Uncategorized
A conveniently timed conference offers Israel educators a safe space to explore complex feelings
CHICAGO (JTA) – At one point ahead of an international conference on Israel education, as raucous anti-government protests filled the streets of Israeli cities, conference organizers considered leaning into the tension created by the news: What if they focused one day of the gathering on conflict, and the next day on hope?
Ultimately, they decided “you can’t divorce the two,” in the words of Aliza Goodman, one of the organizers.
“If you separate them, then it means one is devoid of the other and vice versa,” said Goodman, director of strategy and research and development for the iCenter, the Israel education organization that hosted the conference in Chicago in March.
Israel educators, Goodman said, need to hold “the complexities together with the hopes for us to be able to move forward as human beings.”
That emotional challenge lay at the center of the conference, the iCenter’s fifth, called iCON 2023. The conference covered standard topics in Israel education, ranging from Hebrew literature and language to representations of Jews and Israel in popular culture to a bevy of subtopics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But the turmoil that has rocked Israel this year felt no less prominent. In sessions and on the sidelines, the more than 500 participants discussed the Israeli government’s proposed judicial overhaul, its far-right cabinet ministers and the preservation of Israel’s democratic character.
Conference attendees said they faced dual challenges: understanding the political issues at play and reckoning with what they mean for teaching about Israel. Their thoughts on the current historical moment suggested that those challenges would persist even though Israel’s government announced a pause on the judicial overhaul shortly after the conference concluded.
“We are responsible for doing something, don’t get me wrong, but my immediate responsibility is trying to really get a handle on understanding it for myself and for my students,” said Rebecca Good, the assistant director of education at The Temple, a Reform synagogue in Atlanta.
Good has found herself fielding new questions about Israel, mostly from adult congregants, “but we know that the questions and the feelings that are coming from the adults naturally play out in the home,” she said. In response to the perceived need she has recognized from her students, her synagogue planned a town hall-style meeting that took place in late March.
“It’s almost like you do triage, right? When things like this happen, it’s like, ‘OK, how are you?’” Good said. “You have to address that first and then you figure out what is needed and try to make that happen for people.”
Conference attendees included Hebrew school and day school teachers, executives from communal organizations, summer camp professionals, campus activists, young adult Israeli emissaries and more. iCON Program Director Ari Berkowicz estimated that 75% of the conference participants came from North America and 24% from Israel. Others joined from places like Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Educator Noam Weissman addresses the audience at a session of ICON 2023 at the Marriott Marquis in Chicago, Illinois, March 15, 2023. (Rachel Kohn)
“One of The iCenter’s approaches to education is to make all that we teach and all that we learn about both timely and timeless, but the current moment obviously has an impact on who we are as educators and who we are as learners,” said Berkowicz. While the sessions scheduled for iCON 2023 remained mostly unchanged, the facilitators, speakers, and educators were “different people” from what they had been three or six months ago due to the upheaval in Israel, he said.
“They aren’t the same people that they were even yesterday or two days ago,” Goodman added in an interview at the conference. “All of this is impacting them at the core.”
Questions and anguish about the judicial overhaul — and other Israeli government policies – filtered into the conference programming. A campus professional, who asked not to be identified because she wasn’t authorized by her employer to speak to the press, shared a practical concern during a breakout group: If the government follows through on its call to limit the Law of Return, which currently affords automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with one Jewish grandparent, what should she say to a student who wants to go to Israel but no longer falls under the government’s revised definition of who is a Jew?
In a nearby group, an Israeli expat from Dallas named Meirav said she likes that Israel doesn’t separate between religion and state. But she fears for women’s rights under a religiously conservative regime.
Another group endeavored to understand the specifics of the proposed judicial overhaul, comparing newspaper articles with Wikipedia text as they struggled to confirm how judges are appointed in Israel.
“It’s not only in America or everywhere else – I’m not sure everyone in Israel understands exactly what’s going on and the ramifications,” said Etty Dolgin, the Israeli-American principal of a Chicago-area Hebrew-immersion preschool and after-school program, in a different session. “I don’t know that anybody really knows what the ramifications are going to be.”
Former Jewish day school principal Noam Weissman, whose lecture at the conference drew a standing-room-only crowd of some 150 people, said in an interview that the current moment is an important one for Israel educators to be able to contextualize.
“Part of why cultural literacy is important is because history informs the present,” Weissman said. “People like to jump to judicial reforms, but if people don’t know about Israel’s lack of a constitution, it’s hard to be conversant in that.”
Weissman, the former head of Los Angeles’ Shalhevet High School who is now executive vice president of OpenDor Media, where he develops educational content on Judaism and Israel, said in his session that the goal of Israel educators shouldn’t be defending the country but “understanding and connecting.” He’s grateful, he said, that “the Israel education world has really, from a professional perspective, moved on from hasbara,” a Hebrew term for public relations or advocacy on Israel’s behalf.
“When someone recently said to me, ‘I don’t envy Israel educators at this moment’ … I actually said I feel zero pressure,” Weissman told his audience. “You feel pressure when you’re trying to defend everything Israel does. That’s the world of Israel advocacy, where you train young people to defend Israel. … If my job is to defend something that I have no interest in defending, this doesn’t work.”
Good said she appreciated the “brain trust” of fellow Israel educators she gets to interact with at the conference. At the same time, she likened the sense of uncertainty she is feeling these days to the concerns many Americans have felt in recent years when looking at their own fraught political landscape.
“That kind of feeling we all get, like, ‘Where could this go?’” she said. “That’s as best as I can put it.”
—
The post A conveniently timed conference offers Israel educators a safe space to explore complex feelings appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Attacks in South Lebanon Strain Ceasefire on Eve of Washington Talks
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in southern Lebanon, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon‘s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
On the eve of talks in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Beirut would seek an extension of the 10-day, US-mediated ceasefire, which is set to expire on Sunday.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the Lebanese Islamist group opened fire in support of Iran.
The US-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon emerged separately from Washington’s efforts to resolve its conflict with Tehran, though Iran had called for Lebanon to be included in any broader truce. The United States has denied any link between the tracks.
Lebanon‘s state-run National News Agency said the Israeli strike hit a car in al-Tiri, a village in south Lebanon, killing two people inside. The Israeli military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hezbollah said it attacked an Israeli artillery position in southern Lebanon with a drone, in response to what it said was an Israeli violation of the ceasefire. The Israeli military said it had intercepted “a hostile aircraft” launched by Hezbollah toward Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon.
More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched an offensive in response to Hezbollah’s March 2 attack, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel says the vast majority of those killed have been Hezbollah terrorists, who often embed themselves in civilian areas.
Israeli forces have seized a belt of territory at the border where troops remain, saying they aim to create a buffer zone to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets at Israel during the conflict.
BEIRUT TO SEEK END TO ISRAELI DEMOLITIONS
Aoun said Beirut’s envoy to Thursday’s talks, Lebanese Ambassador to Washington Nada Moawad, would seek a ceasefire extension and a halt to demolitions being carried out by Israel in villages in the south, according to a statement.
A Lebanese official said Beirut wants a ceasefire extension as a prerequisite for talks to expand beyond the ambassadorial level to the next phase, in which Lebanon would push for an Israeli withdrawal, the return of Lebanese detained in Israel, and a delineation of the land border.
Hezbollah, which says the Lebanon ceasefire was the fruit of Iranian pressure, has condemned Beirut for seeking talks with Israel, reflecting wider splits with the government that has sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament for a year.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a speech, said Israel had taken a “historic decision to negotiate directly with Lebanon after more than 40 years” whilst also calling it a “failed state.”
“I call on the Government of Lebanon: Let’s work together against the terror state that Hezbollah built in your territory. This cooperation is needed by you even more than by us,” he said.
The Israeli military said it had killed two terrorists who had crossed its “Forward Defense Line” in south Lebanon on Tuesday and approached Israeli soldiers, saying they had violated the ceasefire.
DRUZE LEADER URGES CLEAR AGENDA, INCLUDING WITHDRAWAL
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to attend Thursday’s meeting. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter.
Aoun has cited goals including halting Israeli attacks on Lebanon and securing the withdrawal of Israeli troops. In a speech on Friday, he said a ceasefire should be transformed into “permanent agreements that preserve the rights of our people, the unity of our land, and the sovereignty of our nation.”
Announcing the ceasefire on April 16, US President Donald Trump said he had instructed Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine to work with the two countries to achieve lasting peace.
Lebanon and Israel have remained in an official state of war since the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Lebanon‘s most senior Shi’ite state official, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, is against face-to-face negotiations with Israel, saying Beirut could have negotiated indirectly.
Lebanon‘s leading Druze politician, Walid Jumblatt, said on Tuesday that the most Lebanon could offer is an update to a 1949 armistice agreement with Israel.
In comments to reporters after a meeting with Berri, Jumblatt said there should be a clear agenda for talks that includes a withdrawal of Israeli troops still in southern Lebanon.
Uncategorized
Dutch Prosecutors Seek 30-Year Sentence for Alleged Syrian Torturer Who Backed Assad
Fighters of the ruling Syrian body inspect the site of a mass grave from the rule of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, according to residents, after the ousting of al-Assad, in Najha, Syria, Dec. 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Prosecutors in the Netherlands on Wednesday demanded a 30–year prison sentence for a Syrian man accused of torturing and raping prisoners when he was a member of a militia that backed the government of former president Bashar al-Assad.
Prosecutors have charged 58-year-old Rafik A., whose last name is withheld by the Dutch court, with 25 counts including torture, sexual violence, and rape as crimes against humanity against nine people in 2013 and 2014.
Rafik A. has repeatedly denied any involvement with the alleged crimes. The case is the first in the Netherlands to deal with alleged atrocity crimes in Syria committed by pro-government forces. It is also the first time Dutch prosecutors have charged sexual violence as a crime against humanity.
Cases against Assad-era security officials have also been brought in other European countries, including Germany.
Witnesses who survived the defendant’s attacks spoke of the physical and psychological torture inflicted by A. during the trial.
“Not only did he tear my body apart, but he trampled on my soul. He was the worst nightmare of my life,” one witness said, recounting that he entered detention as a child and emerged as a traumatized adult.
Prosecutors say Rafik A. was the head of the interrogation unit of the National Defense Forces (NDF) in Salamiyah, Syria, in 2013 and 2014. The NDF was a militia that fought on the side of the government of Assad, who was ousted in December 2024.
Rafik A. was arrested in 2023 in the Netherlands, where he had lived for several years as an asylum seeker.
Under the concept of universal jurisdiction, Dutch law broadly allows cases to be brought against foreign nationals for crimes committed abroad if the perpetrators or some of the victims are present in the Netherlands.
Rafik A.’s lawyers and lawyers for his alleged victims will give their closing arguments on Thursday. The verdict is expected on June 9.
Uncategorized
French Soldier Dies of Wounds After Attack on UN Force in Lebanon, Macron Blames Hezbollah
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference in Paris, France, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that a second French soldier had died following an attack on United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon last week, which he said was carried out by Iran‑backed Hezbollah.
The soldier, Chief Corporal Anicet Girardin, was severely wounded on April 18 and died of his wounds after being evacuated to France on Tuesday, Macron said in a post on social media platform X.
One of his colleagues was killed immediately while clearing a road in southern Lebanon in the same attack on the UN peacekeeping mission.
Macron blamed Hezbollah terrorists for the attack.
UNIFIL said initial assessments indicated the fire came from non‑state actors, allegedly Hezbollah, and that an investigation had been launched into what it called “a deliberate attack.”
Hezbollah has denied any involvement, expressing its “surprise at positions that rushed to make baseless accusations” against the Islamist group.
During a visit to Paris on Tuesday, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said he was personally following the investigation into the incident.
“I have instructed the police force to carry out all necessary inquiries in order to identify those responsible and bring them to justice,” he said.
France, which has deep historical ties to Lebanon, has about 700 troops as part of the UNIFIL mission.
Three French soldiers have now died in the region since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran at the end of February. One was killed earlier in northern Iraq after a drone attack on a French‑Kurdish base.
Since 1978, more than 160 French soldiers have been killed in Lebanon.