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Israel at 75: How Israel’s political crisis took center stage at a major American Jewish conference
KIBBUTZ MAAGAN MICHAEL, Israel (JTA) — About a dozen Jewish leaders from North America and beyond clustered at the edges of a courtyard on this kibbutz by Israel’s northern coastline, standing silent as a two-minute siren rang out in memory of the country’s fallen.
Afterward, young Jews from around the world, some of whom will soon enter the Israeli military, read memorial passages and led the crowd in the singing of Israel’s national anthem. The scene, emblematic of Diaspora support for Israel, delivered the kind of feeling that the Jewish Federations of North America hoped to evoke when it held its marquee conference in Israel this week, and timed it for the country’s Memorial Day and 75th birthday.
It was also a stark contrast from the atmosphere at the conference a day earlier where — even as Jewish leaders emphasized unity in the face of adversity — it was hard to avoid the political strife over the Israeli government’s effort to significantly limit the Supreme Court’s power. A raucous session in the morning was filled with screaming, and other panels touched on hot-button issues such as Israel’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews as well as human rights groups.
“We’re also living at a time of so many crises and so much painful brokenness,” Rabbi Marc Baker, CEO of the Boston area’s Jewish federation, said in a short address on Monday afternoon to the conference’s 2,000 attendees, while discussing the importance of Jewish learning. “It can feel like things are falling apart, like at best, as leaders, we’re just trying to hold things together.”
The drama did not exactly surprise organizers of the gathering, called the General Assembly, or GA, who had expected protesters to show up and even encouraged their cause. But it pointed to the challenge facing the Jewish Federations, which had hoped to put on a traditionally exuberant celebration of Israel despite the conflict rocking its streets.
Those traditional commemorations and festivities did happen, and sessions covered a range of issues, from racial diversity to philanthropy in Israel. But they were mixed in with anguish over the state of Israeli society, which some attendees and panelists portrayed in urgent terms.
“For the first time, at Israel’s 75th birthday, a government is trying to fundamentally alter the definition of a Jewish state,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, said at the tumultuous Monday morning panel, referring to efforts to restrict immigration to Israel and other proposals.
He added, “If this cluster of changes, the coalition agreements, would be implemented, I’m not sure that in the 80th year of our national birthday, the GA will decide again to conduct its event here.”
The departure from business-as-usual was evident from the get-go, when hundreds of protesters came to the gates of the conference to protest a planned speech on Sunday night by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who canceled in the face of the demonstrations. Israeli President Isaac Herzog did speak that night.
Julie Platt, the Jewish Federations’ board president, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she found out about the cancellation earlier on Sunday. Netanyahu’s office told the staff of the Jewish Federations that day of the cancellation, and the news became public shortly afterward. Netanyahu did not reach out personally to Platt or to Eric Fingerhut, the Jewish Federations’ CEO, to let them know he would not be coming.
“We were preparing for weeks and months for the opportunity to have here the duly elected prime minister,” Platt said on Monday. “We were disappointed that he wasn’t part of our celebration.”
Tensions peaked on Monday morning during a session where anti-government protesters repeatedly interrupted far-right lawmaker Simcha Rothman with shouts and chants, and in which Rothman and Plesner verbally sparred onstage. Multiple protesters were removed by security personnel, and the panel took an unplanned five-minute break to cool tempers.
“They’re our brothers, they support us,” said Erez Elach, who protested Rothman at the event, regarding Diaspora Jews. Elach is a member of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, a group made up of military reservists opposed to the judicial overhaul.
Elach said he was protesting in order to honor Diaspora Jews who were killed while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. “We lost friends who served with us, who came from those same places,” he said.
Fingerhut told JTA that the protests of Rothman were “a taste of what’s happening in Israel today,” though he added, “I don’t think anyone benefits from that kind of disruption.”
“As the GA grew closer, we knew that the judicial reform issues and the divisions it’s creating in Israel would necessarily be a significant topic,” he said. “By time we were finalizing our plans, we expected it to be a major issue, and it was.”
But he said that he still felt the conference conveyed the importance of celebrating Israel and its ties to global Jewry. “On Sunday night and Monday, we focused on Israel’s history and our contribution to that history. That was not overshadowed,” he said. The battle over the judicial overhaul, he said, “added an agenda item, but it didn’t detract in any way.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid speaks at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Tel Aviv on April 24, 2023. (Courtesy of JFNA/Amnon Gutman)
Yizhar Hess, the vice chair of the World Zionist Organization, also said on Monday that things were going well — because of the arguments, not despite them. Hess pointed to the three large gatherings of establishment Jewish groups — the General Assembly, the Jewish Agency for Israel Board of Governors’ meeting and the World Zionist Congress — each of which saw fierce debates or disruption stemming from the judicial overhaul fight.
“This week has been dramatically successful particularly because it’s been so turbulent,” Hess said directly after the session with Rothman. “Zionism and the state of Israel are a subject that stirs up the Jewish people and is at the heart of the argument. That’s a good thing. … Zionism is more relevant than ever, particularly because Jews are fighting over its character.”
Bucking its usual practice of not commenting on internal Israeli politics, the Jewish Federations has made its position on the overhaul relatively clear. The group issued a statement objecting to one of the overhaul’s provisions, praised a decision to pause the legislation, said it was “awed” by the anti-overhaul protesters and organized a “fly-in” earlier this year, in which federation leaders traveled to Israel to share their concerns about the effort with Israeli officials.
Deborah Minkoff, an executive board member at the Madison, Wisconsin, Jewish federation, participated in the fly-in and said she had lobbied to exclude all politicians from the General Assembly stage. She attended sessions where anti-overhaul activists spoke and felt that being in Israel for the conference gave her an opportunity to stand with the protesters.
“I think it’s going to be easier to sell Israel to our community because of this fight for democracy,” she said. “As we articulate what it means to be a free, equitable, democratic society, I think it resonates with the community who has been critical of Israel in the past.”
Attendees gave a warm reception to Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, whose easy manner suggested that he felt the crowd would be receptive to his words. “I’m happy to be here, unlike some others,” he said to laughter from the audience.
“Don’t give up on us,” Lapid told the crowd. “I know how many people here feel about this current government. I know it doesn’t represent your values. It doesn’t represent mine either. But this government isn’t all of Israel… Today, maybe more than ever, we need you to rally around us.”
But not everyone at the conference was keen to protest. Beto Guzman, a Jewish professional who came to the conference from Helsinki, said the Finnish Jewish community tends not to protest Israeli policies because, given its small size, its involved members value having a positive relationship with Israeli emissaries in the country and do not want to blame them for the government’s policies. He also objected to protesters disrupting conferences, though he said the issues at the heart of the debate should be discussed.
“In Helsinki we don’t really have any protests or anything like this, because the community is very small and everybody has their own relationship with Israel,” he said. “For us that connection is very different. We really like the people from the Jewish Agency, their emissaries, and the embassy, they are very nice to us. So for us to put what is going on in the government on them would be unfair.”
Sandi Seigel, the president of Naamat Canada, a branch of a global Jewish women’s rights organization, said she was troubled by raucous debate she saw at the World Zionist Congress, which had taken place at the end of the previous week. She particularly worries that young delegates to the congress, one of whom she recalled seeing crying, would leave disheartened by the fighting.
“It’s almost like people feel it’s an existential threat for Israel, and so you’re passionate,” she said. “But there used to be an ability to have healthy debate and say, ‘OK, we’re not going to agree on this, OK, but I respect your right to have your opinion. And I think some of that is gone.”
At the same time, Seigel does not feel that the General Assembly was too focused on the debate over the judicial overhaul, which she framed in existential terms.
“If you have something, and you don’t know, if this doesn’t get resolved, [whether] Israel will be Israel anymore, or it won’t be the Israel that I can live in — there are a lot of things to talk about, but if you don’t deal with that, you can’t talk about anything else,” she said. “Because there’s nothing left to talk about.”
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Holocaust Remembrance Day Marked in Poland, Germany Amid Nazi Displays, Rising Antisemitism
Participants with Israeli flags look at the landmark Birkenau extermination camp gate in Auschwitz Museum – former Nazi German Concentration Camp during the International March of the Living (MOTL) in Oswiencim, Poland on April 14, 2026. Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Eighty-one years after the Holocaust, antisemitism remains rampant in the heart of the former Third Reich, with incidents in both Poland and Germany underscoring a disturbing resurgence of Nazi-linked provocation and hatred across Europe — even as Jews and Israelis around the world marked Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.
Polish far-right lawmaker Konrad Berkowicz sparked outrage in Warsaw after displaying a modified Israeli flag during a parliamentary debate, replacing the Star of David with a Nazi swastika.
Berkowicz’s act was widely condemned as a deeply troubling distortion of Holocaust memory and a provocative example of “Holocaust inversion,” weaponizing Nazi imagery to target Israel in a manner that promotes hateful rhetoric.
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the incident, calling on government officials to take swift and decisive action to address the matter, deter similar acts, and uphold public accountability.
“This act constitutes a clear example of Holocaust inversion, distorting the memory of the Shoah, and trivializing its victims,” EJC wrote in a post on X, using the Hebrew word for referring to the Holocaust.
“The use of Nazi symbols in this context is not only offensive, but represents a serious form of antisemitic provocation, particularly on a day dedicated to remembrance,” the statement read. “Preserving the integrity of Holocaust remembrance and ensuring that antisemitism is not tolerated in public institutions is essential.”
Polish MP Konrad Berkowicz displayed an Israeli flag bearing a swastika during a parliamentary debate in Warsaw on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This act constitutes a clear example of Holocaust inversion, distorting the memory of the Shoah and trivialising its victims.
The use of… pic.twitter.com/zeyRN5yG6T
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) April 14, 2026
The latest antisemitic incident came as Holocaust survivors from around the world joined thousands of participants in the 38th March of the Living, held at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in remembrance of the 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II. The annual march goes from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were killed.
During a ceremony, Revital Yakin Krakovsky, deputy chief executive of the International March of the Living organization, warned that antisemitism continues to endure today despite the lessons of the Holocaust, stressing that its warning signs are once again becoming impossible to ignore.
“Since Oct. 7, antisemitism has surged and is spreading everywhere,” Krakovsky said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. “The scale and normalization of this hatred echoes the dark times we have seen before and, today of all days, we know how it ended.”
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Poland has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Germany has also experienced a marked surge in antisemitism, with Jewish communities and Israelis facing an increasingly hostile climate and a growing number of disturbing public provocations.
On Tuesday, workers at the Eggenfelden tax office in Bavaria, southern Germany, discovered a structure over a meter high on the premises, allegedly designed to resemble a crematorium and adorned with a swastika and SS runes. The structure also had the inscription “Zyklon B,” the pesticide used by the Nazis to carry out the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz.
This latest incident coame just three weeks after a replica of the Auschwitz concentration camp gate, also covered in swastikas, was placed in front of the same tax office.
Eggenfelden’s mayor, Martin Biber, strongly condemned the incident, calling it a deeply disturbing provocation that has shocked the community.
“This shocks me. It’s also a huge disappointment that someone here is so cowardly. Quite apart from the fact that an object that is presumably meant to resemble a crematorium represents a horrific act,” Biber told the German newspaper BILD.
Local law enforcement has launched an investigation into the incident, treating it as a serious suspected extremist provocation.
The incident coincided with a commemoration held by the Israeli Embassy in Germany for the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis at the Sachsenhausen Memorial in Oranienburg, in eastern Germany.
During the ceremony, Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor called for the resolute protection of Jewish life, warning that “antisemitism is not a relic of the past but remains visible and on the rise.”
He also emphasized that confronting the spread of terror by Iran is not solely Israel’s responsibility, warning of its expanding global reach and ideological influence.
“The mullahs are already part of the war in Europe. Their drones are falling in Ukraine. Their networks operate across continents – and their deadly ideology is spreading faster than any missile,” the Israeli diplomat said.
“Once again, Israel is on the front line. But the free world, especially Germany and Europe, has not only the responsibility, but the duty to confront this deadly ideology that threatens Europe from within,” he continued.
Andreas Büttner, the Brandenburg commissioner against Antisemitism, was also in attendance at the ceremony, where he reaffirmed the urgent need to confront and counter rising antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is not a shadow of the past. It is an open fire burning among us. And this fire is being stoked from various sides – by the extreme right, by the extreme left, and by those who disguise their hatred of Israel as moral concern,” the German official said.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
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Mossad Chief Says Iran Campaign ‘Will Only Be Complete When This Extremist Regime Is Replaced’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Mossad chief David Barnea in July 2025. Photo: Israeli Government Press Office (GPO)
The head of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad declared on Tuesday that the Israeli military campaign against Iran will end only with the collapse of the Islamist regime in Tehran.
David Barnea’s comments during a speech at a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony came as a fragile ceasefire teetered on the brink of collapse and prospects for renewed negotiations remained uncertain.
Israel secured “significant achievements” after 40 days of intense fighting against “those who have made the destruction of the Jewish state their guiding principle,” said Barnea, who noted that the campaign had reshaped the regional security landscape.
“The Iranian threat grew stronger before our eyes, before the eyes of the world, almost without interruption,” he continued. “We repeatedly warned of the nuclear danger as an existential threat, and time and again we warned about the quantities of ballistic missiles that threaten Israeli citizens across the country, as well as the danger posed to us by the Iranian regime.”
Barnea said that Israel and its close ally the US took matters into their own hands for the good of the entire world and warned that, at least for Jerusalem, the mission isn’t done until the Iranian regime collapses.
“Finally, we took our fate into our own hands and entered two wars out of necessity. Alongside us, in firm alliance and historic cooperation with the world’s most powerful nation, we fought together for the values of justice and freedom,” the Israeli official continued. “Our commitment will only be complete when this extremist regime is replaced.”
Since Feb. 28, when the US and Israel launched joint strikes, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that, in addition to degrading Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, they aim to “create the conditions” for the regime in Iran to collapse, weakening the government to the point that the Iranian people can revolt.
US officials have not publicly adopted regime change as a declared war goal. However, President Donald Trump has at times suggested that Iranians should rise up once the airstrike campaign ends.
During Tuesday’s ceremony, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also delivered a speech, saying that the US and Israel had “defined the removal of enriched material from Iran as a threshold condition for ending the campaign.”
“Iran’s regional proxies — from the collapsed Syrian regime to Hezbollah and Hamas — have been dealt heavy blows and have lost their capacity to pose a strategic threat to Israel,” Katz said. “There remains the task of confronting the rest of their power, and we are doing so — and will continue to do so — with full commitment and full force.”
On Monday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir approved plans to escalate the military campaign against Iran and advance expanded operational planning across multiple arenas in the region if the ceasefire ends, signaling continued pressure on Tehran’s military and strategic infrastructure.
“We are facing a multi-theater campaign unprecedented in the history of our people and of nations — against both immediate enemies on our borders and distant adversaries seeking our destruction,” Zamir said. “We are striking Iran and its proxies, inflicting heavy blows and significantly degrading their military capabilities.”
With the ceasefire deadline approaching in a week and regional tensions escalating, Trump said the White House has received a request from “the appropriate parties” to resume talks, adding that the Iranian regime is seeking to renew negotiations and reach an agreement.
“Iran will not have nuclear weapons. We agreed on a lot of things, but they did not agree to that. And I think they will agree to that. I am sure of it. If they do not agree – there will be no agreement,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
According to The New York Times, US officials have proposed a 20-year halt to Iranian uranium enrichment, which Iranian negotiators countered with a five-year suspension that Washington rejected, while also reportedly insisting that Iran dismantle major enrichment sites and surrender more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has offered to host another round of US–Iran negotiations in Islamabad in the coming days before the ceasefire expires, as diplomatic efforts intensify to prevent a renewed escalation.
The Trump administration has also stepped up pressure on Tehran to accept its demands by imposing a naval blockade on vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping chokepoint for energy supplies.
Since the start of the war, Iran has used control over the Strait of Hormuz as a major source of leverage, militarizing the waterway and sharply restricting maritime traffic through one of the world’s most critical shipping corridors.
Iranian officials warned they would retaliate against any US naval blockade targeting their ports, calling the move illegal and warning that Gulf shipping routes would no longer remain secure if Iranian access were restricted.
Responding to Iranian threats in a post on Truth Social, Trump said, “If one of these boats approaches the blockade, it will be eliminated immediately, using the same elimination method that we use against drug smugglers at sea. It will be fast and brutal.”
Iran has also signaled it intends to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz even after the war ends, potentially imposing transit fees framed as compensation for wartime damage.
Following the latest escalation at sea, Israel had instructed its forces to maintain a high level of alert and prepare for the possibility of an immediate collapse of the ceasefire agreement, remaining on heightened readiness in case the truce breaks down and talks do not resume.
Israeli officials have said they do not rule out that Iran may be using the ceasefire to rebuild damaged air defense systems and restore military capabilities, while also attempting to bring weapons and sensitive technologies back into the country through overland smuggling routes.
Meanwhile, Iran appears to still be targeting Gulf states despite the ceasefire, with Bahrain intercepting seven Iranian drones in the past 24 hours in what officials described as a clear breach of the agreement.
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Smith College Trustees to Vote on Anti-Israel Divestment Measure
The campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Instagram/Screenshot
Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts is the site of the latest clash between anti-Zionists and administrators over institutional ties to Israel, as its trustees will vote on Thursday on a divestment measure proposed by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization.
Brimming with falsehoods, the proposal distinguishes itself from similar ones put forth at other colleges by accusing Israel of the crime of “femi-genocide,” which SJP describes as “sexual and reproductive violence” and mass murder perpetrated against Palestinian women and girls. The measure continues a pattern of depicting Israel, the most progressive country in the Middle East, as a foe of left-wing causes and an enemy of liberalism.
“The deliberate and disproportionate targeting of women represents an egregious practice of radicalized gender violence intended, in large part, to prevent the reproduction of a population marked for extermination,” SJP charged in the document, submitted in November. “This is a tactic common to settler colonialist projects and a grave injustice affecting women globally.”
Calling on Smith to withdraw investments in armaments manufacturers, SJP went on to describe divestment from Israel as a prelude to divesting from fossil fuels, a subtle but common tactic in which far-left groups place Jews and Zionists at the center of an array of alleged conflicts and social maladies.
“Militarism and the use of explosive weaponry has a devastating impact on our climate: military carbon emissions from the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians exceeds that of several countries combined,” the proposal continued. “We face interconnected human rights crises at home and abroad that jeopardize our immigrant and international students, faculty, staff, and community members. Broader patterns of forced displacement are inseparable from climate change, and are fueled by a longer history of neoliberalization, securitization, and colonization.”
The divestment proposal draws on the principles of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Formally launched in 2005, the BDS campaign opposes Zionism — a movement supporting the Jewish people’s right to self-determination — and rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation-state. It seeks to isolate the country comprehensively with economic, political, and cultural boycotts as the first step towards its eventual elimination.
Smith College has not responded to The Algemeiner’s request for comment about the upcoming vote.
SJP has historically escalated its pressure tactics in the event that procedure fails to translate its demands into policy. Following Smith College’s rejection of divestment from Israel in spring 2024, dozens of SJP affiliated students occupied the College Hall administrative building for two weeks. The incident led to a face-to-face confrontation with Smith president Sarah Willie-LeBreton in which the students shouted over Willie-LeBreton as she attempted to negotiate with them, prompting her to say, “Screaming at me every time I talk does not show me respect; it does not begin to show me the respect I am showing you.”
Adopting divestment proposals dictated by anti-Zionist groups is a recipe for squandering tens of billions of dollars in endowment returns, according to a report published in September 2024 by the JLens investment network, an arm of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report said BDS would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion in growth, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
Citing fiduciary concerns, virtually all colleges asked to adopt BDS have turned it down.
In March 2025, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine did so when its Board of Trustees voted to accept the counsel of a committee that recommended maintaining investment practices which safeguard the institution’s financial health and educational mission. In a report authored by the college’s Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility, it said, “Interventions in the management of the endowment that are rooted in moral or political considerations should be exceedingly rare and restricted to those cases where there is near-universal consensus among Bowdoin’s community of stakeholders.”
Boston University rejected divestment the previous month, with its president, Melissa Gilliam, saying, “The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.