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How Trump’s first year back in office destabilized our country — and our Jewish community
One year into President Donald Trump’s second term, the American Jewish community is reeling — just like the rest of the country.
For generations now, presidents have at least paid lip service to steadying the ship of state. Trump has taken an axe to the mast.
And as he has destabilized the United States since being sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2025, he has destabilized American Jews.
To mark the end of Trump’s first year back in office, I looked at how a series of his policies and pronouncements have exaggerated already-deep divides in the Jewish community — and bewildered his supporters and detractors alike.
Rooting out antisemitism, or nurturing it?
Trump’s approach to addressing antisemitism has shuttled between a slap and embrace, deeply unbalancing American Jews.
He correctly called out intimidation tactics on college campuses, especially during the anti-Gaza War protests, that violated the civil rights of Jewish students — preventing them from accessing parts of campus or speaking out freely as other students.
But the measures he took against those universities, which included cutting off funding for unrelated research, deporting foreign students for exercising their First Amendment rights, and undermining laudable efforts at diversity, alienated Jews with legitimate concerns about campus antisemitism.
A May 2025 poll from GBAO Strategies reflected the disconnect.
Some 65% of younger Jews expressed concern over antisemitism on college campuses, and 71% said deporting campus protesters made that antisemitism worse.
Any relief Jews felt that Trump was addressing a long-festering problem quickly morphed into the concern that he was using it to carry out an ideological score-settling that had nothing to do with Jews, and that could ultimately backfire on them.
Meanwhile, there’s Tucker Carlson. The ideological Svengali of the GOP, Carlson has used his popular podcast to give a platform to neo-Nazis, push ever more intricate antisemitic conspiracy theories, and suggest that Jews were behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
And more recently, he’s provided a serious hint that Trump’s focus on antisemitism isn’t particularly earnest.
“I think we don’t need them,” Trump recently told the New York Times about antisemitic elements in the GOP. “I think we don’t like them.” He thinks, because, well, sometimes he apparently does need them: Carlson lunched twice at the White House this week.
For Trump, antisemitism appears not to be an absolute evil, but yet another issue to use to his political advantage. And as he’s gambled with our community, he’s brought more strife to it. Now, we battle one another over the question of whether Trump has been just what we needed — or the very worst thing that could have happened to us.
Triumph in Gaza, despair in Iran
In October, Trump forged a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza that pleased liberal Jews even as it upset many on the Jewish right with its tacit endorsement of an eventual two-state solution. He cashed in the goodwill he had banked with Israel, and, through incessant horsetrading with the Gulf States, leveraged a diplomatic breakthrough.
“He did something so many of us yearned for in the last two years, and he made it happen, and Biden didn’t make it happen,” Abraham Foxman, former CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told JTA at the time.
Yet Trump started the year making promises to assert U.S. control in Gaza and turn it into a land of luxe resorts, to the horror of many liberal Jews. What can we make of the fact that he then turned around and accomplished a diplomatic feat that so many of us yearned for?
Even this week I find myself rooting for Trump — not something I normally do — to push through his idea of an international Board of Peace to oversee Gaza reconstruction, over the opposition of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yet at the same time Trump has worked for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, his Iran strategy now verges on incoherent, if not cruel. He joined with Israel in attacking and degrading Iranian missile and nuclear ability, and bragged that doing so stripped decades of progress from Tehran’s nuclear program, though evidence suggests the operation brought much more moderate success.
He then threatened to attack again, to stop Iran’s bloody crackdown on protesters who have swarmed the streets this month. That issue is particularly close to the hearts of many American Jews, both because of the Iranian regime’s vehement antagonism toward Israel, and because so many Jews here have roots in Iran and have personal or familial experiences of the regime’s brutality. Then he backed down, convinced, reports say, of Iran’s promise not to execute its political opponents.
“It is unconscionable to say ‘Help is on the way’ and then do nothing,” Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Iran envoy in the first Trump administration, told Jewish Insider. “I hope the president will change his mind.”
Yes, intervention is a tricky business. But to those American Jews who would see Trump take decisive action to change the status quo in the Middle East, his choice to step aside from this fight seems baffling. And for all of us, it raises questions: Does he actually have a long-term vision for the region, and if so, is he able to commit to a path to deliver it?
The Minneapolis worry
The May GBAO survey found that 74% of American Jews disapproved of the job Trump was doing in office. That was five months into office, before the Gaza deal, but also before — the rest.
Signals differ about where, exactly, Trump stands in American Jewish public opinion. But there are some leading indicators, and they all center around Minneapolis.
The killing this month of Renée Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent there; Trump’s knee-jerk defense of the shooting; and his decision to flood the city with more ICE agents prompted a rare attack ad from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which does not normally weigh in on issues unconnected to, well, Israel.
The ad criticized former Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski, who is running in a Feb. 5 primary for the House seat vacated by New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill, for voting in favor of more ICE funding in a bipartisan 2019 border bill.
“We can’t trust Tom Malinowski” to stand up to Trump over ICE, said the ad.
Even if it was a cynical use of an issue to undermine a candidate AIPAC may oppose for other reasons — Malinowski is a former director of the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, which accused Israel of apartheid — AIPAC correctly understands how American Jews feel about Trump’s use of ICE: worried sick.
The abuse of state power, the breach in civil liberties, and the atmosphere of intimidation echoes some of the darkest times in Jewish history.
Nothing in Trump’s response to the situation — or his past efforts to engage with civil protest — suggests he will work to calm the situation, back down, or change the approach to international and domestic affairs that has unsettled Americans and American Jews.
And that suggests the most disorienting fact of all, for Jews as for all other Americans: There’s still three years left.
The post How Trump’s first year back in office destabilized our country — and our Jewish community appeared first on The Forward.
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Hezbollah Pays Steep Price in Battle to Reverse Its Fortunes
Workers remove a coffin with a body from temporary graves and prepare for transport for a funeral ceremony of four Hezbollah fighters and two civilians, amid a temporary ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, April 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Marko Djurica/File Photo
Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi’ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters, according to previously unreported casualty estimates from within the group.
The move has brought severe political consequences, too. In Beirut, opposition has hardened to its status as an armed group, which domestic rivals see as exposing Lebanon to repeated wars with Israel.
In April, Lebanon’s government held face-to-face talks with Israel for the first time in decades, a decision Hezbollah firmly opposed.
However, more than a dozen Hezbollah officials told Reuters they see a chance to reverse deteriorating fortunes by aligning with Tehran in its war with Israel and the United States. The group, founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982, opened fire two days into the conflict, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
The group’s calculations are based on the assessment that its participation would force Lebanon onto the agenda of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, and that Iranian pressure can secure a more robust ceasefire than one that took effect in November 2024 following a conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, the officials said.
Hezbollah was mauled in the last war, which killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with some 5,000 fighters, and weakened its long-dominant hold over the Lebanese state.
Rearmed with Iranian help, it has used new tactics and drones, surprising many with its capabilities after a fragile 15-month truce during which Hezbollah held fire, even as Israel continued to kill its members.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi denied the group was acting on Iran’s behalf when it resumed hostilities, as alleged by opponents. He told Reuters Hezbollah saw a window to “break this vicious cycle … where the Israelis can target, assassinate, bombard, kill, without any revenge.”
He acknowledged losses and damage in southern Lebanon but said “you don’t go into making calculations of how many are going to be killed” when “pride and sovereignty and independence” are at stake.
Hezbollah’s media office said the figure of several thousand fighters killed in the present war was false.
While a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect on April 16 has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel maintains troops in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Hezbollah had “shown more resilience than many thought possible, but that was not a strategic gain in itself.”
“The only thing that will contain Israel is a comprehensive US-Iran deal,” he said. “Without a deal, there’s going to be a lot of pain for everyone. At best, a hurting stalemate.”
GRAVES FRESHLY DUG, AND QUICKLY FILLED
More than 2,600 people have been killed since March 2, around a fifth of them women, children and medics, Lebanon’s health ministry has reported. Its toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Three sources, two of them Hezbollah officials, said the ministry’s figures do not include many of the group’s casualties. They said several thousand Hezbollah fighters have been killed, though the group does not have the full picture yet.
In a statement to Reuters, Hezbollah’s media office denied the figures cited by the sources, and that the numbers published by Lebanon’s health ministry included its members killed in Israeli strikes.
One source, a Hezbollah commander, said scores of fighters had gone to the frontline towns of Bint Jbeil and Khiyam intending to fight to the death. Their bodies have yet to be recovered.
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, more than two dozen freshly dug graves were quickly filled with fighters’ bodies in the days after the ceasefire took hold. Simple marble tombstones identify some as commanders, others as fighters.
In one southern village alone, Yater, the council recorded the deaths of 34 Hezbollah fighters.
Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim community has borne the brunt of Israel’s attacks, forced to flee into Christian, Druze and other areas, where many blame Hezbollah for starting the war.
Israel has been entrenching its hold over a security zone stretching as far as 10 km (6 miles) into Lebanon and demolishing villages, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
An Israeli government official said Hezbollah had abrogated the November 2024 ceasefire by firing on Israeli citizens on March 2. The threat to northern Israel would be eradicated, the official said, adding thousands of Hezbollah militants had been killed, and Israel was steadily destroying the group’s infrastructure.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel since March 2. Israel has announced 17 soldiers killed in southern Lebanon, along with two civilians in northern Israel.
Citing ongoing Israeli strikes, Hezbollah has called the April ceasefire meaningless and continued to attack.
IRAN ‘WILL NOT SELL’ THEIR FRIENDS
A diplomat who has contact with Hezbollah described its decision to enter the war as a big gamble and a survival strategy, saying it felt it needed to be part of the problem so it could be part of an eventual regional solution.
It has yet to be seen if the gamble will pay off.
Tehran has demanded that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah be included in any deal on the wider war. But US President Donald Trump said last month that any deal Washington reaches with Tehran “is in no way subject to Lebanon.”
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, Tahir Andrabi, referred Reuters to an April 16 statement in which he said peace in Lebanon was essential to the talks it is mediating between the U.S. and Iran.
A Western official said they saw a possibility the US and Iran might eventually reach a settlement that does not address the war in Lebanon.
Asked about this, the US State Department, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva and Lebanon’s government did not immediately comment.
Hezbollah’s Moussawi said a ceasefire in Lebanon continues to be a top priority for Iran, adding Tehran shares Lebanon’s objectives, including that Israel halt attacks and withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah has “full trust in Iran – that the Iranians will not sell their own friends”, he said.
The State Department referred Reuters to an April 27 interview Secretary of State Marco Rubio did with Fox News, in which he said Israel had a right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s attacks, and that he didn’t think Israel wanted to maintain its buffer zone in Lebanon indefinitely.
The United States has urged Israel “to make sure their responses are proportional and targeted,” he said.
When the April 16 ceasefire was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah’s disarmament would be a fundamental demand in peace talks with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has ruled out disarmament, saying the matter of its weapons is a topic for a national dialogue. Any move by Lebanon to disarm the group by force would risk igniting conflict in a country shattered by civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament since last year. On March 2, the government banned the group’s military activities.
Hezbollah has demanded the government cancel that decision and end its direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese officials have told Reuters they believe direct talks with Israel under the auspices of the US are the best way to secure a lasting ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, as only Washington has enough leverage with Israel to achieve those aims.
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US President Trump Tells Israeli Media: ‘I Studied Iran’s New Proposal, It Is Not Acceptable to Me’
US President Donald Trump arrives to award the medal of honor to Master Sgt. Roderick ‘Roddie’ W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 02 March 2026.
US President Donald Trump said he has reviewed Iran’s latest proposal and described it as “unacceptable” in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan News on Sunday. Trump added that ongoing efforts related to the conflict are “progressing very well,” without providing further details. He also renewed his call for clemency for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that Israel needs a leader focused on wartime priorities rather than legal matters.
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Israel Court Extends Detention of Gaza Flotilla Activists
Activist Saif Abu Keshek, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla detained by Israel, sits at a magistrate’s court for a detention extension hearing in Ashkelon, southern Israel, May 3, 2026. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
An Israeli court has extended by two days the detention of two activists arrested aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters near Greece, their lawyer said on Sunday.
Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish national, and Brazilian Thiago Avila were detained by Israeli authorities late on Wednesday and brought to Israel, while more than 100 other pro-Palestinian activists aboard the boats were taken to the Greek island of Crete.
A court spokesperson confirmed that their remand had been extended until May 5.
The governments of Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday calling their detention illegal.
The activists were part of a second Global Sumud flotilla, launched in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian assistance. The ships had set sail from Barcelona on April 12.
Israeli authorities requested a four-day extension of their arrest on suspicion of offenses that include assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership in and providing services to a terrorist organization, and the transfer of property for a terrorist organization, said rights group Adalah, which is assisting in the activists’ defense.
Hadeel Abu Salih, the men’s attorney, said that the two deny the allegations. Their arrest was unlawful due to a lack of jurisdiction, she told Reuters at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court after the hearing, adding that the mission was meant to provide aid to civilians in Gaza, not to any militant group.
Abu Salih said that Abu Keshek and Avila were subjected to violence en route to Israel and kept handcuffed and blindfolded until Thursday morning.
Asked for comment, the Israeli military referred Reuters to the Israeli foreign ministry, which said that staff were compelled to act to stop what it described as violent physical obstruction by Abu Keshek and Avila. All measures taken were lawful, it said.