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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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How a 19th century murder introduced Americans to a Jewish funeral
In June 1857, newspapers from Philadelphia to St. Louis carried reports of a shocking crime in western Massachusetts. Isaac Jackson, a 17- or 18-year-old German Jewish peddler from Westfield, was shot and robbed while traveling his route between the towns of Westfield and Russell. His body was dragged to the bank of a river, concealed beneath stones and debris, and not discovered until the following day. Contemporary newspaper stories described it as one of western Massachusetts’ most notorious murders in half a century.
The crime quickly attracted national attention as accounts proliferated, sometimes differing on details such as Jackson’s age. Reporters described the search for his body, the arrest of Charles Jones, known to readers as the “ministerial burglar,” and the growing public anger that led some spectators to openly discuss lynching the accused before he could stand trial.
The attention came decades before mass migration from Eastern Europe transformed American Jewish life. The country’s Jewish population numbered no more than 200,000. Yet Jackson’s murder became national news, and newspapers far beyond Massachusetts used the story of his funeral to explain Jewish burial and mourning customs to their readers.
After Jackson’s body was recovered, it was taken to Hartford, Connecticut, for burial, “there being no synagogue at Westfield.” His funeral was held at Touro Hall, home of Congregation Beth Israel, which had only recently converted the former North Baptist Church into a synagogue with the help of a bequest from the Jewish philanthropist Judah Touro.
According to an account first published in the Hartford Times and widely reprinted in newspapers across the country, the body was washed and clothed in white linen garments “expressly made by Jewish women,” who considered it a final act of kindness toward a fellow Jew. Earth was placed beneath the head “to indicate that all cometh from the earth and returneth thither again.” The head was turned toward the east, symbolizing, the newspaper explained, “the great reverence of the Israelite towards the land of his nationality,” and the hope that “as the sun rises to revivify all creation so will the dead finally rise to everlasting life.”
As the coffin was lowered, those gathered prayed, “May the soul of the departed come to its resting place in peace.” Each mourner then placed earth upon the grave before reciting the words, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
The funeral itself was not the only moment that revealed how Isaac’s family mourned.
When word reached Westfield that a peddler had been murdered along the road to Russell, “there was a great rush in that direction, and at least one hundred persons were promptly there. Among them were Coroner Abbott, Justice Lewis, and other prominent citizens.” Isaac’s brother Joseph also hurried to the scene. At first, according to one newspaper account, he refused to believe the victim could be his younger sibling. But when he saw the wagon, he recognized it immediately and “burst into tears.”
As the body was recovered from the stream, Joseph, the newspaper reported, performed what it described as his “first duty as a Jew,” removing from Isaac’s pockets the tefillin he carried “to bind around his forehead and arm each morning upon rising.”
The newspapers also offered small glimpses of the life that had ended so suddenly. Isaac was the youngest of four brothers, whose family operated a store in Westfield and maintained traveling peddler wagons throughout the surrounding countryside. On the morning of the murder, he left carrying dry goods, jewelry and ready-made clothing. Among the possessions later identified by his brother was his watch.
The burial rites did not end with the funeral.
Several weeks later, the Springfield Daily Republican published a brief account, later reprinted in the Boston Evening Transcript, about one of Isaac’s brothers while he was again traveling as a peddler with the same wagon. As he unfolded a piece of cloth for a customer, he noticed a single drop of blood. Overcome with emotion, the newspaper reported, he “cried for a few moments like a child,” then folded the cloth and declared that he must return to Hartford so the bloodstained cloth could be buried with his brother. According to the account, everything bearing Isaac’s blood that had been found after the murder had already been interred with him, per Jewish tradition.
Isaac Jackson still rests in Hartford’s Zion Hill Cemetery. Much of his life has been lost to history. But the newspapers that reported his murder preserved something that endures: a careful record of the customs through which his family and community buried him.
The post How a 19th century murder introduced Americans to a Jewish funeral appeared first on The Forward.
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How an obscure centrist politician could be key to defeating Netanyahu in October
(JTA) —
TEL AVIV — At a barbecue on a Netanya rooftop earlier this month, MK Yoav Segalovitz, a politician most people outside Israel have never heard of, told his fellow members of the leading opposition party Yesh Atid that he would not be running with them in the upcoming October election.
It’s a decision that could reshape Israel’s political landscape and determine whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lose the October 27 election.
That’s because Segalovitz, 67, who formerly headed the Israel Police’s Investigations and Intelligence Division, is planning to join Ra’am, an Arab party that was the kingmaker in the 2021 elections, pollster Yousef Makladeh told Jewish Telegraphic Agency, describing his conversation with Segalovitz prior to leaving the party. Makladeh added that the move had been under discussion for months.
In an official statement last week, Ra’am’s chairman Mansour Abbas and Segalovitz said they had met and held a “cordial and positive” discussion about the possibility of Segalovitz joining Ra’am’s slate in the upcoming Knesset elections. The two agreed to continue direct talks in an effort to advance the matter.
If that indeed happens, it would send a seismic shock though the Israeli political system on two fronts: Segalovitz would be the first lawmaker in decades to leave a Zionist party for an Arab-led party; and that party would be in a position to join other opposition groups to pry control of the next Israeli government away from Netanyahu.
The willingness of Ra’am and two Zionist slates — Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Naftali Bennett’s New Right party — to join a coalition in 2021 led by Bennett and Lapid provided the needed seats to push Netanyahu out of power after 12 consecutive years as prime minister. The first coalition in Israeli history to take office with the support of an Arab party was unprecedented –and viewed by many as a historic breakthrough in Jewish-Arab political cooperation.
The question in 2026 is: Could it happen again?
This time around, the prospect of an Arab party in the coalition prompts more wariness among many Israelis, and Bennett and Lapid have both ruled out forming a coalition with one.
Israeli polls have consistently shown that neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the bloc of opposition Jewish parties led by his chief rival, former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, is on track to secure the 61 seats needed to form a government. The opposition’s Jewish parties have consistently polled at approximately 58 to 60 seats, while Netanyahu’s bloc trails with roughly 50.
That deadlock has thrust Ra’am, led by MK Mansour Abbas, back into the spotlight. Most recent polls give the party between five and seven seats, potentially making it the kingmaker once again.
Founded in 1996, Ra’am, whose name is an Arabic acronym meaning United Arab List, has roots in the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement and had until recently been a religious Arab party. It had been part of the traditional bloc of Arab parties in the Knesset until Abbas split away, as part of his strategy to shift the party’s focus from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to practical achievements for Israel’s Arab society.
Makladeh, who has conducted surveys for Channel 13 and political parties across Israel’s political spectrum, describes Ra’am as “the missing piece of the puzzle” that could lift the opposition bloc “to 62 or 63 seats.”
In 2021, however, there was a shedding of some of the longstanding reluctance to consider an Arab party in the coalition, for those who saw the political necessity of doing so in order to remove Netanyahu from office. Netanyahu himself had reportedly spoken with Abbas about some form of a political partnership. This time around, the prospect of an Arab party in the coalition prompts more wariness among many Israelis, particularly this early in the election cycle when it is unclear if it will be absolutely necessary to do so.
Political commentator Nadav Perry, host of one of Israel’s most influential political podcasts, says that the party’s ties to conservative Muslim religious leadership, together with the rapid collapse of the 2021 government and the trauma of Oct. 7, 2023, had effectively pushed the idea of Ra’am joining another coalition with Jewish parties back to “square one.”
The addition of Segalovitz to Ra’am could change that by making the party more palatable to the Israeli public and could expand its voting base.
Ameer Bisharat, the former director-general of the National Committee of Arab Local Council Heads, added that Arab Israelis are “hungry for change.”
“Change can come through political power, and Abbas understands that very well. He is trying to create that political power,” Bisharat said
JTA reached out to both Ra’am and Segalovitz for comment. Segalovitz’s spokesperson declined to comment, while Ra’am did not respond to a request for comment.
Segalovitz has been a member of the Lapid-led Yesh Atid party, a centrist bloc which emphasizes secular rights and opposition to draft exemptions for haredi Orthodox yeshiva students, since 2016. He later served as Deputy Minister of Internal Security in the Bennett-Lapid government. In that role, Segalovitz was the public face of the government’s efforts to combat violent crime in Israel’s Arab communities. During his tenure, the number of murders in Arab communities declined sharply before rising dramatically again after the government fell.
Bisharat, who worked with Segalovitz and now advises the public policy department at the Accord Institute on Arab voting patterns, said the Bennett-Lapid government was “successful” for Arab society. It helped build trust between the government and Arab citizens and it presided during a decline in violent crime in the Arab communities in Israel.
Under Segalovitz’s leadership, a special plan was developed to combat crime in Arab communities, focusing on the main drivers of crime, improving case clearance rates and strengthening cooperation among the various authorities, which was not continued under far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. In Segalovitz’s only full year in government, the number of Arab citizens killed in crimes fell from 126 to 116, according to data from the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit that tracks violence and crime in Arab communities. The figure surged to 244 the following year, after he was replaced.
“Segalovitz was the point person in the previous government on crime in the Arab community,” said Perry, the political commentator. “He worked on it, and he delivered results. That made him a very popular figure on the Arab street. Not because he was pro-Palestinian, not because he was against the IDF, but because he reduced crime among Arab citizens.”
Former Yesh Atid MK Inbar Bezek, who served alongside Segalovitz in both the party and the coalition that relied on Ra’am, told JTA: “I saw with my own eyes that Yoav is an extremely respected and well-liked figure throughout Arab society, especially among local government leaders.”
Segalovitz’s possible move is far more than symbolic.
Bezek believes Segalovitz could both increase Arab voter turnout and attract Jewish left-wing voters to Ra’am. “I truly think he’s someone who brings voters to the ballot box,” she said. But she emphasized that the addition of Jewish voters would not change the overall balance between the opposing blocs, because those voters would otherwise support the Democrats, the most left-wing Zionist party.
That assessment appears to be supported by a recent Channel 13 poll, which was conducted in part by Makladeh. The survey found that Ra’am would rise to seven seats if Segalovitz joined the party, compared with five seats in most recent polls. Makladeh said six of those seats would come from Arab voters, while one would come from Jewish voters.
The move’s real significance, argued Perry, lies not in winning additional votes before Election Day but in what happens afterward. He says that bringing Segalovitz into the party is intended “to create renewed legitimacy for Ra’am’s participation in a governing coalition.”
“I don’t think this would dramatically reshape the electoral map,” Perry said. “But it could dramatically reshape the question of legitimacy. It could complete Mansour Abbas’ metamorphosis from the leader of a non-Zionist Islamist party into the leader of a Jewish-Arab party that puts the integration of Israel’s Arab citizens first, while setting aside issues related to the Palestinian national struggle.”
Perry’s comments come as leaders of the opposition bloc send mixed and sometimes contradictory signals about whether they would govern with Ra’am.
Eisenkot has said he “doesn’t rule out” a coalition partnership with Abbas. Another strong contender for the premiership, Bennett, whose Together (Beyachad) party is polling second within the opposing bloc, said in February that “after October 7, there is no mandate in Israel for a government that relies on Arab parties.” Bennett recently declined to answer directly when asked whether he would rely on Abbas to form a government. Speculation is high, however, that he would agree to sit with Ra’am, given his past record of including the party in the coalition after running a campaign in which he promised not to do so.
Opposition Leader Lapid joined forces in this election cycle with Bennett after his own party struggled in the polls and the two now run together on the same slate. Lapid has also ruled out forming a government that relies on Arab parties — a notable position given that Lapid was the architect of the move to bring Ra’am into the coalition in 2021. Another opposition leader, Avigdor Liberman who heads Yisrael Beiteinu, sat with Ra’am in the 2021-2022 government. Last week, however, he said that “Ra’am cannot be a coalition partner.”
Segalovitz’s membership in Ra’am could soften that resistance.
“It will be very difficult to delegitimize a party whose number two is a Zionist and a former Israel Police major general,” Makladeh said. He believes that Segalovitz’s addition could effectively “legitimize” Ra’am’s votes in the eyes of the Israeli public, making it easier for opposition leaders to cooperate with the party after the election.
The hesitation among opposition leaders also reflects Netanyahu’s campaign strategy, which identifies the bloc’s dependence on Arab support as its main political vulnerability.
In a video posted this month on X, Netanyahu juxtaposed his political rivals with Abbas under the slogan, “It’s them or us.”
Segalovitz’s potential move has also drawn backlash from the right. Ben-Gvir called Segalovitz’s departure from Yesh Atid “a joint conspiracy by the left to pave the way for a future government with the Muslim Brotherhood.” Coalition lawmaker Tally Gotliv of the Likud called Segalovitz Abbas’ “pet Jew” and warned that his move could lead to “the imposition of Sharia law on Israel.”
Perry said, “Almost the only political asset Netanyahu has left to take into the election is negative campaigning, because it’s very difficult to build a positive campaign around the last term.” He argued that Netanyahu has relatively few lines of attack against Eisenkot beyond the possibility that he could form a government with Arab parties. “That’s basically the Likud’s one-trick pony in 2026,” Perry added. “And it’s a message that has political effectiveness.”
This is why the addition of Segalovitz who comes from the Israeli center and not the far left is significant, Perry explained. The political commentator added: “If Ra’am enters the realm of legitimacy — because it is no longer Ra’am, it is no longer Islamist, and it is no longer only Abbas but Abbas and Segalovitz — then that could create a more realistic possibility of removing Netanyahu after the election.”
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Man charged in Central Synagogue attack linked to posts about Israel, Judaism, and Mamdani
The man accused of attacking a woman and a security guard at Central Synagogue, a prominent New York City congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side during Friday night services, had filled his Facebook page with posts about Israel and Judaism in the months leading up to the attack — and, according to his aunt, had expressed a desire to convert to the Jewish faith.
“He’s mentally traumatized because of his desire to belong to that religion [Judaism] — that’s what he’s said,” Myriam Montes, the aunt of Larry Montes, 46, told the New York Post.
“Given what happened, he might not have been in his right mind,” she said. However, she added that she had not spoken with her nephew in three months.
On a Facebook page that appears to belong to Montes, he reposted a video comparing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Other videos reposted on the page focused on Jewish and Israeli topics. One featured a Jewish man disputing claims that the Talmud contains disparaging remarks about Jesus. In 2024, he posted a photo of the map of Israel with text overlaid that says, “Keep Israel in your heart.” Another reposted video featured Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi explaining why evangelical Christians support Israel.
The page also reposted several videos from Ruhama’s Food, a popular Israeli social media account.
The Facebook page’s recent posts are more disjointed. They include screenshots showing attempts to translate seemingly incoherent Spanish text into Hebrew.
Police said Montes had three prior arrests before the Central Synagogue attack, all of which were for robbery.
Montes was charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count of criminal mischief as a hate crime. He is expected to appear in court on August 20.
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