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‘A battle of Jews against Jews’? Arab Israelis debate whether and how to join Israel’s democracy protests
TAYIBE, Israel (JTA) — Prominent figures among Israel’s Arab minority are calling on its members to join the mass protests against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul plan, arguing that Arabs will be the first victims of any weakening of the Supreme Court.
“If the government succeeds it will make our chances for equality and a just peace more remote,” said Suheil Diab, former deputy mayor of Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab city, and one of the organizers of a nonpartisan push to get Arabs to demonstrate alongside their Jewish counterparts.
“If we don’t repel the attack on the judiciary, we can’t go forward with our agenda,” Diab went on. “I want Arabs to participate and to know that participating is in their interest.”
The proposed reforms would give the Knesset — now controlled by a right-wing coalition — the power to override Israel’s Supreme Court, in a move that proponents say is needed because, in their view, the court has grown too liberal and out of step with popular sentiment. Leaders of some of the parties in the coalition have called for curbing rights of LGBTQ Israelis, non-Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis. At least one of them has openly suggested that Arab citizens who are “disloyal” should be deported.
Diab and other Arab leaders fear that without the protection of the Supreme Court, the Arab minority might face measures limiting funding, access to jobs and opportunities and even their political representation. Even expulsion feels like a realistic concern given the far-right influence in the government, he said.
”We need to convince a distinct share of the Jewish majority that both of us are threatened,” Diab told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The only way is a shared Jewish-Arab struggle.”
But while massive protests including tech entrepreneurs, army reservists, academics and others have shown the extent of determination among Jews to stop the government’s bid to legislate what it terms “judicial reform,” Arab Israelis, who make up one-fifth of the population, have hardly turned out.
This dynamic has been true in the Knesset as well as in the streets. Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Arab Ra’am Party, has said he opposes the changes, but when he was invited to participate in a press conference with other leaders of the political opposition, he declined.
Palestinian flags were seen at some of the early pro-democracy protests in Israel, such as at this one in Tel Aviv Jan. 14, 2023, but have appeared less frequently since. (Gili Yaari/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A push to get Arabs to participate in the protests began Friday with publication of a petition calling for public activism, inked by more than 200 Arab personalities, including retired judges. A gathering here on Saturday sought to work through thorny questions about what Arab participation might look like, and what demands it might make.
Getting Israeli Arabs to the protests that have become a recurring feature of life in cities across Israel every Saturday night won’t necessarily be easy. The push is likely to run up against perceived disenfranchisement on the part of Arab Israelis, whose political parties have rarely been part of governing coalitions and whose participation in electoral politics has been portrayed in the past as illegitimate by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.
Another likely obstacle is a narrow focus for the protest organizers, almost all Jewish.
In the first weeks of the protests in January, Palestinian flags raised by protesters drew criticism from right-wing and pro-government pundits. National Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for a ban on the flag in public and warned that those waving Palestinian flags in future demonstrations would be arrested. Fewer Palestinian flags were seen in the following weeks, and issues relating to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or to the new government’s attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were all but dropped from the agenda. An Israeli activist who asked to carry a Palestinian flag while speaking was declined.
The organizers do not seem interested thus far in broadening the agenda, and only a few Arab speakers have been featured in the demonstrations. Just hours after the Tayibe meeting on Saturday, Reem Hazzan, a leader of the predominantly Arab Hadash party in Haifa, was told by organizers who reviewed a copy of her planned speech to make changes to it. She refused and there was no Arab speaker.
Haaretz quoted unidentified organizers as saying the problem was that Hazzan refused to call in her speech for the Arab public to turn out for the protests. But Hazzan, in remarks to JTA, said she sees a deeper problem.
“We want to change the rules of the game, not just preserve what exists. What exists is not good,” she said. “We need to speak about the occupation and about discrimination. If you want Arabs to participate you must take into account that Arabs have an agenda.”
Exactly what that agenda should be was under debate during the gathering in Tayibe, a sprawling town in central Israel that like many Arab municipalities suffers from spiraling crime and violence.
“People say it’s a battle of Jews against Jews; others say they don’t want us there so why should we go and others point to times when the court sided against us,” said Mohammed Ali Taha, 82, former head of the Arab Writers Association, who spoke at the Tayibe gathering.
Arab Israelis cast their vote at a voting station in Tayibe, Nov. 1, 2022. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
“It’s all true,” he continued. “But still we must join the protests because we will be the primary losers. When the far right rises, it strikes against the weak. We are the weak.”
With no constitution, Israel lacks any explicit guarantee of equality for all its citizens. Some laws, including those ensuring the right for immigration, advantage Jews. To the extent that Arabs have been able to challenge discrimination in recent decades, it has been largely through the Supreme Court inferring equality on them based on liberal legislation such as the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom, passed in 1992, which specifies, “Every human being is entitled to protection of his life, body and dignity.” Critics of the proposed reforms warn that they could result in the rollback of that basic law.
The court has also at times ruled against Arab Israeli interests, such as when it refused to consider petitions against the 2018 Nation State Law, which enshrines Jewish settlement as a national value, declares that national self-determination in the state of Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and demotes Arabic from an official language.
Tayibe’s deputy mayor, Malik Azzem, said that despite its mixed record, an independent Supreme Court is essential for Israeli Arabs.
“The High Court is our last defense for our rights as a minority,” he said. “The struggle for our rights is not separate from this struggle. We need to mobilize the public.”
He added that as an elected official, he fears that without the court’s oversight, the government would simply cut the budgets of Arab municipalities.
”People need to raise their voices and join,” Azzem said. “We should be at the center of the demonstrations. We are already late in dealing with this.”
Taha, the writer, whose works often focus on the Nakba, an Arabic term meaning catastrophe that is used to describe the plight of Palestinians after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and which he lived through as a child, told the gathering: ”Without Jewish-Arab cooperation we cannot achieve anything. This is an opportunity for cooperation.”
He said he believes Arab Israelis are today more vulnerable than they have been at any time since the period that they lived under military rule, from 1948 to 1966. At that time they were so restricted that they could not travel within Israel without permits. The danger today, he says, is due to the clout of far-right ministers Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have expressed anti-Arab views and, in Ben-Gvir’s case, even called for the expulsion of “disloyal” citizens.
“If they succeed it will be worse for us than military rule was,” Taha said. To avert this, he argued, Arabs need to join the protests alongside Jews even if it means not raising Palestinian flags.
”It’s not the time and place for a protest about a Palestinian state,” he said. “This could cause conflict among the protesters.”
But to others, the idea of protesting without highlighting the need to end both the occupation and inequality is akin to denying one’s very identity.
“I’m against participating in any demonstration that is embarrassed to talk about context and the occupation. I support something broader,” said Sondos Saleh, a former member of Knesset for the Arab Ta’al party.
Sondos Saleh, an Arab Israeli politician then on the Joint List Party candidate list, speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Feb. 23, 2021. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Merav Ben-Ari, a legislator for the largest opposition party, Yesh Atid, told JTA she would welcome greater Arab participation in the protests. ”Anything that strengthens the protests is excellent,” she said.
But she showed little enthusiasm for talking about many of the topics that animate Israeli Arabs in the political sphere, including the core one that liberal critics of the protest movement say is being given short shrift.
“How is the occupation connected?” Ben-Ari asked. “What is needed is to talk about the reform. Everyone who loves the country and cares about it has to fight against the reform and the harm to the Supreme Court.”
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As Political Lines Blur, Republican Jewish Coalition’s Matt Brooks Warns of a Deeper Shift Facing American Jews
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, holds a kippah in support of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as he speaks on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, July 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
At some point, the question stops being which political party you belong to — and becomes what, exactly, you believe that party stands for.
That was the underlying tension in a recent conversation with Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks, who offered a stark assessment of the changing political landscape for American Jews: the erosion of bipartisan support for Israel, the reemergence of antisemitism across ideological lines, and a growing sense that long-held assumptions about political alignment no longer cleanly apply.
For decades, support for Israel functioned as one of the few durable points of agreement in American public life. It transcended party, survived shifts in leadership, and provided a kind of baseline continuity in an otherwise volatile political system. That consensus, Brooks suggested, has now meaningfully weakened.
“There is only one pro-Israel party today,” he said on The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “And that’s the Republican Party.”
It is, in his telling, less a triumph than a warning — a sign that what was once shared ground has become contested terrain.
The shift did not happen overnight. Brooks, who has spent nearly four decades at the intersection of Jewish communal life and Republican politics, described a long internal effort to strengthen pro-Israel sentiment within the GOP — one that has, by his account, succeeded.
What concerns him now is not where the Republican Party has landed, but where parts of the Democratic Party have moved.
Yet the more unsettling dynamic, he argued, is not confined to partisan drift. It is structural.
Invoking the “horseshoe theory,” Brooks pointed to a phenomenon that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: the convergence of the political extremes. While the far left and far right often present themselves as opposites, he argued, their rhetoric — particularly when it comes to Jews — can begin to mirror itself in striking ways.
“The language may be different,” Brooks said, “but the themes are familiar.”
On one end, Jews are cast as agents of capitalism, landlords, or power brokers within systems of inequality. On the other, they are portrayed as shadowy manipulators of media, finance, or political institutions. The ideological framing shifts. The underlying instinct does not.
That convergence, he warned, creates a more diffuse and unpredictable threat environment — one in which antisemitism is no longer easily located or dismissed as belonging to a single fringe.
The implications of these changes, Brooks suggested, extend into the political behavior of American Jews more broadly.
For much of the modern era, Jewish voting patterns have been closely tied to identity, history, and inherited political affiliation. But Brooks indicated that those patterns may be undergoing a quiet but significant recalibration — one driven less by ideology than by a more immediate question: security.
“It’s not about who you like,” he said. “It’s about who you trust to keep you safe.”
That framing, he noted, has proven especially resonant in recent election cycles, where data-driven outreach efforts have shown that concerns about personal safety, antisemitism, and the security of Israel can outweigh longstanding partisan loyalties — particularly among undecided voters.
It is, in many ways, a shift from expressive politics to consequential politics — from signaling identity to assessing risk.
And yet, for all the instability he described, Brooks did not frame the moment as one of inevitable decline.
On the contrary, he returned repeatedly to the idea of resilience — not as a slogan, but as a historical pattern.
“We’ve faced adversity before,” he said. “We’re a resilient people.”
That resilience, in his view, is what underwrites his long-term optimism about American Jewry.
Still, optimism, as Brooks articulated it, is not the same as comfort. It is contingent. It requires recognition — of shifting alliances, of emerging threats, and of the limits of assumptions that may no longer hold.
The deeper question raised by his analysis is not simply which party is more aligned with Jewish interests at a given moment. It is whether the framework through which those interests have historically been understood — bipartisan consensus, stable coalitions, predictable boundaries — is itself in the process of being rewritten.
If so, then the challenge facing American Jews is not only political, but conceptual. It is to understand where they stand in a landscape that is less fixed than it once was — and to decide, with greater clarity and less nostalgia, what matters most when the ground begins to shift.
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Federal Complaint Alleges Antisemitic Housing Discrimination at Williams College
Williams College in Massachusetts. Photo: Wikipedia commons.
A federal complaint filed with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development accuses Williams College in Massachusetts of practicing housing discrimination against an Orthodox Jewish student whom it allegedly denied kosher foods and other religious accommodations that would have promoted his integration into the mainstream campus culture.
Filed on Thursday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the complaint presents a harrowing portrayal of an observant Jewish student forced to eat vegan cuisine which falls far below the culinary standards of meals prepared for other students, to stand in the cold for hours when observance of the Sabbath prevents his using an electronic keycard to enter residence halls, and to “confine” himself to his room on Saturdays to avoid being locked out.
So indifferent is the college to the student’s situation, the Brandeis Center alleges, that it once discouraged him from moving to campus at the same time as it promised other incoming students a “learning community you live in.” The Brandeis Center adds that the school’s alleged violation of its own values is underscored by the fact that it mandates on-campus residency for most students due to its belief that living at the college is an integral part of the undergraduate experience.
“It saddens me as a proud Williams College alumnus to see my alma mater treat a Jewish student as a lesser member of the community because of his religion, turning him away as he was freezing and hungry,” Brandeis Center chairman and chief executive Kenneth Marcus said in a statement announcing the legal action. “Religious discrimination is discrimination. Jews, as well as other students and people of faith, should be able to practice their religion freely, without prejudice or discrimination. That is what religious freedom in America is all about, and we must continue to stand up when this freedom is denied.”
On Wednesday, the college told The Algemeiner that it has “no tolerance for antisemitism or discrimination” and would “welcome” a “dialogue with the student and Brandeis Center to ensure a welcoming and inclusive educational environment.”
“We are devoted to ensuring that all students have success to appropriate living spaces, dining options, and our full range of learning opportunities,” the college’s media relations director said. “The college’s leaders and chaplains are strongly committed to working with students and their families to address student concerns.”
The complaint trails years of reports that American higher education institutions fail to protect the civil rights of Jewish students even as their leaders proclaim a commitment to promoting equity and inclusion. While many institutions have pledged to combat antisemitism in recent months with new initiatives and policies, surveys of Jewish students continue to suggest that those reforms have not yet produced a meaningful reduction in antisemitic bigotry.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students report having experienced antisemitism at college, according to a survey released by the American Jewish Committee and Hillel International in February. Of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. The survey also found that 32 percent of Jewish students believe that campus groups promote antisemitism or a learning environment that is hostile to Jews, while 25 percent said that antisemitism was the basis of being “excluded from a group or an event on campus.”
On Thursday, the Brandeis Center said the specifics of the William College case prompted a “first of its kind” approach to representing a campus antisemitism victim. The group has filed scores of federal complaints alleging antisemitic discrimination in higher education, but the agency petitioned in those cases was the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Additionally, the suits demanded redress for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now, the Brandeis Center contends that Williams College ran afoul of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and is contesting the matter in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“The filing reflects the expansion and strengthening of the Brandeis Center’s legal advocacy efforts to push back against discrimination targeting Jewish Americans wherever their civil rights are threatened,” the group said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Democratic Nominee for University of Michigan Regent Refuses to Condemn Hezbollah
Attorney Amir Makled accepts the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement for the University of Michigan Board of Regents in Detroit, Michigan on April 19, 2026. Photo: Andrew Roth/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A political controversy is intensifying in the race for a spot on the University of Michigan’s top governing body, as Democratic nominee Amir Makled faces mounting criticism for failing to explicitly condemn Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group responsible for attacks against not only Israel but also Western targets — including US soldiers.
Makled, an attorney who last Sunday secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for a seat on the university’s Board of Regents, has come under scrutiny following the resurfacing of social media activity in which he appeared to engage with or amplify content viewed as sympathetic to Hezbollah and hostile toward Israel.
When asked last week by MLive, a local news outlet, to clarify his views on Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist organization, Makled deflected and refused to criticize the Islamist group. However, Makled stated that he would continue condemning the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
“I will continue to talk critically of the policies of the Israeli Defense Forces and of the state of Israel,” Makled said. “But I’m not playing a condemnation game of Hezbollah, because I believe that’s a trap designed to put Arab Americans on the defense simply for existing.”
Makled also dismissed the notion that his Jewish opponent in the Democratic primary, incumbent Jordan Acker, lost his reelection bid due to antisemitism.
“Hatred against Jewish people is wrong, period,” Makled said. “Acker didn’t lose because of antisemitism. People are tired of Islamophobia. They’re tired of being told that standing up for Arab lives is somehow disqualified.”
In the two years following the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Acker has been targeted by anti-Israel activists with a relentless barrage of protests. In December 2024, for example, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car with the message “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted on Acker’s car an inverted red triangle, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership, and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel on campus.
Makled initially came under immense scrutiny after an investigation by The Detroit News revealed that he was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of Hezbollah. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder, and blackmail.”
While Makled has issued statements broadly disavowing antisemitism, his refusal to emphatically denounce Hezbollah has raised eyebrows among moderate Democrats and Jewish voters in Michigan. Jewish organizations and community leaders have expressed alarm over what they describe as a troubling pattern of ambiguity.
The controversy has already had political consequences. A major labor union withdrew its endorsement of Makled, citing concerns over his past rhetoric and associations. Within the Democratic Party, the episode has exposed widening divisions over how to address extremism linked to anti-Israel activism.
The dispute comes amid heightened sensitivities surrounding the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as well as increased scrutiny of campus climates across the United States. Further, the controversy remains especially sensitive in Michigan, as a Hezbollah-sympathizing terrorist targeted a major synagogue, Temple Israel, in suburban Detroit last month.
Further, higher education institutions like the University of Michigan have faced criticism over their handling of anti-Israel protests, some of which have drawn accusations of crossing into antisemitic territory. Against this backdrop, Makled’s candidacy has become a flashpoint in a broader debate over whether anti-Israel activism is being sufficiently challenged when it veers into support for extremist groups.
Critics note that as a regent, Makled would help oversee university policy, including responses to campus discrimination and student safety concerns. His reluctance to explicitly condemn Hezbollah could raises serious questions among voters about his judgment and fitness for the role.
Makled’s willingness to frame violent anti-Israel protests as a legitimate expression of grievances and expression further casts doubt over whether he would be willing to dispatch law enforcement to control raucous demonstrations on campus.
The controversy underscores a growing tension within Democratic politics, where progressive activism related to the Palestinian cause has, in some cases, blurred lines that critics say should remain clear—particularly regarding terrorist organizations and incitement against Israel. This issue has become more salient in recent months, as Democrats have increasingly cozied up to individuals that espouse extremist beliefs, such as anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.