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On the streets of Tel Aviv, protesters on cusp of a big victory vow to keep fighting
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Yaniv, a resident of Tel Aviv, has lost count of how many protests he’s been to during the past three months. But on Monday afternoon, he headed once again to Kaplan Street, the urban artery that has become ground zero of the anti-government demonstrations, to demonstrate once again.
Israel’s current rupture, said Yaniv, 34, is the “biggest crisis in my lifetime.”
“We’ll keep going until something changes,” he said. “They left us no choice. The damage has been done.”
Week after week, Yaniv and tens of thousands of other Israelis have filled the streets of Tel Aviv to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of the country’s judiciary — which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power and influence. Then, on Sunday night, massive protests again took shape to oppose Netanyahu’s firing of his defense minister, who called for a pause on the legislation.
Now, the following day, the protesters came with a different feeling: that their activism might actually succeed, at least in the short term. After people gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere, Netanyahu announced that he would pause the legislation to allow time for dialogue. Several of his ministers had already called for him to do just that.
Justin Jacobs, a recent immigrant to Israel from the United States, said he is hopeful about the outcome of the protest movement. (Deborah Danan)
But even as the campaign to stall the legislation was poised to achieve an at least temporary victory, protesters were not in a celebratory mood. They vowed to continue demonstrating against what some described as Netanyahu’s broader authoritarian impulses.
“You see how the liberal voice that has been missing for so long is returning to the street and has become the mainstream,” said Ben Luria, a resident of Jaffa protesting in Tel Aviv. “It looks like they’ve succeeded in passing the message across.”
But for Luria, that success doesn’t translate into any desire to ease the pressure. “You can’t deny that this is no longer just a question of Bibi being Bibi, this is a dictator in the making,” he added, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “We need to put the line somewhere.”
Even as Israelis were glued to their TV screens, waiting to hear Netanyahu announce a suspension of the legislation, Daria, who immigrated to Israel with her family from what is now Russia, did not pin her hopes on Netanyahu changing course.
“I don’t think that even if they stop this legislation, they will stop anything else,” said Daria, who came to the protest with Yaniv and, like him, declined to give her last name. “Even if they say they’ll postpone until Pesach or for forever, that doesn’t mean that we stop protesting what this government is doing.”
Sunday night’s protests were followed by a countrywide general strike. Blocked streets and canceled bus routes in downtown Tel Aviv meant that a 20-minute journey to a high-risk pregnancy clinic on Monday instead took an hour and a half for Natalie Solomon, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant. She said she hoped Netanyahu would concede and spare Israelis further disruption.
“Our country is falling apart,” she said, expressing her hope that an end to the political standoff is near. “I really hope Bibi backs down today, that’s the only option. … We care about democracy but we really just care about the health of our baby.
At the end of the day it really does disrupt day-to-day lives.”
Despite being on the cusp of their first major victory, protesters said the potential respite offered by Netanyahu would be a minor gesture, not one that could overcome the hard feelings that have built up over the past three months.
Justin Jacobs, an immigrant to Israel from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said Israel has “turned a corner” after Sunday night’s protests.”So, [there’s] a glimmer of hope that we’ll go back to the status quo, which to me remains not good enough,” he said. “But not good enough is still better than horrifying.”
Others were less optimistic. “My feeling, the feeling of my parents, my grandparents, [is] that there’s no future here, I don’t know if I’ll raise kids here,” said Yotam Weingrad.
Like Weingrad, Daria, recalling her family’s experience, is also considering her future in the Jewish state.
Yariv and Daria, left, walk in Tel Aviv after participating in anti-government protests on Monday, March 27, 2023; at right, Natalie Solomon said her trip to a high-risk pregnancy clinic took more than four times longer than normal because of the protests. (Deborah Danan)
“I grew up in a family with intimate knowledge of what it feels like to live under oppression, and I feel like it’s our duty to do whatever we can to prevent it,” she said. “But if push comes to shove, if nothing’s going to change, I’ll make the same decision my parents did — my kids aren’t going to live in a dictatorship.”
For those not emotionally invested in the Israeli crisis, the streets of Tel Aviv on Monday provided a rare experience, and a sense of uncertainty. Jennifer, a tourist from Utah visiting Israel with her two daughters, Holly and Diana, wanted to know if “it is going to get scary” and wondered if they’d be able to get back to the United States, as airports had closed due to the general strike.
“We’ve never been to this part of the world so we’re kind of like ‘Wow,’ just taking in everything,” said Diana. “We don’t know what it’s like without the protests, and we’re like, ‘This is Tel Aviv. It’s a lot.’”
Support for the protests isn’t unanimous across Tel Aviv, a bastion of left-wing politics in Israel. Josh Eidelshtein called the protests “hypocritical,” and blamed them for fanning the flames of conflict.
“What if the protesters were right-wingers, Orthodox Jews, or Palestinians?” he said. “Would their strategies still be OK? There is too much hate being bred here, and it’s as if the collective stress and anxiety this country has lived on for so long has been set aflame. The same people who went out to vote [for the left] are now trying to work against the system because they didn’t get what they wanted.”
Khalil, who originally hails from the Arab village of Ein Hawd in Israel’s north, and has lived in Tel Aviv for 50 years, also opted to stay away from the protests, which he felt did not speak for him.
“The Arabs are a minority, what do they have to do with these protests?” Khalil said as he walked his dog near a giant yellow sign reading “Nonstop Democracy,” painted by the Tel Aviv municipality on the boardwalk.
“Bibi has done good things but now he’s silent. This is a man who knows how to speak,” Khalil said. Then, referring to Netanyahu’s coalition partners, he added, “He’s not the king of Israel anymore. He made big mistakes by taking those criminals into the government with him. They want to throw out all the Arabs.”
Also sitting out the protests was Meir Dayan, who counts himself among the supporters of Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform. He is especially in favor of the legislation that was due to be brought for a final vote on Monday, which would have increased the governing coalition’s control over Supreme Court appointments. But Dayan added that he didn’t appreciate the way Netanyahu attempted to pass the measures into law.
The path along the beach in Tel Aviv has been painted with pro-democracy messages. (Deborah Danan)
“The way they went about it was reckless,” he said. “Change to heavy organizational processes — because this is what this basically is, after all — doesn’t happen with legislation, it happens with people. It must be bottom-up and from a place of education, not ignorance.”
Dayan predicted that Netanyahu will halt the legislation now, and then in the summer months “when the left are overseas,” he will return it to the Knesset floor.
Roughly four miles away from the main protest, a smaller demonstration coalesced near Jaffa’s clocktower, a landmark at the entrance to Tel Aviv’s older counterpart. At this protest, children as young as 5 chanted “Shame!” and “Save Democracy!” while their parents stood to the side.
“Here the adults are quiet so the children are taking the lead. It’s exciting,” said Gavri, 10.
There are a few things he’d like to bring about in Israeli society: the failure of the judicial overhaul, as well as an end to fighting between Jews and Arabs. Like the adults protesting across the city, he vowed not to give up.
“I will be here until the end,” he said. “I hope it won’t be a long time.”
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Israeli and diaspora Jews live in different realities. The Israel Day parade proved it
If Sunday’s Israel Day Parade in New York City had been held in Israel, with the same Israeli leaders in attendance, there is no way that so many people would have shown up — unless it was to protest.
The fact that tens of thousands of American Jews seemed to have no problem marching alongside far-right Israeli ministers — including Bezalel Smotrich and Amichai Eliyahu — is a clear indication of the ever-widening gap between Israelis and diaspora Jews, whose support for Israel is, for the most part, conceptual. And that gap isn’t exclusively, or even primarily, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yes, there are many Israelis who oppose the messianic, anti-Palestinian rhetoric and policies pushed by Smotrich, Eliyahu and the rest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet — although not nearly enough, if you ask me. But the broad disdain for this government has more to do with domestic issues.
Israelis are furious over the ongoing Haredi draft exception; the government’s effective abandonment of citizens on the northern border; its refusal to take any accountability for the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 attack; a collapsing education system; a narrowing of religious freedoms; soaring murder rates in Arab communities; an epidemic of violence among Israeli teenagers; and police ineptitude and brutality.
From Israel, it seems clear that diaspora Jews have been unwilling to confront just how much damage Smotrich and his fellow coalition partners have done inside Israel.
Which is perhaps why Israel Day in New York City felt so disconnected from Israeli life.
The discourse around Israel’s delegation to the parade, at least on my algorithm, seemed to involve two contrasting beliefs: Either the ministers’ presence invalidated the legitimacy of the entire event and no one should have participated, or the parade was not a show of support for the Israeli government but a celebration of culture and heritage — and therefore these politicians should not be allowed to define it.
That debate largely took place around Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision not to attend the parade. To some pro-Israel Jews, his choice read as a rebuttal of Israel’s right to exist. In response, they spoke in the sweeping language of Jewish self-determination. This is nothing new: pro-Israel diaspora Jews often find themselves defending Israel against those who call for its destruction.
And yet, when it comes to the people who are actually destroying it, many are remarkably silent.
The full list of problematic statements and behaviors from members of Israel’s political the delegation is too long to detail in full. Among the most shocking items: Eliyahu, a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Jewish Power party, has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on the strip was a possibility. His fellow party member, Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, who also attended the parade, has led several provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in violation of Israel’s own clear norms regarding the holy Muslim site.
And Smotrich — whose attendance organizers said they had not been told about in advance — has doggedly worked to enable the de facto annexation of the West Bank.
Obviously, diaspora Jews have a different relationship with Israel than those of us who live here. We exist in completely different contexts, with different needs, fears and responsibilities. I do not believe our concerns need to be exactly identical. I am not telling anyone it was wrong to go to the parade.
But the question is what happens after.
How will the thousands who poured out to celebrate Israel in Manhattan on Sunday use their voices and energy to fight not just for Israel’s right to exist, but also for it to have a better future? After mainstream Jewish institutions have taken apart their floats, what resources will they allocate to protecting Israeli democracy, supporting the communities this government has abandoned and opposing the extremists dismantling the country from within?
After the parade, I kept seeing a brief clip of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer speaking from the dais. He ended his speech with the popular refrain “Am Yisrael Chai,” which he then translated into English.
Except he stumbled a bit over the words. Instead of saying, “The people of Israel live,” it came out as “the People Israel live.”
His flub inadvertently captured a deep truth. Israel, as a peoplehood, as an idea, is alive and kicking. Despite what some online ideologues want you to believe, our ancestral homeland is not going anywhere.
Nor do we need to fight quite as hard as we seem to think for the right to self-determination, seeing as we already have it and are not in any real danger of losing it.
But the people of Israel — the ones who actually live inside the country — are suffering. We are at the mercy of the most extreme government this country has ever seen.
We want to raise our children in security: real, long-lasting, diplomatically achieved security. We want to send them to decent schools in the morning and get them back in one piece at the end of the day. We want to live in a democracy, with a free press and an independent judiciary, where our daughters can read from the Torah if they want to and our sons can marry men if they want to.
The people of Israel do not need you to stand with Israel in a show of blanket solidarity.
We would much rather you stand with us, in active opposition to our government.
The post Israeli and diaspora Jews live in different realities. The Israel Day parade proved it appeared first on The Forward.
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North Carolina Democrats reject Gaza genocide resolution following campaign by Jewish caucus
(JTA) — For weeks, Jewish Democrats in North Carolina worked to block the state’s Democratic Party from passing a resolution declaring Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.
On Saturday, they narrowly prevailed.
The measure, titled the “Genocide Accountability Resolution,” was struck down by members of the North Carolina Democratic Party’s State Executive Committee with a vote of 163-130.
For Amy DeLoach, the first vice chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party Jewish Caucus, the victory marked a sign that Jewish Democrats still have a place in the party, even as debates over Israel have roiled Democratic politics across the country.
“Most Jews vote Democratically, and we were feeling abandoned, and now we feel like we have a home again,” said DeLoach, who also sits on the party’s international subcommittee.
The defeat of the resolution comes as support for Israel has dropped dramatically among Democrats, and the U.S.-Israel alliance has increasingly emerged as a third rail within the party.
While resolutions condemning the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and calling to halt arms sales to Israel have been blocked by the Democratic National Committee over the past year, last June, the North Carolina Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for an immediate arms embargo on Israel.
Joel Wanger, the chief political officer of the Democratic Majority for Israel, welcomed the outcome of the genocide resolution in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Tuesday.
“This resolution would have divided Democrats at a time when we should be united in opposing Donald Trump, while doing nothing to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.
The resolution was introduced earlier this year by a member of the progressive, Arab and Muslim caucuses of the North Carolina Democratic Party. It advanced from the precinct level through county, district and state bodies before reaching the State Executive Committee for a final vote Saturday.
The resolution would have added language to the state party platform calling for the “prosecution” and “vetting” of individuals and entities in the United States who “may have participated in or enabled genocide.” The resolution also cited a United Nations Commission of Inquiry that concluded for the first time in September that Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza.
The resolution’s defeat Saturday followed an extensive campaign by the party’s Jewish Caucus to block its adoption.
In a May 27 letter to members of the executive committee, leaders of the Jewish Caucus urged them to reject the resolution, arguing that state parties “should not adopt contested international policy positions” and that its timing would hurt 2026 Democratic candidates and divide voters.
“Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, Christian, and secular Democrats are united on affordability, public education, healthcare, voting rights, and reproductive freedom,” the letter said. “This resolution forces them to take sides on something most did not join the party to fight about.”
The letter cited “serious factual and legal problems” with the resolution and said Jewish Democrats would support a substitute “affirming NC Democrats’ commitment to ending civilian suffering in Gaza, supporting humanitarian aid, and opposing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and political violence in all forms.”
But the Jewish Caucus was not the only group within the party invested in the outcome of the vote.
Last month, the leaders of the Muslim, Arab, interfaith and progressive caucuses of the North Carolina Democratic Party issued its own a letter calling on members of the State Executive Committee to support the resolution in order to “affirm our party’s commitment to human rights and the protection of civilian life.”
“All too frequently, the burdensome narrative of genocide denial has been heard from those persons and organizations who have 1) either acquiesced to genocide or 2) feared the worst reprisals from those who have supported it,” the letter read. “This silence compromises the faith of many voters in our party.”
The letter, which cited a recent study that found 80% of Democrats have an unfavorable view of Israel, was undersigned by the head of the state party’s Jewish Democrats, a non-Zionist Jewish subgroup within the Interfaith Caucus.
Mark Bochkis, the communications chair of the Jewish Democrats, told JTA that his group and the Jewish Caucus “fundamentally disagree about the divisiveness” of the resolution.
“We believe this is actually an issue that galvanizes the younger base of the party and other other important key voting blocks for the Democratic party,” Bochkis said. “We believe not speaking out on something like this is actually holding the party back.”
Paul McAllister, the chair of the Interfaith Caucus, told JTA that “we don’t want to see anything happen to any member of any community, Jewish or otherwise, but we do want accountability.”
While McAllister said that the language concerning “prosecution” in the resolution could have been “clarified,” he said the Jewish Caucus’ suggestion of an alternative to the resolution attracted little support because he felt it “waters down the need to hold a nation accountable for what it is doing to another people.”
“My major concern is that we have a faction within the party that wants justice for all people equally, Jews and Palestinians, and that there’s some in the party, namely members of the Jewish caucus, who do not comprehend how critical it is that we not only look after our own interest or our own group’s interest, but the interest of others, and this is the struggle,” McAllister said.
DeLoach said the scheduling of the vote last week on Shabbat had bothered members of the Jewish caucus. But she said they had “let that one go” to focus on fighting the resolution.
“We talk about that amongst ourselves, but we’re in a war right now,” she said. “We’re going to pick and choose the battles we fight.”
DeLoach said her group viewed the resolution as a political liability that could potentially force Democratic candidates in the state to either distance themselves from the party or embrace a “difficult divisive issue” on the campaign trail.
“No politician is going to want to run on a platform that includes this,” DeLoach said. “Platforms don’t win elections, and this is going to risk us losing an outrageously important election.”
DeLoach pointed to the campaigns of Roy Cooper, the state’s former governor who’s running for a Senate seat, and Anita Earls, who is running for reelection to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
“Most Democrats in North Carolina really are more concerned about their electric bill right now, and the cost of food,” DeLoach said. “As the vote shows, you know, nobody likes what’s going on in the Middle East. We don’t like what’s going on in the Middle East, but we know that’s not where our focus should be right now.”
Looking ahead, DeLoach said she hoped that the resolution’s defeat would serve as a warning against rhetoric she saw as “adding to a drumbeat of antisemitism that is so prevalent in the country.”
“There’s war crimes on both sides here, but it’s not a genocide, and y’all pounding this drum is making it more and more dangerous for Jews to live in this country,” DeLoach said. “We see the defeat of this resolution not only as a chance for us to start just electing Democrats, but as a hopeful pause, at least, if not a stop to this horrible rhetoric.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post North Carolina Democrats reject Gaza genocide resolution following campaign by Jewish caucus appeared first on The Forward.
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Tidbits: For the first time, a kosher restaurant has won a Michelin star
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
צום ערשטן מאָל געווינט אַ כּשרער רעסטאָראַן אַ „מישעלין־שטערן“
ייִט״אַ. — ווען מע האָט באַשאָטן דעם ישׂראלדיקן קוכער רז שבתי (ראַז שאַבטײַ) מיט קאָנפֿעטי האָט ער זיך ממש צעוויינט — און זײַנע מיטאַרבעטער האָבן אים וואַרעם אַרומגענומען.
מיט עטלעכע מינוט פֿריִער האָט מען געמאָלדן, אַז זײַן רעסטאָראַן אין מיאַמי, וואָס הייסט „מוטראַ“, איז געוואָרן דער ערשטער כּשרער רעסטאָראַן צו באַקומען אַ „מישעלין־שטערן“ — דעם גרעסטן כּבֿוד אין דער רעסטאָראַן־אינדוסטריע.
„דאָס איז אַ מאָמענט פֿון שׂימחה און פֿון שטאָלץ,“ האָט שאַבטײַ געזאָגט דער ייִדישער טעלעגראַפֿישער אַגענטור. „דעם שטערן באַקומט נישט בלויז ׳מוטראַ׳, נאָר דאָס גאַנצע ייִדישע פֿאָלק.“
שבתי, וואָס האָט שוין געאַרבעט אין אַ צאָל קיכן איבער ניו־יאָרק און ישׂראל, האָט געעפֿנט „מוטראַ“ אין פֿעברואַר 2025, געבנדיק דעם רעסטאָראַן אַ נאָמען נאָך זײַן ירושלים־געבוירענער באָבען, וועמעס קאָכן האָט אינספּירירט זײַן מעניו.
„איך האָב ליב צו באַצייכענען דאָס עסן אין דעם רעסטאָראַן ווי ׳ירושלימער מאכלים׳ אַנטקעגן ׳מיטל־מיזרחדיקע אָדער ישׂראלדיקע מאכלים׳ ווײַל די טעמען וואָס איך פּרוּוו ברענגען צום טיש זענען די טעמען וואָס זענען פֿאַרבונדן מיט מײַנע זכרונות און מיט מײַנע עקסקורסיעס אין מאַרק מיט דער באָבען,” האָט שבתי געזאָגט. „איך דאַרף זײַן געטרײַ די פּאָטראַוועס וואָס די באָבע האָט מיך געהאָדעוועט.“
אַ באַשרײַבונג פֿונעם רעסטאָראַן אויף דער „מישעלין“־וועבזײַט לויבט זײַנע „פּרעכטיקע בוריקעס אין ‘אַהאָ בלאַנקאָ’ (אַ קאַלטע זופּ געמאַכט פֿון מאַנדלען, קנאָבל און עסיק)“ און „שאָפֿנפֿלייש־קאָבאַב מיט גערייכערטן פּאַטלעזשאַן־קרעם און פּאָמידאָרן־בוימל“.
אַ דאַנק דער אָנערקענונג איז „מוטראַ“ געוואָרן איינער פֿון די אָנגעזעענסטע רעסטאָראַנען און באַטרעפֿט אַן אמתן ווענדפּונקט פֿאַר דער כּשרער קיך. פֿאַר שבתי, וואָס האָט אָנגעהויבן היטן כּשרות מיט מער ווי 10 יאָר צוריק, איז די פּרעמיע אַ קלאָרער באַווײַז, אַז קולינאַרע אויסגעצייכנטקייט קען בליִען אין די ראַמען פֿון דער כּשרער קיך.
„איך האָף אַז די דערגרייכונג וועט אינספּירירן אַנדערע כּשרע קוכערס,“ האָט ער געזאָגט.
צו זען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To see the article in English, click here.
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