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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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The Day I Hid My Star of David Necklace
Anti-Israel protesters gather at Museumplein ahead of a 6 km march through the city as part of a protest demanding a tougher stance from the Dutch government against Israel’s war in Gaza, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Oct. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Charlotte Van Campenhout
There are moments when a small object can feel unbearably heavy.
For me, it was my Star of David necklace — a delicate piece, inherited through generations, usually worn without a second thought. But recently, for the first time, I left it at home on purpose.
I have spent more than a decade publicly defending Israel in the Netherlands. I am not easily intimidated. I have never believed in lowering my voice to make others comfortable. Yet years of activism have taught me something sobering. Conviction does not shield you from hatred.
In the Dutch debate, hostility toward Israel is often dressed up as principled anti-Zionism. The terminology sounds political, even academic. In practice, it frequently mutates into something far uglier. I have been called a dirty Jew, a child killer, a parasite. I have received death threats online. Eggs were thrown at my home. My car tires were slashed more than once. A dead pigeon was once hung on my door in a plastic bag, a grotesque attempt at intimidation.
The irony is bitter. According to rabbinical standards, I am not considered Jewish enough to qualify for Aliyah under religious law, despite Jewish roots on both sides of my family. Yet to those who despise Israel, I am more than Jewish enough to be targeted.
When I reported the harassment, I was advised to keep a lower profile. Perhaps, I was told, I should refrain from speaking so openly in support of Israel. That conversation taught me a painful lesson. Protection would not necessarily come from institutions. It would have to come from resilience.
Over the years, I have lost professional opportunities and personal relationships. I occupy a strange space. Too Jewish for some. Not Jewish enough for others. Meanwhile, I am accused of being a Mossad agent or a paid operative for advocacy groups such as CIDI. The truth is less glamorous. I am simply a Dutch woman who has studied history and refuses to distort it.
Still, something shifted recently.
I needed to see a cardiologist. A routine appointment, nothing political about it. Out of caution, I searched his public social media profile. He had shared and endorsed extreme anti Israel content, including propaganda portraying Israel as uniquely evil. Suddenly a standard medical visit felt charged.
That morning, I removed my Star of David and placed it on my dresser.
The gesture unsettled me more than I expected. It felt like surrender. The same calculation followed before an appointment with another medical professional, originally from Iran. Check social media. Remove visible symbols. Avoid potential bias. Stay invisible.
I am not proud of that instinct. For years I have urged others to stand tall. Yet when you are alone in a climate of escalating hostility, prudence can override pride. Health is not a battleground on which one wishes to test ideological neutrality.
The broader context explains why this fear is not imaginary. The Netherlands has witnessed a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents. CIDI, the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, recorded 379 antisemitic incidents in 2023, then 421 in 2024, the highest number since monitoring began. Police figures, using broader criteria, have been even higher. These are not abstract data points. They represent Jewish students harassed in classrooms, mezuzot ripped from doorposts, and families who hesitate before displaying visible signs of identity.
Each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, including ceremonies marking the liberation of, we solemnly repeat the words “never again.” The phrase echoes with sincerity. But remembrance without vigilance is ritual without substance.
My advocacy for Israel does not stem from blind loyalty. It arises from historical understanding. After two thousand years of exile, persecution, and statelessness, the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in 1948 was not a colonial experiment but an act of national restoration. Israel, like any democracy, is imperfect. It debates fiercely within itself. It includes Jews from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Ethiopia. I have written extensively about the rescue of Ethiopian Jews who found refuge and citizenship there. That diversity alone undermines the simplistic caricature of Israel as a racist project.
When activists declare that Zionism is racism and deny Israel’s right to exist, they claim to be advancing justice. In reality, they are singling out the world’s only Jewish state for elimination. It is not surprising that such rhetoric often spills over into open antisemitism.
The consequences are felt far beyond Israel’s borders. Across Europe and America, Jewish communities report heightened violence and terrorism. The Netherlands is not immune. And so a necklace becomes a calculation.
Yet while I may occasionally remove a symbol, I will not silence my voice. If anything, the climate reinforces why speaking out matters.
Unity is essential. Jews and non-Jews alike must reject the normalization of antisemitism, whether it appears under the banner of anti-Zionism or any other fashionable label. This is not about suppressing legitimate criticism of Israeli policies. It is about drawing a moral line when criticism becomes demonization and when political disagreement becomes collective vilification.
One day, I hope, wearing a Star of David in Amsterdam will feel entirely unremarkable. An heirloom necklace will simply be jewelry, not a statement of defiance. Until then, even if I sometimes leave it at home, I will continue to speak publicly and unapologetically.
Because never again is not a slogan. It is a responsibility that begins in the present.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
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History and Archaeological Evidence Shows Jews Were Pioneers in Learning and Education
Inside the National Library of Israel. Photo: © Herzog & de Meuron; Mann-Shinar Architects, Executive Architect.
The opening of a new building for the National Library of Israel was one of the events overshadowed by the October 7 attack on Israel.
The library, almost five million square feet of space containing five million books, did open its doors on October, 29, 2023. The impressive new building, with its state-of-the-art automated book retrieval system, is a far cry from the library’s modest beginnings in 1892.
That the library opened five years before the first Zionist Congress, and well before the establishment of the state of Israel, indicates the importance that the Jewish people place on books and literacy — and also the long connection between Jews and Israel.
In Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity (1998), Lee I. Levine makes the point that Jews were unique in the ancient world in reading a holy text at religious services and discussing its meaning on a regular basis. (Ezra the Scribe is credited with initiating the reading of the Torah at religious services, in the fifth century BCE, after the return from exile in Babylonia [Nehemiah 8:1-8].)
That Jews are widely associated with literacy is a widespread belief. In fact, the expression “People of the Book” originated in the Koran, as a description for Jews (and Christians). But how literate were they in Biblical times? Scholars such as Meir Bar Ilan suggest that literacy in ancient Israel was low, less than 3% of the population, even as late as the first centuries CE.
After all, with the exception of priests and scribes, why would it be necessary to read and write in an agricultural society? However, recent archeological evidence signals that Jewish literacy in Biblical times was far more widespread than previously thought.
Archeological teams from Tel Aviv University used computer-based analyses to evaluate letters written by a small contingent of 20 to 30 Judean soldiers located at a military outpost at Arad, near the southern border of Judea. The letters, in Hebrew, were written in ink on ostraca (potsherds used as writing surfaces) shortly before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 BCE.
Computer handwriting analysis used machine learning to digitize, segment, and extract features (for example, separation distances, angles, slopes, curves) from script to identify individuals. A professional handwriting expert also evaluated the writing on the ostraca.
The results, published in academic journals (PNAS, 2016 and Plos One, 2020), show that there were at least 12 different writers. They varied in rank, down to the equivalent of quartermaster (much of the material in the letters dealt with provisions and supplies). Clearly, the society represented by the soldiers at Arad must have included an educational infrastructure capable of ensuring widespread literacy.
In Discovering Second Temple Literature (2018) Malka Z. Simkovich, Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, provides a comprehensive view of the extensive literary output by Jewish communities during the period of the Second Temple (539 BCE to 70 CE). While she does not refer to literacy per se, the variety of material she describes, and the volume of letters written between Jews in Judea and those in the Diaspora (mainly between Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch), suggests that the ability to read and write was common.
Some of the writings Simkovich refers to were found in the Cairo Geniza, a trove of more than 400,000 manuscripts, and fragments of manuscripts, discovered in the storeroom (the geniza) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt.
Most of this collection was taken to Cambridge University in 1896 and today is being digitized. While much of this material involves the post-Temple period, manuscripts from the earlier, Second Temple period, were also common.
The geniza, a uniquely Jewish concept, is rooted in Jewish law. Any old or damaged liturgical texts or ritual objects that may include G-d’s name must not be casually discarded. The geniza is a temporary repository for such material prior to burial in consecrated ground.
The material in the Cairo Geniza was unusual in that the material stored there accumulated for a long time, between the 8th and 19th centuries. It includes secular material, such as legal contracts, accounting books, and personal letters, along with Biblical texts and rabbinical writings, making it a particularly valuable historical find. But equally important, the existence of the geniza is a reminder of the reverence for the written word that is a part of the Jewish tradition.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
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Tucker Carlson’s Huckabee Interview: Confidence Without Comprehension
Fox personality Tucker Carlson speaks at the 2017 Business Insider Ignition: Future of Media conference in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
When Tucker Carlson announced he would be interviewing US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, it was clear this would not be a friendly exchange. Carlson, who some have speculated is funded by Qatar, a state that openly backs Hamas, has positioned himself as one of Israel’s fiercest critics in American media.
What followed was not the exposé Carlson likely imagined. It was a two-hour display of confident ignorance.
Yet much of the media coverage focused on a single distorted headline: Carlson’s suggestion that Biblical scripture implies Israel seeks to “take over the Middle East.”
That became the story.
It was also the least revealing part of the interview.
What went largely unreported was not Huckabee’s answers, but Carlson’s performance: his theological confusion, historical sloppiness, conspiratorial insinuations, and failure to grapple with facts that contradicted his narrative.
A Disaster From Start to Finish
Carlson opened the interview with a monologue that appeared designed to rehabilitate his own credibility.
He repeated claims that he had been “detained” at Ben Gurion Airport when leaving Israel after recording the interview, suggesting it was unsafe for him to travel to Jerusalem. He implied he felt endangered after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly called him a “Nazi.”
That was among the first of his distortions. There is no verified record of Netanyahu making such a statement.
Footage from the airport shows Carlson in the VIP lounge, posing for photos and interacting amicably with staff.
He claimed he was “detained,” that security “took passports,” and his producer was “hauled into a side room.”
Footage from Ben Gurion’s VIP lounge shows Tucker Carlson hugging staff and posing for photos.
So why did @DailyMail and @nypost amplify his wild claims to begin with? https://t.co/ZL6qd2hvn9 pic.twitter.com/Z8lEfgg5LA
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 19, 2026
This pattern — reframing routine events as persecution — serves a rhetorical purpose. It casts Carlson as a dissident truth-teller under siege. It does not withstand scrutiny.
Tucker Carlson says he was detained at Ben Gurion International Airport. The Israel Airports Authority says no detention occurred and released a statement backing routine screening. Footage shows a calm VIP interaction. Two narratives. One record. pic.twitter.com/EEGyybELSF
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 21, 2026
Another consequential exchange concerned Anthony Aguilar.
Huckabee directly confronted Carlson over his earlier interview with Aguilar, a former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid worker who claimed he witnessed Israeli soldiers kill a young boy in Gaza.
As Huckabee pointed out, that account was later proven false when the boy was discovered alive.
Huckabee stated that he personally helped coordinate the child’s evacuation from Gaza, working with four countries to secretly extract the boy and his mother less than a week after the alleged “murder.” The operation had to remain covert, he said, because Hamas would have killed the child to validate Aguilar’s narrative.
And yet Carlson still entertained the claim as plausible, naturally failing to acknowledge his own role in broadcasting this fiction to millions.
For a commentator who brands himself as a skeptic of mainstream media narratives, the absence of self-scrutiny was striking.
Bethlehem and Basic Geography
Carlson cited Bethlehem — the birthplace of Christianity — as evidence that Christians are being driven out of the West Bank by Israel.
Bethlehem has been under Palestinian Authority control since 1995. Israel does not govern it, and there has been no Jewish community there for decades.
If the Christian population has declined, the obvious question is: under whose governance?
Huckabee raised precisely that point.
Carlson did not engage.
1/
The media’s takeaway from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Ambassador @GovMikeHuckabee?A distorted headline about Israel “taking over the Middle East.”
That wasn’t the story…
The story was Tucker Carlson self-immolating for over two hours.
Watch the clip.
Then let’s… pic.twitter.com/e5AvpTMGW6
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 21, 2026
Theology as Geopolitical Caricature
Carlson invoked God’s promise to Abraham — “from the river of Egypt (Nile) to the Euphrates” — and suggested that this covenant implies contemporary Israeli expansionism across sovereign Middle Eastern states.
This is a categorical error.
The Abrahamic covenant is a theological concept, not a modern policy platform. No Israeli government has articulated a program to annex the Middle East based on Genesis.
By collapsing ancient scripture into a present-day territorial blueprint, Carlson substituted provocation for analysis.
Huckabee attempted to correct the framing.
Carlson appeared uninterested.
Ancestry as Legitimacy Test
In one of the interview’s most jarring moments, Carlson questioned Netanyahu’s right to live in Israel on the basis of ancestry.
“Netanyahu’s family is from Poland,” Carlson said. “There’s no evidence his ancestors ever lived here. On what basis does he have a right to be here?”
Huckabee responded bluntly: “I’m totally unable to process what you’re saying.”
The exchange spoke for itself.
Framed as a critique of one politician, the logic extended further — implying that Jewish belonging in Israel requires genealogical proof acceptable to Carlson.
It was delivered not tentatively, but with certainty.
And then there was the subject of Qatar.
Carlson appeared surprised when Huckabee noted that Christians in Qatar are overwhelmingly migrant workers confined to a restricted church compound, with no Christian citizens and limited public expression of faith.
By contrast, Israel has approximately 184,000 Christian citizens, hundreds of churches, open Easter processions, and church bells ringing weekly.
Carlson initially leaned on a cursory reading of Wikipedia before conceding he did not know the details.
For someone positioning himself as a defender of Christianity in the Middle East, all while seemingly receiving funding from the Qatari state, the disconnect was difficult to ignore.
Conspiracy, Recycled
Carlson floated additional insinuations and conspiracy, including the absurd claim that the United States went to war in Iraq after September 11 because of Israel.
This trope, that Jewish or Israeli influence dragged America into war, has circulated for decades across ideological extremes.
Reducing complex American strategic decisions, Congressional votes, and post-9/11 security policy to “Israel made us do it” is not serious analysis. Yet here it was, presented as such by a former Fox News host watched by millions.
By the end of nearly three hours, a pattern had emerged.
Carlson repeatedly blurred theology into policy, questioned Jewish historical continuity, recycled war-blame insinuations, dismissed counter-evidence, and spoke authoritatively on subjects he appeared not to have mastered.
And he did so with confidence.
That is what much of the media missed.
The story was not Huckabee’s answer to a distorted Biblical question.
It was watching a prominent commentator unravel under the weight of his own thinly sourced claims.
Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate. Debate over strategy is healthy.
But when interrogation gives way to insinuation, and skepticism morphs into selective credulity, the result is not fearless journalism.
It is confidence without comprehension.
And it was watched by nearly two million viewers in under 24 hours.
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.