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Advocates for Netanyahu’s judicial reforms are increasingly pressing their case in English
(JTA) — The video gives a “Schoolhouse Rock” vibe: Cartoon figures climb the names of the three branches of the U.S. government — “legislature” at the base, “judiciary” at the top and “executive” sandwiched in the middle — as part of a lesson on governance.
But while the video is in English, the government it refers to is not American but Israeli. And the video was produced not by an educational television company but by the Kohelet Policy Forum, a think tank that is widely understood to have influenced the rightward shift within Israeli politics.
The video’s release on Twitter Wednesday appears to be part of a wave of efforts to sell one particularly controversial aspect of that shift — proposed reforms to Israel’s judiciary — to skeptical English speakers. While the many critics of the proposed changes say they would bring Israel out of line with other democracies, all of the English-language efforts press the case that the opposite is true.
“The reforms in progress will address the anomalies of the Israeli system and bring Israel just a few steps closer to the rest of the Western democracies,” concludes the Kohelet Forum video, which features a caped jurist superhero.
Israel’s judicial reform: strengthening democracy pic.twitter.com/k4rL88NlaU
— פורום קהלת Kohelet (@KoheletForum) January 25, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has forcefully defended the proposed changes, which include allowing the parliament to overrule the Supreme Court and would have the added benefit of insulating himself from his ongoing corruption prosecution. But he appears to have underestimated opposition to the reforms, which has come not just from liberal Israelis and American Jews but from traditionally nonpartisan think tanks, legal scholars and even right-leaning Americans.
Unlike some of the other changes called for by members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which includes far-right extremists and religious parties, the judicial changes are raising questions about core values held by most pro-Israel American conservatives: that Israel is a democratic oasis in the Middle East and that business savvy is an Israeli strength. Foreign investors and international credit agencies have both signaled that if the reforms go through, they will downgrade their estimation of the country.
“The conservative right was with [Netanyahu] and now he seems to be riding the tiger of the radical right,” David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in December on the day the government was sworn in, before it had begun turning its ideas into policy proposals. “And I think that is bound to alienate the very people who counted on him being risk-averse and to focus on the economy.”
In a notable symbol of this shift, Bret Stephens, the New York Times columnist who has been a staunch defender of Netanyahu, publicly broke with him on Wednesday, writing that the judicial reforms convinced him that the prime minister had “moved along the current of illiberal democracy whose other champions include Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.” Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz, the constitutional lawyer who is usually a stalwart supporter of Israel, has also criticized the reforms.
“It’s a high bar for conservatives in contemporary American politics to criticize Israel, but there have been some cracks,” said Scott Lasensky, who teaches on U.S.-Israel relations at the University of Maryland.
Whether the English-language defenses emanate from any kind of coordinated public relations strategy is unclear. But Lasensky said Netanyahu may feel that he needs to explain why he is dismantling the judiciary to American conservatives, who cherish a judicial system independent of the pressures of successive liberal Democratic administrations.
“American conservatives have a majority on their courts — they don’t want to change their courts,” he said.
It’s unlikely that the Kohelet video will reach an audience anywhere the size that Stephens has. But another defense of the judicial reforms released this week certainly can: that made by Ben Shapiro, the American Jewish right-wing pundit with more than 20 million followers across platforms, on his Daily Wire podcast, which says it has more than 1 million paid subscribers.
“They want the judges of the Supreme Court to be appointed by the prime minister and approved by the Knesset, which sounds like the system in the United States,” Shapiro said in the segment. “They want to ensure, because Israel does not have a constitution, that the Supreme Court will not be able to come up with a constitution in a move of judicial dictatorship. … It’s ridiculous.”
Netanyahu briefly shared a video of Shapiro’s comments on Twitter before his tweet was removed. The version that Netanyahu shared features Hebrew subtitles as well as a message from the person who made it suggesting that Shapiro — who spoke in Israel for the first time last summer — can convince Israelis and Americans alike: “Ben Shapiro supports the judicial reform and not just that he explains why. Watch and join in.”
In yet another English-language defense of the proposed judicial reforms, Tablet, the online Jewish magazine that is known for airing conservative and often inflammatory ideas, published an essay by Gadi Taub, a prominent Israeli conservative.
“The press has got it backwards. Yariv Levin, Netanyahu’s new justice minister, is not out to destroy democracy,” Taub wrote in the essay published Wednesday. “He is out to restore it.”
The English-language defenses are particularly notable given Netanyahu’s longtime boast that he does not care about winning over Americans to his domestic agenda. But Josh Block, a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Netanyahu is interested in having Americans be convinced that he is driving changes, not the extremists with whom he is aligned in government.
“He clearly feels the need to try to reassure people across the political spectrum in the United States, that he’s in charge of his government,” said Block, who is now a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. “That the decisions that will be made rest with him and not with people who are subordinate to him, who may have ideas that are anathema to some of us in the United States.”
Netanyahu may be sensitive to a major criticism of his immediate predecessors, Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid, who accused the current prime minister of alienating Israel’s most important ally, said a former senior U.S. official who dealt with Israel policy.
“It cuts against one of the arguments of the opposition that these reforms, or this plan, will weaken Israel’s standing in the community of democracies, including its relationship with the United States,” said the official, who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “‘Well, look, there are Americans who are endorsing it and saying good things about it,’ Bibi can say.”
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The post Advocates for Netanyahu’s judicial reforms are increasingly pressing their case in English appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘I made a mistake’: Abdul El-Sayed apologizes to Michigan Jews for past comments about synagogue attack
(JTA) — LANSING — Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized for his past comments regarding the March attack on Temple Israel in suburban Detroit during a meeting with the state Democratic party’s Jewish caucus at the party convention on Saturday.
The Democratic nominee told the room that his remarks following the attempted targeting of the West Bloomfield synagogue preschool, in which he had said, in part, “Hurt people hurt people,” were intended to provide “context.”
Reflecting on them, he said on Saturday, “I made a mistake.”
“If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry. It was not what I intended to do,” El-Sayed continued. Referencing the first of two statements he had made about the attack, he added, “We issued a statement, of course, condemning it, and that just should have been it, full stop.”
El-Sayed’s initial Temple Israel comments, which many Jews interpreted as justifying the attack, have alienated Jewish voters in the state. After an initial statement condemning the attack, El-Sayed then followed up with one referencing Israel’s war in Lebanon, where the attacker had lost family in an Israel airstrike.
On Saturday, El-Sayed, a former county health director, insisted that his push for “context” to the attack was broadly appropriate, but not at that moment, explaining that such “conversations” could happen “in the fullness of time.”
“Sometimes you can’t really see context in the moment of acuity or pain,” he said. “The intention for me was not to trample that pain. It was not to discount it. It was not at all to justify any sort of domestic terrorism. That’s wrong, full stop.”
El-Sayed’s apology, which was in response to a question posed to him by a Jewish Democrat in attendance, came amid a new round of outreach efforts he has been making with Jewish voters since he won Michigan’s Democratic senate primary earlier this month. He also plans to attend a Sunday Jewish caucus gathering honoring state Attorney General Dana Nessel with congressional nominee Jeremy Moss in attendance, both of whom the candidate has publicly been at ideological odds with over Jewish issues.
In recent days El-Sayed has also minimized some of his harsh critiques of Israel in his stump speeches and issued a statement distancing himself from onetime campaign ally Hasan Piker, the left-wing anti-Israel streamer.
His nomination acceptance speech later that day made only one, oblique, reference to American support for Israel: “It shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money’s going to be spent on you, and your kids, and your schools, instead of being dropped in the form of a bomb on somebody else, and their kids, and their school.”
But skepticism was still palpable among the 30 or so Jewish Democrats in the room, a crowd that included one delegate who said his daughter and grandson had been inside Temple Israel when it was attacked.
“Our safety as Jews in America relies on, I think, what’s said by public figures, and how they present themselves in public, and how they advocate for Jews in public,” he said just prior to El-Sayed’s apology.
Not all of El-Sayed’s answers pleased the room. Fielding another question about whether he would support the longstanding Democratic platform of a two-state solution in the Middle East if elected senator, the candidate pivoted.
“It’s incoherent to start with a solution and say, ‘Figure out how to work here,’” El-Sayed said. “To me, it’s about starting with a process and saying, ‘How do we dignify equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinian people and Jewish Israelis alike?’”
He added, as he has in other interviews, that he was open to the possibility of a two-state solution “if that’s what a free Palestinian and free Jewish Israeli people decide.” But, he qualified, “Our country, under the guise of a two-state solution, has been aiding, arming, and abetting a government that wants to foreclose on the possibility of a second state.”
That didn’t sit well with some in attendance, even as El-Sayed’s apology for his other comments was broadly appreciated.
“I really liked him apologizing for misspeaking. We’ve all made comments that we regret later on,” Rebecca Kasen, a Lansing-area Michigan Jewish Democrat in attendance, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I was less comfortable with what he said about not supporting a two-state solution.”
Overall, Kasen said, her opinion of El-Sayed had improved after the Jewish caucus meeting as a result of his apology.
“I was probably a more reluctant voter for him” beforehand, she said. That had changed: “Instead of just going to vote now, I am going to be enthusiastically voting for him.”
As the senate race is shaping up to be the potential tipping point to decide control of the chamber in a crucial midterm year seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump, the views of the state’s Jewish Democrats regarding their party have been placed under a microscope for more reasons than just El-Sayed. That has led some longtime Jewish Democratic voters to defect to the Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, and also led to some awkward moments at the convention.
In one example, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit, the party’s progressive Jewish nominee for state attorney general, addressed the Jewish caucus by declaring, “We’re going to win and keep the attorney general’s office in the hands of a Michigan Jewish Democrat.” Conspicuously absent from the day’s events was Nessel, the Jewish Democrat currently holding the seat.
Prior to the Saturday convention, Nessel, the state’s highest ranking Jewish official, had announced she would not be attending for fear she would be targeted by antisemitic harassment. Earlier this week, in a podcast interview with The Atlantic, Nessel had reiterated her issues with El-Sayed’s comments about Temple Israel and expressed hope he would walk them back soon.
Nessel’s son Zach Nessel, secretary of the state Jewish Democratic caucus, told the caucus that his mother’s absence stemmed from “agitators” who had targeted her at the party endorsement convention in the spring. Attendance at Saturday’s event was less than one-third of what the Jewish caucus had drawn at the spring convention, organizers said.
Zach Nessel criticized the state Democratic Party for failing to take prompt action to remove the agitators from the earlier convention. He told JTA that Jews in the party “have a right to be concerned.”
“I think the Democratic Party needs to put more work into addressing their concerns,” Zach Nessel said. “But I think that can’t happen without showing up.”
Moss, the Michigan state senator who has recently been at the center of another El-Sayed-related controversy, was spotted at the convention on Saturday but did not attend the Jewish caucus events.
One ally of El-Sayed’s who also addressed the caucus is University of Michigan Board of Regents nominee Amir Makled. He is an attorney for members of the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement who had pushed out a Jewish pro-Israel incumbent at the previous convention. During his own address to Jewish delegates, Makled did not mention his history of social media posts including retweeting far-right antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and sharing praise for Hezbollah leaders.
Makled’s speech later that day at the nominating convention alluded to his work with the encampments as he declared that Michigan “will never have a university where students are punished simply because their speech makes the powerful uncomfortable.”
In-between candidate meet-and-greets, Jewish caucus members shared their anxieties about their closely scrutinized role in the midterm elections. They were gravely concerned about protecting democracy and election security from Republican threats, and felt that flipping the Senate was crucial.
Yet it was hard, they said, to get much of the Jewish community onboard this time, given the positions of El-Sayed and some other members of the Democratic slate. Michigan is home to an estimated 100,000 Jews, and the senate race is currently polling in a dead heat, making their votes potentially pivotal.
“How do we unify our community to put the country first?” one attendee asked the group. “I have a hard time doing that.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘I made a mistake’: Abdul El-Sayed apologizes to Michigan Jews for past comments about synagogue attack appeared first on The Forward.
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The woodcutter and the water carrier in the Torah portion, Nitzavim
לעילוי נשמת מײַן באָבע מנוחה וויטקא ע״ה לזרוב, לכבֿוד איר יאָרצײַט, ט״ו אלול
איינער פֿון די שטאַרקסטע קעגנער מיט וועמען אַ מענטש דאַרף זיך אויסקעמפֿן איז…זיך אַליין.
די סיבה איז פּשוט: די געדאַנקען און געפֿילן וואָס אַ מענטש קען צום בעסטן, זענען זײַנע אייגענע. און ווײַל דאָס זענען זײַנע פּערזענלעכע געדאַנקען און נײגונגען, איז מען נאַטירלעך גענייגט זיי צו געבן אַ גרויסע חשיבות. אויב איך פֿאַרשטיי אַזוי, אָדער איך פֿיל אַזוי, איז דאָס שוין לכאורה אַ גענוג גוטע סיבה צו טאָן אַלץ וואָס איך קען כּדי אויסצופֿירן מײַנע געדאַנקען און באַפֿרידיקן מײַן ווילן.
אָבער זייער אָפֿט טרעפֿט דווקא דאָס פאַרקערטע. דער מענטש וואָס שטעלט אויס זײַן לעבן בלויז לויט דעם וואָס אים דאַכט זיך ריכטיק אָדער באַקוועם, קען צום סוף שאַפֿן געלעגנהייטן וואָס גייען ווײַט העכער פֿון זײַנע באַגרענעצטע און פֿאַרבײַגייענדיקע פּערזענלעכע געפֿילן.
מיט אַנדערע ווערטער, באַקוועמלעכקייט און צוגעוווינטקייט קענען זײַן די גרעסטע שׂונאים פֿונעם מענטשן, אַנשטאָט זײַנע מיטהעלפֿער.
אין דער סדרה פֿון דער וואָך, נצבים־וילך, ווענדט זיך משה רבינו צום ייִדישן פֿאָלק אַזוי:
„אַתֶּם נִצָּבִים הַיּוֹם כֻּלְּכֶם לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם… מֵחֹטֵב עֵצֶיךָ עַד שֹׁאֵב מֵימֶיךָ“ — איר שטייט הײַנט אַלע פֿאַר דעם אייבערשטן, אײַער ג־ט… פֿון דײַנע האָלצהעקערס ביז דײַנע וואַסער־שעפּערס (וואַסער־טרעגערס).
דער גרינדער פֿון חב״ד, רבי שניאור זלמן, באַקאַנט ווי דער אַלטער רבי, דערקלערט אַז דאָס האָלצהאַקן און וואַסער־שעפּן האָבן, אויסער זייער פּשוטן באַטײַט, אויך אַן אינערלעכן טײַטש אין דער פּערזענלעכער עבֿודה פֿונעם מענטש.
דער אויסדרוק „עֵצֶיךָ“, דײַן האָלץ, קען מען אויך פֿאַרשטיין ווי „עצותיך“, דײַנע אייגענע עצות, געדאַנקען און חשבונות.
דאָס „וואַסער“ איז מרמז אויף דעם יסוד המים פֿונעם נפֿש הבהמית — דער מקור און טרײַבקראַפֿט פֿון קערפּערלעכע תּענוגים.
די לערנונג, זאָגט רבי שניאור זלמן, איז אַז אַ מענטש דאַרף „אויסהאַקן“ די אייגענע חשבונות און „אויסשעפּן“ די תּאוות וואָס צילן בעיקר אויף פּערזענלעכע קערפּערלעכע הנאות.
ערשט ווען אַ מענטש קען נייטראַליזירן אָט די צוויי כּוחות און זיך נישט לאָזן פֿירן פֿון זיי, קען ער צום בעסטן מקיים זײַן זײַן שליחות אין לעבן — אָן דעם שוחד פֿון פּערזענלעכער באַקוועמלעכקייט. שוחד פֿאַרבלענדט דאָך די אויגן און לאָזט ניט זען קלאָר און אָביעקטיוו. דאָס זעלבע טרעפֿט מיט באַקוועמלעכקייט. עס לאָזט ניט טראַכן אָביעקטיוו.
מען וואָלט אָבער געקענט מיינען אַז אַזאַ דיסציפּלין איז שייך בלויז צום תּורה־לערנען, צו מענטשן וואָס פֿירן אַ רוחניותדיק לעבן, אָדער בלויז ווען אַ מענטש וויל מצליח זײַן אין זײַן אייגענער גײַסטיקער זוכעניש.
וואָס איז אָבער מיט מסחר, פּרנסה אָדער אַ פּראָפֿעסיע — מיט די לכאורה „נישט־רעליגיעזע“ געביטן פֿון לעבן? דאָרט מעג מען דען נישט טאָן וואָס מען אַליין האַלט פֿאַר ריכטיק און וואָס גיט פּערזענלעכע צופֿרידנקייט?
דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי — זכותו יגן עלינו — ווײַזט אָן אַז דער ענטפֿער אויף דער פֿראַגע ליגט שוין אינעם פּירוש רש״י אויפֿן פסוק.
ווער זענען געווען די דאָזיקע האָלצהעקערס און וואַסער־שעפּערס?
רש״י דערקלערט אַז זיי זענען געווען כּנענים וואָס זענען געקומען צו משה רבינו ע״ה מיט דער כּוונה זיך מגייר צו זײַן, און משה האָט זיי באַשטימט צו דינען ווי האָלצהעקערס און וואַסער־שעפּערס.
דער רבי ווײַזט אן אַז דאָס וואָרט „כּנעני“ מיינט אויך אַ סוחר.
דער רמז איז, אַז נישט בלויז ווען עס רעדט זיך וועגן הימלישע און רוחניותדיקע ענינים — „רעליגיעזע“ באַשעפֿטיקונגען — דאַרף מען זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון פּערזענלעכע אינטערעסן, צי שׂכלדיקע צי פֿילעוודיקע.
אויך אין מסחר, אין אַלע ענינים וואָס האָבן צו טאָן מיט גשמיות און מאַטעריע, דאַרפֿן די „האָלצהעקערס“ און „וואַסער־שעפּערס“ גיין צו דער אַרבעט.
מען דאַרף זיך העכערן איבער די אייגענע חשבונות און תּאוות, און זיך אָפּגעבן מיט די גשמיותדיקע טעטיקייטן מיט דער כּוונה, אַז דורך זיי זאָל מען אַרײַנברענגען הייליקייט און ג-טליכקייט אין דער וועלט — דורך דעם ליכט פֿון דער תּורה און דער נפֿש האלוקית.
עס זענען דא מענטשן וואָס קענען דאָס באַטראַכטן ווי אַ באַגרענעצונג: „מען לאָזט מיר נישט טאָן וואָס איך וויל.“
מען קען דאָס אָבער באַטראַכטן גאָר אַנדערש — ווי אַן אויסערגעוויינטלעכע געלעגנהייט:
„שטענדיק — אַפֿילו אין די מערסטע וועלטלעכע און לכאורה נישטיקע טעטיקייטן — האָב איך די מעגלעכקייט צו דערגרייכן עפּעס וואָס האָט אַן אומענדלעכע און אייביקע ווערט.“
דעריבער איז די געצײַג פֿון דער וואָך:
אויב דו פֿילסט זיך שלעכט ווײַל עס דאַכט זיך דיר אַז אַ גרויסער טייל פֿון דײַן לעבן האָט נישט קיין באַזונדערן זין אָדער ווערט, געדענק אַז עס ליגט אין דײַנע הענט צו באַשליסן אין וועלכער ריכטונג דו וועסט גיין.
דו קענסט צייכענען דײַן וועג לויט דײַנע פּערזענלעכע געדאַנקען און געפֿילן, וואָס קומען און גייען און לאָזן נישט קיין אייביקע שפּור.
אָדער דו קענסט זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון זייער הערשאַפֿט און זיך אָפּגעבן מיט עפּעס וואָס איז אַ טייל פֿון אַ ציל וואָס איז אומענדלעך גרעסער — און אומענדלעך מער ווערטפֿול.
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Vance, who’s drawn ire of Jewish conservatives, will speak at Republican Jewish confab
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance, who has drawn the ire of a number of Jewish conservatives, will speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Monday, the RJC confirmed.
“The Republican Jewish Coalition is proud to welcome Vice President JD Vance to our National Leadership Summit in Las Vegas,” said an RJC spokesperson. “JD Vance is a friend, who is coming back after first joining us in 2022 as a candidate for the US Senate.”
Vance’s appearance comes as a number of Jewish Republicans and major GOP donors have indicated that they would rather support Marco Rubio for the presidential nomination in 2028 than Vance, who is seen as Donald Trump’s likeliest successor. Some of those donors will be in the room on Monday at the Venetian Resort, which is owned by the billionaire Adelson family — a major backer of Trump and various Jewish and Israeli causes.
The vice president has lost the confidence of the pro-Israel crowd with his reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on Tucker Carlson, the prominent pundit who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories. Multiple donors told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during last year’s confab that they would not support Vance in 2028.
Carlson, meanwhile, was a major focus of the discussion at the RJC’s 2025 summit, where signs reading “Tucker is not MAGA” were handed out to attendees. His son, Buckley Carlson, is a former Vance staffer.
An agenda sent by the RJC lists Vance as a speaker during a Monday evening session that will be closed to press. A spokesperson confirmed that Vance will be speaking in a “fireside chat.”
A number of high-profile Republican candidates are also expected to speak at the RJC confab, which is being held on Sunday and Monday, a few months ahead of the midterm elections. Speakers include U.S. Senate candidates Mike Collins, the Georgia congressman who is challenging Jewish Democrat Jon Ossoff, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
Collins has faced accusations of antisemitism and having ties to the far right. He has said that some of his statements were misunderstood, and has defended himself by citing his support for Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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