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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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US-Brokered Peace Talks Break Off Without Deal After Overnight Russian Bombardment of Ukraine
Some windows glow in a residential building left without heating and facing long power cuts after critical civil infrastructure was hit by recent Russian missile and drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Alina Smutko
Ukraine and Russia ended a second day of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Saturday without a deal but with more talks expected next weekend, even as overnight Russian airstrikes knocked out power for over a million Ukrainians amid subzero winter cold.
Statements after the conclusion of the talks did not indicate that any agreements had been reached, but Moscow and Kyiv both said they were open to further dialogue.
“The central focus of the discussions was the possible parameters for ending the war,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X after the meeting.
More discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi, said a US official who spoke to reporters immediately after the talks.
“We saw a lot of respect in the room between the parties because they were really looking to find solutions,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We got to real granular detail and (we feel) that next Sunday will be, God willing, another meeting where we push this deal towards its final culmination.”
A UAE government spokesperson said there was face-to-face engagement between Ukraine and Russia — rare in the almost four-year-old war triggered by a full-scale Russian invasion — and negotiators tackled “outstanding elements” of Washington’s peace framework.
Looking beyond next week’s negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the US official voiced hopes for further talks, possibly in Moscow or Kyiv.
“Those sorts of meetings have to happen, in our view, before we get a bilateral between (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Zelensky, or a trilateral with Putin, Zelensky and President Trump. But I don’t think we’re so far away from that,” the official said.
BOMBARDMENT OF UKRAINE BEFORE SECOND DAY OF TALKS
The bombardment of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and its second-largest city Kharkiv by hundreds of Russian drones and missiles prompted Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha – who was not at the talks – to accuse Putin of acting “cynically.”
“This barbaric attack once again proves that Putin’s place is not at (US President Donald Trump’s) Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal,” Sybiha wrote on X.
“His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table.”
Saturday was scheduled to be the final day of the talks, billed by Zelensky as the first trilateral meeting under the US-mediated peace process.
The UAE statement said the talks were conducted in a “constructive and positive atmosphere” and included discussions about confidence-building measures.
Kyiv is under mounting Trump administration pressure to make concessions to reach a deal to end Europe’s deadliest and most destructive conflict since World War Two.
US peace envoy Steve Witkoff said at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos this week that a lot of progress had been made in the talks and only one sticking point remained. However, Russian officials have sounded more skeptical.
RUSSIA WANTS ALL OF DONBAS
After Saturday’s talks, Zelensky said the US delegation had raised the issue of “potential formats for formalizing the parameters for ending the war, as well as the security conditions required to achieve this”.
The US official said the proposed security protocols were widely seen as “very, very strong.”
“The Ukrainians and many of the national security advisors of all the European countries have reviewed these security protocols. And to a person, and this includes NATO, including (NATO Secretary General) Mark Rutte, they have expressed the fact that they’ve never seen security protocols this robust,” the official said.
Ahead of the discussions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday Russia had not dropped its insistence on Ukraine yielding all of its eastern area of Donbas, the industrial heartland grouping the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the 20 percent it still holds of Donetsk – about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles) – has proven a major stumbling block to any deal. Most countries recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine. Putin says Donetsk is part of Russia’s “historical lands.”
Zelensky has ruled out giving up territory that Russia has not been able to capture in four years of grinding, attritional warfare against a much smaller foe. Polls show little appetite among Ukrainians for any territorial concessions.
Russia says it wants a diplomatic solution but will keep working to achieve its goals by military means as long as a negotiated solution remains elusive.
Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said late on Friday that the first day of talks had addressed parameters for ending the war and the “further logic of the negotiation process.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine came under renewed Russian bombardment.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 375 drones and 21 missiles in the overnight salvo, which once again targeted energy infrastructure, knocking out power and heat for large parts of Kyiv, the capital. At least one person was killed and over 30 injured.
Before Saturday’s bombardment, Kyiv had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that cut electricity and heating to hundreds of residential buildings. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Saturday that 800,000 people in Kyiv – where temperatures were around -10 degrees Celsius – had been left without power after the latest Russian assault.
Zelensky said on Saturday Russia’s heavy overnight strikes showed that agreements on further air defense support made with Trump in Davos this week must be “fully implemented.”
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Conscription Law Heads to Final Vote in Knesset Amid Political Showdown
A drone view of Jerusalem with the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
i24 News – Israel’s conscription law is reaching its final stretch as the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is expected to complete its discussions this week before bringing it to a first reading vote in the Knesset plenum, i24NEWS’s Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) affairs correspondent Ari Kalman reported Sunday.
The legal counsel of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is expected to support the legislation, subject to changes that will be made in the wording of the law. However, it is not certain that this will satisfy its opponents. Meanwhile, opponents of the law within the coalition insist that they have “a majority that can defeat the law.”
Against the backdrop of the crisis with the Haredi parties, the state budget is expected to be brought to a first reading vote on Monday. Recently, i24NEWS reported that the Knesset’s legal advisor, Attorney Sagit Afik, told Knesset members that at least two months are required from the moment it is placed on the Knesset table until its final approval. Therefore, the coalition is required to submit it this week in order for it to be approved on time.
The problem facing the coalition and Prime Minister Netanyahu is that this year there is not enough time to pass the budget by the end of March, as Passover Eve falls on April 1, and therefore the budget needs to be approved in its third reading by March 25, two months from today.
Amid the pressure and the attempt to bring the budget to a vote, the Hasidic Council of Torah Sages published its decision this month against the conscription law: “The Council expresses its deep pain and concern over the campaign of harassment against Torah students by various authorities, the harm to them and to their rights, their public denigration and humiliation for being students of God’s Torah; something that is becoming increasingly severe.”
They also wrote that the Council of Torah Sages demands a law “without personal and institutional sanctions and without arrests, as has been customary all these years. Any other legislation that harms Torah scholars whose Torah study is their profession, imposes sanctions on them, or sets quotas is unacceptable. And it must be opposed with all force.”
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Syria and Kurdish Forces Extend Ceasefire by 15 Days Amid Rising Tensions
A person holds flags as people celebrate after the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls much of Syria’s oil-rich northeast, has signed a deal agreeing to integrate into Syria’s new state institutions, the Syrian presidency said on Monday, in Damascus, Syria, March 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
i24 News – A four-day ceasefire between Syrian government forces and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which expired on Saturday night, has been extended by 15 days, officials from both sides said, providing a temporary respite amid rising tensions in northeast Syria.
The extension, effective from 11 PM local time, was announced by Syria’s defense ministry to support an ongoing US operation transferring Islamic State detainees from Syrian prisons into Iraq. The SDF confirmed the agreement was reached through international mediation, while dialogue with Damascus continues.
The ceasefire follows recent advances by government troops, who seized swathes of northern and eastern territory from the SDF in the past two weeks, consolidating control under President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Sharaa had initially given SDF forces until Saturday to lay down arms or face renewed fighting.
The US has been conducting shuttle diplomacy to establish a lasting ceasefire and facilitate the integration of the SDF, which was Washington’s main partner in Syria for years, into the state led by Sharaa. Senior US and French officials reportedly warned Sharaa against sending troops into remaining Kurdish-held areas to avoid potential mass abuses against civilians.
As tensions escalated ahead of the Saturday deadline, SDF forces reinforced positions in Qamishli, Hasakeh, and Kobane. Kurdish security sources indicated the buildup was precautionary amid fears of renewed conflict.
The offensive earlier this month marked the culmination of a year of rising tensions. Sharaa, whose forces toppled Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, aims to bring all of Syria under state control, while Kurdish authorities have resisted merging their autonomous civilian and military institutions into Sharaa’s administration.
With key oil fields, hydroelectric dams, and facilities holding Islamic State detainees now under government control, the 15-day ceasefire offers a brief pause. The situation remains fragile, and the international community continues to monitor developments closely.