Rosenfeld and Veiga’s story is a classic New York City meet-cute: The comedian was riding the 6 train when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Veiga, then an intern at CAA, the talent agency, introducing himself.
“And then we went on a date,” Rosenfeld told JTA. “I picked him up and I brought him to the Comedy Cellar, where I was performing. And he didn’t know that.”
After his 15-minute set, Rosenfeld returned to the comedians’ table, where he had nabbed Veiga a seat, to gauge his date’s reaction. “I said, ‘So I’m a comedian.’ And then we had dinner, we had two more dates, and then he moved in.”
In the eight years they have been together, Rosenfeld credits Veiga with facilitating the evolution of his career as both his husband and manager. During the COVID lockdown, as comedians everywhere found themselves unable to perform in their usual crowded clubs, Rosenfeld says he thought he was getting a break from work — but it was Veiga who suggested a pivot to video. That’s when Rosenfeld grew his online presence and developed his now-beloved characters, like the Israeli know-it-all “Nir, not far” (married to the fictitious, off-camera Stacy) and the Hasidic Yoely, who reviews quarantine-era TV shows and runs for president.
While Yoely is a character, Rosenfeld, too, is religiously observant. He wraps tefillin in the morning, even while touring, and he and Veiga keep a kosher home. Though Veiga is not Jewish — the couple had a civil wedding — he attends synagogue with Rosenfeld, his Hebrew and Yiddish pronunciation is excellent, and he is extremely well-versed in Jewish ideas and lingo. That has occasionally enabled him to stand up for their relationship when encountering people who believe it is forbidden: In one anecdote on the podcast, Rosenfeld shared that at a Shabbat retreat at a yacht club in notoriously conservative Orange County, California, a man at the couple’s table told them that the Bible says two men should not live together. Veiga retorted that the Bible says people should not mix wool and linen — implying that not all strictures are always followed, and leaving the man dumbfounded, according to Rosenfeld’s account.
Veiga has been part of Rosenfeld’s podcast behind the scenes since it began in August 2021, and began appearing on-screen in the taped recordings in December of that year. (In a sign of how deeply Jewish content is woven into his own life, he once wore a kitschy shirt referring to “muktzeh,” the prohibition of touching or moving certain objects on Shabbat.) Rosenfeld co-hosts the podcast with Jewish comedian Periel Aschenbrand, where guests include a mix of mostly comedians with the occasional rabbi (one time, Alan Dershowitz made an appearance).
Leo Veiga, left, wears a t-shirt bearing the Hebrew word “muktzeh,” which refers to a prohibition of touching certain objects on Shabbat. (Screenshot via YouTube)
In the December episode with Jake Cohen, Rosenfeld and Veiga recounted their experience at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas. The couple, who admitted to following RuPaul’s Drag Race more closely than American politics, learned what causes Republican Jews were almost universally excited by (Israel and antisemitism on college campuses) and what causes they were lukewarm on (abortion) solely based on the volume of applause in the room. They also said they were surprised by how welcomed they felt as a gay couple at a Republican event, and remarked on how many of the political figures and donors they met were excited to show them pictures of all the other gay couples they knew.
Veiga said in the episode that he didn’t learn until after they agreed to the gig that the conference lineup included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, whom Rosenfeld said he found “a little creepy.” Both men have advanced policies and ideas that are anti-LGBTQ.
Rosenfeld said he had no principled objection to performing for Republicans, or anyone else.
“If the Democrats want to invite me, I will go there,” Rosenfeld said. “If Al-Qaeda wants to invite me, we’re there. A check and a microphone, and I’m there. It’s simple.”
The aside came as Rosenfeld, Veiga and Cohen discussed one of Rosenfeld’s favorite ideas — what he calls “moshiach energy.”
“Moshiach energy,” as Rosenfeld puts it, is akin to the Jewish principle of loving your neighbor as yourself and then putting that energy into the universe in order to bring about the coming of the Messiah. The idea is inspired by the last leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — a major source of inspiration for Rosenfeld, who studied at a Lubavitch yeshiva.
Comedian Modi Rosenfeld Rosenfeld speaks with Rabbi Manis Friedman, right, and comedian Periel Aschendbrand on his podcast in November 2021. A portrait of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last rebbe of the Chabad Orthodox movement, is behind Rosenfeld. (Screenshot via YouTube)
It’s an attitude that he says is embodied by his synagogue, which he has attended since it opened in the 1990s.
“I am so fortunate to belong to a synagogue, Sixth Street Community Synagogue, where when you put moshiach energy out, it comes right back at you,” he said.
Schneerson considered homosexuality a sin and advocated for Jews to choose not to yield to homosexual urges. Last year, on his podcast, Rosenfeld hosted a Chabad rabbi, Manis Friedman, the former translator for the Rebbe, who espouses the same view; he said he finds Friedman inspiring even though he may not agree with all of Friedman’s views. It’s one of many instances where Rosenfeld has been able to square his identities in ways that have proved challenging for others.
Greenberg, the executive director of Eshel, agreed with Rosenfeld’s hypothesis that the Variety article would have little effect on the comedian’s ability to book gigs — and he said Rosenfeld’s commitment to Orthodox ideas and practices could work in his favor.
“Maybe some of those organizations that have hired him before will actually think this is an even more important reason to have him,” Greenberg postulated. “Some people will see this as a kind of affirmative step that you don’t have to abandon your religious identity because you’re gay.”
It’s an idea that is central to one of Rosenfeld’s signature jokes. For him, being Jewish means praying with tefillin every day, eating kosher food and observing Shabbat — while also being married to his husband.
“I always say: the Jewish people — we’re not the chosen people, we’re the choosing people,” Rosenfeld said. “Being Jewish is a lifestyle — like Equinox.”
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AIPAC wants to defeat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan Senate race. Mike Rogers would rather it stay out.
In the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, both candidates are trying to turn a narrow margin into victory.
Republican Mike Rogers is trying to win as the more moderate alternative to Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive and an outspoken critic of Israel. El-Sayed, who narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary, hopes to repeat a strategy that worked for him: campaigning against AIPAC and its political influence.
The pro-Israel lobbying group’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $30 million trying to defeat El-Sayed in the primary. Now, with $60 million in cash on hand, according to the latest FEC filings, it is eager to keep a fierce Israel critic out of the Senate. There is just one problem: Rogers would rather AIPAC stay out of the race.
Allies of the Republican nominee have reportedly asked AIPAC not to run ads to boost him, fearing that the group’s involvement would backfire and give El-Sayed the same political foil that helped him overcome its massive spending in the primary. Axios reported that AIPAC officials didn’t take that rejection easily. However, after Rogers spoke with AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin, the group shelved an ad it had already produced attacking El-Sayed.
AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa told Axios that its members “are highly motivated to be involved in this race and we will be looking at every option to make the case that El-Sayed’s policies are bad for Michigan and bad for America.”
Rogers did not outright reject support from pro-Israel donors. His campaign reportedly suggested ways AIPAC could help without putting its own name front and center. The disagreement is over whether having the group attached to the campaign would help him win or make his job harder.
Michigan’s narrow margins
Recent Michigan elections leave little room for error. Trump carried the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes. In the Senate race that same year, Democrat Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes. Four years earlier, Joe Biden carried Michigan by about 2.8 points.
A recent AARP poll found El-Sayed at 48% and Rogers at 47% among 877 likely voters, well within the poll’s 3.3-point margin of error. El-Sayed leads among independents by six points. To close the gap, Rogers would need more independents and some dissatisfied Democratic primary voters.
For Rogers, that creates an important distinction: He wants to run against El-Sayed’s positions on Israel and his associations with controversial Israel critics without allowing El-Sayed to turn the election into another fight over AIPAC.
AIPAC has already become increasingly controversial among mainstream Democrats for backing pro-Israel Republicans who joined President Donald Trump’s crusade to question the 2020 election results. The wars in Gaza and Iran have only intensified that backlash, as Democratic voters have increasingly rejected U.S. policy supporting Israel.
Michigan has one of the largest Arab American populations in the nation, and it is the birthplace of the “uncommitted” movement to protest the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war in the 2024 presidential primary — making the politics of Israel and Gaza particularly complicated. A recent Fox News poll showed that 55% of Michigan voters opposed continuing U.S. aid to Israel.
In addition to the Michigan primary, AIPAC had some setbacks in other midterm races across the country. Last week, progressive candidate Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed Melissa Hernandez in the closely watched California special election to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned after allegations of sexual assault. Earlier this year, Analilia Mejia prevailed in a New Jersey special election for a House seat, after an AIPAC-associated super PAC spent more than $2 million targeting another Democratic candidate. Many congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC.
AIPAC has also become increasingly controversial on the right. Prominent America First voices, including Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have attacked AIPAC’s influence over American foreign policy.
Winning over Jewish Democrats
Last week, Rogers launched a “Democrats for Rogers” effort to target voters who are uncomfortable with El-Sayed, in particular Jewish Democrats who remain uneasy with his rhetoric on Israel — including his calling Israel “bloodthirsty.” Jewish voters make up 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, a Modern Orthodox rabbi in suburban Detroit who backed Stevens in the primary and usually votes Democratic, endorsed Rogers at that event and urged others to do the same. Lopatin focused his criticism not only on El-Sayed’s positions on Israel but on his relationship with Hasan Piker, the popular left-wing pundit who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric and who appeared with El-Sayed on the campaign trail.
El-Sayed “has shown contempt for the Jewish community and, frankly, for American values by making Hasan Piker, a vicious antisemite and racist, his campaign surrogate and someone he buddies up with,” Lopatin said.
The Democratic nominee understands that vulnerability. Since winning the primary, El-Sayed has sought to reassure Jewish voters that his opposition to Israel is not hostility toward Jews. “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people,” he said in a recent TV appearance. “They are not the same as AIPAC and Israel.” In that interview, El-Sayed also disavowed some remarks by Piker, though he did not commit to ending campaign appearances with him.
That helps explain why Rogers prefers AIPAC to remain out of the spotlight. The Republican nominee would rather spend the fall forcing El-Sayed to defend his positions on Israel, his relationship with Piker and distrust among Jewish voters than spend it answering attacks over millions of dollars in AIPAC money pouring into his campaign.
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The note Netanyahu would never write
George H.W. Bush left the Oval Office on January 20, 1993, after losing his bid for reelection to Bill Clinton. On the desk, he left his successor a handwritten note wishing him well with obvious sincerity and ending with an expression of democratic grace: “Your success now is our country’s success.”
It is hard to imagine a sentence further removed from Benjamin Netanyahu’s conception of political power. When Naftali Bennett replaced him as prime minister in 2021, Bennett arrived at the traditional handover expecting a serious transfer of responsibility for a country facing Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and other threats.
In an interview this weekend with Israel’s Channel 12, Bennett said he cleared his day, and was shocked when Netanyahu gave him about 30 minutes, volunteered little, asked to keep living in the prime minister’s residence and for state funding for his wife’s car, and otherwise was eager to end the encounter.
The contrast goes far beyond manners. Netanyahu treats political defeat as something closer to dispossession, and those who threaten his hold on power as enemies whose legitimacy must be destroyed. Bennett said Netanyahu had warned him before the new government was sworn in that if he went ahead with it, he would deploy “all the heavy artillery” to brand him a traitor. Bennett says Netanyahu, whom he called an “anarchist,” kept his word, via a “poison machine” – a sophisticated social media influence operation featuring mass Whatsapp groups and bot accounts amplifying talking points – such as the theory, now popular on the right, that the Shin Bet helped Hamas attack Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in order to harm Netanyahu.
Five years later, the target has changed: It is former military chief Gadi Eisenkot. The method has not.
Eisenkot is now Netanyahu’s most dangerous electoral challenger, an extraordinary target for such a campaign. Eisenkot spent four decades in the IDF and rose to its chief of staff. After the Hamas attacks, he joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet for a few months, despite their political disagreements. His son Gal was killed fighting in Gaza in December 2023, and two nephews were killed during military operations in Gaza. Yet even Israel’s increasingly brutal politics seem unable to leave room for a measure of respect.
Instead, Eisenkot is portrayed as dangerous, weak and somehow beyond the bounds of acceptable government. His military record itself becomes evidence against him. His willingness to construct a governing majority that might depend on an Arab party – something that is essential for the societal health of Israel, whose population is 20 percent Arab – is presented as something inherently disqualifying. The objective is larger than defeating his arguments. It is to make his accession to power appear intolerable.
From smear campaign to security risk
I was reminded of this Sunday while appearing on television with Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who spied for Israel, spent some 30 years in an American prison, and now hopes to enter Israeli politics. Pollard, who over the weekend endorsed a splinter right-wing party and seemingly hopes to parlay that into a Knesset seat or other position, comes at Netanyahu from the ultra-nationalist far-right, but essentially supports him. He explained that he could never support a government headed by Eisenkot because Eisenkot had weakened the IDF as chief of staff.
There is an obvious problem with that argument. Eisenkot served as the IDF chief of staff from 2015 to 2019. Netanyahu was prime minister throughout his tenure. If Eisenkot presided over the degradation of the Israeli military, Netanyahu presided over Eisenkot. It is utter nonsense, but that is how the poison machine works. Responsibility flows away from Netanyahu while culpability attaches itself to whoever threatens him. Institutions that Netanyahu himself headed somehow become the failures of his opponents.
Now this has collided with a matter of security for candidates.
Eisenkot’s campaign says threats against him – from the rabble whipped up by Netanyahu – are increasing as the election approaches, and he has requested state protection. The Shin Bet in recent days declined to provide an armed security detail, although it will provide intelligence assistance.
That decision is astonishing in a country whose domestic security service once failed catastrophically in preventing the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin – after months in which he was called a traitor, a murderer and a Nazi by a campaign of agitation presided over by the young Netanyahu.
The lesson Israel drew was supposed to be permanent: when serious political incitement converges with a credible physical threat, the state errs on the side of protecting its leaders.
The contrast becomes almost grotesque when one considers whom the state does protect. Netanyahu’s son Yair who has lived in Miami for years, receives Shin Bet protection there. Yair, who is 35, avoided military service and has made himself a regular participant in the same poisonous political media ecosystem that serves his father, especially by attacking his opponents on X. The Netanyahu family successfully pressed to have responsibility for his security transferred to the Shin Bet, over the agency’s objections.
And the entitlement extends into the future. Netanyahu, like other former prime ministers, is set to receive lifelong Shin Bet protection. But a ministerial committee has approved extraordinary post-premiership protection for the Netanyahu family: Sara Netanyahu for as long as her husband is alive, and their sons for at least five years. The state can therefore find the resources and justification to protect a prime minister’s adult son living in Miami during a devastating war, and to plan years of protection for the family after Netanyahu leaves office, while the man currently leading many polls to replace Netanyahu is told to make do without an armed state security detail.
Bennett has issued an even more chilling warning. He says the relentless campaign against Eisenkot and other opposition figures could persuade someone that these politicians are monsters who must be stopped by violence. Bennett himself receives protection as a former prime minister.
The man making the decision at the Shin Bet is David Zini, perhaps the most politically controversial director in the agency’s history. He was a senior officer whose reputation as a far-right firebrand stopped his advancement in the military, and his appointment generated fears that Netanyahu was seeking a loyalist to lead an institution that must serve the state rather than the prime minister. That distinction goes to the heart of Israel’s present crisis.
The lesson Netanyahu still hasn’t learned
A democracy depends on people in power understanding that the state and the government are different things. The Shin Bet serves Israel. The IDF serves Israel. The civil service serves Israel. The prime minister serves Israel. Political opponents remain Israelis, and an opposition leader who may soon become prime minister deserves protection based on the threat against him rather than his usefulness to the incumbent.
Of course, Netanyahu’s entire “judicial reform” effort, which tore Israeli society apart in 2023 before the Hamas attack, was animated by the illiberal and fundamentally anti-democratic proposition that the elected government should be largely unchecked.
The Bush note seems almost quaint from Israel today, but its message is anything but sentimental. Bush understood that Clinton’s safety, legitimacy and success had become matters of national interest because America was more important than George Bush. The 30-minute handover to Bennett and the security controversy surrounding Eisenkot belong to the same story because both reveal what happens when a leader has difficulty separating the interests of the country from his own political survival.
There is an irony here that Israelis should appreciate. Netanyahu has always seemed, in some ways, Israel’s most American politician. He spent his formative years in the United States, lived in the Philadelphia area, studied at MIT and speaks beautiful American English. Yet in his behavior, Netanyahu has almost become anti-American; there is nothing in him that the Founding Fathers could admire.
There is, of course, a final irony. It would be misleading in 2026 to pretend that George H.W. Bush’s conception of political succession describes the current occupant of the White House. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have far more in common with each other on this score than either has with Bush.
Israel, like the United States, desperately needs a return to the standards and ethics of the past, when the leader’s success actually was the country’s success.
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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