(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump Tuesday, as the American leader is weighing whether to expand his bombing campaign against Iran or to find a diplomatic resolution regarding the Straits of Hormouz and the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Israel fears that Trump is going to negotiate a premature end to the war without eliminating Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons in the future. Trump has persistently insisted that Iran can’t possess nuclear weapons, but the war and the economic upheaval it has spurred has contributed to Trump’s approval rating hitting record lows in his second term. The poor marks are ringing alarm bells for Republicans ahead of midterm elections that could return Democrats to leadership in at least one chamber of Congress.

Netanyahu and Trump are also at odds over other issues, however, including the recent U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal, the pending sale of F-35 advance fighter jets to Turkey and the extent of Israel’s troop presence in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

Netanyahu is coming to the United States to attend the funeral for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who remained one of Israel’s most unyielding advocates even as its popularity plummeted and was one of the most important Trump associates in pressing for the Iran war. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, now the opposition leader, will also be at the service at Washington’s National Cathedral on Tuesday.

But while in Washington, Netanyahu will seek to close the widening gaps between himself and Trump over Middle East strategy. In a video statement he released before Monday‘s departure, Netanyahu said, “I am embarking on this mission with one clear goal – to ensure the security, strength and future of our dear State of Israel.”

“We will discuss all the issues on the agenda, first and foremost, Iran,” he said. “Naturally, our goal is to safeguard our security and also to expand the circle of peace around us.”

During the trip, Netanyahu said he would also pay his final respect to Graham, “one of the greatest friends the State of Israel has ever known.”

Israelis are acutely aware of the emerging differences between the allies. “It will not be an easy visit,” former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told Israel Radio on Monday morning. “There is no doubt that Netanyahu wants the United States to return to war.”

Trump himself spoke on Monday of the discord between himself and Netanyahu, even as he lauded Netanyahu, while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, stating that Netanahu had been “great” and that “we did very well together.”

On the plane Trump was quizzed about U.S. plans to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which Netanyahu has publicly opposed. “Turkey has been a great ally for me,” Trump told reporters, stressing, “No one tells me what we should be selling or not.” He acknowledged that Turkey “is not a big fan” of Israel and Netanyahu.

When it comes to the Saudi civilian nuclear power program that the Trump administration recently completed, Israel has been more circumspect. But it has deep concerns about an agreement that allows for plants with the capacity to enrich uranium. Assisting in the building of those plants had been one of the key incentives former President Joe Biden had used as a means to sway Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel and join the Abraham Accords between Israel and several other Muslim countries.

Trump has since said that U.S. support for a Saudi civilian nuclear program would be contingent on normalization with Israel and that the plants would not be allowed to enrich uranium. But on Monday, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that he hadn’t spoken with Saudi Arabia about the Abraham Accords. Tuesday’s meeting is the first face-to-face encounter between Trump and Netanyahu since the announcement.

The closer Netanyahu appears to Trump and the center of U.S. decision making, the better it is for him domestically ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Trump has in his second term met with Netanyahu more than any other leader. This will be their eighth such conversation, and the fifth time he has hosted the Israeli leader in the White House.

Tight ties with Netanyahu also plays well for Trump with his evangelical base ahead of the U.S. mid-terms in November, but they run the risk of further alienating the larger American public that opposes the conflict.

Netanyahu’s influence in America had diminished, in part because of how unpopular the war has become in the United States and the role he played spurring it on.

“This is not the same Netanyahu of 2025 or even of February 2026. He is greeted with suspicion,” Yadlin said of the reception he expects for the prime minister in the United States.

Netanyahu last visited Washington in February, where he successfully advocated for the joint Israeli-U.S. military aerial bombing campaign against Iran launched on the 28th of that month.

Tehran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil supply is shipped. That step caused crude oil prices to spike in the first quarter of 2026 from $61 a barrel to $118, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Iran allowed the strait to reopen in a limited way after an April ceasefire that was followed by a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. in June. The agreement fell apart in early July, with the parties resuming attacks – but without any Israeli military involvement. The United States bombed Iran for 13 consecutive nights, ending on Thursday, even as talks with the Islamic Republic  continued.

The United States and Israel in February were initially aligned around their joint goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, with Netanyahu also focused on the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

Over the weekend, Trump stressed that the war was still about eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Last week he spoke about specifically hitting the nuclear facility at Pickaxe mountain.

In an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said the United States was “keeping all options on the table,” but was giving space for talks.

He dismissed media reports that lack of military supplies was part of Trump’s motivation to pause its bombing campaign, stating that the United States had everything it needed militarily.

Waltz warned Iran not to ignore American military threats. Early Monday morning, Trump published a short AI video in which his likeness planted an American flag on an Iranian oil tanker, with a slogan that stated, “it’s our oil tanker now.”

Later in the day, the president told reporters on Air Force One that he was having “good talks” with the Iranians, “so we will see what happens. I think there is a good chance something could happen. If it does, good. If it doesn’t, we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago.”

Yadlin told Israel Radio that at the end of the day, “What interests President Trump is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.”

The war might have begun in February with a focus on the Iranian regime and its nuclear program, but it will end, Yadlin predicted, with the reopening of the strait and some kind of diplomatic achievement with regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Israel has watched the U.S.-Iran reengagement warily from the sidelines.

Sima Shine, an Iran expert at the Tel Aviv-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, said that until now, neither Washington nor Tehran had wanted Israel’s involvement in the resumed fighting, fearing that such a step would “widen the scope of the war.”

Maintaining its status as a bilateral conflict makes it easier to return to negotiations, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The United States can better control the battlefield without Israel, which would have its own military agenda and objectives, Shine said. Israel can only enter the war if it is attacked by Iran or invited to do so by the United States, she added.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Netanyahu warned of a forceful response should Iran attack Israel.

Iran has to end its nuclear program, he stressed, saying that the military strikes so far have set the program back but have not eliminated it.

A nuclear-armed Iran is a danger to Israel, the region, the United States and the world, he said, adding, “President Trump and I are both committed to prevent this danger.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Netanyahu to meet Trump with Iran, Gaza and Saudi Arabia on the line appeared first on The Forward.

As a kid, I had no idea schmuck wasn’t an English word.

In 1985, my fourth-grade Cheder class in Los Angeles was assigned to write a short story about a time we felt embarrassed. I had a great example I wanted to share, so while the other girls asked the teacher questions, I got straight to the assignment. My pen glided across the smooth, wide-ruled paper. Done! Without even looking up, I knew I had finished first. I raised my hand, and my teacher called on me.

Here goes:

“This past Shabbos, I slept at Mimi’s house. On Friday night after Shabbat dinner, Mimi’s father took us to a party celebrating a new baby boy born in the neighborhood. We ate delicious cake and sat around with the other kids, but it was getting late. Mimi and I looked at each other. “Ready to go?” she asked me. I was ready. We peeked into the dining room where all the men sat and realized that Mimi’s father had disappeared. Who were we supposed to walk home with now? Mimi spotted her neighbor getting up to leave and pulled me out of the house. We never asked him to walk us home; we just casually walked behind him. We figured out that he knew we were there, trailing him, when he suddenly spoke loud enough for us to hear: “What kind of schmuck leaves his kids at a party?”

Immediately, my teacher interjected, “Sit down this moment, Dena!”

“But, Ms. B, I’m not finished with my story!” I protested. I stubbornly read the last line as I made my way back to my seat.

“…I was so embarrassed that he lectured us, and I wanted to disappear. Thankfully, we made it home safely. The end.”

I was especially excited to tell this story because the neighbor who had embarrassed us was Ms. B’s brother. Mimi knew it. I knew it. All my classmates knew it. The one person who didn’t realize it was Ms. B.

What I didn’t know was that schmuck was a vulgar Yiddish word. This was my first clue that the language I thought was ordinary English was actually something else. The adults around me used it and got away with it — until I came along and said it out loud. That was the first time I understood that some words aren’t really about their meaning at all — they’re about who’s saying them, and why.

Yiddish couldn’t sound like profanity to me. It sounded like home, and we didn’t say curse words at home. It sounded like the people who loved me and raised me, their affection softening even its roughest edges.

* * *

The Yiddish I grew up with begins, fittingly, with the first English sentence my father remembers hearing when he landed in America from Israel at 11 years old:

Gey across the street tsu dem candy store, un keyf mir a candy.

Go across the street to the candy store and buy me a candy.

Although he didn’t understand English, the word candy was universal. He got the gist.

My Aba repeated this command to us throughout our childhood whenever he wanted us out of the room so he could prepare a class, take a phone call, or speak privately with my mother.

“Gey.”

Go.

We went.

For him, the joke was picking out the English words, like candy and street. For me, a generation later, it was the Yiddish.

This blending of Yiddish and English was the two worlds our family inhabited, meshing naturally into one. Growing up, I heard a lot of Yinglish — Yiddish peppered with English, accented with Polish, Russian, or Hungarian. The official language in our home was English, but even that was seasoned with Yiddish. At different times in my life, I understood less and then more of it, but somehow the meaning always came through. No matter what, I understood the shape of what the “old people” were trying to say.

Whenever a grandchild or great-grandchild was born, my Bubby Pearl, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, would say, “Mayn nekome afn Daytsh” — “my revenge against the Germans.”

Today, my parents are the age the “old people” were when I was a child. Their English is flawless, but still seasoned with Yiddish.

I want my children to know about my grandparents’ generation. I pepper my English with their sweet Yiddish (in truth, some of it is Russian), as though doing so might somehow seed a little of my ancestors’ courage and character into my children’s souls. It’s a bit like the crumpled bills my grandparents shoved into our pockets: We enjoyed the extra cash, but even as a child, it seemed to me that the givers were more enriched than we were. How grateful they were to have grandchildren, and to have something to give us. So now I do the same with language.

I plead with my children to pick up their shmutsike vesh off the bathroom floor and put it in the hamper. When someone sweeps the kitchen floor, the crumbs go into the savok and then the garbage bin. In the morning, I throw my khalat over my pajamas and slip into my warm tapkes.

When I wrote that story about my teacher’s brother, I knew I was being chutzpadik. No one would have accused me of being an eydl meydl.

These words wove themselves through the conversations of my parents and grandparents. I didn’t realize until much later that many of them weren’t English at all. (A few were less savory and such fun to say: paskutsveh, for being obnoxious; svolitch, if you were real scum; or smarkatsh, for rascal. And schmuck of course, which I thought meant idiot. Then there was krasavitseh — beautiful, in the eyes of all.)

In class that day, I did not know I had uttered a dirty, vulgar word. I wish I could say that when I found out its meaning, I was embarrassed. The truth is, I was thrilled — because, as my mother said, I was a khutspinyak (one level up from regular chutzpah).

What is it about Yiddish? So many things. But as it does, so will I: compress whole stories into one word.

Take khutspinyak. There is no English word that carries my mother’s voice, her mother’s voice, and her mother’s mother’s voice. Or schmuck. In either of those words, I don’t hear an insult or vulgarity. I am folded right into the generations that came before me. Maybe that is why I never learned to hear these words as foreign; they never came to me as vocabulary. They were, and remain, simply love.

Dena Schusterman, a mother of eight and native Californian, is co-founder of Chabad Intown in Atlanta, a Jewish educator, preschool director and teacher. Stories Carry is her debut memoir.

The post How Yiddish compresses whole stories into one word appeared first on The Forward.

About a dozen Israelis gathered in my living room this week for a conversation that would have seemed unnecessary a decade ago. Some identified with the political left, others with the right. But everyone agreed that the bipartisan foundation of the U.S.-Israel alliance is being destroyed, that this is a disaster for Israel, and that restoring confidence among Democrats has become a critical priority, as important as preventing a nuclear Iran.

Leading the discussion was Rotem Oreg-Kalisky, the 32-year-old founder of LIBRAEL, an Israeli nonprofit built around that very challenge. The organization argues that support for Israel and liberal values are fundamentally compatible, and that rebuilding the relationship requires something more ambitious than better public relations. It sees its mission as educating members of Congress on the liberal Zionist perspective, training pro-Israel advocates to communicate more effectively in progressive spaces, and helping Israeli institutions — from the Foreign Ministry and the IDF to technology companies and NGOs — engage international audiences in language that resonates with liberal Americans.

The animating idea is that two things are true yet underappreciated: one, that most Israelis actually do believe in liberal values; and two, that most Americans actually are Zionists by the classic definition that means simply that the Jewish people have the right to a democratic nation-state in their ancestral homeland.

“There’s a growing big lie in America that says that if you are a liberal — if you believe in peace, justice, and human rights — you can’t be a Zionist, in the basic sense of believing Israel has the right to exist as the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people,” he told me. That belief, he argues, has become increasingly accepted among younger progressives, even though he believes liberal Zionism remains entirely compatible with progressive values.

This — while in my view completely true — obviously runs counter to the prevailing winds in the United States

In particular, there is a major challenge with the “genocide” claim — which, like me, he rejects —  that has become widely accepted even outside the far-left. He argues that it can be engaged, at least with liberals, and even with some progressives, provided Israel is willing to acknowledge its own failures and present a different political vision.

“At least some of them are persuadable,” he says of progressive Democrats. His strategy is to sidestep the legal label of genocide and argue that Israel regains credibility by acknowledging wrongdoing where it exists, refusing to defend indefensible actions, and changing policy. “I don’t think the IDF is a force for evil. But it makes mistakes and it sometimes makes stupid decisions.”

Either way, LIBRAEL has already begun turning that strategy into measurable activity.

Oreg-Kalisky, a former research advisor to U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, says his group has developed relationships with 39 congressional offices from 19 states, sends a biweekly newsletter to 75 lawmakers and congressional staff with a 37% average open rate, has presented its liberal Zionist narrative to hundreds of liberal Americans, and has trained more than 1,800 pro-Israel advocates.

With a staff of 15, all volunteers, its ambitions are considerably larger still, including regular congressional engagement, expanded advocacy missions to Washington, and a dramatic increase in outreach — especially on social media — over the coming four years.

Oreg-Kalisky spends much of the money he succeeds in raising simply getting himself to Washington and New York, knocking on doors that are often closed even to official Israeli channels. Over the past three years he has repeatedly flown to the United States, meeting with Democratic lawmakers, congressional staff, policy advisers, and political operatives, but also with grassroots: college students, Jewish communities, non-Jewish liberal organizations and even a queer synagogue.

The value of those trips, he argues, often lies not in headline meetings but in quieter conversations. He described reaching Democratic offices that Israeli diplomats sometimes struggle to access. In one example, he said he was able to meet with the military adviser to Sen. Raphael Warnock — a conversation that officials from the Israeli embassy had found difficult to secure. His pitch was not that Israel deserved automatic support, but that liberal Israelis still existed, still shared many of the same values as American liberals, and still wanted to preserve the bipartisan alliance that had anchored Israeli security for decades.

The timing could hardly be worse. Recent polling found that roughly 60% of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, with much of the deterioration concentrated among Democrats and younger voters. Even Republicans have become increasingly less supportive of Israel, while many Democrats have grown steadily more critical of Israeli governments and their policies. The result has been the erosion of one of Israel’s greatest strategic assets: broad bipartisan support in the United States.

Oreg-Kalisky does not believe this can be solved simply by improving messaging. He also claims Americans and Israelis increasingly process the same events through different moral vocabularies. Israelis naturally describe Oct. 7 as terrorism, while many younger Americans, he argues, do not have an emotional response to the word “terror” because they were not alive on 9/11 — but they will respond if the Nova massacre is described as the largest mass shooting in history. Israelis instinctively speak about terrorism when Jews are targeted; Americans, especially liberals, often first think in terms of hate crimes. The underlying facts remain identical, but the political language has diverged.

Nor does he believe the answer is asking Americans to lower their standards for Israel. Asked about today’s Israeli government, Oreg offered blunt criticism, especially of the tolerance of Jewish terrorism in the West Bank “at least by some segments of the government. Nationalistic violence is something I’m not proud of, to put it mildly, and something that needs to change. You won’t hear me defending an indefensible policy.”

That willingness to criticize Israel from within is central to LIBRAEL’s approach. Oreg-Kalisky, an IDF veteran with over 200 days of reserve duty since Oct. 7, argues that rebuilding Democratic confidence requires not simply changing how Israel explains itself but, in some cases, changing Israeli policy itself. Replacing Benjamin Netanyahu alone, he believes, would not be enough. Future governments would also need to phase out the military aid, demonstrate changes in the West Bank, preserve democratic institutions, confront extremist violence, and persuade allies that Israel still seeks a political horizon beyond permanent conflict.

At the same time, he rejects what he sees as another dangerous illusion taking hold in parts of Israel: that the United States can somehow be replaced. “If someone tells you Israel can replace the U.S. with India, the UAE, Azerbaijan, or anyone else — that’s bullshit. There are no alternatives to America. Israel needs to retain the support of the United States. I’m doing this because I want to save the alliance.”

That is the central wager behind Oreg-Kalisky’s work. Rather than writing off Democrats as lost, or asking them to “Support Israel and shut up” — as he says many government backers expect, — he believes Israeli liberals must re-enter the conversation themselves, speaking honestly about Israel’s flaws while defending its legitimacy as a democratic and Jewish state with serious security needs.

Whether that proves possible remains uncertain. Oreg is betting that enough common ground still exists to recover. But there are no illusions about the political side. What if Netanyahu wins the upcoming October election?

“Then we will certainly need to reassess.”

The post Can Israeli Liberals win back the Democratic center — and save the U.S.-Israel alliance? appeared first on The Forward.