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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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The post Pro-Israel stalwarts Miriam Adelson and Noa Tishby join chorus condemning judicial reforms as protests enter 10th week appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How the Israeli police’s first trans volunteer fought bigotry on the force
From the beginning of the biographical documentary The First Lady, Efrat Tilma makes it clear she has mixed feelings about the film, which details how she became the first trans woman to volunteer in Israel’s police department. When asked why she wanted to make the movie, she tells one of the directors, “I didn’t want to. You asked me.” This prickly demeanor persists throughout the film, although she later acknowledges that she wants “to show people that a trans woman is just like any other woman, like any other person.”
Tilma starts her story in 1964, the year she first tried living as a woman. Using archival footage, animation, and present-day interviews, directors Udi Nir and Sagi Bornstein present a moving portrait of Tilma’s life, unveiling how the burdens of her past have followed her into the present.
When Tilma was 14, she often wandered the streets of Tel Aviv to escape her abusive father. There she met another trans woman, Gila Goldstein, who introduced her to a whole network of trans women who taught Tilma about hormones and gender reassignment surgery. That same year, a man held her hostage in his apartment for a day and a half and sexually assaulted her. Not long afterwards, she says, an Israeli police officer threatened to kill her for dressing as a woman.
These experiences made her determined to carve her own path in spite of obstacles or the opinions of others, including the film directors. In one scene, as the team records her coming out of her apartment building, she strikes several poses.
“Natural, Efrat. We said natural!” a director reminds her.
“Kiss my ass!” Tilma responds, before strutting away.
But behind all the bravado is a vulnerable human being, who spends her first moment in the film nervously rehearsing the speech she is going to give at a 2023 Pride celebration in Israel. Tilma acknowledges that she’s not sure she’s been able to process her trauma and still carries it with her.
After leaving Israel in 1967, Tilma spent nearly four decades living in Europe, where she created a new life for herself as a woman. She performed in nightclubs, worked as an airline stewardess, got sex reassignment surgery in Morocco, married a man, and, nearly two decades later, divorced him. In 2005, she finally moved back to Israel and, on a whim, began volunteering with the Israel Police.
She wasn’t open about her gender identity at first, given the negative way she saw her colleagues treat trans women on the street. But when the police captain eventually discovered she was trans, the result ended up being positive: She began leading workshops on approaching the trans community with empathy and respect.
The film jumps between Tilma’s past and the present, as she reacts to Netanyahu’s 2022 re-election and the creation of a far-right coalition in Israel. Convinced that the world is reverting to the hateful days of her youth, Tilma leaves the police force and plans how she’ll kill herself if the government attempts to round up trans people. As protests start to sweep the country, however, she decides to channel her fear into activism. Shots of her among the protesters are mixed with recollections of her 1971 sex reassignment surgery and abuse she faced from a doctor in 1973.
Respecting Tilma’s boundaries while encouraging her to share her life story, the filmmakers capture both Tilma’s toughness and sensitivity, giving the film the honesty and heart that make The First Lady feel so intimate. They get Tilma to open doors into her life — literally.
Several times, the directors try to convince Tilma to bring the film crew into her apartment, where she says that no one else has been for a decade. When she finally lets them inside, they encounter piles of clothing, discarded plastic bottles, and other hoarded objects. The filmmakers tell her that the film crew will help her reorganize the apartment bit by bit, in much the same way they piece together her story: bit by bit.
Even if she approaches the whole process with a bit of attitude, Tilma remains determined to never give up fighting for a better life — or a better apartment.
The First Lady will screen at the New York Jewish Film Festival on Jan. 20.
The post How the Israeli police’s first trans volunteer fought bigotry on the force appeared first on The Forward.
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Exclusive: Israeli Officials Harshly Critical of Steve Witkoff’s Influence on US Policy on Gaza, Iran, i24NEWS Told
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
i24 News – Amid growing disagreements with the Trump administration over the composition of the Board of Peace for Gaza and the question of a strike on Iran, officials in Israel point to a key figure behind decisions seen as running counter to Israeli interests: Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
The officials mention sustained dissatisfaction with Witkoff. Sources close to the PM Netanyahu told i24NEWS on Saturday evening: “For several months now, the feeling has been that envoy Steve Witkoff has strong ties, for his own reasons, across the Middle East, and that at times the Israeli interest does not truly prevail in his decision-making.”
This criticism relates both to the proposed inclusion of Turkey and Qatar in Gaza’s governing bodies and to the Iranian threat. A senior Israeli official put it bluntly: “If it turns out that he is among those blocking a strike on Iran, that is far more than a coincidence.”
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EU Warns of Downward Spiral After Trump Threatens Tariffs Over Greenland
European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on June 17, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman
European Union leaders on Saturday warned of a “dangerous downward spiral” over US President Donald Trump‘s vow to implement increasing tariffs on European allies until the US is allowed to buy Greenland.
“Tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. Europe will remain united, coordinated, and committed to upholding its sovereignty,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Antonio Costa said in posts on X.
The bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said tariffs would hurt prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, while distracting the EU from its “core task” of ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“China and Russia must be having a field day. They are the ones who benefit from divisions among allies,” Kallas said on X.
“Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity. If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside NATO.”
Ambassadors from the European Union’s 27 countries will convene on Sunday for an emergency meeting to discuss their response to the tariff threat.