Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post Diaspora alarm over Israel: Your guide to what the critics are saying appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
What Happened, Megyn Kelly?
Megyn Kelly hosts a “prove me wrong” session during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara
Megyn Kelly is one of the leading voices in the American right-wing media landscape.
The former Fox News host’s podcast draws millions of listeners, and is one of the highest-ranked news podcasts in the United States.
But with that influence has come a noticeable and troubling shift in her approach to Israel.
In less than a year, Kelly has gone from a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people to someone who downplays antisemitism and suggests Israel wields disproportionate influence in American politics.
A few examples illustrate the change:
- In November 2022, Kelly referred to far-right figure Nick Fuentes’ meeting with then-former President Donald Trump as “absolutely disgusting” and “deeply, deeply wrong.” Yet in November 2025, during a conversation with Ben Shapiro, she defended Tucker Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes.
- In June 2025, Kelly lauded the American bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and emphasized longstanding US opposition to a nuclear Iran. Nine months later, she described the joint Israel-US operation as “Israel’s war.”
- In November 2022, Kelly called rising antisemitism “disturbing” and forcefully condemned anti-Jewish hate. By December 2025, she accused Jewish figures like Ben Shapiro and Bari Weiss of “making antisemites,” while downplaying the role of figures like Tucker Carlson in amplifying such rhetoric.
- In June 2025, Kelly framed an attack on a gathering of Jews advocating for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, as a likely terror incident tied to broader antisemitic violence. But after a Lebanese man attacked a Michigan synagogue in March 2026, her only responses were reposting a claim about the attacker’s family — omitting their Hezbollah ties — and a brief reference to him as a “naturalized citizen from Lebanon.”
So, what changed?
Kelly’s shift appears to have begun in July 2025, when she claimed that Israel was making itself “the villain of the world” during an appearance on Piers Morgan’s show.
A month later, she interviewed then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who argued that Israel exerts undue influence over the US government and that American politicians are “bought and paid for” by AIPAC. Kelly stopped short of endorsing Greene’s claims of “genocide” in Gaza, but still maintained her support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
In September 2025, Kelly cited Max Blumenthal, regarding the death of Charlie Kirk and Israel, lending credibility to a figure widely associated with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Since then, the pattern has intensified. As noted above, Kelly has defended Tucker Carlson’s platforming of antisemites, declined to confront antisemitism on the right (claiming her focus is the “left”), and increasingly suggested that Israel exerts outsized control over US foreign policy.
This change appears driven by both political and personal factors.
Within the American right, an ongoing dispute between traditional foreign policy hawks and “America First” isolationists has intensified — especially since the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025.
Israel has become a central fault line in that divide.
On the isolationist side, this debate has increasingly overlapped with the normalization of extremist and antisemitic rhetoric seen in figures like Tucker Carlson and others who platform voices that demonize Israel and Jews.
This retreat from foreign engagement, combined with flirtations with antisemitism, is particularly pronounced among younger right-wing audiences drawn to figures like Carlson and Candace Owens.
Against this backdrop, Kelly appears to be recalibrating.
Rather than shaping her audience, she is following it, moving from tentative criticism to increasingly sweeping claims.
Yet she has not fully embraced the conspiratorial rhetoric of Carlson or Owens. Instead, she acts as a bridge shielding more extreme voices while refusing to challenge them.
That makes her less an extremist than an enabler.
There are also more personal incentives at play. As noted by Ben Shapiro, Kelly has a history of adjusting her positions to maximize engagement, reflecting trends within the right rather than shaping them.
Her podcast is managed by Red Seat Ventures, which also produces Tucker Carlson’s show and other right-leaning content. Breaking with those figures could carry professional costs.
Taken together, Kelly’s shift appears driven by audience capture, relevance, and incentives, not principle.
And when a major media figure operates that way, it raises serious questions about the integrity of American political discourse.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
Uncategorized
Yes, It Should Be Spelled ‘Anti-Semitism’ — and Yes, It Matters
Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel gather at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 2023 for the “March for Israel” rally. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
With everything happening right now — bombs thrown in New York City; synagogues and Jewish schools shot up in Michigan, Toronto, and the Netherlands; Israelis beaten in nearly every European country — one would think that semantic arguments would be the last thing we’re engaging in.
But we’re Jews; we do like to argue. And even pro-Israel millennials were raised on the post-modern falsehood that words can be manipulated to suit personal agendas.
It all started with the forbidden hyphen, which refused to conform to social media norms. Hashtags are sacred on social media. And hashtags are anti-hyphen — sorry, #antihyphen — so anti-Semitism had to be smushed up and millennialized: “antisemitism.”
If you dare to spell it correctly, you will receive long tirades on how conformity will set you free.
Never mind that non-conformity is at the essence of who we are as a people — and all free societies. And that when French anti-Semites began throwing Holocaust survivors out of windows and poisoning Jewish kids’ food, the perpetrators didn’t shout: “No hyphen!”
In the old days, we would call these types of theoretical arguments “academic” — essentially, meaningless. It’s quite ironic, actually, given that so much of academia is now meaningless. But we’ve now moved past meaningless to actually harmful.
The newest post-modern fascism I mean fashion is to not just remove the hyphen from anti-Zionism but to smush it up into: antizionism.
It is so disrespectful to the word Zion, which of course means Jerusalem (Tziyon), and to Zionism, which means the return of Judeans to our homeland, that many of us find it hard to even look at these post-modern configurations.
But by unlinking the term to anti-Semitism, post-modernists have also allowed it to be redefined by anyone with an anti-Semitic agenda. At a minimum, this could lead to a course called something like “Zionism vs. anti-Zionism,” and we all know how factually accurate that will be.
The post-modernists argue that we need to say that anti-Zionism is a hate movement. Leaving aside the fact that anti-Semitism says precisely that, I would even be willing to indulge a little of this nuttiness if the primary source of today’s anti-Semitism was still coming from the Soviet Union.
The Soviets did a great deal of damage, and not just by promoting the warmth of collectivism. In addition to creating the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with Egyptian Yasser Arafat in 1964, the Soviets first introduced the oppressor/oppressed narrative into our universities, failing to mention of course that Russia has been (and is) one of the greatest oppressors throughout history.
But the truth is, the bulk of today’s anti-Semitism on the left — both in and out of academia; both here and in Europe — is not coming from Marxists. It’s coming from Islamists. Many people who immigrated here came from countries where anti-Semitism was part of the formal education system, and also the informal one. It’s taboo to say that these days — even though a look at the “anti-Israel” marches on the streets of the West shows this dynamic — but ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.
Arab Muslims who were living in Eretz Yisrael before 1948 — before the fulfillment of Zionism — opposed Jews living on any piece of the land. That’s why there is no “Palestinian state” today. Because while the UN granted one in 1947, the Palestinian Arab population and five Arab armies rejected that. Instead, they tried to kill every Jew in Israel, and take all of the territory for their own. You never hear the fact that they turned down a Palestinian state in any discussion about the Middle East these days.
The anti-hyphen warriors claim to be merely calling out a hate movement. But by giving it a new name they’re legitimizing it. We still need to “name the movement,” they vehemently demand.
Okay. It’s called anti-Semitism. It’s the world’s oldest hatred. Spelling it incorrectly doesn’t lessen the hate or mitigate the violence that always follows. It just takes our eyes off of the escalating situation. No doubt Islamists can’t believe their good fortune.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A different version of this article appeared in The Jewish Journal.
Uncategorized
After Ukraine and Iran, NATO Must Change
A Turkish army personnel walks as they search a field after a piece of ammunition fell following the interception of a missile launched from Iran by a NATO air defense system, in Diyarbakir, Turkey, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Sertac Kayar
The war with Iran — along with the Ukraine war — have exposed wide cracks in NATO. The political and economic realities have changed dramatically since the birth of NATO, and more so after the end of the Cold War.
Institutions, especially these multinational ones, are never quick to react to the changes around them. And they are also, like every bureaucracy, resistant to change. Eventually, they serve no purpose but the glory of the past and the employment of the bureaucracy itself. And that is exactly where NATO could find itself if reform doesn’t happen.
At the end of the Cold War, Russia, slowly emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union, presented itself as a great economic opportunity. European NATO members bought into the new economic-security architecture of the continent that consisted of two pillars: energy from Russia and security from the United States.
Europe was to be in the middle, reaping the benefits from the cheap oil and gas from Russia and spending far less on defense than the US.
A military alliance like NATO assumes each member is, regardless of its size, economy, and military capabilities, willing to put its citizens in harm’s way when war is the only option left.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has shown that this is not the case. Most NATO members admit that Russia is the biggest threat to Europe and NATO. They publicly declare that Ukraine is just the first step in Russia’s strategy to reclaim its previous glory (and territory), and the status of a superpower.
Yet, they repeat the assertion that under no circumstances will NATO, or any European troops, participate directly in the hostilities. True, Ukraine is not a NATO member, but NATO has shown Europe’s desire to avoid war at all costs. If a country like Poland or Estonia, both NATO members, was attacked by Russia, does anyone believe NATO would actually engage Russia in direct combat?
The blame for this abdication of duties lies, at least partially, with the United States. When NATO was created, Europe, devastated by the war, was in no position to match even remotely what the US could offer to the alliance. The United States assumed the burden in money and fighting force.
Europe has recovered and prospered since that arrangement. The reality changed, but the division of labor in NATO between the US and its European members did not. The United States never, until President Donald Trump came into office, pressed the point forcefully or publicly. NATO did contribute to the War in Afghanistan, but its small participation is not enough to confront the very real threats of Russia and this new century.
The story repeats itself in the war with Iran. The oil and gas from the Middle East is important for energy-hungry Europe. Although the amount of European oil that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is low, the percentage of imported jet fuel is high — and the war affects the market overall.
Yet the United States finds itself begging NATO members to participate in opening the Strait. Iran, with its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, with its fanatic anti-Western ideology, and control of the energy routes, is a strategic threat to NATO European members. But the United States finds itself, along with Israel, dealing with the issue.
Some NATO members may still join the fight. It will be great to see some help coming, but the cracks in NATO are irreparable. The conflicts of the 21st century are showing that NATO is hopelessly divided. It is no longer a military alliance, but a bureaucratic machinery pretending to be a military force. NATO must be a coalition of the willing, not just of the participating.
A superpower, no matter how powerful, needs dependable alliances. The United States cannot continue leading the world alone. NATO in its current form does not provide security to either side of the Atlantic. The respective goals are different. Yet the United States and Europe need each other. Perhaps, another alliance should be created in place of NATO, consisting of the countries willing to engage the enemy.
It does not matter if the alliance is smaller. What matters is that the new group of countries shares the same vision and resolve. NATO was never the goal. It was the means. And so should whatever comes next.
The author lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. He is a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel.