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Peter Beinart, Elliot Cosgrove and other Jewish leaders face off over the future of liberal Zionism
(JTA) — For decades, liberal Zionism served the American Jewish majority as the ideological bridge between democratic and Jewish values: Support for Israel was based in, and justified by, a commitment to Jewish self-determination anchored in democracy, and animated by the promise of peace with the Palestinians.
On Tuesday night in Manhattan, a group of prominent rabbis and Jewish thinkers gathered to ask whether that bridge is now collapsing.
The conversation, held at B’nai Jeshurun in the heart of the famously Jewish and historically liberal Upper West Side, centered on what panelists described as a profound crisis in liberal Zionism — accelerated by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the devastating war in Gaza that followed, but rooted in decades of occupation, the rightward political drift in Israel and growing estrangement between American and Israeli Jews.
The panel brought together figures who have long wrestled publicly with Israel’s moral and political direction, albeit to different degrees: Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the rabbinic human rights organization T’ruah; Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Manhattan’s Park Avenue Synagogue; Peter Beinart, the writer and editor who lately has soured on the idea of a Jewish state in favor of a single, binational state of Arabs and Jews; and Esther Sperber, an Israeli-American architect and Orthodox activist critical of Israel’s shift to the right.
Representatives of the Zionist right were not invited to sit on the panel, said moderator Rabbi Irwin Kula, because “that’s [not] where the crisis is.”
“We are living through the collapse of a paradigm,” said Kula, describing a polarized Jewish community shaken by grief, fear of antisemitism, and, especially for liberal Zionists, despair that their vision of two states for two people will ever come about. Kula, who championed pluralism as the president of the Jewish organization CLAL, said the question was no longer how big the Jewish tent should be, but whether it had already been “shredded.”
Throughout the evening, Kula resisted turning the discussion into a debate over one state versus two states or competing historical narratives. Instead, he pressed panelists to articulate the fears and “nightmares” driving their positions — a strategy meant to surface “vulnerability” rather than certainty. For the most part, the audience — 700 in the sanctuary, and another 1,000 online, according to the synagogue — held its applause and jeers, as Kula requested, lending the evening the hushed air of a memorial service.
Cosgrove, who recently referred to himself as a “liberal Zionist disillusioned by the Israeli government,” framed his fears around internal Jewish fracture. Drawing on biblical imagery, he warned that American Jews were increasingly turning one another into enemies, and said that the role of pulpit rabbis like him is to make room in their congregations for disagreement.
“My primary fear, and that is my primary role right now, is that in a moment of time when the Jewish people don’t lack for external enemies, we are making internal enemies,” he said. “And I believe that the role of rabbinic leadership and all of leadership right now must be that we restrain ourselves from this need to call the other a ‘self-hating Jew’ or ‘self-hating Zionist,’ or whatever label you want to put on one side, and a colonial oppressor on the other side.”
Jacobs, whose organization has been outspoken in condemning Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank, said liberal Zionism’s credibility has been undermined by institutions that claim its mantle while abandoning their Jewish values.
For years, she said, major Jewish “legacy” organizations instructed American Jews that supporting Israel meant defending its government, ignoring occupation and silencing Palestinian voices. As Israel has moved further away from liberal democracy, that model has alienated young Jews, whose distancing from Israel was front of mind for a panel whose youngest members are in their 50s.
“You have a young generation who’s never known Israel without Netanyahu in the helm, or almost never known the possibility of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians,” Jacobs said.
“Unsurprisingly,” she continued, that generation “looks around and says, ‘Well, if you’re telling me that Zionism means defending occupation and defending illiberal democracy, I want no part of that.’”
Jacobs suggested that most American Jews remain deeply connected to Israel while opposing its current government and supporting a two-state solution — a position she described as underrepresented in communal leadership.
In March, a Pew Research survey found that about 46% of Jewish Americans, or a plurality, said a two‑state solution is the best outcome. Polling by Pew and others also suggests that while a substantial share of young Jews still affirms the importance of Israel and the two‑state idea, they also tend to be less supportive of Israeli policy and more questioning of traditional Zionist approaches than older generations.
Sperber brought the crisis into the realm of family and faith. Speaking as an Israeli with relatives across the political spectrum, she described conversations that have become nearly impossible, even among her siblings in Israel who share religious language and deep attachment to the land.
She said her own activism as a founder of Smol Emuni, or the “faithful left,” grew out of alarm at what she called the celebration of power, vengeance and dehumanization in Israel discourse in her community of Orthodox and otherwise observant Jews. Their uncritical support of the current Israeli government and its hawkish policies is often justified, she said, through distorted readings of Jewish tradition.
“We hear a kind of admiration of power and vengeance and brutality that is using our Jewish tradition as its justification,” said Sperber. “People talking about the Palestinians as Amalek, a kind of mythical nation that is supposed to be destroyed.
“Our Judaism has been leached away from us, and we need to find a way to bring it back into a place that’s morally grounded in our Torah and in our kind of democratic and liberal” values, she continued.
What is needed, she argued, is not only broader inclusion but teshuvah — moral self-examination and repentance — a core Jewish response to catastrophe.
Beinart, a prominent journalist whose call for one state has placed him outside the liberal Zionist camp, described his own position as emerging from years of listening to Palestinians, including people in Gaza. He spoke of specific conversations that left him haunted by the scale of civilian suffering and fearful of being judged by future generations for silence or complicity.
“The most constructive role I could play is to nudge people a little bit to listen to Palestinians,” he said. Such conversations undermine assumptions about Palestinian intentions and force Jews to confront how “ethnonationalism in Israel-Palestine” contradicts their own ideals as Americans. The liberal Zionist promise — that one could affirm Jewish safety, democracy and equality simultaneously — has failed under the weight of reality, he suggested.
At the same time, Beinart — recently criticized by Zionists and supporters of the Israel boycott after his appearance at Tel Aviv University — acknowledged the cost of rejecting the Zionist idea of exclusive Jewish sovereignty: estrangement from the observant Jewish communities he once felt at home in, and anxiety about what that alienation means for his children.
“My nightmare is that I will continue to lose those relationships because I can’t find a way to communicate effectively with people who profoundly disagree with the positions that I’ve taken that I do it out of love for our people and then other people,” said Beinart.
Indeed, Cosgrove suggested that Beinart’s views have become so toxic in many parts of the Jewish community that it was a risk for a prominent pulpit rabbi like him to share the stage. “I’m concerned, because this is a public forum, that me sitting here quietly would signal my assent with anything that’s being said here,” Cosgrove said at one point, earning scattered applause.
Cosgrove agreed with the notion that American Jews could learn from Palestinian voices, but also said that critics of Israel should speak with Israeli soldiers and others “risking life and limb to make sure the atrocities of Oct. 7 never happen again.”
Repeatedly, the conversation returned to American Jews’ relationship with Israeli Jews — and to the question of responsibility across distance and disagreement. Even panelists sharply critical of Israeli policy rejected the idea of disengagement.
“We can’t try to create a Jewish community that has nothing to do with half of the [world’s] Jews,” Jacobs said, referring to the young anti-Zionist Jews who are severing their relationship with Israel, home to more than 7 million Jews. At the same time, she urged American Jews to stop using Israel as a proxy for Jewish identity and invest more deeply in Jewish life at home.
By the evening’s end, no roadmap had emerged for saving liberal Zionism — or replacing it. Sperber suggested Jews like her have a responsibility to continue to bring their “moral convictions to your Jewish community and the very broken country that we live in,” even in the absence of political solutions.
“The challenge is on us, those who still believe that Israel is a vital and important place that we care [about] and love,” she said.
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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