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‘We have to leave our comfort zone’: Cautious but determined, Israeli expats protest Netanyahu’s government

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Benny Chukrun, speaking in Hebrew on a wind-whipped day outside the Israeli embassy in the U.S. capital, had a message for his fellow protesters.

“We have a special role in Washington. We have access to the Jewish opinion leaders in the United States,” he said at a rally on Sunday opposing far-reaching changes planned by the new government in Israel, including a proposal to limit the power of the country’s judiciary. “We have to leave our comfort zone and act.”

Israeli expatriates have been coming together in cities worldwide in solidarity with the tens of thousands who have gathered every Saturday night in Tel Aviv and elsewhere to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. Rallies have taken place in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, Miami, Vancouver, Sydney, Berlin, Paris and London, drawing crowds ranging in size from 50 to 200. This weekend, the protests in North America took place on Sunday to accommodate demonstrators who observe Shabbat. 

It’s new and at times intimidating territory for Israeli expatriates. Israelis in America  were once known to keep a low profile in Jewish communities due to a stigma associated with leaving Israel. That sense of shame has faded as growing numbers of Israelis have relocated to the United States for work in the tech sector or other fields. Overseas travel and communication have also grown far easier. More recently, Israeli political activists in the United States have become best known for supporting their country publicly via organizations such as the Israeli-American Council.

The group organizing many of the rallies, UnXeptable, formed in 2020 to demonstrate in solidarity with Israeli protests against Netanyahu. Now, the mandate has broadened to oppose the actions of the Israeli government. That change has sparked familiar anxieties among Israelis in the United States: Are they harming Israel’s public image? Do they have a right to criticize their home country now that they have moved outside of its borders?

These questions populated multiple WhatsApp groups ahead of this weekend’s protests, said Kathy Goldberg, 57, an Israeli American who helped organize the solidarity protest in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

“There were fears of it looking, ‘anti-Israel,’ fears of antisemitism, that it will look like we’re piling on Israel and giving them more ammunition, when in fact these are people who love Israel and believe that right now this is the most pro-Israeli thing we can do, to help protect Israel as a democracy,’” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

What helped Goldberg and other Israelis overcome those fears was the role that they feel Israelis living abroad can play in explaining to Jewish communities why it’s OK, this time, to come out and protest. At the rally outside of the Israeli embassy, Chukrun pointed out that Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli just traveled to the United States to defend the government’s proposals. 

“Chikli was here a while ago, trying to persuade the conservative Jewish funders of Kohelet that the revolution underway is not antidemocratic,” Chukrun told the 50 or so Israelis who met outside the embassy, referring to the Kohelet Forum, an influential Israeli right-wing think tank that is leading the charge in advocating abroad for the new government.

“We can give the opposing voice, we must give the opposing voice,” he told the crowd, which responded with murmurs of agreement. “Whoever has friends in Jewish organizations, reach out. We must explain to them what is going on. There is a lot of ignorance, misunderstanding.”

The Israelis who are protesting, both in Israel and abroad, are reeling from a barrage of potential changes. The issue with the highest profile has been a proposed reform that would significantly weaken Israel’s judicial review and change the way judges are appointed. Groups of protesters also oppose government pledges to annex West Bank territory to Israel, restrict the rights of LGBTQ Israelis and expand police powers — particularly in relation to Israeli Arabs.

“A lot of [Jewish] Americans say,’What’s the problem? Here [in the United States], politicians pick judges,’” said Chukrun, 62, who works in educational tech. “They don’t understand that [in the United States], it is just one part of an overall structure of checks and balances, and you can’t just take one aspect of the state of Israel that is already a democracy standing on chicken legs.”

Expatriate Israeli protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)

Etai Beck, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, told the crowd at the San Francisco protest that the Jewish Diaspora had a moral stake in speaking out now. He framed his speech as a true/false test. Like Chukrun, he criticized the Kohelet Forum as well as Israel Hayom, a free right-wing tabloid in Israel that is funded by Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.

“The Jewish people outside Israel are not allowed to express their opinions and join the protest: False,” he said in his remarks in English, which were shared on WhatsApp with other protesters. “One, Israel was established as the worldwide Jewish center. Two, the Jewish people worldwide lobbies and supports Israel — in Congress, in the media, in day to day life.”

To the degree that Israeli Americans have had a public profile until now, that profile has leaned right. The Israeli-American Council, funded to a large degree by the Adelsons, has served as a forum for Republicans in recent years; it was one of just two Jewish groups that Donald Trump agreed to speak to as president, and he used the occasion to mock American Jews for not supporting Israel enough. The protests IAC organizes typically defend Israel’s sitting government.

Shay Bar, 38, who attended the Los Angeles protest with his family, said the concerns of Israelis abroad in this instance stretched beyond partisanship.

“Our solidarity from abroad is for the future of Israel and our future here in the Diaspora,” he said. “If Israel’s democracy erodes, that will directly affect Jewish and Israeli life and in the Diaspora.”

At the Washington rally, protesters held up massive Israeli flags. An older man, speaking Hebrew, asked a group of teenagers holding up letters spelling “DEMOCRACY” in English whether they were aligned properly, and they collectively rolled their eyes and said, in English, that yes, they were. The protest ended with a rendition of “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem.

Protesters in San Francisco made light of an old Israeli warning not to “wash one’s dirty laundry” abroad. “We learned from Bibi [Netanyahu] to wash our dirty laundry overseas,” said a poster in San Francisco, a reference to Netanyahu’s wife Sara’s habit of loading her flights with dirty clothes because she preferred laundry service overseas.

“Some of us here are here temporarily, some not so much,” said Yoni Charash, 47, a lawyer wearing a T-shirt bearing UnXeptable’s logo. “We all go visit, we have a connection, those of us who leave Israel are not cut off from Israel.”

Nor were they cut off from the larger Jewish communities they live in, said Chukrun. Times had changed since Israelis arriving in the United States kept to themselves because they were alienated by the synagogue-centric life of American Jews.

“Jews in the United States feel the Judaism of faith and Israelis feel the Judaism of national identity, the Israeliness,” he told JTA. “There is a cultural difference, but in recent years it’s begun to change.”

Bar in Los Angeles said Israelis are likelier now to assimilate into American Jewish communities than not. “We’re Israeli Americans who live within the community, we send our kids to school with a Jewish education, go to synagogues on holidays and are an integral part of the American Jewish community,” he said.

Chukrun, speaking to JTA, said it was critical to leverage the relationships Israelis had with American Jews.

“We have to explain that it’s not the land of the patriarchs and matriarchs, not the land of the Bible,” he said. “It’s a real country with real people — with ugly things.”

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The post ‘We have to leave our comfort zone’: Cautious but determined, Israeli expats protest Netanyahu’s government appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Will the Release of the Hostages Be the Next Phase of Our Renewal?

Israeli protestors take part in a rally demanding the immediate release of the hostages kidnapped during the deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, and the end of war in Gaza, in Jerusalem September 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

With all the talk of “deals” and “final phases,” it feels a world away from those days — only recently — when Israel felt more vulnerable than at any moment since 1948.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, as the full horror of the Hamas pogrom unfolded, Israel’s invincibility — that almost mythic confidence built over decades of survival against the odds — shattered in a matter of hours. Images of slaughtered families, homes in flames, the kidnapped and the violated, flooded our screens — not scenes from history books, but unfolding in real time, and on Israeli soil. 

The world’s only Jewish state — the nation that had vowed “Never Again” — suddenly felt helpless. Battle-hardened soldiers wept as frightened parents clutched their children in bomb shelters. The idea of safety and deterrence — the IDF and Iron Dome as an impenetrable shield — was shaken to its core.

And even as the shock turned into rage, another kind of pain began to set in — the pain of inexplicable isolation. The world, which very briefly stood with Israel in the days immediately after the massacre, quickly turned. 

Within weeks, university quads and city squares were filled with angry crowds chanting slogans that blurred the line between anti-Zionism and old-fashioned antisemitism. Hostage posters were torn down by ordinary passersby who denied the reality of Jewish suffering and Hamas terror. 

Western governments — even close allies — urged “restraint,” as if Israel’s response to the atrocities required an apology. And the headlines found their favorite refrain: “disproportionate response.”

For Israel and Jews around the world, the vulnerability deepened — not only military but moral. For in the wake of October 7th a jarring truth emerged: the world’s sympathy is as fleeting as a news cycle, and Jewish blood is still cheap in the court of global opinion. 

Then came the grinding months of war — tunnels and booby traps, rockets raining down from near and far, hostage vigils, funerals of young soldiers, sleepless nights without end. Israel’s mission to destroy Hamas — so just and so necessary — was widely portrayed as cruelty and overreach. 

And although the country carried on, bruised and defiant, every Israeli, and every friend of Israel, knew their world would never be the same again.

But out of that national trauma, something remarkable emerged. Instead of despair, there was determination. Israel didn’t collapse; it recalibrated. The chaos of October 7th and its aftermath hardened into resolve — arguments and missteps notwithstanding. The IDF went into Gaza and, slowly and methodically, dismantled an infrastructure of terror once thought untouchable. 

And now — two years since that black day — Israel stands at the brink of what few dared to imagine then: a deal poised to bring home the remaining hostages and which signals the absolute capitulation of Hamas. If only this moment had come sooner.

The dark night that began on Simchat Torah two years ago is, at last, giving way to dawn. And it’s here — at this exact point of transition — that we arrive at Parshat Vezot Habracha, the Torah’s final portion. 

Moshe stands within sight of the Promised Land. He knows he won’t cross the Jordan, and he knows the nation will. His mission — with all its triumphs and heartbreaks — is complete. And before he departs, Moshe does something extraordinary: he blesses the people.

He doesn’t bless them because everything and everyone was perfect. Far from it. The wilderness years were marked by rebellion, doubt, and tragedy — this was a nation that often fell short of God’s lofty expectations. And a journey that should have taken months took forty years. 

But Moshe looks at the broken and scarred nation before him and sees beyond the pain. He sees the promise. He understands that blessings don’t land when life is smooth – they come into focus when we can see the rough edges of our journey and still believe in our purpose. That’s why he blesses them: to mark the passage from survival to meaning, and from suffering to renewal.

Vezot Habracha — together with Simchat Torah, the festival on which it is always read — has never felt more resonant. For two years, Israel wandered a wilderness of fear and grief. Every headline, every hostage — living or lost — and every fallen soldier, reminded us that the price of Jewish existence is still unbearably high. 

And yet, perhaps this moment — this stunning deal put together by President Trump and his determined team — is our Vezot Habracha. Like Moshe’s farewell, it arrives at the close of trials and tribulations. The enemies have been fought, the losses mourned, and the next chapter — rebuilding, redefining, renewing — stands ready to begin.

Moshe’s blessing ends with a vision for Israel’s future in its land (Deut. 33:28): “Israel shall dwell in safety, alone.” Those words have always felt poetic but unrealistic — aspirational dreaming rather than a reality we can experience.  Today they sound prophetic, as intended. 

For the first time in years — perhaps since its inception — Israel stands secure, unthreatened by the terror that has shadowed it from the start. The very movement that sought its destruction and the killing of all Jews wherever they are — Hamas — has been broken, and its former patrons have been knocked out or forced to abandon it. 

There’s a divine symmetry here: what began when we read Vezot Habracha now finds its conclusion as we read Vezot Habracha again.

It’s truly fitting that Vezot Habracha is always read on Simchat Torah — the day we dance, sing, and celebrate the Torah’s completion. You’d think we’d pause to reflect, maybe catch our breath after the long journey from Bereishit to Devarim. 

But no — the moment we finish the final words, we roll the scroll right back to the beginning and start again. That’s the Jewish way. There’s no such thing as “The End,” because every ending is the start of something new.

After all, Moshe’s death isn’t an ending — it’s the prelude to Yehoshua’s story and the Jewish nation’s metamorphosis into one of history’s most influential forces. The Jewish people don’t stop, nor are they paralyzed by the past. They move forward. 

And in our own time, as Israel stands at the end of one of the darkest chapters in its history, the same truth applies. As we close the chapter of pain that has been the past two years, we immediately stand on the threshold of renewal, raring to go.

On Simchat Torah, as the scroll rolls from the end back to the beginning, we will all remember the horrors of October 7th. Even so — through our tears — as we lift the Torah and dance with it again, we’ll be declaring something profoundly Jewish: that light follows darkness, that faith outlasts fear, and that life never stops. 

So when the hostages come home, when the guns fall silent, and when Israel can finally breathe again, let’s not linger in the horrors of the past. Let’s celebrate. We are turning the scroll from tragedy to triumph, from mourning to blessing — from October 7th to Vezot Habracha — and beginning anew. 

Like our ancestors before us, we will start again — stronger, wiser, and with our faith renewed — ready to write the next chapter of the Jewish story.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California. 

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Two Years Since Oct. 7: A World That Lost Its Moral Compass

People react near the scene, after an attack in which a car was driven at pedestrians and stabbings were reported at a synagogue in north Manchester, Britain, on Yom Kippur, Oct. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Phil Noble

Two years have passed since October 7, 2023 — a day of unspeakable horror for Israel and the Jewish people.

Across Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, this weekend was marked by somber commemorations, filled with dignity and tears. Candles were lit, names were recited, and prayers rose for the 1,200 victims, for the hostages still held in Gaza, and for the survivors who carry the trauma of that day.

But even as Jews mourn, the streets of Europe and particularly in the Netherlands, have been filled with anger and hatred. More than a quarter of a million protesters recently marched, not to demand the release of hostages or condemn terrorism, but to denounce Israel. Some waved Hamas flags, others shouted calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, and openly echoed antisemitic slogans. Among them were politicians, cultural figures, and so-called “human rights activists” who have chosen ideology over morality.

The renewed peace initiative led by former President Trump receives little attention, as does the suffering of Israeli hostages or the trauma of their families. The same protesters who speak the language of “human rights” fall silent in the face of atrocities that do not involve Israel.

Ignored Tragedies Around the World

While the global media fixates on Israel, genuine humanitarian catastrophes unfold elsewhere, largely unnoticed:

  • In Sudan, a brutal civil war since April 2023 has displaced over 12 million people and claimed tens of thousands of lives.
  • In Ukraine, the war continues to devastate both sides, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.
  • In Myanmar, entire villages have been destroyed amid ongoing conflict.
  • Across the Congo and the Sahel, armed groups massacre civilians daily.
  • In Yemen, famine and war push entire families to starvation.
  • In Somalia and the Horn of Africa, drought and fighting threaten tens of millions with hunger.

Even more overlooked are the massacres of Christians in Africa. Since 2023, over 22,000 Christians have been murdered by Islamist extremists across the continent.

  • In Nigeria, the Yelwata massacre (2025) left 200 dead and entire Christian communities destroyed.
  • In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Komanda and Kasanga attacks killed more than 100 worshippers, many inside their churches.
  • In 2023 alone, 4,761 Christians were killed for their faith.

There are no mass demonstrations, no “solidarity weeks,” no campus rallies for these victims. Their suffering does not fit the fashionable narrative.

The Moral Epidemic of Selective Outrage

This is the defining moral crisis of our time: selective outrage. The global community claims to champion justice and peace, yet its attention and anger are rationed, directed almost exclusively at the world’s only Jewish state.

In Paris, Amsterdam, London, and New York, chants of “intifada” echo through the streets. At leading universities, students glorify Hamas as a “resistance movement.” At the United Nations, Israel is condemned more often than all other nations combined.

The evidence is clear: this is not about human rights. It is about hatred, the oldest and most adaptable hatred in history, repackaged as activism.

When the World Turns Upside Down

Today, we live in an age where terrorists are celebrated, and their victims are blamed for defending themselves. Where Jewish blood is once again cheap, and the world remains silent. And yet, Israel endures. The Jewish State mourns, rebuilds, and defends itself because it has learned, time and again, that Jewish survival cannot depend on global approval.

Two Years Later: The Truth Remains

On this October 7, 2025, we remember the murdered, we pray for the hostages, and we reaffirm an unshakable truth: “Israel is not the cause of the world’s chaos. It is the moral measure of it, a nation that proves, even after centuries of hate, that the Jewish people still choose life.”

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel

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Pro-Palestinian LA Times Heiress Seizes Left-Wing Outlet to Push Agenda

May 1, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; A flag is waved during a sit-in outside of a pro-Palestinian encampment at the campus of UCLA. Violence broke out early in the morning at the encampment, hours after the university declared that the camp “is unlawful and violates university policy.” Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

The pro-Palestinian daughter of the Los Angeles Times owner has recently been appointed publisher of the left-leaning outlet Drop Site News— a new platform for her to espouse her hateful views about Israel.

Nika Soon-Shiong, 32, daughter of billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, is no stranger to newsrooms. She has allegedly interfered behind the scenes at her father’s newspaper to influence coverage, meddling with headlines and clashing with editors who didn’t align with her activist agenda.

Soon-Shiong’s own public statements reveal a consistent hostility toward Israel and Zionism. On social media, she has displayed a Palestinian flag in her bio, dismissed the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, described Israel as an “apartheid state” that is engaged in “genocide” — and even alleged that the Los Angeles City Council was funding a “Zionist militia.”

Despite this pattern of rhetoric aligning with fringe, hardline narratives rather than journalistic neutrality, Soon-Shiong has, since 2021, sat on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — an organization that redefines international law to designate terrorists as journalists.

How much influence has Soon-Shiong exerted on the CPJ? Even before the October 7 massacre and the resulting war, the CPJ published a report accusing the Israeli military of acting with “impunity” and severely undermining freedom of the press. This, even while according to the organization’s own data, Israel did not even feature in its so-called “Global Impunity Index,” which charts the countries in which press freedom is curtailed and where there is a lack of accountability when journalists are killed.

The double standards were glaring.

The CPJ has also been at the forefront of eulogizing so-called “journalists” who were killed in Gaza while working for outlets like Al-Aqsa TV and Quds News Network, which are affiliated with Hamas.

As we will see below, Soon-Shiong isn’t overly concerned when it comes to distinguishing between journalists and terrorists. One can only assume that this has played an active role in the CPJ’s willful blindness on this issue.

A New Platform for Anti-Israel Hate

So what happens if someone who brings both money and an extreme pro-Palestinian agenda is given her own media outlet?

We’re about to find out. Soon-Shiong has been appointed publisher of Drop Site News, a proudly left-wing outlet positioning itself as a corrective to what it calls mainstream media’s failure to cover “genocide” and “apartheid.”

It’s a media outlet devoted to delegitimizing Israel and promoting terrorist agendas. Alarmingly, its audience keeps growing.

The move provides Soon-Shiong’s ideological agenda a direct platform with more than 400,000 followers, which is most likely now set to receive a significant injection of cash.

Funding Gaza Journalists or Terrorists?

For starters, just before Soon-Shiong’s new role was announced, she launched a fund to support an undisclosed list of Gaza “journalists” whose vetting process raises questions about possible terror ties.

The fundraising initiative is run in partnership with Unmute Humanity, which describes itself as “a grassroots collective to disrupt media complicity and call for accurate reporting of the U.S.-funded genocide by Israel against Palestinians.”

The so-called “Gaza Journalist Fund” has already raised more than $200,000, but no list of beneficiaries has been published. Instead, the group says it supports “journalists who have appeared on Unmute Humanity’s Voices of Palestine webcast or weekly TikTok Lives, or individuals with whom Unmute Humanity maintains ongoing direct communication.”

That vague “vetting process” has already spotlighted troubling figures. One is Bisan Owda, an Al Jazeera reporter exposed as a longtime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a terror group responsible for suicide bombings, shootings, rocket fire, and the 2014 massacre of five Jewish worshipers in a Jerusalem synagogue. Unmute Humanity repeatedly promoted Owda across its platforms throughout 2024.

Another example is Anas al-Sharif, a Hamas operative who masqueraded as an Al Jazeera journalist until being killed by the IDF. Unmute Humanity openly eulogized him in posts and collaborations with other pro-Palestinian groups. Had he survived, it appears he would have been eligible for Soon-Shiong’s Gaza Journalist Fund.

Another “journalist” whose material was promoted is Mohammed Salama, a Hamas terrorist who posed as an Al Jazeera journalist and was targeted by the IDF together with al-Sharif.

If these examples are the norm rather than the exception, Soon-Shiong may effectively be financing terrorists under the guise of supporting Gaza reporting, through partnerships with groups that present them as journalists.

And she does not even try to hide her agenda.

Soon-Shiong also proudly announced her plans to turn her new media toy into an instrument of propaganda, for the sake of “the verdict of history”:

And Drop Site News’ Middle East editor recently explained — in an agenda-driven panel with CPJ’s CEO and former head of Human Rights Watch — that journalists should join the Gaza-bound flotilla (and thus take part in a blatant breach of international maritime law) because avoiding it is a “political” decision.

Many questions arise: How much cash is Soon-Shiong funnelling into Drop Site News? Is she planning to tighten her grip on her father’s newsroom, too? And who are the so-called “journalists” in Gaza now poised to receive US dollars?

The American public is owed absolute transparency — because when media power and US money are funneled into agendas that imperil Jewish lives — silence is complicity.

HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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