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Thomas Friedman explains how devastating Israel’s attacks on Iran have been
By BERNIE BELLAN I’m not sure how many readers follow Thomas Friedman’s writing in the New York Times; after all, he’s been highly critical of Netanyahu for years, which probably makes him persona non grata for a lot of you.
But, on Tuesday, November 26, Friedman wrote a piece that was so particularly incisive – and came across as so laudatory of what Israel has been able to achieve in the past 13 months, that even diehard Friedman critics should be able to take some very meaningful lessons away from that column.
Toward the beginning of what he wrote, Friedman makes what, for most readers of his columns, would probably be perceived as a fairly shocking statement when he writes: “In just the last two months, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran that approaches its 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Full stop.”
He goes on to describe what Israel has been able to do to Hezbollah in the past few months as so destructive of that terrorist organization’s abilities that “Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran have decided to delink themselves from Hamas in Gaza and stop the firing from Lebanon for the first time since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded Israel.”
Friedman then provides some very interesting information about how effective two attacks Israel launched against Iran – one in April and then one in October, were, both in inflicting tremendous damage to Iran’s capability to defend itself against a full scale Israeli attack – should one be launched, and in undermining Iran’s confidence that it can continue to arm Hezbollah without severe repercussions.
Here is what Friedman wrote:
“There is a reason for this (Hezbollah’s agreeing to a cease fire). Hezbollah’s mother ship has suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s April strike on Iran eliminated one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on Oct. 26. Israel also damaged Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce the solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, according to Axios, Israel’s Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was a response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to create the explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran’s efforts in nuclear weapons research.
“A senior Israeli defense official told me that the Oct. 26 attack on Iran ‘was lethal, precise and a surprise.’ And up to now, the Iranians ‘don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished, and they are worried about Trump.’ “
Friedman’s column goes on to offer advice to President-elect Trump how to deal with other changing realities in the world, including the rapid pace of artificial intelligence development in which, Friedman points out, Israelis are playing a leading role. But one has to wonder whether anyone in Trump’s circle bothers to read anything written by Friedman. After all, he was very close to President Biden – which would certainly put him into Trump’s enemies’ camp, on top of which he writes for that most hated of all media: The New York Times.
Still, if someone who is as critical of Israel’s government as Friedman has been is capable of pointing out the vastly changed dynamic now permeating the entire Middle East as a result of the huge blows Israel has inflicted both on Iran’s number one proxy in the region – Hezbollah, and on Iran itself, once can more readily understand how Israel’s strategy of taking on different enemies all at the same time has paid off.
I, for one, will admit that I was quite surprised to read Friedman’s analysis – and it leads me to question my own thoughts as to what would happen when Israel opened up a new front in Lebanon at the same time as it was still engaged in Gaza. I had thought that it might lead to a repeat of the 2006 debacle, in which a ground invasion by Israel into Lebanon led to heavy Israeli losses and what was, in effect, a victory for Hezbollah – not by being able to defeat Israel, but simply by surviving that invasion.
This time around though – and we’ll have to wait for military analysts to tell us just how effective the heavy Israeli bombardment of Lebanese areas has been in terms of degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities, Israel has managed to keep its own casualties relatively low by relying upon bombing of Hezbollah infrastructure. As has been the case in Gaza, however, it’s so difficult to tell what those devastating bombings have actually accomplished in specific terms beyond realizing that they have thoroughly degraded both Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s military capacities. It seems though that the aphorism that “the sum is greater than its parts” is particularly apt in describing what the Israel Air Force has been able to achieve.
While we have been witnessing the wholesale destruction of civilian areas – in both Gaza and Lebanon, it now seems evident that Israeli intelligence has been able to locate terrorist locations with tremendous accuracy. The fact that both Hamas and Hezbollah have been so thoroughly embedded within civilian population areas made it inevitable that, once the IAF embarked upon a relentless campaign to destroy terrorist infrastructure and locations where terrorists were embedded within the civilian population, there would be huge civilian casualties – but ultimately Israel would be able to degrade both Hamas and Hezbollah’s fighting abilities to the point where they have both been neutralized in large part.
The question, of course, is what will now happen as a result of Friedman himself describing Israel’s having forced Hezbollah and Iran to “delink” themselves from Hamas. Hamas is, in effect, nothing more than a mafia type organization, now terrorizing the Palestinian population in Gaza, with its own survival now being its purpose. The Israel Defence Forces seem content to let Hamas carry on its campaign of looting aid trucks and terrorizing the population for its own benefit.
But Hamas fighters, however many may remain, don’t have the same option as Hezbollah’s fighters – which is to retreat behind a defined line north of the Litani River in Lebanon. How many are in the tunnels? How many are embedded within the rest of the Gaza population? If the IDF has an idea what the answers to those questions are, I haven’t seen them.
So, the war in Gaza will likely carry on for some time. It appears that the bombing campaign has thoroughly reduced Hamas’s ability to carry on any effective strikes on Israeli targets, but it is not clear at what point the Israeli government might be willing to accept any sort of a ceasefire. The government’s position has been that a ceasefire can only be entered into when at least the majority of the hostages are released, but frankly, Israel is now operating from such a position of strength vis-a-vis Hamas, that the idea of accepting a ceasefire that would allow Hamas fighters to remain in place seems unconscionable to the vast majority of Israelis. It may seem perverse to think that the government has been willing to sacrifice hostages’ lives for the sake of dealing a final, crushing blow to Hamas, but that’s the sad reality.
Still, who would have thought that Israel would be able to wage successful wars on so many fronts? As Thomas Friedman has noted, Israel has upended the situation in the Middle East, albeit at a very heavy price. And even though I’ve been questioning from the outset the Israeli government’s strategy of seeking total victory over Hamas, given how thoroughly Israel has been able to undermine Hezbollah’s and Iran’s positions, perhaps I was wrong to question Netanyahu’s goal of thoroughly crushing Hamas. Credit has to be given though to the IDF and how much they learned from previous wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Amidst all this though, one has to feel great sympathy for the people of Gaza. They are being held to ransom by a gang of thugs and there does not appear to be any way out for them. For their sake, let’s hope that Israel can “finish the job” quickly, although how that can be done remains difficult to know. Perhaps Thomas Friedman, who is always so thoughtful and insightful, can shed some answers to that question as well.
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National Council of Jewish Women ejects LA chapter, other affiliates cut ties amid historic reboot
When wildfires blazed through Los Angeles last year, displacing tens of thousands of people, the local National Council of Jewish Women affiliate was well positioned to help. The national nonprofit’s LA chapter already ran donation drop-off sites across the city — its iconic thrift shops — and employed staff that knew how to sort the flood of donated items.
And after NCJW-LA chief executive Marjorie Gilberg sent an appeal to her members, colleagues at chapters in other cities also shared the letter with their own constituents. Hundreds of thousands of dollars soon poured in from outside of LA, and Gilberg’s nonprofit — which has focused on economic justice for decades — ultimately distributed more than $1 million in cash relief, donated goods and store vouchers to fire-affected families.
“It felt like a huge hug,” Gilberg said. “There was support coming from all these directions, from these women across the country to pull for LA. I was like, ‘Oh, this is what a network is for.’”
But last month, the chapter’s parent organization, the National Council of Jewish Women, cut ties with the LA group.
Citing a “strained” relationship, NCJW president Laura Monn Ginsburg informed Gilberg’s board May 8 that the national organization was terminating its affiliation with the LA chapter, whose $23 million annual budget is three times national’s size. NCJW gave the chapter 90 days to rebrand.
“Despite our good-faith efforts to preserve the affiliation,” Monn Ginsburg wrote, “the Board of Directors of NCJW, Inc., has concluded that continued affiliation with the LA section is no longer tenable.”
The collaborative response to the LA fires reflected one of the strengths that has made the National Council of Jewish Women a leading American social justice nonprofit movement for more than a century. The grassroots Jewish movement started out by seeding local sections and only established a national umbrella in the mid-20th century. As the parent group lobbied on progressive issues, dozens of local sections pursued that mission at the grassroots level in ways that served their local communities, working mostly independent of each other and collaborating when opportunities arose.
But that freedom for local chapters to choose their own priorities is now history. The Washington, D.C.-based parent organization, citing scores of section closures over the last two decades, is transitioning to a regional model focused more on political advocacy than community service. The national shakeup, which began in earnest last July, has already resulted in two sections closing and the decision by three more — in Arizona and Essex County, New Jersey, as well as LA — to break away from the national council. The movement’s six largest remaining chapters — as well as roughly 20 others in the network — may soon follow suit.
National leadership says the restructuring was necessary to prevent further closures, free local chapters from the burden of administration and allow the national organization to expand into places not currently served by the local model. And the group is betting that a tighter, advocacy-focused national agenda will effect greater political change locally and launch the Jewish women’s movement into the future.
“We want folks to take action that is more strategic, that is more thought through, to ensure that they are going to be more successful,” said Ellen Buchman, NCJW’s vice president of engagement and leadership. “We will never question whether the right people to do that is our grassroots — it always will be. The difference is how they will do it.”
But the uncertainty in the network points to a massive identity change for the legacy nonprofit, and to some, a tragic one. Leaders of some sections said moving away from community service work would not only abdicate a local responsibility, but also subtract a powerful Jewish presence from the front lines of American social justice during a time of rising antisemitism.
“We are a Jewish organization that has shown up in progressive places, we’ve shown up in women’s health, all these important issues across the country,” Gilberg said. “And they’re just tearing it down with no sense. It’s the worst possible time to be doing this to this kind of organization.”
A proud grassroots history
The story of NCJW reads like a progressive history of the United States — and in some ways, it is. The organization was founded in 1893 by women who had been invited to the participate in the Chicago World’s Fair, only to discover that the role others had intended for them was as hostesses pouring coffee. The organization originally focused on Jewish religious education for women and children, but quickly branched out to social welfare issues. Today, many of the movement’s 250,000 subscribers — the national group calls them advocates — are the children or grandchildren of lifetime members.
On virtually any American social concern you can think of since then — education, criminal justice reform, civil rights, abortion rights — NCJW, backed by the voices of hundreds of thousands of Jewish women, has been at the forefront of political advocacy.
On virtually any American progressive domestic cause you can think of today, there’s a National Council section pursuing it at the local level. And maybe only one; it’s often said in the NCJW network that if you know one section, you know — well, one section. Their efforts are wide-ranging and specialized: The Pittsburgh section operates a daycare center for children whose parents are required in court; Essex organizes an annual fair for low-income families to pick up free school supplies; Arizona runs a sexual assault trauma recovery center. The sections frequently partner with other local nonprofits, too — sometimes the only Jewish presence in those progressive spaces.
At its peak, the nonprofit had hundreds of sections — one veteran estimated as many as 200 in the post-Roe era. The national organization counted more than 125 in the early 2000s. But Jewish civic life across the country has since contracted, and younger members have grown scarce. There is no local chapter in the Washington metro area today — there were once five — or in some other major Jewish communities, including Boston and Philadelphia.
The 44 sections that remain today — that number does not include the three disaffiliating — range in size. Some have full staffs, thousands of members and budgets in the millions; others are fully volunteer-led, with a five-figure budget and a membership in the dozens.
They have enjoyed a symbiotic, mostly hands-off relationship with the national body. The nationally recognized legacy of NCJW helps the local chapters fundraise, and most sections are registered as 501(c)3 organizations under the national nonprofit’s group tax exemption. The sections pay dues according to their budget, and do the grassroots community work that bolster the national body’s credibility. They unite on certain national initiatives like Repro Shabbat, an annual abortion rights-themed Shabbat program held in 2,000 local communities, Buchman said.
“The organization does tremendous advocacy work nationally, so it does help us locally when we are doing our own advocacy work,” said Andrea Rakitta Mintz, the Essex chapter’s president. “But we are the ones who want to do the hands-on volunteering.”
A new national direction
Still, according to Buchman, the national vice president, the old system was unsustainable. “The antiquated 100-plus-year old system was not going to be able to continue if it was not going to be updated,” she said. For the national organization, it didn’t matter if the Los Angeles and Essex chapters were thriving if 10 or 20 other chapters were spiraling into dissolution.
And while the diversity of the sections was “wonderful,” Buchman said, it was also “something that we’re trying to reel in, so that through consistent advocacy as an organization we can have a greater impact, and be more of a household name.”
After bringing in a consulting firm to survey thousands of NCJW members and stakeholders, the national group formalized a new strategic plan, known as NCJW Forward, that replaced the sections with a regional staffing model. The plan established four core advocacy areas — reproductive rights, gender pay equity, family economic security, and combating antisemitism and hate — and included an increased focus on doing advocacy in Israel.
When it presented the formal plan to its sections in July 2025, NCJW offered them a choice: Integrate with the national organization — that is, turn over assets and donor lists and agree to the new structure — or disaffiliate. It gave sections until December 2027 to decide. Two of them, located in Greater Houston and Sarasota, closed in the next six months.
Buchman acknowledged the integration model would have staffing implications for both the national organization — which expects to hire up to 15 people over the next three years — and its affiliates. Some section staff will likely be let go upon integration with the national group, she said, and others may be kept on a case-by-case basis. Each section’s board of directors, meanwhile, would go from managing its affairs to serving as an advisory committee.
For some smaller sections, integration made sense. NCJW Miami, for example, already focused on reproductive justice advocacy, and it was fully board-run, with no staff. Integration meant surrendering independence, said Jessica Silver, a board member of the section, but it also came with additional national resources.
“We really don’t feel like we were giving up very much,” Silver said. “We can still really do everything that we want to do locally, and now we just have more of a partner in National in doing that work.”
The six additional sections integrating — whose budgets range from $30,000 to $200,000, according to Buchman — are Louisville, Minnesota, Colorado, Long Beach (California), Chicago North Shore, Kendall (Florida) and Utah.
Buchman said the three integrating sections with executive directors would be phasing them out. But NCJW Louisville’s executive director, Sarah Harlan, said the national organization had been flexible during the integration process, allowing her and her office administrator — the section’s only two employees — to stay on as contract staff.
Other volunteer-led sections, however, warned that integration would undermine decades of community work, if not squander it.
NCJW Arizona’s board president, Civia Tamarkin, said that though her section did not employ staff, merging was never an option. On a technical level, she said, her organization needed autonomy and local nonprofit status to advocate on state issues, serve on government advisory committees and partner with other Arizona-based nonprofits.
But she also did not trust NCJW staff for her region — which would be based in Denver, according to the strategic plan — to oversee Ruth Place, the trauma recovery center her section founded three years ago for survivors of sexual assault.
“It’s our Field of Dreams,” Tamarkin said. “We don’t want to lose that or turn it over to any other entity.”
The organization plans to rename itself the Jewish Women’s Action Alliance Arizona.
For larger sections, an uncertain future
When NCJW presented its sections in July 2025 with the option to integrate or break off, it offered a third route to the seven chapters whose budgets exceeded $750,000 — a new kind of affiliation. Affiliating sections would be required to commit to NCJW’s core issues; follow rules about how to allocate funds; and adopt the national group’s standards around Zionism, which include supporting a two-state solution.
The seven sections replied in September 2025 with a joint letter from their lawyers, Gilberg said, rejecting the proposal and outlining their concerns. She said the national organization has still not sent a letter in response. Buchman says the organization did respond, asking to meet in person rather than conduct a negotiation in writing.
Seven months later, without any changes to the affiliation proposal, Essex announced it was rebranding as Tovah, a decision that went into effect Monday.
Rakitta Mintz, the Essex president, felt the same way about her chapter’s signature programs as Tamarkin did about Ruth Place. The section’s Center For Women, which provides free career coaching to women re-entering the workforce, has helped 40 people get new jobs just this year. An annual fair where low-income families “shop” for free school supplies was another Essex hallmark she didn’t want threatened.
Neither of those efforts fits explicitly into the national organization’s four core advocacy issues. So while Rakitta Mintz was weighing the chapter’s options before cutting ties, she said she never saw the affiliation option as a real possibility.
“We did not want to lose our autonomy,” she said, “and we didn’t want to lose the ability to do our local hands-on volunteer work.”
The other five major sections — New York, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Michigan and St. Louis — entered mediation with the national organization, which pertained to possible changes to the organization’s bylaws. (A sixth section, Dallas, was offered affiliation later, and did not participate in the mediation.)
Buchman said those talks went well.
“We also feel strongly that we will come back to the table to make more progress,” she added. “We haven’t yet figured out when that will be, but we had not talked for months, and we have now, and that’s a sign of true progress.”
LA’s banishment stunned many in the network, including leaders of the other sections that had joined it in mediation. But it did not blindside Gilberg, who had been preparing for the possibility LA would be going independent by securing the section’s own IRS tax determination letter.
According to Buchman, the national vice president, the LA section’s work simply did not align with the NCJW vision.
“To us, the LA section does a beautiful job focusing solely on financial independence and economic security, and that’s never been what our organization has chosen to do,” Buchman said. “Certainly, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that economic justice isn’t part of our work to improve the lives of women, children, and families, but our priority issues are broader than that.”
Gilberg pointed to numerous places in NCJW Forward that seemed to highlight economic justice work, including on its page about family economic security, though its policy ambitions do not include cash assistance, which features in several ongoing NCJW LA programs.
“In their current policy priorities, there’s paid family leave — which is specifically an economic justice issue,” Gilberg said. “That’s one of their big four things.”
Buchman said 10 more sections were likely to integrate and estimated eight to 10 others were “on the fence.” She did not say which chapters fell in each category.
Those numbers, combined with the five departures and five in mediation, left about a dozen sections unaccounted for. Buchman, who joined NCJW two years ago with more than 30 years of nonprofit experience, said she didn’t know where those chapters stood.
But she didn’t regard disaffiliation or closure as a subtraction for the national group.
“It frees us up to meet our goals, which is to expand,” Buchman said. “There are cities that have advocates but no sections. Or legislative opportunities but no advocacy. Where we have donors but no fundraising.” She added that it was possible she’d send fundraisers into cities where disaffiliated sections continued to operate.
To some NCJW veterans, though, the breakup felt like a slow-motion collapse for an organization that once spoke for hundreds of thousands of Jewish women.
“A lot of people have a very nostalgic feeling for NCJW,” said Tamarkin, the Arizona section head. “They may be third-generation, fourth-generation and are very sad to see the federation broken up.
“On the other hand,” she continued, “times change, organizations change, and in such a competitive economic climate for nonprofits, every organization has to do what they are advised is the best route forward.”
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Trump says Netanyahu ‘turned his Troops around’ after he asked Israel not to bomb Beirut
(JTA) — U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming credit for another truce between Hezbollah and Israel, nearly two months after surprising both sides by declaring a ceasefire that has teetered ever since.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said nothing has changed in Israel’s approach to battling Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it is based.
“I had a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu today, asking him not to go into a major raid of Beirut, Lebanon. He turned his Troops around. Thank you Bibi!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday afternoon. “I also had a conversation with Representatives of the Leaders of Hezbollah, and they agreed to stop shooting at Israel, and its soldiers. Likewise, Israel agreed to stop shooting at them. Let’s see how long that lasts — Hopefully it will be for ETERNITY!”
The post followed another similar message published hours earlier in which Trump said “there will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back.”
The posts came after days of heavy fighting in Lebanon, where multiple Israeli soldiers have been killed by Hezbollah drones and Israel spurred an evacuation in the outskirts of Beirut after warning that it would soon launch an operation against Hezbollah outposts there.
In a post of his own on X, Netanyahu confirmed that he had spoken with Trump but did not say that he had agreed to a ceasefire.
“Tonight, I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged,” Netanyahu wrote. “In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
The Lebanese Embassy in Washington, meanwhile, said in a statement that Lebanon had learned that Hezbollah had agreed to a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire.
The hostilities in Lebanon and northern Israel reflect a distinct front in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. When Trump declared a ceasefire in that war in early April, Israel at first maintained that it did not apply to Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. But Trump insisted that Netanyahu cease fighting in Lebanon, too.
Two months later, Trump is still negotiating for a permanent end to the Iran war. On Monday, he said on CNBC that he found the talks to be “very boring” and did not care if the Iranians dropped out of discussions.
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Smotrich’s surprise appearance at Israel Day Parade sparks backlash from NY and Jewish leaders
(New York Jewish Week) — Amid a record crowd at New York’s annual Israel Day parade on Sunday, one participant is standing out.
A growing number of city, state and Jewish leaders are denouncing the participation of Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right Israeli minister who joined the march without having been announced in advance.
“The facts: Smotrich was NOT invited. Crashed at the last minute. Marched in the back of the parade. Not one New York public official joined him,” David Greenfield, the CEO and executive director of the Met Council, which sponsored a pre-parade breakfast for elected officials Sunday, wrote in a post on X.
Greenfield was responding to a groundswell of anger about Smotrich’s presence at the rally, which is typically framed as a broad Jewish communal celebration of Israel. While the inclusion of Israeli government officials has long been a sticking point for some who would prefer the parade to avoid politics, this year Smotrich’s presence in particular has proved galling for several prominent parade participants.
“Bezalel Smotrich is a far-right extremist whose hateful and divisive rhetoric is fundamentally at odds with the values we hold dear in New York,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, who joined the march, wrote in a post on X Monday. “Yesterday’s parade was a celebration of Jewish pride, community, and unity. I strongly condemn his participation.”
Attorney General Letitia James, who attended the parade, and New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores also condemned Smotrich on Monday.
The Israeli government had promised its largest-ever delegation this year, in part a show of strength at a time when New York City’s anti-Israel mayor, Zohran Mamdani, vowed to skip the parade. But it had not said that Smotrich, who recently said he believed he was facing International Criminal Court charges, would be among the group. Smotrich joined the parade after flying in from Israel early Sunday morning.
Mamdani condemned the inclusion of Smotrich and other ministers in the parade, telling MS Now in an interview published Monday that he was “offended” by their presence.
“You can see in the participation of the far-right Israeli minister Smotrich, as well as a number of other ministers, a vision of annihilation, a complicity in genocide, and frankly, a belief that does not have much value for even the sanctity of children in Gaza,” Mamdani said. “I am offended, as I know many New Yorkers are, by their participation.”
Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, has been sanctioned by several countries for inciting settler violence against Palestinians. The head of Israel’s far-right Religious Zionist Party, Smotrich has previously advocated for annexing the majority of the West Bank, called for the “total annihilation” of cities in Gaza, and said that it would be “justified and moral” to block humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, Mark Treyger, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which organizes the parade, said he did not know exactly which Israeli officials would be at the parade.
“We don’t have the full details as far as who is or who is not coming from the Israeli delegation,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time.
“That’s usually handled from the consulate office, and I will refer to them as far as handling that,” Treyger added. “But for me personally, it’s really not about politicians. It’s about the people that we are welcoming, as far as families across New York, the state, the region, folks coming in from across the country that are looking forward to this parade.”
For some of them, Smotrich’s participation was a blemish.
“Bezalel Smotrich should be sanctioned by American political and Jewish communal leaders – not marching alongside them in the streets of New York City,” the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street wrote in a post on X. As a political organization, J Street does not officially participate in the parade, but its members typically march as part of liberal delegations.
Other liberal Jewish groups similarly criticized both Smotrich’s presence and New York politicians for participating in the same parade as the Israeli delegation.
“It is shocking to see New York officials march alongside Kahanists like Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit members, whose support for illegal settlements and territorial expansion inspire violence, hatred and the further immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza,” New York Jewish Agenda wrote in a post on X.
“We are grateful to Mayor Mamdani for refusing to march in the Israel Day Parade, which featured some of the Israeli politicians who have not only cheered on the genocide of Palestinians, but are part of the government committing that genocide,” tweeted the left-wing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, adding, “Shame on every elected official who marched yesterday.”
Israel had announced several participants in advance of the parade, including Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli and Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who has said he wants to see Gaza flattened by a nuclear bomb and then resettled by Jews, was also on the list.
Tamar Glezerman, an organizer for Israelis for Peace, which took part in a small demonstration along the parade route to oppose the Israeli government delegation’s presence, told JTA Sunday that she was surprised to see Smotrich in the group.
“They hid that because the Israeli government is, you know, a group of cowards, and they don’t want to get pushback,” she said.
Treyger appeared to respond to the outcry on Monday, writing in a post on X that while “some individuals who attended were neither invited by JCRC-NY nor known to us in advance, participation in the parade is not an endorsement of any political figure or ideology.”
A spokesperson for JCRC declined to clarify whether Treyger was referring to Smotrich specifically.
“We reject rhetoric that dehumanizes others, fuels division, or diminishes the dignity of any human being,” Treyger continued.
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