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The Loneliness of American Jews Post-October 7: A Reflection on True Friendship, Antisemitism, and Double Standards
The world revealed a terrible ugliness and horrific hate on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a brutal terror attack on Israel, and started the ongoing war against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and their supporters.
The global rise in anti-Jewish bigotry and hatred have been shocking, but not surprising. The hatred of Jews being so openly expressed, and often masked as anti-Zionism and anti-Israel activism, has left a deep scar on the Jewish community worldwide.
For American Jews, this tragedy has not only been a moment of profound sorrow, but also a time of painful revelation. When the terror attack began and the world reacted, many American Jews began to grapple with the uncomfortable realization of who their real friends are. The rise in anti-Jewish racism and bigotry, and the hypocritical double standards justifying antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist sentiments have exacerbated a profound sense of loneliness and alienation.
The Shock of Silence
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, Jewish communities across the United States looked to their friends, colleagues, and allies for support and solidarity. Many of us found solidarity among our own Jewish communities and the few allies who rose as upstanders.
While many stood in solidarity, offering condolences and condemning the violence, a distressing number of erstwhile allies were conspicuously silent. The absence of unequivocal support from individuals and organizations who had previously championed human rights and social justice was a stark and painful revelation.
This silence was not just an absence of words; it was a loud declaration of where allegiances truly lay. For many American Jews, it felt like a betrayal, a stark reminder that our pain and suffering were not seen as legitimate or worthy of the same empathy extended to other marginalized groups.
The Rise of Antisemitism
Antisemitism is anti-Jewish racism. No matter if it is called anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, it is anti-Jewish.
The resurgence of antisemitism has been another bitter pill to swallow. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in the United States have been on the rise for several years, and the aftermath of the October 7 attack has only intensified this trend. Synagogues have been vandalized, Jewish individuals harassed or attacked, and anti-Jewish rhetoric has proliferated online and in public discourse.
The surge in antisemitism is not just a reaction to the conflict in Israel, but a reflection of deep-seated prejudices that have been allowed to fester. The false dichotomy between being anti-Zionist and antisemitic has provided a convenient cover for those who harbor ill will towards Jews. The vilification of Israel often spills over into a broader hatred of Jews, making it increasingly difficult for American Jews to feel safe and accepted in our own country.
Every day, my social media accounts are filled with anti-Jewish hatred, personal threats, and even death-threats against me as an individual. And the hatred online does not stay online. I have needed security to be hired for my speaking engagements outside of Israel. News reports, and countless stories shared with me by individuals and organizations, reveal the ever-increasing targeting, bullying, harassment, hate crimes, vandalism, and terrorism.
Hypocrisy and Double Standards
One of the most insidious aspects of this experience has been the hypocritical double standards employed to justify anti-Jewish racism and anti-Zionism. Many who speak out passionately against other forms of racism and discrimination are conspicuously quiet when it comes to antisemitism. The selective application of principles of justice and human rights is glaring.
Critics of Israel often frame their arguments in the language of human rights, yet they ignore the existential threats faced by the Jewish State and its people. They hold Israel to an impossible standard, one not applied to any other nation. This hypocrisy extends to the justification of violence against Israelis and Jews, which is often downplayed or excused in ways that violence against other groups would never be.
My own liberal, progressive, and LGBTQ communities have revealed terribly anti-Israel and anti-Zionist factions that I actively speak out and stand against — and some of these are former fiends and organizations I used to be involved with.
It is vital that we stand up for our people, our values, and our rights and security, even if it means we stand up against some of the communities that were supposed to include and represent us. The harsh reality of their words and actions let us know who supports us and who is against us.
In the first months after October 7th, I felt as if two-thirds of my friends were not real friends, or had become former-friends. In the following months it felt like almost three-quarters of them were former-friends.
I was pained when people directly expressed anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish sentiments in their social media posts, in marching and attending the protests, riots, and encampments, and even in direct messages to me. But I shifted away from that pain towards the hopeful outcomes of my activism and advocacy. These former-friends revealed to me that they never were the types of people who should have been my friends to begin with.
Finding True Friends
In these challenging times, American Jews have found solace and support in unexpected places. True friends have emerged, those who understand that standing against antisemitism and supporting Israel’s right to exist is not mutually exclusive with advocating for Palestinian rights. These allies recognize that condemning terrorism and supporting Jewish communities in their time of need is a matter of basic human decency.
Jewish organizations and some interfaith groups have also played a crucial role in providing support and fostering solidarity. By coming together, sharing experiences, and working towards mutual understanding, these groups have helped to mitigate the feelings of isolation and loneliness that many American Jews have been experiencing.
I have been traveling across the United States and Canada on a speaking, advocacy, and media tour. As keynote speaker, my goal is to empower, inspire, and motivate Jews and allies towards being activists and advocates for the Jewish people, Israel, and the values we find important.
While I consistently am met with hatred and threats in many of these cities (and across social media), I have also made new friends and have witnessed communities coming together and new bonds being formed.
Moving Forward
The path forward is fraught with challenges, but it is also filled with opportunities for growth and solidarity. American Jews must continue to advocate for our rights and work towards educating others about the realities of anti-Jewish racism, hatred, and bigotry. We also must share the truths and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Building bridges with other communities and finding common ground will be essential in combating the double standards and prejudices that persist.
In the aftermath of the October 7 attack, and the ever-increasing anti-Jewish hatred, violence, and threats, the loneliness felt by American Jews is a painful reminder of the work that still needs to be done. But it is also a testament to the resilience and strength of the Jewish people — and why the Zionist movement exists. We have faced adversity time and again. By standing together and reaching out to true friends, American Jews can continue to fight against antisemitism and for a more just and compassionate world. We are fighting for our existence today and for the future of our people, here in America, Israel, and around the world.
Am Israel Chai.
Yuval David is an Emmy and Multi-Award-Winning Actor, Filmmaker, Journalist, and Jewish LGBTQ+ activist and advisor. A creative and compelling storyteller, on stage and screen, news and across social media, Yuval shares the narrative of Jewish activism and enduring hope. Follow him on Instagram and X.
The post The Loneliness of American Jews Post-October 7: A Reflection on True Friendship, Antisemitism, and Double Standards first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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At this interfaith calligraphy class, the lines between Jew and Muslim blur
“So…are you Middle Eastern?”
I had just walked into the American Sephardi Federation office in lower Manhattan, where 20 Muslim and Jewish young people gather twice a month to learn Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy together. I was clearly the newbie, and one of the participants was sussing me out.
“I am,” I replied.
“Fully?” he asked.
I gave my usual spiel, explaining my Iraqi and Iranian background.
“Sick,” he said. “I’m only half.”
It struck me then that neither of us had any idea whether the other was Muslim or Jewish.
As I broke bread with the group, we chatted over an odd but familiar spread of kosher pizza and Gojeh Sabz, golf-ball-sized and very tart plums – a common Middle Eastern fruit many of us grew up eating. Somehow, religion didn’t really come up.
Eventually, felt-tipped multicolored calligraphy pens were passed around, and we began learning to write Hebrew letters — letters I had been perfecting since I embarked on my Hebrew School journey as a fourth grader. I was terrible. My reyshes weren’t swooping as they should, my khafs were somehow uneven and my yuds looked suspiciously like daleds.
Across the table, a young man who had introduced himself to me minutes before as Mohamad from Saudi Arabia had effortlessly filled the page with elegant Hebrew letters. He noticed my frustration. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve done this like a million times. You’ll get it.” 
The person at the helm of this unusual form of interfaith exchange is Ruben Shimonov, a 39-year-old Sephardic polymath. I first discovered Ruben’s work when I saw an exhibit of his calligraphy blending Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. I assumed he was a full-time artist, but soon learned that his main gig is serving as an educator and interfaith organizer. He mentors dozens of Sephardic college students, hosts LGBTQ+ Sephardic Shabbats. Now, he leads Sacred Scripts in NYC, a new six-month-long cohort-based interfaith calligraphy fellowship where Jewish and Muslim community leaders learn the intertwined history and etymology of Hebrew and Arabic.
Shimonov was born in Uzbekistan, a Muslim-majority country. For him, that background makes interfaith work feel like an extension of his upbringing.
“As a Jew from a community whose culture was shaped by Islamic cultures and histories, it is a natural expression of my Jewish identity to be in interfaith spaces,” he told me. “It’s not something I do because it’s cool or sexy or whatever. I just feel at home, because these are my people. This is my own background.”
From a young age, he was drawn to language, inspired in equal measure by the Hebrew letters he learned for his bar mitzvah and the Arabic script that adorned the mosques and architecture of his hometown.
Eventually, he taught himself calligraphy in three languages and came to see it as a powerful tool for the interfaith work he was already doing — organizing gatherings such as iftars in synagogues and seders in mosques through the Muslim Jewish Solidarity Committee. Over the past decade, Shimonov has led more than 100 interfaith calligraphy workshops around the world, highlighting the deep historical and linguistic connections between Hebrew and Arabic.
This year, Shimonov launched Sacred Scripts alongside his longtime partners at the Muslim American Leadership Alliance (MALA), drawing fellows from networks he and MALA have built over the years. The program brings together young artists and community leaders — many with Middle Eastern backgrounds — who they feel stand to benefit from sustained engagement. Over the course of six months, fellows study calligraphy and the histories of the languages, while connecting over shared meals and cultural outings. This month, they are attending a concert focused on Jewish and Muslim music from the Maghreb.
After Oct. 7, Shimonov said, he witnessed fractures between many Jewish and Muslim organizations that had been working together on interfaith initiatives. “That sense of betrayal and hurt was very real,” he said. “But if the only times you meet are when things are bad, what do you expect? I think the secret sauce to all this stuff is you’ve got to be in it for the long haul.”
The Sephardic connection
During each session, we practice writing while Shimonov lectures on the connections between the two languages. Shiminov gives each language its due, devoting several sessions to studying each before bringing them together.
Eventually, we learn the same words in Hebrew and Arabic — beit and bayt for home, Shabbat and al-sabt for Saturday — the list goes on. Before tackling day one of learning the Arabic alphabet, we practiced writing the phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, which appears at the beginning of every surah in the Quran, into Hebrew. Translated word-for-word, it sounds remarkably similar.
For Shimonov, that overlap is the point. He believes strongly that Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews occupy a unique place in interfaith work because of the seemingly endless cultural similarities they share with Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa.
That sensibility is reflected in the space itself. The fellowship is hosted at the American Sephardi Federation, a Jewish institution that looks more like a place to sip chai and do a close reading of Rumi’s greatest hits. The floors are covered with embroidered rugs, the walls are lined with ouds, a pear-shaped Middle Eastern instrument, and endless shelves are packed with rare books in Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi.
Because of these connections, the days focused on Arabic study are more Jew-y than one might expect. Shimonov takes care to highlight Jewish history in the Middle East, explaining how Iraq — not Europe — was the world’s foremost hub of Jewish life for centuries, where many Jews only spoke Arabic because Hebrew wasn’t widely taught, and presenting pivotal Jewish texts written in Judeo-Arabic.
In Shimonov’s Sephardic approach, the aim is less to “build bridges” — a phrase that has become a catch-all interfaith mantra — than to reveal how much was never separate to begin with.
Ali Saracoglu, a Muslim participant in the fellowship and an artist from Izmir, Turkey, said Sacred Scripts reshaped his understanding of Jewish identity.
When he moved to the United States, his primary exposure had been to Ashkenazi Jewish communities. “When you open the conversation to Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, you encounter people from Uzbekistan to North Africa to descendants of communities from Spain,” he said. “You start to see a much more global form of Judaism.”
Saracoglu joked that within the group, it was often impossible to tell who was Jewish and who was Muslim unless it came up in conversation.
Nora Monasheri, a 23-year-old Iranian Jew, said that after Oct. 7, she had participated in countless interfaith dialogues at her alma mater, Binghamton University. “I felt like I’d been there, done that on campus,” she said, lamenting that such gatherers were “always very focused on Israel and Palestine, and it felt very forced.”
For her, creating calligraphy rather than debating peace agreements from the ’90s is a welcome change.
“I found that some of our most important words in Hebrew are the same in Arabic — faith, charity, blood — So instead of debating each other, we’re discovering this shared history, tradition, and spirituality together.”
For Saracoglu, the program’s artistic aspect is particularly powerful. He first met Shimonov at a one-off interfaith calligraphy workshop two years ago, an experience that stayed with him as an artist. He has been creating ebru, the traditional Turkish art of marbling, since the age of five, and now practices it in his New York City apartment. In a recent series he calls “One Word: Peace,” he layers his marbled designs with calligraphy by both Jewish and Muslim artists — often including Shimonov himself.
During one session, Shimonov read aloud from a Judeo-Arabic translation of the Torah, explaining that many Jews in the Arab world historically translated religious texts into Arabic because many did not understand Hebrew. The word for God was therefore transcribed as the Arabic word, Allah.
I chimed in that my own Jewish parents say “Inshallah” all the time when they simply mean “God willing.” My non-Sephardic friends always found this bizarre, but among this crowd, it barely required explanation.
As he read from the Torah, one Muslim fellow suddenly interrupted.
“It sounds like the Quran!”
The post At this interfaith calligraphy class, the lines between Jew and Muslim blur appeared first on The Forward.
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Debating Zionism is good for Jews, actually
A group of Jewish Theological Seminary students were furious with the chancellor’s position on Jewish statehood. In protest, they draped flags around campus before graduation, which the administration removed before the ceremony.
The year was 1948. The flags were Israeli. And the dissenting students were protesting Chancellor Louis Finkelstein’s refusal to make support for Jewish statehood part of academic commencement. Some students even arranged for the bells at nearby Union Theological Seminary to play “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, after JTS officials declined to include it in commencement.
As a historian of American Zionism, I have been thinking about that episode while reading the many vitriolic reactions to a few JTS undergraduates who spoke out in opposition to the seminary’s decision to welcome Israeli President Isaac Herzog as this year’s graduation speaker. Once again, a JTS commencement has become a battleground over Israel, but the sides are now reversed.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether this was the right moment to extend an invitation to Herzog to speak at commencement. What deserves attention is the outraged reaction to a group of students raising objections, and the speed with which those students’ concerns have been cast as a deviation from the historical contours of mainstream American Jewish politics.
A recent Times of Israel blog post, for example, argued that the mere fact that JTS students raised concerns about Herzog was a rupture with Judaism. “Jewish survival without sovereignty is fragile,” wrote the author, Menachem Creditor, adding that “the founders of JTS did not need to debate the necessity of Jewish self-determination,” and that Herzog “represents the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”
These claims erase JTS’s long and sophisticated engagement with Jewish nationalism and the conception of Jewish peoplehood. Reading American Zionism backward risks collapsing peoplehood and statehood, and creating traditions to ratify present assumptions out of a past that never existed.
The relationship between Zionism and JTS was nuanced from the start. Both founding president Sabato Morais and the seminary’s third chancellor, Cyrus Adler, opposed Zionism on religious grounds. Morais believed the restoration of Jewish sovereignty could only come through divine intervention at the dawn of a messianic era. Adler thought of the growth of a non-religious community in the land of Israel “as the greatest misfortune that has happened to the Jews in modern times.”
Solomon Schechter, as chancellor, brought a measure of support for the Zionist movement to JTS; shaped by the cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha-am, Schechter insisted that Zionism transcended statehood. Its primary aim, he argued, was the national regeneration of global Judaism, not the creation of a secular state that would hollow out Jewish life from within.
And the controversies over the 1948 graduation exercises revealed how far Louis Finkelstein stood from political Zionism, even after the establishment of Israel. Where some Zionists celebrated sovereignty, Finkelstein remained focused on the Jewish character of the land and its people. That orientation drew him toward Judah Magnes’s binational vision — that of a federated framework in which Jews and Arabs would each hold recognized rights and a measure of national autonomy within a single shared political entity.
This reticence to conflate Judaism, Zionism and Jewish sovereignty was not limited to the seminary’s chancellors.
Henrietta Szold, JTS’s first female student, a central figure in its intellectual orbit, and the founder of Hadassah, similarly supported a binational vision from her new home in Jerusalem. Mordecai Kaplan — a longtime JTS faculty member, committed Zionist, and one of the most influential American Jewish thinkers of the 20th century — expressed concern throughout his career about the mistake of equating Jewish nationhood with Jewish statehood. In Judaism as a Civilization, he called for a “more ethical conception of nationhood fundamentally as a cultural rather than as a political relationship.”
After Israel’s founding, Kaplan went further, arguing to David Ben-Gurion in 1958 that “the basic assumption that the state of Israel is a Jewish state is itself open to question.” The Israeli government’s task, he insisted, was to establish “a modern state, not a Jewish state, an Israeli state, not a Jewish state.”
These questions did not disappear even as JTS evolved under new leadership.
Gerson Cohen, whose chancellorship beginning in 1972 marked a shift toward a more pro-statist posture, embraced the state’s significance for Jewish life and identity in ways his predecessors had not. Yet even Cohen insisted that commitment to Judaism must rest “not on political statehood or upon geography but solely on the idea of covenant and commitment to ethos.” He argued that a flourishing diaspora was a necessity for Jewish civilization as a whole, not adjunct to Israeli interests.
His successor, Chancellor Emeritus Ismar Schorsch, was more direct, saying in a recent warning that Jews must ensure that “Judaism qua religion is not submerged and shredded by the power of the Jewish state.”
One can disagree with any of these perspectives. In fact, the disagreement itself is the point.
The leaders who built JTS debated Jewish self-determination, Zionism and statehood while living through the Holocaust, the collapse of European Jewish life, existential danger in Palestine, and the precarious birth of the state of Israel. They were not naïve about antisemitism, indifferent to Jewish survival, or ignorant of Jewish sources. Nor were they unsophisticated about Zionism.
Instead, they offered a more demanding account of Zionism: one that affirmed a Jewish homeland and insisted that Jewish power remain answerable to Jewish ethics, all without diminishing Jewish life in the diaspora.
This is precisely the perspective that has been crowded out of our contemporary discourse, not because these questions were answered, but because the space to ask them has collapsed. As the boundaries of acceptable Zionist discourse have narrowed, issues that arose from within Zionism itself — the potential dangers of equating the Israeli state with the Jewish people, the risks of elevating political statehood above other ethical and communal commitments, and the need to have diaspora Jewish life be seen as carrying independent religious and moral weight — have come to be treated as anti-Zionist rather than part of a living internal debate.
The furor over the JTS undergraduates’ letter objecting to Herzog is a troubling sign that, across American Jewish life, it has become harder to think honestly about the risks of treating support for the state of Israel not merely as a Jewish commitment, but as one that takes precedence over other all other Jewish commitments. When the past is rewritten so that the equation of peoplehood and statehood appears inevitable, American Jews are left with a false choice: either embrace the state as an unquestioned and unquestionable expression of Jewish identity, or abandon Jewish life altogether.
JTS has offered its students a richer education because, in its halls, the relationship between the Jewish people and the Jewish state has been debated and contested. That discourse is not a failure of Jewish commitment, but an expression of it. The sustained engagement with the hardest questions of Zionism is one of the best things JTS has given American Jewish life, and one of the most important gifts it still has to offer.
The post Debating Zionism is good for Jews, actually appeared first on The Forward.
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ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan Sidesteps ‘Genocide’ Accusations Against Israel
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb. 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Karim Khan, the embattled chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has cast fresh doubt on accusations that Israel committed “genocide” in Gaza, arguing in a new interview that no legal conclusion has yet been reached in the ongoing legal battle.
In a lengthy interview with anti-Israel journalist Medhi Hasan this week, Khan refused to engage in the popularized rhetoric labeling Israel’s military campaign against Hamas terrorists in Gaza as genocidal, even as pressure mounts on the ICC by activists to pursue more sweeping charges against Israeli officials.
When asked directly whether Israel’s conduct amounted to genocide, Khan emphasized the need for sufficient evidence to level charges against Israeli officials and that prosecutors must follow evidence and legal standards rather than political narratives.
“So, you’re not ruling out that there could be a warrant in the future?” Hasan asked.
“Everything is a function of evidence,” Khan responded, arguing that accusing Israel of genocide for political purposes would be “reckless.”
“You’re saying in the past three years there hasn’t been evidence of genocide in Gaza?” Hasan asked, visibly flummoxed.
Khan lamented the “suffering” in Gaza but reaffirmed that the ICC could not proceed in making final judgements about the nature of Israel’s military operations in Gaza without sufficient evidence. He asserted that officials within the ICC are vigorously analyzing the case and that he cannot reveal more about the nature of the investigation.
“So, genocide is not off limits?” Hasan pressed.
“No crime is off limits if the evidence is there,” Khan responded.
Khan has come under fire for making his initial surprise demand for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on the same day in May 2024 that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation reportedly infuriated US and British leaders, as the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Nonetheless, Khan’s latest remarks are likely to reverberate through international legal and diplomatic circles, where the genocide accusation has become one of the most contentious aspects of the war between Israel and Hamas. Over the past two years, an array of humanitarian organizations and human rights experts have accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. These accusations have been controversial and widely contested, with critics alleging these groups and individuals lack sufficient evidence.
Khan’s comments come as the ICC faces intense scrutiny over its investigation into the conflict. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave throughout the war.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
Genocide is among the most difficult crimes to prove under international law because prosecutors must establish specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Hasan, one of the most prominent anti-Israel critics in media, has spent the past two years unleashing an unrelenting barrage of criticism against the Jewish state, repeatedly accusing the Israeli military of pursuing a “genocide” in Gaza.
In the interview, Khan also forcefully denied allegations of sexual misconduct that have engulfed his office in recent months, accusing critics of politicizing the claims amid the ICC’s high-profile investigations into Israel, Russia, and other global conflicts. He dismissed suggestions that his pursuit of Israeli leaders was intended to distract from the allegations against him, saying that he did not have evidence to substantiate the claim.
Khan further alleged that senior Western officials attempted to pressure the ICC over its investigation, including what he described as warnings from prominent American and British political figures about the geopolitical consequences of targeting Israeli officials.
The ICC’s investigation has placed the court at the center of an increasingly bitter international divide over the Gaza war. Khan’s comments won’t settle the debate, but the ICC prosecutor appeared to signal a more cautious legal approach than some of Israel’s fiercest critics have demanded.