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Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying

(JTA) — I started reporting on North American Jews and Israel in the last century, and for years covered the debate over whether Jews in the Diaspora had a right to criticize the Israeli government in public. The debate sort of petered out in the early-1990s, when Israel itself began talking about a Palestinian state, and when right-wing groups then decided criticizing Israel was a mitzvah.

Nevertheless, while left-wing groups like J Street and T’ruah have long been comfortable criticizing the Israeli government or defending Palestinian rights, many in the centrist “mainstream” — pulpit clergy, leaders of federations and Hillels, average Jews nervous about spoiling a family get-together — have preferred to keep their concerns to themselves. Partly this is tactical: Few rabbis want to alienate any of their members over so divisive a topic, and in the face of an aggressive left, organizational leaders did not want to give fuel to Israel’s ideological enemies. (The glaring exception has been about Israeli policy toward non-Orthodox Judaism, which is seen as very much the Disapora’s business.)

In recent weeks, there has been an emerging literature of what I have come to think of as “reluctant dissent.” What these essays and sermons have in common, despite the different political persuasions of the authors, is a deep concern over Israel’s “democratic character.” They cite judicial reforms that would weaken checks and balances at the top, expansion of Jewish settlements that would make it impossible to separate from the Palestinians, and the Orthodox parties that want to strengthen their hold on religious affairs. As Abe Foxman, who as former director of the Anti-Defamation League rarely criticized Israel, told an interviewer, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”

I read through the various ways Jewish leaders and writers here and in Israel are not just justifying Diaspora Jews who are protesting what is happening in Israel, but providing public permission for others to do the same. Here is what a few of them are saying (with a word from a defender of the government):

‘I didn’t sleep much last night’
Yehuda Kurtzer: Facebook, Feb. 8

Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, the New York-based branch of the Israeli think tank that promotes a diverse, engaged relationship with Israel. In a recent blog post, he neatly describes the dilemma of Diaspora Zionists who aren’t sure what to do with their deep concerns about the direction of the Israel government, especially the concentration of power in a far-right legislative branch.

Centrist American Jews who care about Israel are caught between “those to our right who would see any expression of even uncertainty about Israel’s democratic character as disloyalty, [and] those on the other side who think that a conversation about Israeli democracy is already past its prime,” he writes. He is also concerned about the “widespread disengagement that we can expect among American Jews, what I fear will become the absent majority — those who decide that however the current crisis is resolved, all of this is just ‘not for them.’”

Kurtzer likens Israel to a palace, and Diaspora Jews as “passersby” who live beyond its walls. Nonetheless, he feels responsible for what happens there. “The palace is burning and the best we can do is to tell you,” he writes. “It is also how we will show you we love you, and how much we cherish the palace.”

An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis: Times of Israel, Feb. 7

Three high-profile writers who moved to Israel from North America and who often defend Israel against its critics in the United States — Gordis, for one, has written a book arguing that American Jewish liberalism is incompatible with Israel’s “ethnic democracy” — now urge Diaspora Jews to speak out against the current Israeli government. They don’t mention the territories or religious pluralism. Instead, their trigger is the proposed effort to reform the Supreme Court, which they say will “eviscerate the independence of our judiciary and remake the country’s democratic identity.” Such a move will “threaten Israeli-American relations, and it will do grave damage to our relations with you, our sisters and brothers in the Diaspora,” concluding, “We need your voice to help us preserve Israel as a state both Jewish and democratic.”

All Israel Is Responsible for Each Other
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: Sermon, Jan. 27

Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of New York City’s Reform Central Synagogue, isn’t looking to Israeli writers for permission to weigh in on Israel’s political scene. In a sermon that takes its name from a rabbinic statement of Jewish interdependence, she asserts without question that Jews everywhere have a stake in the future of Israel and have a right to speak up for “civil society and democracy and religious pluralism and human rights” there. She focuses on the religious parties who are convinced that “Reform Jews are ruining Israel,” as you might expect, but ends the sermon with a call to recognize the rights of all Israeli citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish, “and also those living under Israel’s military control.” Of those Palestinians, she says, “We can’t feel comfortable sitting in the light of sovereignty next to a community living in darkness and expect to have peace.”

And like Kurtzer, she worries that concerned American Jews will simply turn away from Israel in despair or embarrassment, and urges congregants to support the Israeli and American organizations that share their pluralistic vision for Israel.

On That Distant Day
Hillel Halkin: Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2023

In his 1977 book “Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist Polemic,” the translator and author Hillel Halkin made a distinction similar to Kurtzer’s image of Israel as a palace and the Diaspora as passersby: Jews who don’t emigrate to Israel are dooming themselves to irrelevance, while immigrants like him are living on the stage where the Jewish future would play out. His mournful essay doesn’t address the Diaspora, per se, although it creates a permission structure for Zionists abroad to criticize the government. Halkin sees the new government as a coalition of two types of religious zealots: the haredi Orthodox who want to consolidate their control of religious life (and funding) in Israel, and a “knit-skullcap electorate [that] is hypernationalist and Jewish supremacist in its attitude toward Arabs.” (A knit skullcap is a symbol for what an American might call the “Modern Orthodox.”) Together, these growing and powerful constituents represent “the end of an Israeli consensus about what is and is not permissible in a democracy — and once the rules are no longer agreed on, political chaos is not far away. Israel has never been in such a place before.”

Halkin does talk about Israeli expansion in the West Bank, saying he long favored Jewish settlement in the territories, while believing that the “only feasible solution” would be a two-state solution with Arabs living in the Jewish state and Jews living in the Arab one. Instead, Israel has reached a point where there is “too much recrimination, too much distrust, too much hatred, too much blind conviction, too much disdain for the notion of a shared humanity, for such a solution to be possible… We’re over the cliff and falling, and no one knows how far down the ground is.”

Method to Our Madness: A Response to Hillel Halkin
Ze’ev Maghen: Jewish Review of Books, Jan. 10, 2023

Ze’ev Maghen, chair of the department of Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, is hardly a dissenter; instead, his response to Halkin helpfully represents the views of those who voted for the current government. Maghen says the new coalition represents a more honest expression of Zionism than those who support a “liberal, democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, individualist, environmentally conscious, economically prosperous, globally connected, etc., etc., society.” The new government he writes, will defend Israel’s “Jewish nationalist raison d’être, and keep at bay those universalist, Western-based notions that are geared by definition to undermine nationalism in all its forms.” As for the Palestinian issue, he writes, “I’d rather have a fierce, hawkish Zionist in the cockpit than a progressive, Westernized wimp for whom this land, and the people who have returned to it after two millennia of incomparable suffering, don’t mean all that much.”

The Tears of Zion
Rabbi Sharon Brous: Sermon, Feb. 4, 2023

Brous, rabbi of the liberal Ikar community in Los Angeles, doesn’t just defend the right of Diaspora Jews to speak out in defense of Israeli democracy and Palestinian rights, but castigates Jewish leaders and communities who have been reluctant to criticize Israel in the past. “No, this government is not an electoral accident, and it is not an anomaly,” she says. “This moment of extremism has been a long time in the making and our silence has made us complicit.”

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The post Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal?

Sap Sua, a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, was one of Emily Lanigan’s favorite restaurants. She even celebrated her 44th birthday there in June. So Lanigan was stunned when the restaurant posted this since-deleted message on Instagram in September: “Jews are welcome, Zionists are not.”

Lanigan, a former synagogue president, identifies as a Zionist, which she defines as the Jewish right of self-determination. Was she really no longer welcome at the place where she had received a complimentary dessert just months before?

She wondered if the restaurant had a different definition of Zionism, she said, and thought maybe reaching out and offering to have an in-person discussion could clear things up.

“Being a Zionist does not mean I do not also believe in the freedom and autonomy of Palestinians,” Lanigan said she commented on Instagram. “You and I are not so far apart.”

But Sap Sua’s owner, Anthony “Ni” Nguyen, doubled down: “As you clearly saw, the full statement was ‘Jews are welcome. Zionists are not.’ Jews are a protected class, and all Jews are welcome,” Nguyen wrote in messages to Lanigan reviewed by the Forward. “Zionism is a political ideology, like Nazism.”

Nguyen’s response to Lanigan implied the law was on his side. He could ban “Zionists,” it seemed, so long as he let in Jews who shared his views about Israel.

Legally speaking, Nguyen was partially correct. Neither federal civil rights law nor Colorado law prohibits businesses from refusing service based on customers’ political beliefs — meaning turning someone away based solely on their political support for Israel could be allowed.

But the line gets murkier when “Zionist” is used as a stand-in for Jewish or Israeli identity, which can violate laws prohibiting discrimination based on religion or national origin.

The distinction matters not only for Sap Sua, as spaces from coffee shops to book festivals to concert venues make disavowing Israel a condition of entry or participation. The troubling practice raises a thorny question: How should the law distinguish between excluding someone because of their political beliefs and excluding them because of who they are?

The right to exclude?

Sap Sua was not the first business to declare itself off-limits to Zionists with no legal consequences. In Utah, after a bar called Weathered Waves declared “no Zionists allowed” in 2024, the attorney general found no evidence of legal wrongdoing. (Weathered Waves later closed over a dispute with its landlord.)

But that doesn’t mean “Zionist” bans are always legal. According to Richard Katskee, a professor of law at Duke University with expertise in public accommodation law, the legality depends on how the ban is enforced.

Does the business ask only Jewish or Israeli customers to disclose their views? Does it make assumptions about the politics of customers wearing kippahs? If Jewish customers are being singled out, Katskee said, that would make a finding of illegal discrimination more likely.

Omer Wiczyk, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, told the Forward that two cases he’s currently litigating cross that line. At a coffee shop in Oakland, California, a customer wearing a Star of David baseball cap was asked on video if he was a Zionist and told to leave. At an eyebrow salon in Northern Virginia, a customer was kicked out after disclosing she was Israeli-American.

Businesses “cannot turn a customer’s identity into objectionable politics, and then invoke that to justify their exclusion,” Wiczyk told the Forward. “Being Israeli is not a political issue. Being a Jew is not a political issue. It’s who you are.”

But if a business required every customer, regardless of their identity, to affirm a particular political position on Israel before receiving service, that could be legal, Katskee said — though enforcing such a policy fairly would inevitably prove difficult in practice.

“It might be legal, like putting up a sign saying ‘Republicans only’ or ‘Democrats only,’” Katskee said.

Jenin Younes, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, argues that businesses have some latitude to refuse service based on customers’ politics. The ADC is currently making that case on behalf of Poetica Coffee, which is fighting a Department of Justice investigation into its decision to publicly bar Rep. Dan Goldman over his support for Israel.

In Goldman’s case, Younes said, his public profile and easily searchable voting record help support the idea that the coffee shop targeted him for his political views.

“It’s harder to make the argument that ‘No, this was really about just not letting Jewish people in’ — because he’s a public figure,” Younes said. “He’s said what he thinks on these issues.”

Even Goldman himself said that the coffee shop incident did not warrant a civil rights investigation because of his status as a public figure.

Younes argues that the same principle applies to situations unrelated to Israel and Zionism.

In 2018, for example, the owner of a Virginia restaurant kicked out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders citing the Trump administration’s “inhumane and unethical” policies. The restaurant faced social backlash, but no legal consequences.

And last year, a Martha’s Vineyard farmers’ market stand refused to sell lawyer Alan Dershowitz pierogi, citing his legal defense of Jeffrey Epstein and other men accused of sexual assault. Dershowitz threatened legal action, but it appears he never actually filed suit.

“In my opinion, businesses should have the right to exclude people whose views it doesn’t like,” Younes said. “And by the way, I would apply this in the other context: If there’s a pro-Israel coffee shop owner and they wanted to say, ‘We don’t want anyone wearing a pro-Palestine pin in here,’ I think they have that right.”

The law’s limits

Whether businesses have the legal right to exclude certain customers is a different question than whether they should.

Such bans can end up holding ordinary Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government — with the misguided idea that denying them a meal or a cup of coffee will somehow advance the Palestinian cause.

And since “Zionist” means different things to different people, using the label as a litmus test will almost inevitably lead to erroneous assumptions about peoples’ views.

In cases where the law is not a remedy, the free market may be. Businesses that turn away “Zionists” must be so committed to their beliefs that they are willing to refuse a paying customer, risking boycotts and reputational damage.

At the same time, some businesses may believe the publicity will draw in new clientele. Karimi Brows, which turned away the Israeli-American customer, boasted that it gained 40,000 TikTok followers in the month after the incident.

For its part, Sap Sua appeared to backtrack amid intense public pressure, posting to Instagram that it would welcome “every guest who walks through our doors.” (Sap Sua did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.)

But for Lanigan, the damage was done.

“It was one of my favorite restaurants,” Lanigan told the Forward. “But I will never set foot in that place again.”

The post ‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal? appeared first on The Forward.

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Explainer: Gadi Eisenkot’s four conditions for forming Israel’s next government

(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israeli President Isaac Herzog tasked Gadi Eisenkot on Sunday with forming Israel’s next government, giving him up to six weeks to assemble a coalition with a total of 61 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

If he fails to do so, then the president can give another Knesset member the opportunity; most likely this will be incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For his part, Netanyahu, has urged Eisenkot to join him in an emergency national unity government that will keep Israel strong against ongoing threats.

Eisenkot has responded that the “national emergency government” he will form will comprise the “four Zionist parties” of the change bloc – his own Yashar Party, B’Yachad headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party and the Democrats under Yair Golan.

He also said he would welcome “parties and Knesset members who support Yashar’s four principles” to join the coalition.

At the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, Eisenkot said he would be sending out formal invitations as soon as possible “to every Knesset faction, calling on all their members, both as parties and as individuals, to take part in forming the government and bringing it to its swearing-in.

“The rule is simple,” he added. “If you are prepared to sign on to the four principles I have set out, you are potential partners in a national emergency government under my leadership.”

Throughout his campaign, and particularly since the Oct. 27 election, Eisenkot has emphasized these four principles as the basis for forming the next government. But what are they exactly? And who, out of the other 11 parties, will be able to accept them and join his coalition?

1) Recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Eisenkot wants to define his coalition as a government that is committed to Israel’s Jewish national identity and to democracy, not simply an alliance united by opposition to Netanyahu.

Any party wanting to join must accept Israel’s identity as the national home of the Jewish people first. The requirement has historically been contentious for Israel’s two Arab parties, who represent 19 Knesset members.

Parties must also accept the country’s democratic institutions, which uphold equality and rights for all citizens and prioritize the rule of law.

This means parties, such as the far-right and the ultra-Orthodox, that, as members of the outgoing government, have been pushing to overhaul the country’s judiciary – a key institution in Israel’s system of democratic checks and balances – might think twice about joining.

2) Acceptance of the values of the Declaration of Independence.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed and signed on May 14, 1948, is a foundational document that has helped shape the country’s constitutional principles, although Israel does not have a single, formal written constitution.

In it, the signatories laid out their vision for Israel, including the historical ties the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and its place as a safe haven for Jews around the world who are in trouble.

For Eisenkot, the emphasis appears to be on one particular section that declares: “The State of Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

By embracing the Declaration of Independence, Eisenkot is recognizing the place of Israel’s minority groups, highlighting their “full and equal citizenship.” A point mentioned twice in the declaration.

The declaration also reaffirms that Israel is a country seeking peace, rather than endless conflict, at a time when Netanyahu has recently been criticized over his handling of the country’s wars on multiple fronts.

3) Mandatory service for all — military, national, and civilian, to strengthen the IDF and expand its ranks.

Including this condition for joining the government is a direct message to the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is considering supporting Eisenkot’s coalition.

United Torah Judaism, which has been aligned closely with Netanyahu’s bloc for at least the past two decades, on Thursday refused to recommend the prime minister as Israel’s next leader. Instead, the party, which holds seven seats, abstained from recommending any candidate.

Both UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, have resisted efforts that would include ultra-Orthodox young men studying in yeshiva under a universal draft law requiring all eligible Israelis to perform military service.

Previous exemption laws have expired, and Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s blanket exemption of yeshiva students from military service has no legal basis and violates principles of equality before the law.

By including this condition, Eisenkot is telling the ultra-Orthodox – and even the Arab community, most of whose members are also exempt from mandatory military service – that everyone in Israel must do their part, whether through military service or some type of national or community service.

This stipulation could either keep the ultra-Orthodox out of the government, even though Eisenkot’s partners have expressed willingness to allow their participation. Or it could force them to be more flexible on an issue that until now they have appeared unrelenting.

4) Recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization and commitment to dismantling its military and governing power.

Leaders of the two Arab parties, the Islamist Ra’am Party and the more nationalist Joint List, have refused to make this statement out loud.

Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 attack, has said he does have a clear position on this but refuses to state it publicly for several reasons ranging from concerns about his personal safety to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is also affiliated. He has also questioned why Arab politicians are required to pass loyalty tests that are not applied equally to Jewish politicians.

When President Herzog pressed him on the matter last week, Abbas said: “I have an unequivocal answer, but leave me space to be a bridge. To also influence the other side.” He argued that maintaining channels of communication with Palestinians requires him not to adopt language that would immediately alienate them.

For the Joint List, the continued refusal to call Hamas a terror group appears to reflect the view that Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian political movement. Some of its members argue that labeling it a terrorist organization risks delegitimizing Palestinian political aspirations as a whole.

Members of the 11-member faction have condemned the Oct. 7 massacre, but are unlikely to accept this particular condition because it could be used to justify Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Its leaders also want to preserve their credibility among Palestinian voters, many of whom see the conflict through the lens of occupation and Palestinian national rights.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Explainer: Gadi Eisenkot’s four conditions for forming Israel’s next government appeared first on The Forward.

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Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3

Hundreds of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square Sunday morning ahead of a bike rally targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. There were about 300 anti-Zionist protesters and about 200 pro-Israel counterprotesters, police estimated. Rally organizers said the timing — just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish shops and homes — was coincidental.

Three people were arrested Sunday, according to police. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said a few hours after the crowd had dispersed, “In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.”