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Far-right Israeli minister urges loyalty as his US visit draws protests, boycotts and arrests
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For more than a week, American Jewish groups have debated how and whether to welcome Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as he visits Washington, D.C.
On Sunday night, that debate culminated in protests, arrests, boycotts — and a speech by Smotrich urging American Jews to remain loyal to the Jewish state.
Inside the Grand Hyatt Washington, Smotrich spoke to Israel Bonds, a U.S. organization that encourages investment in Israel. In the lobby of the hotel, left-wing groups protested, sang songs and, in some cases, were escorted out in handcuffs. And outside the hotel, in the cold rain, hundreds of liberal Jews gathered to declare their dedication to the Jewish community — and to protest Smotrich and Israel’s government.
“This is a moral emergency,” said Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, in a speech at the protest. “We must name this deep pain that so many of us feel for what’s happening in Israel right now, a place that we love. It is with that love that we come here tonight, standing with our Israeli siblings, saying there is nothing normal, nothing acceptable about this moment.”
The Israeli government is advancing legislation that would transform Israel’s system of government and has drawn sweeping protests across the country as well as concern by foreign investors and financial watchdogs. But little sense of emergency was present in the remarks given by Smotrich, who called on his audience to stay the course. The event was closed to press.
“This moment in the history of Israel is a miracle,” he said in remarks released by his office. “And for more than 70 years, Israel Bonds investors like you have helped make our Jewish State a reality. But, there is still work to be done, so don’t stop investing!”
Outside the conference room where Smotrich spoke, the left-wing Jewish group IfNotNow protested by singing and reciting maariv, the Jewish evening prayers. The group said seven of its members were arrested by police. The anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace also protested.
The dueling speeches and actions on Sunday came at a time when even the staunchest advocates for Israel are publicly criticizing its government. They serve as the latest evidence that the coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is upending the Diaspora’s relationship with Israel like no government before it.
Much of the criticism has surrounded the government’s signature legislative effort, which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power and independence. And a fresh round of criticism came this month after Smotrich called for a Palestinian village to be wiped out — a statement he has since walked back repeatedly and at length, including during his Israel Bonds address. In the past, Smotrich has also made statements denigrating LGBTQ people and Arabs.
Major Jewish establishment organizations and leaders, once loath to publicly criticize Israel, are expressing alarm about the judicial legislation as well as Smotrich’s incendiary rhetoric. They are watching as the country is roiled by frequent massive demonstrations that have brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets.
That criticism has manifested itself in a widespread boycott of Smotrich’s visit — a change of pace for Jewish organizations that are generally eager to meet with senior Israeli officials. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is snubbing Smotrich, and so is the Biden administration. His only known quasi-governmental interaction this week will be a guided tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Aside from his Israel Bonds appearance, Smotrich is meeting with officials from just two Jewish organizations, the Orthodox Union and the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, one of the few U.S. groups to support the judicial reform.
“The hateful views long expressed by Minister Smotrich are abhorrent, are opposed by a majority of Israeli citizens, and run contrary to Jewish values,” the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said in a statement. “No public servant should ever condone or incite hatred or hate-motivated violence, and when they do, they will be fiercely condemned by a wide swath of American Jewry.”
Those comments were echoed by the speakers at the protest outside the Grand Hyatt, which was organized by an array of progressive Jewish groups. Despite their attitude toward the Israeli official speaking inside the hotel, the event was suffused with patriotic fervor, with piles of Israeli flags for protesters to wave. It finished with a rendition of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah.”
“Anybody who has authority in the community has to be ne’eman, to be faithful, has to be somebody who the community can trust like Moshe,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, using the Hebrew name for Moses and quoting a rabbinic teaching.
Jacobs, who is a longtime proponent of curbing Americans’ giving to right-wing extremist groups in Israel, went on: “We’re here to say that the current leadership of Israel — including, of course, Bezalel Smotrich, speaking inside this hotel — they are not ne’eman, they are not people we can trust, they are not people who are leading Israel in the right direction.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich addresses Israel Bonds in Washington D.C., March 12, 2023. (Office of the Finance Minister)
Smotrich emphasized the same themes — Jewish unity and mutual responsibility — but toward different ends. He thanked his audience of investors in Israel bonds “for the unquestionable connection between Israel and Diaspora Judaism.”
“We must not forget that we are brothers,” he said. “Despite all of the differences, despite the many colors that make up the Jewish mosaic, we are one.”
He also once again apologized for his call to “wipe out” Huwara, a Palestinian West Bank village where Israeli settlers rioted recently after a Palestinian gunman there killed two Israelis. He said his words “created a completely mistaken impression.”
“I want to say a few words about the elephant in the room,” Smotrich said. “I stand before you now as always committed to the security of the state of Israel, to our shared values, and to the highest moral commitment of our armed forces to protect every innocent life, Jew or Arab.”
If anyone is finding new allies, it is not Smotrich but his opponents, who run the gamut from the Jewish left to once-reliable mainstays of the right. Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate, Republican kingmaker and pro-Israel donor Sheldon Adelson, said on Sunday that Netanyahu’s rush to enact judicial reform was “hasty, injudicious and irresponsible.”
Those changes galvanized the protesters. “We are the Jewish establishment!” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said later in an interview that the “grounds are shifting” among American Jews. “Some of us here and in Israel have been on the ground fighting against the occupation and the attacks on democracy for years and years, and now it’s becoming clear to more and more American Jews and Israeli Jews that that was the right message,” she said.
The issue of whether to raise Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has been a matter of debate amid the protests in Israel, where there have been reports that organizers have discouraged the display of Palestinian flags, fearing that Netanyahu will weaponize any sign of solidarity with the Palestinians.
The tension over whether the Palestinians should be mentioned played out before the protest in Washington as well, at a press conference featuring philanthropists and Israeli businessmen who said the judicial reforms were threatening Israel’s economic standing.
The event started with a rendition of “Oseh Shalom,” the Jewish prayer for peace, composed by the Israeli Jewish Renewal group Nava Tehila.
Susie Gelman, a philanthropist who chairs the Israel Policy Forum, which supports the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, said one of the key roles of the Israeli Supreme Court in recent years has been to protect some Palestinian rights and slow Israeli efforts to increase sovereignty in the West Bank.
“You can’t entirely separate judicial overhaul from the question of what’s happening with Palestinians in the West Bank in particular,” she said.
But Offir Gutelzon, a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who helped found UnXeptable, an anti-Netanyahu protest movement by Israelis living abroad, differed, saying the protesters’ top priority should be to save the courts’ independence. Achieving that goal, he said, required maintaining unity across the Israeli political spectrum.
“We have to save our Israeli democracy and then we can move on and talk about” the Palestinians, Gutelzon said.
Still, at the protest, speakers spoke of the occupation and its effect on the Palestinians, and there were no objections. Gutelzon led an Israeli contingent in registering cheers for every pronouncement by American liberals.
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The post Far-right Israeli minister urges loyalty as his US visit draws protests, boycotts and arrests appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How Israel’s Shift from ‘Deliberate Ambiguity’ to ‘Selective Disclosure’ Could Prevent a Nuclear War
A satellite image shows un‑buried tunnel entrances at Isfahan nuclear complex, in Isfahan, Iran, Nov. 11, 2024. Photo: Vantor/Handout via REUTERS
Though it might seem counter-intuitive, Israel needs specific enhancements to its strategic deterrence posture. Among other things, these necessary enhancements center on nuclear doctrine and strategy. Most urgently, Jerusalem should plan for an incremental but defined end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.”
Why should this argument be taken seriously? Hasn’t Iran’s nuclear potential been degraded or eliminated by Operations “Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion”? During any future war with Iran, wouldn’t Israel already be in firm position to maintain “escalation dominance?”
Gathering the correct answers is more complex than first meets the eye.
Though a non-nuclear Iran would risk greater harms than would Israel in any future war, the more powerful Jewish State could still suffer the grievous consequences of (1) Iranian CBW (chemical-biological) or radiological attacks; and (2) Iran-spurred operational misunderstandings/policy miscalculations.
Iran could also call upon nuclear allies (most plausibly North Korea) to act as witting nuclear proxies, and on sub-state terror groups to inflict various force-multiplying costs. These groups (e.g., Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi) would likely include both Sunni and Shiite surrogates.
For Israel, there will be derivative strategic issues. Prima facie, the direct Israel-American war against Shiite Iran has strengthened some Sunni state adversaries in the region. To wit, now there will be more compelling reason to expect nuclear moves by Turkey, Egypt, and/or Saudi Arabia. Correspondingly, certain predictable actions by China or Pakistan would further undermine Israel’s core national security.
What should Israel do? A comprehensive remedy would include calibrated policy shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (Amimut in Hebrew) to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Though nuclear ambiguity has managed to “work” thus far, it will not work indefinitely.
At times, strategic truth must emerge through paradox. For Jerusalem, the greatest risk of catastrophic deterrence failure may lie in the prospect of Israeli nuclear threats that are “too destructive.” Oddly but plausibly, nuclear threat credibility could sometime vary inversely with nuclear threat destructiveness.
To be suitably deterred, an enemy state would require continuing assurances that Israel’s nuclear weapons were effectively invulnerable and “penetration-capable.” This second expectation would mean that Israel’s nuclear weapons not only appear protected from adversarial first-strikes, but are also able to “punch through” enemy active defenses.
Adversarial judgments concerning Israel’s ultimate willingness to engage with nuclear weapons would depend on acquiring certain foreknowledge of these weapons and their operational capabilities. Enemy perceptions of mega-destructive, high-yield Israeli nuclear weapons could undermine the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent. Bringing a measured end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity,” on the other hand, would offer a promising corrective for Israel’s ultimate and existential vulnerability. In principle, at least, if an enemy state should ever appear willing to share its nuclear military assets with a surrogate terrorist group, Jerusalem would then need to prepare for nuclear deterrence of sub-state adversaries.
The main point of any shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure” would be to signal that Israel’s “bomb” capability lies safely beyond enemy reach and could punish all levels of enemy aggression. By removing the bomb from its metaphoric “basement,” Israel could best enhance its overall strategic deterrence. A properly-calculated end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” would underscore Israel’s willingness to use measured nuclear forces in reprisal for both first-strike and retaliatory attacks. Also, a defined shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure” would best convince Iran or any other non-nuclear enemy state of Israel’s willingness to use calibrated nuclear force against a non–nuclear aggressor.
What about the so-called “Samson Option?” While generally misunderstood, this option could support Israel’s unrelieved task of strategic dissuasion. For Jerusalem, the reinforcing benefits of “Samson” would lie not in any supposed eagerness to “die with the Philistines,” but in its presumptive deterrent advantages. These expected advantages would lie at the “high end” of Israel’s deterrence options and serve any ultimate requirement of “escalation dominance.”
In assessing optimal levels of “selective nuclear disclosure,” Israel ought to continuously bear in mind that the country’s strategic nuclear objective must always be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. If, however, nuclear weapons should ever be introduced into an escalating conflict with Iran or another enemy state, one form or another of actual nuclear war fighting would ensue. At that chaotic tipping point, Israel’s deterrence objective would need to shift from nuclear war avoidance to nuclear war termination.
Conceptually, if Israel were the only nuclear belligerent in a still-impending conflict, it would find itself in an “asymmetrical nuclear war.” If Israel’s foe were also nuclear, Jerusalem would then be engaged in a “symmetrical nuclear war.” Significantly, even in a “symmetrical” conflict, there would remain detectable inequalities of military power. To best support “escalation dominance” amid such destabilizing inequalities, Israel would benefit from prior policy shifts to “selective nuclear disclosure.” For authoritative decision-makers in Jerusalem, there could be no more important step toward national survival.
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018). Professor Beres was born in Zurich at the end of World War II.
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Palestinian Authority TV Promises Israel ‘Will Pass’ and Cease to Exist
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
Having just celebrated 78 years of independence, Israel has proven it is here to stay.
But the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestinians in general are adamantly claiming Israel’s status is temporary, while dreaming and hoping for its demise.
“There is no room for two identities,” a host on PA’s official TV channel stated, predicting that Israelis/Jews are “the ones who will pass”:
Official PA TV host:“The Israeli occupation … is taking control of the holy city [Jerusalem] and the Islamic and Christian holy sites in it.
But in this land, there is no room for two identities: [It is] either us or us. We are the ones who will remain and they are the ones who will pass.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, March 29, 2026]
A Palestinian researcher similarly taught viewers that Jews “are transient in this land” and that Palestinians are “the true owners”:
Palestinian affairs researcher Muna Abu Hamdiyeh: “We are talking about the Ibrahimi Mosque [i.e., Cave of the Patriarchs] — the Judaization of the site.
The Palestinian understands that [the Jews] are transient in this land.
Everything that the archaeological delegations that have visited Palestine and the Ibrahimi Mosque have presented has proven that the occupation has no connection, no existence and no roots in this land …
As part of our role as those who research the Palestinian cause, history, or archaeology, we must clarify this situation to the Palestinians: We are the true owners of this land, and therefore [we] must not abandon it, no matter what… [The Palestinian] completely understands that he has suffered from violence and aggression [only] because he owns something that the other –who is transient in this place — wants to take from him.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, March 16, 2026]
Another Palestinian academic also envisioned Israel’s downfall, stating at a cultural meeting in Paris that the Palestinians “will win and all of Palestine will be liberated”:
Palestinian researcher Muzna Al-Shihabi: “When we see all the people who came here today just to … hear about Palestine and know better what is happening [in Palestine], this is proof that — honestly, it gives us great hope that in the end we will win and all of Palestine will be liberated.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV News, Feb. 2, 2026]
Manifesting the Palestinian narrative in numerous ways, on at least two separate occasions, PA TV broadcast the following “poet” from Gaza predicting the end of Israel’s “colonial rule” just as other colonial rulers have been defeated:
Gazan poet Adel Al-Ramadi:
“Do not believe that the land will not return
How much has this land been occupied!
How much defilement?
How many soldiers have trodden upon it!
So where are the soldiers?
Where is the rule of the Greeks over us?
Where is the rule of the Tatars?
Where is the rule of the Romans?
Where is the rule of the Persians?
Where is the rule of the Crusaders?
Where is the rule of the English?
Where are the soldiers?
One day you will grow up and ask:
Where is the rule of the Jews?” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Dec. 7, 2025, and April 5, 2026]
PA TV chose to rebroadcast a documentary from 2021 with the conclusion that Israel “will disappear”:
Official PA TV narrator: “Immediately after the [Israeli] occupation of Jerusalem in 1967 and until this day, they have not stopped making attempts to Judaize the place and take control of it, aiming to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque to build the alleged Temple in its place …
This speaking stone is like a person and a place at the same time. Its age is many times greater than the age of the occupation state [i.e., Israel]. The Al-Aqsa Mosque will remain here, the eternal capital Jerusalem will remain here, and the occupation will disappear!” [emphasis added]
Images are shown of Palestinians waving Palestinian flags on the Temple Mount.
[Official PA TV, broadcast of 2021 documentary film “The Speaking Stone,” March 20, 2026]
A released murderer also joined the choir, telling “heroic” imprisoned terrorists that Allah will “liberate the land”:
Released terrorist murderer Shadi Abu Shakhdam: “My message to our heroic prisoners [i.e., terrorists] behind bars: Just as Allah showed us mercy and granted us freedom, Allah willing the time and moment will come when He will show mercy to our brothers and grant them freedom.
Allah willing, there will be freedom with the liberation of both the land and the people.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Giants of Endurance, March 21, 2026]
As Palestinian Media Watch recently reported, there are many more examples of how the PA dreams of Israel’s demise.
World leaders must finally acknowledge this deeply entrenched destructive vision that the PA embraces, and oppose giving the PA any role in the future of the region.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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What it means for Jews when Trump administration officials misquote the Bible
(JTA) — The Bible is back in the news.
In a Pentagon prayer service on April 15, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quoted what was seemingly meant to be a verse from the ancient Hebrew prophet Ezekiel, but was in fact from the Gospel of Tarantino, as Stephen Colbert quipped.
In response, Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, released a statement on X noting that the homage to the auteur’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction” was intentional. Hegseth had “shared a custom prayer … which was obviously inspired by dialogue in ‘Pulp Fiction.’”
Two days later, the New York Times suggested that President Donald Trump was likely participating in “America Reads the Bible,” a marathon reading of scripture to take place in Washington, D.C.’s Museum of the Bible, as a means to repair his relationship with Catholics after he publicly sparred with the pope over the Iran war and deleted a tweet depicting himself as Jesus Christ.
“President Trump has a complicated relationship with the Bible,” the paper noted. “He has often called it his favorite book, has posed with it for photographers outside a church and has sold his own edition for $60. But he has also struggled to name a favorite passage or even pick a favorite Testament between the two.”
At the event on April 21, Trump read a passage from 2 Chronicles, in which God promises to heal the land if its people “humble themselves, pray, and seek My favor.”
As a scholar specializing in the influence of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish ideas on American history, I can attest that the habit of American leaders citing chapter and verse (accurate or not) is as old as the United States itself. In fact, it dates back to the Pilgrims. It has been a powerful and effective means of cultivating covenantal community. Americans who cited scripture have forged a country unique in world history in the religious freedom it has offered to all its citizens, not the least of which to us Jews, the original biblically bound people.
The America ethos of fighting for freedom and liberty, drawn from the story of the Children of Israel millennia ago, to this day shapes how the United States operates both internally and on the world stage.
Reflecting on the harsh and uncertain early days of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, who signed the Mayflower Compact and would serve as the territory’s governor for roughly three decades, paraphrased the Exodus story and Moses’ final speech in Deuteronomy. Arriving in the New World, he said, his fellow Pilgrims could only see:
a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men — and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects.
In the first half of this excerpt from his journal, Bradford was alluding to the Israelites’ escape from Egypt into the rough wilderness in which they would wander for 40 years. And then he referenced the mountaintop on the precipice of the Promised Land, Pisgah, on which Moses stood as his people were about to complete their arduous journey as described in the last of the Five Books of Moses. To Bradford, scripture was a source of strength and solace during communally challenging times.
Ten years later, the Puritan leader John Winthrop would describe in similarly Hebraic lens how if Massachusetts Bay Colony’s residents will do right in the eyes of the Lord, “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies… For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Winthrop was misquoting of Leviticus 26:8: “Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand.” However, the details were less important than the sense of divine mission that was powering the Pilgrims’ and the Puritan’s project.
Later, the American Founders also possessed a powerful attachment to the Bible, even if the details were sometimes hazy.
John Adams, in 1776, after hearing a sermon paralleling the Patriot cause to Israel’s fight against Pharaoh’s tyranny, ruminated: “Is it not a Saying of Moses, ‘who am I, that I should go in and out before this great People’?” It actually was not a saying of Moses. Adams was conflating Moses’ “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh…” speech in Exodus 3:11 with a a request by a much later Jewish ruler, King Solomon that God “give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people” (2 Chronicles 1:10).
A year earlier, the equally-enamored-with-
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the country’s most biblically literate president ever, often weaved scripture into his seminal addresses, from “four score and seven years ago,” which was likely borrowed from a rabbinic sermon citing a verse in Psalms, to a purposeful paraphrase of Exodus 19:5 when, on Feb. 21, 1861, he referred to Americans writ large as the Lord’s “almost chosen people.”
It hasn’t only been political leaders, of course, who rephrase the Word in an effort to encourage Americans to live up to their highest ideals. Martin Luther King Jr. made reference to that same mountaintop as Bradford in the civil rights leader’s final speech on April 3, 1968 in Memphis. He rousingly reassured his audience that:
We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop… I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
Citing (and mis-citing) scripture, then, is a longstanding and worthy American tradition.
Some Jews might feel excluded by Jesus and New Testament texts being invoked in a nonsectarian context by public leaders, and verses can be abused as opposed to correctly interpreted. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of looking to the Bible to shape the soul of America has served a largely positive purpose. A religious civic space is full of happier, healthier people who give more charity, have more children and forge a strong sense of community.
Regardless of one’s party or views on those in power today, then, quoting the Bible in the American public sphere has long characterized the American experiment. On the whole, it has been largely good for the American collective character and good for the Jews. Occasionally, these quotes might be imperfect, but they reflect a worthy national will: the desire to see through the long march towards liberty and justice for all.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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