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The Orthodox world has abandoned its values by abandoning Palestinians
In parts of the Orthodox world, racist rhetoric has been normalized.
Rabbis speaking from the bimah refer to Palestinians as Amalek. Calls to block humanitarian aid are incorporated into divrei torah. One might hear that “Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and their parties speak for the great majority of the religious Zionist community” — a terrifying normalization of religious extremists — or even that the Palestinian people do not exist.
We know where this kind of rhetoric leads. After undercover Israeli border police killed four members of the Bani Odeh family as they drove home from a shopping trip in Nablus in mid-March, one of the two surviving sons recounted being pulled from the car and beaten by a soldier who told a friend, “we killed the dogs.” That boy is only 11 years old; he will live the rest of his life with the memory of seeing his parents and two of his siblings killed in front of him.
The scale of Palestinian suffering in Gaza and the West Bank cannot be justified or ignored. However, in much of the American Orthodox and observant Jewish community — of which both of us are proud members — this pain is barely acknowledged, let alone condemned.
We know that these are deeply painful times for Israelis, who have endured two years of terror, fear and loss. But we believe our community has a moral imperative to empathize with Israelis and Palestinians alike — not one at the exclusion of the other.
The silence we see in our communities is neither incidental nor neutral. It is structural and communal, reinforced by political and institutional pressures.
Our tradition teaches “shetikah ke-hoda’ah” — that silence is tantamount to approval. We have seen this truth manifest in our modern world, through political upheavals like the #MeToo movement and the continuing Jeffrey Epstein scandal. These moments have proven that silence in the face of known misdeeds is not neutral.
Yet even with this clarity, too many forces in our community currently push for silence when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians. Among them are demands by funders who see supporting Israel as inconsistent with holding empathy for Palestinians, and cultural norms that suggest unquestioning support for Israel is a central principle of contemporary Orthodox life.
This communal silence allows us to ignore scathing reports of Israeli human rights and international law violations, including many issued by Israeli nonprofits such as B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Yesh Din and Peace Now.
What fills that vacuum should alarm anyone committed to principles of humanity and basic decency.
As Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller warned at a recent conference organized by Smol Emuni, the Orthodox left group we co-founded, if we cannot speak against Israeli war crimes or settler violence “it appears as if Judaism supports the massacre of innocents, the stealing of land and sheep, the burning of homes, the uprooting of olive trees, and the murder of children.”
Our tradition has been distorted by those, like Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who speak the language of revenge and supremacy.
Now, more than 900 days after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, it is time for the Orthodox community to refocus on the heart of our tradition. We must answer the biblical question: What does God demand of us right now?
How do we, as religious Jews, respond to horrific violence perpetrated by Jews? How do we face this historical moment in which Jewish people have killed more civilians than ever in modern history?
The horror inflicted on the Bani Odeh family is not an isolated incident. It is part of a sharp escalation of Israeli military and settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In March to date, seven Palestinians have been killed by Jewish extremists. That’s on top of the more than 68,000 people killed in Gaza during the war, including at least 20,000 children. (The total estimated death toll in Gaza includes both combatants and civilians.)
Where are the public reckoning with Jewish-led violence, and the demand for moral accountability? The sermons, communal statements, the school assemblies? Why aren’t rabbis invoking the most basic commandments: “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not steal”?
Where is the Torah that teaches that every human being is created in the image of God? The Torah that commands us to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before God”?
In many Jewish spaces, we acknowledge Jewish suffering, condemning Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah and antisemitism. But a moral and religious life demands that we ask not only what has been done to us, but what wrongs we have done to others.
We must create more communal spaces for pain to be heard and questions to be raised, a reprieve from the isolation many of Orthodox Jews horrified by Israel’s abuse of Palestinians experience in our communities. We must elevate voices within our tradition that reflect a different set of values, values centered on humility and compassion and a commitment to share the land with all those living on it. For every rabbinc teaching that celebrates force, we must quote others sources that demand kindness. When we hear “He who is kind to the cruel will become cruel to the kind,” we must answer “Walk in God’s ways — just as God is merciful, so too you must be merciful.”
And we must learn to listen to the voices of people on all sides of this conflict, even those that are unsettling. Because without hearing from others we cannot learn to live with them.
We co-founded Smol Emuni U.S. as a grassroots movement for those who share a deep commitment to and love for the land and people of Israel, and who believe in the essential Jewish principle that all humans are created in the image of God. We see the pursuit of justice and equality as an essential expression of Judaism. As Rabbi Mikhael Manekin, founder of HaSmol HaEmuni in Israel, often says “we are ‘smol’” — Hebrew for “left” — “not despite our faith, but because of it.”
Decades of occupation, ongoing war, and the erosion of Israeli democracy have not only strained Israeli society but strained Judaism itself. We need, in response, to invest in an Orthodox Judaism that is brave enough to be humble, and faithful enough to be self critical. We need a Judaism for those seeking an authentic Torah vision that insists that justice, equality and human dignity are not departures from our tradition, but its very core.
We need to pursue justice and teshuva returning to God’s call to “swerve from evil, to do good, and to pursue peace.”
The post The Orthodox world has abandoned its values by abandoning Palestinians appeared first on The Forward.
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London Police Set Up Specialist Jewish Protection Team
A police officer stands at the scene, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
British police are setting up a new team of 100 officers including counter terrorism specialists to help protect Jewish communities across London after a series of antisemitic attacks including the stabbing of two men.
The plan announced on Wednesday for a dedicated protection team comes as officers announced more arrests for antisemitism, including detaining a 35-year-old man on Saturday after rocks were thrown at an ambulance belonging to the Jewish community.
London‘s top police boss Mark Rowley said Jewish communities were facing “sustained threats” from hostile state actors as well as extreme right-wing groups, elements of the extreme left, and Islamist terrorists.
Detectives are examining whether the arson incidents have possible Iranian links, after British security officials warned that Iran was using criminal proxies to carry out hostile activity.
Since late March, there have been a number of high-profile arson attacks with four Jewish ambulances burned and synagogues targeted. Last week, two Jewish men were also stabbed. Both victims survived the attack.
Over the past four weeks, police said they had arrested around 50 people for antisemitic hate crimes and charged eight individuals. On top of that, 28 arrests have been made as part of investigations alongside counter terrorism policing for arson and other serious incidents.
“This new team will be primarily focused on protecting the Jewish community, which faces some of the highest levels of hate crime alongside significant terrorist and hostile state threats,” said a statement from London‘s Metropolitan Police force.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened a meeting on Monday with business, health and cultural leaders aimed at trying to tackle antisemitism.
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Iran Reviewing US Proposal to End War, Though Key Demands Remain Unaddressed
People walk on a street near a mural featuring an image of the late Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran, May 6, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran said on Wednesday it was reviewing a US peace proposal that sources said would formally end the war while leaving unresolved the key US demands that Iran suspend its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson cited by Iran‘s ISNA news agency said Tehran would convey its response. US President Donald Trump said he believed Iran wanted an agreement.
“They want to make a deal. We’ve had very good talks over the last 24 hours, and it’s very possible that we’ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Trump had sounded more pessimistic about the chances of a deal. In a Truth Social post, he threatened to restart the US bombing campaign in Iran, calling the possibility of Tehran agreeing to the latest US proposal a “big assumption.”
Trump has repeatedly played up the prospect of an agreement that would end the war that started Feb. 28, so far without success. The two sides remain at odds over a variety of difficult issues, such as Iran‘s nuclear ambitions and its control of the Strait of Hormuz, which before the war handled one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply.
A Pakistani source and another source briefed on the mediation said an agreement was close on a one-page memorandum that would formally end the conflict. That would kick off discussions to unblock shipping through the strait, lift US sanctions on Iran, and set curbs on Iran‘s nuclear program, the sources said.
It was unclear how the memorandum differs from a 14-point plan proposed by Iran last week, and Iran has yet to respond to the latest US proposal.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an unnamed source, said the US proposal contained some unacceptable provisions, without specifying which ones.
Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei, a spokesperson for parliament’s powerful foreign policy and national security committee, described the text as “more of an American wish-list than a reality.”
“The Americans will not gain anything in a war they are losing that they have not gained in face-to-face negotiations,” he wrote on social media.
OIL PRICES TUMBLE
Reports of a possible agreement caused global oil prices to tumble to two-week lows, with benchmark Brent crude futures falling around 11% to around $98 a barrel at one point before rising back above the $100 mark.
Global share prices also leapt and bond yields fell on optimism about an end to a war that has disrupted energy supplies.
Trump on Tuesday paused a two-day-old naval mission to reopen the blockaded strait, citing progress in peace talks.
The US military has kept up its own blockade on Iranian ships in the region. US Central Command said forces fired at an unladen Iranian-flagged tanker on Wednesday, disabling the vessel as it attempted to sail toward an Iranian port in violation of the blockade.
NO MENTION OF KEY US DEMANDS
The source briefed on the mediation said the US negotiations were being led by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. If both sides agreed on the preliminary deal, that would start the clock on 30 days of detailed negotiations to reach a full agreement.
The full agreement would end the competing US and Iranian blockades on the strait, lift US sanctions, and release frozen Iranian funds. It would also include some curbs on Iran‘s nuclear program, with the aim of a pause or moratorium on Iranian enrichment of uranium.
While the sources said the memorandum would not initially require concessions from either side, they did not mention several key demands Washington has made in the past, which Iran has rejected, such as curbs on Iran‘s missile program and an end to its support for proxy militias in the Middle East.
The sources also made no mention of Iran‘s existing stockpile of more than 400 kg (900 pounds) of near-weapons-grade uranium.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s ally against Iran, said on Wednesday the two leaders agreed that all enriched uranium must be removed from Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb.
Tehran denies wanting to acquire a nuclear weapon.
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Brussels cathedral installs plaques apologizing for medieval antisemitic persecution depicted in stained glass
(JTA) — More than 650 years after Jews in Brussels were executed and expelled following false antisemitic accusations, church officials at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula have installed a plaque apologizing for the persecution commemorated in its stained glass windows.
At a ceremony on April 27, Archbishop Luc Terlinden of Mechelen-Brussels and Rabbi Albert Guigui, the chief rabbi of Brussels, unveiled four plaques, written in Dutch, French, English and Hebrew, providing historical context for the windows and an apology for the antisemitic persecution tied to the events they depict.
The plaques, which Terlinden signed, state that “baseless accusations of the desecration of the Eucharistic host were made against Jewish communities” in medieval Europe and that the accusations “led to persecution, massacres, and unjustifiable expulsions.” The windows show Jews being executed at the stake in response to their alleged attacks on the Eucharist, bread that Catholic doctrine considers a literal representation of Jesus’ body.
“Theological and social anti-Judaism is in direct contradiction with the Gospel of Christ, which calls for truth, justice, and brotherhood,” the plaques say. “We ask forgiveness from the Jewish people for the suffering these accusations have caused.”
The stained glass windows in the cathedral depict the “Brussels Host Desecration,” an antisemitic accusation in 1370 that Jews had desecrated communion wafers, leading to the execution of Jews in Brussels and the expulsion of the city’s Jewish community.
The windows have drawn scrutiny for decades, particularly as the Catholic Church sought to reckon with its history of antisemitism. In 1969, shortly after the landmark Nostra Aetate declaration rejecting longstanding anti-Jewish Catholic doctrine, the Archbishop of Brussels ordered that several paintings be removed and a plaque be mounted to offer context about the remaining depictions.
Several years later, the European Jewish Congress noted last week, Catholic leaders did install a plaque that drew readers’ attention to “the biased nature of the accusations [against the Jews accused of the desecration] and to the legendary presentation of the ‘miracle.’”
But Flora Cassen, the director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and a scholar of European antisemitism, said the existing plaque was “very ambiguous about the responsibility and what happened” and installed in an easy-to-miss location. The new plaques, she said, contain a clear and “very moving” apology and cannot be missed by anyone who comes to see the windows.
“The significance is enormous of the church finally putting a plaque there that tells the story, that acknowledges the antisemitism behind it, that acknowledges that it was a slander and that it resulted in persecution and in the execution of Jews in Brussels and their expulsion,” Cassen said.
The new plaques cite Nostra Aetate and the Catholic Church’s subsequent effort under Pope John Paul II to reckon with historical antisemitism in 2000. They affirm the church’s “commitment to combat all forms of antisemitism, to deepen dialogue between Jews and Christians, and to pass on to future generations a clear remembrance, based on the acknowledgement of truth and mutual respect.”
While some have called for the historic windows to be removed, Guigui said in a statement that the plaques represented an appropriate way to address relics of historical antisemitism.
“What matters today is how we look at these images,” the rabbi said. “They must not be erased, because they are part of history, but they must be accompanied by explanation and moral insight in order to understand the context and avoid repeating past mistakes.”
The post Brussels cathedral installs plaques apologizing for medieval antisemitic persecution depicted in stained glass appeared first on The Forward.