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Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’: The best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term
(JTA) — My synagogue sent out a cautiously anxious email yesterday about an event coming this Shabbat, a neo-Nazi “Day of Hate.” The email triggered fuzzy memories of one of the strangest episodes that I can remember from my childhood.
Sometime around 1990, in response to local neo-Nazi activity, some Jews from my community decided to “fight back.” I don’t know whether they were members of the militant Jewish Defense League, or perhaps just sympathetic to a JDL-style approach. When our local Jewish newspaper covered the story, it ran on its front cover a full-page photo of a kid from my Orthodox Jewish high school. The photo showed a teenage boy from behind, wearing a kippah and carrying a baseball bat that was leaning threateningly on his shoulder.
As it happens, “Danny” was not a member of the JDL, he was a kid on his way to play baseball. Sometimes, a baseball bat is just a baseball bat. But not for us anxious Jews in America: We want to see ourselves as protagonists taking control of our destiny, responding to antisemites with agency, with power, with a plan. I’m sorry to say that as I look around our community today, it seems to me that we have agency, and we have power — but we certainly don’t seem to have a plan.
The tactics that the American Jewish community uses to fight back against antisemitism are often ineffective on their own and do not constitute a meaningful strategy in the composite. One is that American Jews join in a partisan chorus that erodes our politics and fixates on the antisemitism in the party they don’t vote for. This exacerbates the partisan divide, which weakens democratic culture, and turns the weaponizing of antisemitism into merely a partisan electoral tactic for both sides.
Another tactic comes from a wide set of organizations who have declared themselves the referees on the subject and take to Twitter to name and shame antisemites. This seems to amplify and popularize antisemitism more than it does to suppress it.
A third common tactic is to pour more and more dollars into protecting our institutions with robust security measures, which no one thinks will defeat antisemitism, but at least seeks to protect those inside those institutions from violence, though it does little to protect Jews down the street. Richer Jewish institutions will be safer than poorer ones, but Jews will continue to suffer either way.
A fourth tactic our communal organizations use to fight antisemitism is to try to exact apologies or even fines from antisemites to get them to retract their beliefs and get in line, as the Anti-Defamation League did with Kyrie Irving, an approach that Yair Rosenberg has wisely argued is a no-win proposition. Yet another tactic is the insistence by some that the best way to fight antisemitism is to be proud Jews, which has the perverse effect of making our commitment to Jewishness dependent on antisemitism as a motivator.
And finally, the most perverse tactic is that some on both the right and the left fight antisemitism by attacking the ADL itself. Since it is so hard to defeat our opponents, we have started beating up on those that are trying to protect us. What could go wrong?
Steadily, like a drumbeat, these tactics fail, demonstrating themselves to be not a strategy at all, and the statistics continue to show a rise in antisemitism.
Perhaps we are too fixated on the idea that antisemitism is continuous throughout Jewish history, proving only that there is no effective strategy for combating this most persistent of hatreds.
Instead, we would do well to recall how we responded to a critical moment in American Jewish history in the early 20th century. In the aftermath of the Leo Frank lynching in 1915 – the murder of a Jewish man amid an atmosphere of intense antisemitism — Jewish leaders formed what would become the ADL by building a relationship with law enforcement and the American legal and political establishment. The ADL recognized that the best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term, in ways that would transcend and withstand the political winds of change, was to embed in the police and criminal justice system the idea that antisemitism was their problem to defeat. These Jewish leaders flipped the script of previous diasporic experiences; not only did they become “insiders,” they made antisemitism anathema to America itself. (And yes, it was the Leo Frank incident that inspired “Parade,” the forthcoming Broadway musical that this week attracted white supremacist protesters.)
For Jews, the high-water mark of this strategy came in the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. It was the low point in many ways of the American Jewish experience, the most violent act against Jews on American soil, but it was followed by a mourning process that was shared across the greater Pittsburgh community. The words of the Kaddish appeared above the fold of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That is inconceivable at most other times of Jewish oppression and persecution. It tells the story of when we are successful – when antisemitism is repudiated by the general public. It is the most likely indicator that we will be collectively safe in the long run.
We were lucky that this move to partner with the establishment was successful. I felt this deeply on a recent trip to Montgomery, Alabama. Seeing the memorials to Black Americans persecuted and lynched by and under the very system that should have been protecting them from the worst elements of society is a reminder that not all minorities in America could then — or today — win over the elements of American society that control criminal justice.
Visitors view items left by well-wishers along the fence at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on the first anniversary of the attack there, Oct. 27, 2019. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
A strategic plan to defeat antisemitism that must be collectively embraced by American Jews would build on this earlier success and invest in the infrastructure of American democracy as the framework for Jewish thriving and surviving, and continue the historic relationship-building that changed the Jews’ position in America. It would stop the counterproductive internecine and partisan battle that is undermining the possibility of Jewish collective mobilization.
It means more investment, across partisan divides, in relationships with local governments and law enforcement, using the imperfect “definitions of antisemitism” as they are intended — not for boundary policing, but to inform and help law enforcement to monitor and prevent violent extremism. It means supporting lawsuits and other creative legal strategies, like Integrity First for America’s groundbreaking efforts against the Unite the Right rally organizers, which stymie such movements in legal gridlock and can help bankrupt them.
It means practicing the lost art of consensus Jewish collective politics which recognize that there must be some baseline agreement that antisemitism is a collective threat, even if any “unity” we imagine for the Jewish community is always going to be be instrumental and short-lived.
It means supporting institutions like the ADL, even as they remain imperfect, even as they sometimes get stuck in some of the failed strategies I decried above, because they have the relationships with powerful current and would-be allies in the American political and civic marketplace, and because they are fighting against antisemitism while trying to stay above the partisan fray.
It means real education and relationship-building with other ethnic and faith communities that is neither purely instrumental nor performative — enough public relations visits to Holocaust museums! — so that we have the allies we need when we need them, and so that we can partner for our collective betterment.
And most importantly, it means investing in the plodding, unsexy work of supporting vibrant American democracy — free and fair elections, voting rights, the rule of law, peaceful transitions of power — because stable liberal democracies have been the safest homes for minorities, Jews included.
I doubt we will ever be able to “end” individual antisemitic acts, much less eradicate antisemitic hate. “Shver tzu zayn a Yid” (it’s hard to be a Jew). We join with our fellow Americans who live in fear of the lone wolves and the hatemongers who periodically terrorize us. But we are much more capable than we are currently behaving to fight back against the collective threats against us. Instead, let’s be the smart Americans we once were.
The real work right now is not baseball bats or billboards, it is not Jewish pride banalities or Twitter refereeing: It is quiet and powerful and, if done right, as American Jews demonstrated in the last century, it will serve us for the long term.
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The post Beyond the ‘Day of Hate’: The best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israelis head to the polls in country’s most consequential election in decades
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – More than 7 million Israelis are eligible to vote Tuesday in an election that many are calling the most consequential in the country’s 78-year history.
It’s the first parliamentary election since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, mass attack and comes amid security concerns that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday framed as a fight for “Israel’s existence.”
Yet, political analysts who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in recent days said the vote for the 26th Knesset, Israel’s parliament, was more about domestic issues, namely the future character of the country as a democratic and liberal state.
“It’s a referendum about Israeli democracy,” said Udi Sommer, a professor of political science who heads the Barak Leadership Center at Tel Aviv University. “It’s also about Netanyahu’s performance and accountability for the people who were in charge on Oct. 7.”
The question of whether Netanyahu and his coalition of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, which were in office when the Hamas attacks occurred, should remain in power or whether it is time for a change appears to be at the heart of the election.
Facing off against Netanyahu’s bloc is an ideologically diverse group of opposition parties led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot.
“This election is consequential for both sides,” Tani Frank, director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Center for Judaism and State Policy, told JTA.
“For Netanyahu, it could be his last major opportunity — not necessarily because he has set a retirement date, but because he may see the remainder of the Trump administration as a final window to secure what he views as long-term strategic gains for Israel, particularly completing the mission in Iran and expanding and consolidating the Abraham Accords,” Frank said.
“For the opposition, the election is framed as an urgent effort to protect Israel’s democracy and international standing, restore effective governance, address the rapidly growing Haredi community, and ensure its fuller integration into Israeli society,” he added.
According to data shared Sunday by the Central Elections Committee, roughly 7.3 million Israelis are eligible to vote in the election. Additionally, there are estimates that tens of thousands of Israeli nationals living abroad have returned to cast their ballots – literally a slip of paper placed inside a blue envelope. Voting is conducted in person, generally at the polling station assigned to the voter’s registered address.
Election Day is a national holiday in Israel, with most workplaces and schools closed. Shops and entertainment venues, however, remain open, with some stores offering Election Day sales, lending the day a celebratory feel.
According to the Central Elections Committee, 12,018 polling stations will be set up across the country, with around 18,000 ballot boxes and 450 million ballot papers printed for the election. The papers bear the letters or acronyms identifying the competing party lists.
Thousands of election workers and volunteers will staff the polling stations, while around 20,000 police officers will be deployed nationwide “to ensure that all eligible voters can safely reach the thousands of polling stations across the country and exercise their right to vote,” police said in a statement on Monday.
The election committee also said approximately 15,000 cameras would be used by election-integrity inspectors to help detect irregularities at polling stations. Police said their cyber units would work to prevent the spread of disinformation online.
These measures come as the country prepares for a closer-than-ever and high-stakes election.
According to the final set of public opinion polls, published Friday, neither of the main political blocs is projected to secure the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset.
Although Israelis do not vote directly for prime minister, Netanyahu and Eisenkot are the leading contenders to form the next government, though a few other prominent leaders could emerge. The outcome will depend on which party leaders can assemble a parliamentary majority.
Most polls published in the final days of the campaign put Netanyahu’s bloc at around 50 seats, while Eisenkot’s Yashar party and its potential partners appear better positioned but still short of a majority of 61 seats. The two Arab-majority political groupings, the Joint List and Ra’am, are projected to win a combined 14 or 15 seats.
Neither Arab grouping is expected to join a government led by Netanyahu. Some political analysts believe one or both could nevertheless support an opposition-led minority government, although the terms of any such arrangement remain uncertain.
Three other parties are also hovering near the electoral threshold: Amcha Yisrael, the Reservists and the Haredi Public Party. Each must win at least 3.25% of the valid votes to enter the Knesset. If one or more crosses that threshold, it could significantly alter the distribution of seats and the prospects for forming a government.
Frank said the most likely scenario was that neither bloc would win a clear majority.
“A key question, then, is who remains in power if Israel heads to another election. Netanyahu’s aim would be to stay on as prime minister during additional rounds, as happened in 2019–2020,” he said. “The change bloc, meanwhile, would need to increase its numbers enough to replace the government without depending on Arab parties — particularly the Joint List — even if only to enable the transition rather than form a stable long-term coalition.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israelis head to the polls in country’s most consequential election in decades appeared first on The Forward.
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Polls show a deadlock, but betting markets strongly favor Eisenkot to replace Netanyahu
(JTA) — Traders on the Kalshi and Polymarket prediction markets are betting that former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot will replace incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s next prime minister following Tuesday’s election.
That assessment comes despite polls released last week showing that neither candidate has a clear path to a governing coalition with a 61-seat majority.
Most polls predict what has been dubbed the “change bloc” led by Eisenkot at 52 to 56 seats, while Netanyahu’s coalition is polling at around 50 seats.
Kalshi traders, however, give Eisenkot a 52% chance of becoming Israel’s next prime minister, followed by Netanyahu at 28% and the former prime minister Naftali Bennett at 10%. On Polymarket, Eisenkot’s chances stand at 58% and Netanyahu’s at 27%, with no other candidate above 15%.
Moran Ofir, a professor at the University of Haifa’s Faculty of Law who has researched prediction markets, explained the discrepancy, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that there are two fundamental differences between polling and prediction markets.
Polls measure which party voters intend to support, while prediction markets ask a different question: Who will become prime minister?
Secondly, she said that the methodologies are fundamentally different. While polls rely on samples designed to be representative of the electorate, Polymarket reflects only those who choose to put their money on an election outcome.
Also, Polymarket’s percentages represent implied probabilities of winning, rather than shares of voter support.
At first glance, Ofir said, the fact that Polymarket participants have to put money behind their bets should protect the platform against deliberate misrepresentation, to which polls can be vulnerable.
“The promise of these platforms, like Polymarket, Kalshi or PredictIt, is to aggregate the wisdom of the crowd faithfully,” she said.
But that vision is far from the reality on the ground.
In a study conducted by Ofir, Joshua Mitts, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, and Dan Zimmermann, chief intelligence officer at Betting Intelligence (BETINT), the researchers analyzed 1.2 million transactions. They found that 18% of all the money backing Netanyahu on Polymarket was concentrated in a single account, while just seven accounts held 29% of the money bet against him.
“What we see in our research is that the Israeli election market on Polymarket is not a market driven by the wisdom of the crowd, but one dominated by a very small number of relatively large players putting up very large sums of money,” Ofir said.
She described the election betting market as “fragile and highly susceptible to manipulation,” adding that participants may not be acting to maximize profits, but rather to influence public opinion ahead of the election.
“Perhaps Polymarket was, for years, a platform that reflected the wisdom of the crowd. But powerful actors with vested interests identified it, and today, in the world of elections, it has become a platform where large and powerful players step in to shape public perception,” Ofir said.
Another example identified in the study took place last summer. Two accounts placed bets on Ofer Winter, the leader of the Amcha Yisrael party, which was hovering around 3.25%, Israel’s electoral threshold to qualify for seats in the Knesset. The researchers identified two newly created betting accounts that wagered $3,200 on Winter becoming prime minister. The bets briefly pushed him above Avigdor Lieberman, an established Israeli political figure who heads the Yisrael Beytenu party, in the market’s ranking of candidates’ chances of becoming prime minister.
“Two days after the party’s launch: Ofer Winter overtakes Lieberman,” a major Israeli newspaper declared just hours later. Ofir suspects the bets were intended to create a misleading impression that would help persuade Winter’s supporters that his party could clear the electoral threshold.
Ofir said the researchers interpreted betting patterns by the account that placed large wagers on Netanyahu as evidence of possible access to nonpublic information. Other accounts that wagered substantial sums showed similar patterns related to the war with Iran, she said.
Brazil and Serbia held elections over the weekend. On Polymarket, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić had a 72% chance of winning. In Brazil, incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had just a 17% chance of victory.
Vučić lost. Lula won.
The post Polls show a deadlock, but betting markets strongly favor Eisenkot to replace Netanyahu appeared first on The Forward.
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‘We need to save our country’: Bay Area Israelis fly home to vote in pivotal election
(JTA) — This article was produced by J.–The Jewish News of Northern California in partnership with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
ABOARD EL AL FLIGHT 48 — Ayelet Frank was one of the first people to check in on Sunday, Oct. 25, for a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Tel Aviv. A resident of Redwood City, California since she left Israel in 1984, she is flying back for one reason: to vote in the Oct. 27 election.
It’s the first time in her more than 40 years abroad that she is going back to cast a ballot.
“This election is unique. It’s very different than any other,” she told J. “It’s about Israel’s very existence. This election is between the destruction of the country, or building it up in a positive way.”
A native of Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley, she is spending only two days in Israel before returning to California. It’s a long way to travel just to vote, but, she said, “It’s that important.”
Frank was one of 271 passengers on El Al flight 48, which landed in Israel less than 24 hours before the polls open. It was the first nonstop flight from San Francisco to Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Many on board were part of what one organizing group estimates is a wave of 67,000 Israelis abroad flying home for an election widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a tight race, the Israel Democracy Institute said, that many voters could swing nearly two Knesset seats.
Those travelers are spending thousands of dollars for the chance to cast their ballots in what many are calling the most consequential election in Israel’s history.
The mood in the boarding area at the San Francisco International Airport was buoyant. Lots of people seemed to know one another and were running up to hug friends and chat excitedly. There were families with children and plenty of babies in strollers and carriers. There were a smattering of black kippahs as well as one Hasidic family. There were also Israeli residents returning home from vacation in the Bay Area. But judging from the conversations as well as from people interviewed by J., most passengers were Israeli expats flying back to vote.
Capitola resident Udi Pardo left Israel in 1983, a year before Frank. Most of his family still lives in Israel and he visits twice a year. But for him, this was his first time flying home for an election.
“I never tried to go and vote before because I don’t live there,” he said. “But now it’s a national emergency. I can’t not go.”
“Israel is on the verge of an abyss,” he continued, saying that he has not yet decided between Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad — both center-right parties opposed to Netanyahu’s government. “We need to bring back sanity to Israel and to Israeli politics and reestablish liberal democracy because it’s about to disappear.”
The Oct. 27 election is the first since the Hamas attack and the war that followed. The stakes are so high, pundits say, that Israelis living abroad are flying home to vote in what appear to be unprecedented numbers. Israel does not allow absentee voting, except for diplomats and other state employees posted abroad, so expats who want to cast a ballot must do so in person.
The 67,000 estimate comes from Fly & Vote, a project of the U.S.-based America Israel Democracy Coalition to help expats navigate the logistics of participating in the election. The group cautioned that the figure is based on a voluntary August survey and its own registration data, not a count of arrivals. No comparable data exists for previous elections.
Israel’s Likud-led government has tried to impede Fly & Vote’s efforts with legal action, which was blocked in October by Israel’s Supreme Court. The government reportedly also considered closing or slowing down traffic at Ben Gurion International Airport in the days before the election. Analysts say this is because Netanyahu and his allies believe that many, if not most, of those responding to Fly & Vote’s initiative will vote against the current government.
Indeed, that seemed to be true of most of the expats on this El Al flight from San Francisco. Every person interviewed spoke about the “need for change” in Israel’s government, and those who declared their support for candidates mentioned either Eisenkot or leaders of other anti-Netanyahu parties. The Silicon Valley-based Israeli expat group UnXeptable, which emerged to protest Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul and has become a major anti-Netanyahu voice globally, had a large presence on the flight, with about a dozen key members sporting light blue T-shirts emblazoned with the date of the election and the Hebrew words for “Flight for Change.”
They were handing out shirts to any other passengers who would take them, some of whom put them on right away. Local TV stations showed up for an UnXeptable press conference held at the check-in counter.
Roni Bar-Niv of Sunnyvale is one of several people interviewed who is spending just a few days in Israel, in her case enough time to vote, turn around and fly back to the Hebrew-language school she runs near her Silicon Valley home.
In the 26 years since she left Givatayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Bar-Niv said, she visits Israel four or five times a year but she, too, has never flown back to vote until now.
“I thought I didn’t need to vote because I don’t live there,” she said. But everything changed, she added, after Oct. 7. “If we pay taxes — we have an apartment there — and if we send money for the war effort, and if we have children there — my daughter made aliyah five years ago — we need to go and vote,” she said. “The direction our country is going is very bad, for Israelis living there and for us also.”
Berkeley resident Rivka Amado left Jerusalem 22 years ago. A retired ethics professor and Ladino singer, she said it’s the duty of Israeli expats to show up.
“This election is critical, and it’s important for every Israeli to vote, whether you live here or there,” she said.
The surge in emigration since Oct. 7 has also swelled the pool of Israelis abroad. Some 82,800 Israelis left the country in 2024, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, up from 55,000 in 2023. More than 69,000 left in 2025, the Times of Israel reported, the second straight year that emigration outpaced immigration.
Gilad Kariv, an opposition lawmaker from the Democrats party who chairs the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee, has warned of a “tsunami of emigration,” according to the Jerusalem Post. He has called it a “strategic threat to the future of Israel” tied to the government’s conduct.
J Street regional director Shimrit Braun Kamin (left) hugs Galit Lipsitz Goldental near the El Al counter at San Francisco International Airport, Oct. 25, 2026. (Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff/Report for America)
Experts point to the war in Gaza and opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul as driving forces, suggesting that many recent emigrants are critical of the government.
Thirty-seven parties are on the Oct. 27 ballot, but only about a dozen are expected to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold needed to win Knesset seats. With Netanyahu’s Likud party polling neck-and-neck with his main opponent, Eisenkot’s Yashar party — the final pre-election polls show Yashar winning 22 to 23 seats to Likud’s 19 to 21 — every seat matters.
Neither party is projected to win a clear majority, meaning either one will have to negotiate intensely to form a governing coalition.
That’s why these expats have ponied up the dough, packed their bags and jumped on planes.
Eyal, a tech designer in his 40s who has been living in Mountain View since 2004, declined to give his last name because of his former job in the Israeli military. This, too, is his first trip home to vote.
In general, he said that he agrees with Israelis who believe expats should not have a voice in elections that no longer affect them personally.
“But in this particular election, I think a lot of Israelis want us to come and vote,” he said. “I know my parents do.”
Shlomi from Sunnyvale, who left Israel more than 15 years ago and also declined to give his last name, is worried that if there is not a new government, Israel’s brain drain will accelerate.
“We are in the final moments,” he said, likening Israel’s political situation to a soccer game. “If the government doesn’t change, I think a lot of good people who contribute to the future of the country will leave Israel.”
Shlomi is also worried that Israel will lose its partnership with the United States.
“It’s not about right or left,” he said, declining to say how he’ll vote. “It’s about dignity, about taking responsibility, about leaders that actually make decisions for the people rather than their personal benefit.”
Iddo Tal, a Jerusalem native, has lived in Palo Alto for 15 years, where he is a tech entrepreneur and teaches fundraising to startup founders around the world. He has launched “five start-ups and two kids,” he said, joking that “the kids have been a huge success.”
Unlike most of those interviewed, he has traveled back to vote before. He made the trip to visit his parents but timed it around an election.
“They always say every election is historic, and they’re always right,” he said.
Tal believes expats should vote, saying it keeps Israelis at home and abroad closely connected. “There’s something very exciting about making the Israeli diaspora part of Israel [proper], by coming back to fight, to raise money, to vote,” Tal said.
Hadar Aviram teaches law at UC Law San Francisco while studying to become a rabbi through Hebrew Union College. Born in Israel, she grew up “all over the world” and landed in San Francisco in 2001 for grad school. She wore one of the blue UnXeptable shirts and has joined some of the group’s protests.
“Let’s start with taking accountability for the Oct. 7 massacre and the ensuing war,” she said. “And long before that, we were all hostages to this hateful, bigoted, corrupt government.… I’m flying to release us from him, and him from us.”
She bristles at people who don’t understand why Israelis like her feel so strongly about this election.
“If some of those ignorant folks ask what Zionism is, I invite them to look around at all the people here who have packed their bags and emptied their savings accounts because they want to save their country,” she said, waving at the crowded boarding area. “When you love something very, very, very much, you are willing to go to great lengths to save it.”
The post ‘We need to save our country’: Bay Area Israelis fly home to vote in pivotal election appeared first on The Forward.
