Uncategorized
They led protests against Netanyahu. Can they turn outrage into political power?
On Oct. 7, Israelis will come together to commemorate the third anniversary of the Hamas attack. Three weeks later, they will gather again, this time at the voting booth, for the first national election since Nov. 2022. The shadow of the first event will no doubt loom large over the second.
The election is expected to serve, in large part, as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition’s refusal to take responsibility for the failures of Oct. 7. But the fallout will also appear on the ballot itself, which will include several candidates whose lives were upended on that fateful day and the three tumultuous years that followed.
Some stepped into these leadership roles reluctantly, like Likud hopeful Talik Gvili, whose son Ran was the last deceased hostage to return from Gaza, and Sharon Sharabi of Yisrael Beiteinu, whose brothers Yossi and Eli were taken captive; only Eli returned alive.
Alongside those propelled unwittingly into the public eye are a slew of activists-turned-candidates whose path to political leadership was more deliberate. Many rose to prominence in early 2023, during the mass demonstrations against the government’s attempted judicial overhaul. After Oct. 7, they co-led the struggle to free the hostages, together with family members, and then went on to revive the anti-government protests, demanding accountability and calling for elections.
Elections in which they are now candidates.
With A Place for All, the Jewish-Arab party launched by Standing Together leaders, having withdrawn from the race earlier this month, the overwhelming majority of activists have found their political home inside the left-wing, liberal Zionist party formed in 2024 through a merger of Labor and Meretz now known as The Democrats.
Record-high voter turnout for the party’s internal primaries held this past July, and recent polling projecting they will secure at least 10 electoral seats, point to a groundswell of support among protest supporters. But can a movement that repeatedly brought tens of thousands of Israelis into the streets and helped force a pause in the judicial overhaul translate that mobilization into lasting political power? And for the candidates themselves – many with no prior political experience – what does it take to go from protesting outside the Knesset to making decisions inside of it?
For protest leader Yaya Fink, who secured the fifth position on The Democrats’ slate, the answer lies in shifting from resistance to rebuilding.
“The protests were about stopping things from happening. Now it’s time to make things happen,” Fink told the Forward, a transition he describes as “both critically important and completely natural.”
“You cannot stay in crisis-prevention mode forever,” Fink said. “We are incredibly proud of what we accomplished. But it’s time for the next phase: repairing what’s broken, creating change, building anew.”
Fink, a religious activist who helped establish the public-interest lobbying organization Lobby 99, has been involved in social justice movements for most of his adult life. But he describes the judicial overhaul as the first time he felt he was fighting for the country’s very identity as a liberal democracy. “It’s the cause that most affected me as a person and that I also feel I had the most effect on,” he recalled.
From outside the Knesset to inside
Fink is one of more than a dozen candidates near the top of The Democrats’ ticket with a background in activism. Joining him are reservist organizer Omri Ronen; high-tech protest leader Moshe Radman; Moran Zer Katzenstein, founder of Building an Alternative; Arab-Israeli peace activist Somaya Bashir; and Avi Dabush, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.
Yair Golan, at the top of the ticket, followed by incumbent lawmakers Naama Lazimi, Gilad Kariv and Efrat Reytan were also regular fixtures on the protest circuit. “These were the politicians who were out on the streets with us day after day, week after week,” Fink said. “It was a natural fit for us to join their party.”
The transition from protest to politics has clear historical precedence in Israel, according to Doron Shultziner, a professor in the Government, Communication and Diplomacy department at Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College who studies social movements,
In the 1970s, Moroccan immigrants Charlie Biton and Saadia Marciano were part of Israel’s Black Panthers, a group of militant radicals who were regularly arrested and often faced police brutality in their struggle against the racism and poverty Mizrahi Jews encountered at the time. Eventually, the two men entered politics on left-wing tickets, continuing their fight for equal treatment for Mizrahi Jews and emerging as early supporters of peace with the Palestinians.
But infighting and limited political influence prevented them from affecting significant change, even for Biton, who served 15 years in the Knesset. In general, Shultziner cautions against assuming that prominence in a protest movement automatically translates to success in office.
“Clearly, politics and protest are two completely different ball games,” he said. “The career of a politician is haphazard and is affected by so many events that they cannot control.”
Similarly, Shultziner pointed to the social justice protest of 2011, when Israelis pitched tents on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Blvd. and marched in the streets to protest soaring housing costs and economic inequality. As the protest began to wind down, movement leaders Stav Shaffir and Itzik Shmuli moved into politics, securing spots on the Labor ticket in 2013. Shaffir gained prominence demanding budget transparency but spent her parliamentary career in opposition. After leaving Labor in 2019 for a rival left-wing alliance, she was excluded from subsequent electoral partnerships and left the Knesset in 2020.
Shmuli managed to became labor and welfare minister but, as Shultziner explained, his advancement came at a price: “Despite campaigning on a promise not to serve under Netanyahu, he joined Labor leader Amir Peretz in taking the party into the Netanyahu–Gantz unity government, a decision that alienated their supporters. He ended up retiring the following year.”
“So, it really depends on how you define success,” Shultziner noted.
Will protests and protesters change Israeli politics?
For Fink, who remembers these broken promises all too well, loyalty is central to The Democrats’ appeal. “In addition to standing shoulder to shoulder with us on the streets, they were also steadfast in representing the movement in the Knesset,” he said. “It just made sense to go in with people who have demonstrated they cannot be bought by Netanyahu.”
But before Fink can think about the Knesset, he and his fellow Democrats must focus on the road to get there. With Election Day only weeks away, the question is how wide to cast their net.
According to the Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI), by July of 2025, around 1.5 million Israelis were estimated to have taken part in at least one demonstration in the previous three years. And yet most polls have The Democrats at around 10 seats, or roughly 400,000 votes, a significant difference.
“Over time, we see a growing perception that the protests did not succeed in transforming Israel’s political system,” explained Dr. Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow at IDI.
“With The Democrats’ identity so deeply intertwined with the protest movement, that disillusionment has led voters to look elsewhere.”
An even bigger obstacle may be the ideological gap between protester and party. “They were certainly united in their opposition to the judicial reform. But The Democrats as a party is significantly to the left of many of the protesters,” she said. “The majority of those who showed up consistently were quite conservative. They tend to benefit from a status quo they would like to preserve, which contradicts The Democrats’ message of change and revolution.”
Paradoxically, the movement’s public image may also hamper efforts to reach beyond it. ”In the collective Israeli psyche, the protestors, and by extension The Democrats, are so strongly associated with being Ashkenazi, urban, secular, quasi-socialist, and highly educated.” Hermann said. “Which doesn’t appeal to a broad audience.” That perception is not totally unfounded. A January 2023 IDI survey, conducted during the judicial overhaul protests, found that 20% of Ashkenazi respondents reported participating in protest activities, compared with 10% of Mizrahi respondents; participation among secular Jews was 27%, compared with only 4% among religious Zionists, with most of the large-scale demonstrations taking place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa.
But beyond the data, the image carries historical baggage which still lingers today. Israel’s Labor movement, The Democrats’ political forebear, was dominated by Ashkenazi Jews of European ancestry while Mizrahi Jews, driven by the marginalization they faced, helped bring Netanyahu’s Likud party to power in the late 1970s.
Hermann notes that even reaching the projected 10 seats will be a huge accomplishment, a sentiment echoed by Shultziner. “Just the fact that they managed to register over 100,000 voters is an impressive feat,” he said. “People who would never have voted for labor in the past are now registering early with the Democrats just so they can vote in the primaries.”
Fink, however, remains determined to reach beyond the party’s base.
“I am a religious man who lives in the North,” he said, “not exactly the stereotypical ‘Kaplanist,’ ” a pejorative nickname for protesters drawn from Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street, the demonstrations’ main gathering place.
“But who you vote for should not be determined by whether you are religious or secular, Jewish or Arab. Whether you live in the big city or an outlying community.
“The only thing that matters is whether you want Israel to be a liberal democracy or a semi-fascist state. Do you want a government that is honest or one that is crooked? Do you want your money to go to draft dodgers or those who serve? To yet another illegal outpost or to recovery efforts?”
Fink’s message echoes that of the protest movement he helped lead for nearly four years. But it also captures the challenge facing his party: whether the solidarity forged in the streets can survive the compromises of coalition politics. Already, the Democrats’ willingness to govern alongside an Arab party has exposed divisions among their potential partners. Still, their growing momentum and strong polling numbers suggest they may be on the road to fulfilling another promise of the protests – unseating Netanyahu and rewriting the government’s agenda.
The post They led protests against Netanyahu. Can they turn outrage into political power? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Talarico blames Netanyahu, not the Israeli people, for devastation in Gaza
(JTA) — James Talarico, Texas’ Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, said he holds Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than the Israeli people, responsible for civilian devastation in Gaza.
Talarico, a Texas state representative, is running neck and neck against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a race whose results could affect which party controls the Senate this November. Israel has been one of many sources of disagreement among the candidates, who have sparred on issues ranging from affordability to immigration to reproductive rights.
“I believe that Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend its people,” the candidate said while fielding questions on Wednesday at a CNN town hall. “But I don’t believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has a right to wage war against civilians or use collective punishment or restrict aid to civilians.”
A Texas Politics Project poll, issued by the University of Texas this week, showed Paxton trailing Talarico by 3 percentage points, with 47% to the Democrat’s 50% and a margin of error of 3.34 percentage points.
Talarico said in August that he supported stopping arms sales to the Netanyahu government and conditioning military aid “on ending the death and the destruction in Gaza and the West Bank.” He declined to call the crisis “genocide,” noting that the term is being litigated in the International Court of Justice. But he said he’d “use every bit of our nation’s diplomatic and financial leverage to protect the lives of Palestinians.”
When he was pressed further by Rabbi Holly Levin Cohn of Congregation Beth El Binah in Dallas during the town hall, Talarico stressed the importance of directing his criticisms “toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the Israeli people.”
Addressing Israelis’ trauma, Talarico acknowledged that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel “was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Cohn pushed back on his comments regarding aid restrictions, noting Israeli support of humanitarian efforts and arguing that there’s much more going on in the country than the media may be projecting.
Talarico told the rabbi he recognized that his “words carry weight” and gave her his word that he’s “going to continue to listen to all sides of this conflict.” He also expressed hope that “we can all come together to fight for a two-state solution where we have security for Israel and we have freedom and self-determination for Palestinians.”
Talarico also gave a “shoutout” to a local rabbi, Neil Blumofe at Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin. “I spent my first year of my seminary studies learning the Hebrew scriptures from a local rabbi,” he said. “Shout out Rabbi Neil Blumofe!” Cohn grinned.
The post Talarico blames Netanyahu, not the Israeli people, for devastation in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Irish Jewish leader ‘shocked’ after hotel cancels over 70 rooms for antisemitism conference
(JTA) — DUBLIN — An Irish Jewish leader said a Dublin hotel canceled rooms reserved for European delegates after learning that they were visiting for an antisemitism conference.
Maurice Cohen, the president of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said he booked over 70 rooms at the Herbert Park Hotel for people attending a meeting of the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA).
The envoys, who included Jewish community leaders, diplomats and government ministers from across Europe, were invited to the conference this week organized by the World Jewish Congress and the European Commission. The event was tied to Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which rotates between EU member states, and included delegates meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. Most of the government-appointed special envoys are not themselves Jewish.
Cohen said he met with Herbert Park Hotel’s general manager in May to inspect its conference rooms and explained the purpose of the event. According to Cohen, the manager responded by asking, “Will the IDF be involved?”
That question “shocked” Cohen, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I said, this is about antisemitism. It’s not about Israelis, it’s not about Israel, it’s not about the IDF,” he said.
Cohen said the manager told him she had to consult with the hotel owners to determine if his booking could be accepted. The next day, he learned that the rooms were canceled without explanation. The Herbert Park Hotel did not respond to JTA requests for comment.
Cohen booked rooms for the delegates and the conference at different hotels. He described the cancellation in a speech at the SECCA meeting on Tuesday, calling it an example of “contemporary antisemitism.”
“How quickly does the word ‘Jewish’ change a conversation?” he said to the attendees. “How easily does a gathering about antisemitism become associated with the Israeli army? And how quickly can people who were welcome when they were simply 70 hotel guests become something rather different once they are known to be attending a Jewish conference?”
Yoni Wieder, Ireland’s chief rabbi, suggested that the hotel could have based its decision on fears of controversy.
“It’s possible that whoever took the decision had no objection to the conference itself,” Wieder told JTA. “They may simply have wanted to avoid the possibility of protests outside the hotel or some other backlash.”
Ireland’s government has been sharply critical of Israel. The country has recognized Palestinian statehood, barred Israeli far-right ministers from entering its borders and in July passed a law that banned imports from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Martin has said that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a charge Israel vigorously rejects. He has also condemned rising antisemitism in Ireland, which is home to about 2,200 Jews.
Herbert Park Hotel is “actually quite familiar with Jewish guests,” according to Wieder, who said that he has overseen kosher catering at the hotel.
Cohen, who has lived in Dublin all his life, said he had fond memories of the hotel. For years it was his favored site for meetings, New Year’s Eve celebrations and his mother’s birthdays through her 93rd.
“Over time the hotel became associated in my mind with friendship, celebration and my mother,” he said in his speech. “So it was strange that, many years later, the same hotel would acquire a very different place in my memory.”
The post Irish Jewish leader ‘shocked’ after hotel cancels over 70 rooms for antisemitism conference appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to build a case to strip Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of her citizenship and eventually deport her.
It is my hope that American Jews — even those who do not like Omar and can recite every questionable comment she has made over the past 15 years to illustrate why — will understand this as offensive and outrageous not only because they are Americans, but because they are Jews.
The Trump administration may claim that it is building a case against Omar due to paperwork (reports suggest that they are interested in whether her father listed her age as 17 on her citizenship application when she was really 18). It is similarly filing dozens of lawsuits attempting to denaturalize citizens by trying to prove they lied in the process of gaining citizenship. However, that this is happening now, ahead of the midterm elections against a sitting member of Congress, a high-profile progressive whom the president has said should “go back” to her country of origin, suggests that it is, to put it mildly, politically motivated.
Evidently, the Trump administration sees citizenship not as a right or a responsibility but as a reward, one that can be taken away if that is seen as useful to the president and his adherents. That use could be silencing political opposition or something as simple (and callous) as an opportunity to brag about the sheer number of attempted denaturalizations.
Jews, too, have found themselves on the wrong end of political denaturalization. I do not mean to compare the Trump administration to the Nazis, but the stubborn fact is that Jews were indeed stripped of their citizenship as part of a political project in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And in the early 20th century in the United States, it was Jews who politicians claimed were incapable of assimilating, of ever really being a part of the United States. These arguments culminated in legislation that kept out Jews who could have found refuge here. The threat of denaturalization and the experience of perpetual otherness is a grievous part of modern Jewish history; we should be offended by its presence in our political present.
Jewish tradition as well as history encourages us to stand up to authority when that authority is wrong. Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman; Nathan yells at King David for sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband killed; Moses famously urges Pharoah to change his oppressive ways. Even God is on the receiving end of pushback when Abraham pleads and negotiates to spare Sodom.
I do not think one needs to be Jewish to be outraged by the attempt to denaturalize Ilhan Omar. I think it is also bone-chilling as an American who believes we, including our elected officials, have the right to openly oppose our president, and I am worried as a person who thinks it would be good to continue to live in a democratic republic. And I am sure that there are Jews who will say that Omar deserves to lose her citizenship because she has said things about Israel they do not like.
But the Jewish lens through which I see this is that it is right to challenge power when it is abused, and it is wrong for the powerful to make a show of trying to cast their opponents out of the country.
The point is not whether Trump can make good on the threat to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her, but that it is obscene to use denaturalization as punishment for being a high-profile political opponent in the first place. If he is trying to make it more dangerous to speak out while being from the “wrong” country, then the rest of us need to say that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an American citizen.
We should do this because we are Americans and we should do this because we are Jews. We should do this because of the ways in which our American and Jewish identities bleed into one another. And, we should do this because we may not know exactly whether it is as Americans or as Jews that we know we have to protect the right to speak truth to power, but we know we need to do it all the same.
The post Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable appeared first on The Forward.
