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Pro-Israel stalwarts Miriam Adelson and Noa Tishby join chorus condemning judicial reforms as protests enter 10th week
(JTA) — The actor Noa Nishby has gone to bat for Israel on U.S. college campuses as an official emissary of her home country. The philanthropist Miriam Adelson has underwritten multiple organizations dedicated to building pro-Israel sentiment in the United States.
And now both prominent Israeli-Americans have publicly joined what is turning out to be a resounding chorus of criticism of Israel’s current government and its efforts to sap the country’s judiciary of its independence and power.
“I will say it in the sharpest and clearest way: Diaspora Jewry and Israel’s supporters in the world are shocked. They are shocked,” Tishby said in a column published in Hebrew on Ynet Saturday. “With great pain they look and see how the country they fiercely defended — in Congress, in the media, on the networks or in front of foreign governments — is changing its face.”
Tishby wrote that she had never publicly criticized “any step taken by any government” in more than two decades as a public figure, but that she was writing “the most difficult public text I have ever written” because Israelis need to understand that the judicial reform legislation, which she called “not a reform, but a coup,” brings their country out of step with other democracies and would threaten its national security and support abroad.
“It’s not like America. Not even a little,” Tishby wrote.
Writing in Israel Hayom, the right-wing Israeli newspaper founded by her late husband Sheldon, Adelson sidestepped the legislation itself and instead focused on its speedy advance.
“Regardless of the substance of the reforms, the government’s dash to ratify them is naturally suspect, raising questions about the root objectives and concern that this is a hasty, injudicious, and irresponsible move. A good deal is reached through cold-eyed circumspection,” wrote Adelson, who with Sheldon was first a funder of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and then supported the Israel American Council, where she was board chair. She later added, “Bad motivations never bring about good outcomes.”
The statements from Adelson and Tishby offer a clear sign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot expect prominent allies abroad to back his right-wing government on its signature legislation. They join a chorus of figures who have in the past been notable for slapping down Jewish Diaspora criticism of Israel as unwarranted, among them the writers Yossi Klein Halevi, Matti Friedman and Daniel Gordis; the constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz; New York Times columnist Bret Stephens; and the former long-serving national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman.
Adelson and her husband were in the past major funders of the Zionist Organization of America, one of the handful of U.S. Jewish bodies defending the new governments planned reforms.
Protests within Israel entered their 10th week on Saturday night, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating not just in Tel Aviv, the country’s liberal center, but in cities across the country and even in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where most voters are right wing.
Among those publicly condemning the legislation this week have been scores of Israeli military officials; the Jewish former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, who said the changes would cause “tremendous damage”; and about 150 people in Gush Etzion, a group of religious settlements that were a stronghold for the far-right Religious Zionist bloc in last year’s election.
בפעם החמישית ברציפות, 150 מפגינים בגוש עציון. ״גשר צר מאוד״ pic.twitter.com/YLrR862jVt
— Ben Caspit בן כספית (@BenCaspit) March 11, 2023
A core piece of the legislation advanced on Sunday, with a hearing in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on the provision giving the government power over appointing judges. The legislation’s proponents say reforms are needed because the judiciary is out of step with the sentiments of voters, while its broad coalition of critics at home and abroad say they would threaten Israel’s status as a democracy with checks and balances.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has called for compromise talks, and there are some signs that efforts to reach a compromise may be taking place behind closed doors. But Netanyahu’s far-right partners in his governing coalition have not indicated an appetite to slow down or otherwise change their approach.
One of those partners, Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionists, is beginning his first U.S. visit as a government minister. Few Jewish groups have agreed to meet with the finance minister, who also has authority over civil administration in the West Bank, and protests are planned as he lands in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.
Smotrich is speaking to Israel Bonds, the investment mechanism that works closely with his ministry, and an array of liberal Jewish groups have announced plans to picket the speech at a hotel in downtown Washington. Ahead of Smotrich’s speech, a group of leading investors in Israel will hold a press conference in the same hotel to outline what they say is the threats the radical reforms pose to Israel’s economy.
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Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96
(JTA) — Frank Gehry, a Jewish architect who became one of the world’s most renowned innovators in his field for his contributions to modernist architecture, including the famed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, has died at 96.
His death following a brief respiratory illness was confirmed on Friday by the chief of staff at his firm, Meaghan Lloyd, according to the New York Times.
Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on Feb. 28, 1929, to a Jewish family in Toronto. In 1947, Gehry moved to Los Angeles with his family and later went on to graduate from the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in 1954.
The same year, he changed his name to Gehry at the behest of his first wife who was “worried about antisemitism and thought it sounded less Jewish.” He would later say he would not make the choice again.
Among Gehry’s most acclaimed works, which feature his signature, sculptural style, are the Bilbao Guggenheim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris and the DZ Bank Building in Berlin.
Gehry also often returned to the motif of a fish, including two large fish sculptures in the World Trade Center in New York City and on Barcelona’s seafront. Some tied the fish motif to his recollections about his Jewish grandmother’s trips to the fishmonger to prepare for Shabbat each week.
“We’d put it in the bathtub,” Gehry said, according to the New York Times. “And I’d play with this fish for a day until she killed it and made gefilte fish.”
Gehry began to identify as an atheist shortly after his bar mitzvah. But in 2018, while he was working on ANU-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, he told the Jewish Journal that Judaism had influenced his career nonetheless.
“There’s a curiosity built into the [Jewish] culture,” he said. “I grew up under that. My grandfather read Talmud to me. That’s one of the Jewish things I hang on to probably — that philosophy from that religion. Which is separate from God. It’s more ephemeral. I was brought up with that curiosity. I call it a healthy curiosity. Maybe it is something that the religion has produced. I don’t know. It’s certainly a positive thing.”
In 1989, Gehry won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, considered one of the top awards in the field of architecture, and in 1999 won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. In 2007, Gehry also received the Jerusalem Prize for Arts and Letters and in 2016 won the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-president Barack Obama.
His survivors include his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, daughter Brina, and sons Alejandro and Samuel. Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.
The post Frank Gehry, renowned architect who began life as Frank Goldberg, dies at 96 appeared first on The Forward.
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Herzog Says Wellbeing of Israelis His Only Concern in Deal With Netanyahu’s ‘Extraordinary’ Pardon Request
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – In an interview with Politico published on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog remained tight-lipped on whether he intended to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extraordinary” pardon request, saying that his decision will be motivated by what’s best for Israel.
“There is a process which goes through the Justice Ministry and my legal adviser and so on. This is certainly an extraordinary request and above all when dealing with it I will consider what is the best interest of the Israeli people,” Herzog said. “The well-being of the Israeli people is my first, second and third priority.”
Asked specifically about President Donald Trump’s request, Herzog said “I respect President Trump’s friendship and his opinion,” adding, “Israel, naturally, is a sovereign country.”
Herzog addressed a wide range of topics in the interview, including the US-Israel ties and the shifts in public opinion on Israel.
“One has to remember that the fountains of America, of American life, are based on biblical values, just like ours. And therefore, I believe that the underlying fountain that we all drink from is the same,” he said. “However, I am following very closely the trends that I see in the American public eye and the attitude, especially of young people, on Israel.”
“It comes from TikTok,” he said of the torrent of hostility toward Israel that has engulf swathes of U.S. opinion since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, “from a very shallow discourse of the current situation, pictures or viewpoints, and doesn’t judge from the big picture, which is, is Israel a strategic ally? Yes. Is Israel contributing to American national interests, security interests? Absolutely yes. Is Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? Absolutely yes.”
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Syria’s Sharaa Charges Israel ‘Exports Its Crises to Other Countries’
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday escalated his messaging against Israel at the Doha forum.
“Israel is working to export its own crises to other countries and escape accountability for the massacres it committed in the Gaza Strip, justifying everything with security concerns,” he said.
“Meanwhile, Syria, since its liberation, has sent positive messages aimed at establishing the foundations of regional stability.
“Israel has responded to Syria with extreme violence, launching over 1,000 airstrikes and carrying out 400 incursions into its territory. The latest of these attacks was the massacre it perpetrated in the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, which claimed dozens of lives.
“We are working with influential countries worldwide to pressure Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after December 8, 2014, and all countries support this demand.
“Syria insists on Israel’s adherence to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. The demand for a demilitarized zone raises many questions. Who will protect this zone if there is no Syrian army presence?
“Any agreement must guarantee Syria’s interests, as it is Syria that is subjected to Israeli attacks. So, who should be demanding a buffer zone and withdrawal?”