Israeli journalist Barak Ravid drew gasps this month when he told the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, “We are much closer to Israeli settlements being built in Gaza than hostages coming home from Gaza.” This is hardly news to anyone paying attention to Israeli governmental policy, but it introduced an unwanted chill into a conference that aimed to focus on “Jewish unity” and unspecified “support for Israel.”
Like other American Jews with strong connections to Israel, and dozens of friends and family members there, I have spent many a sleepless night worrying about the fate of the country, and furiously WhatsApping loved ones there to check on their safety. We may want to believe that Israeli leaders are trying to do what is best for their country and its residents. When we see news of yet another teenage soldier killed in Gaza or Lebanon, we want to believe that their sacrifice is not in vain but is making Israel safer.
But this is not a moment for surprise or for more rousing shows of vague “support for Israel.” It is a moment for anyone who cares about the future of the country and the people who live there to sound the alarm and wake each other up.
The settler movement has achieved a full takeover of the Israeli government, and they make no secret of their intentions: to resettle Gaza and officially annex the West Bank. Israeli leadership views the election of Donald Trump as clearing the path for this goal. Israel’s Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich said as much explicitly earlier this month. This past Sukkot, Likud members of Knesset took part in a conference on resettling Gaza held in a closed military zone meters from the strip, with the IDF protecting participants while pushing back hostage families who had come to protest.
High level Israeli officials have testified that Netanyahu has entirely abandoned the hostages and torpedoed any attempt to free them. Instead, he is continuing the war to advance his political survival and to allow for the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza. One of his high level aides has been arrested on suspicion of passing information to a German newspaper, allegedly at the prime minister’s behest, in order to sway public opinion against a hostage deal. Even former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fired apparently for supporting such a deal, has said publicly that there is no reason for the war to continue and that Israel is on its way to military occupation of Gaza.
There is increasing evidence that the army is implementing the “Generals’ Plan,” which aims to displace all 300,000-400,000 residents of Northern Gaza by preventing any humanitarian assistance from entering, bombarding the territory, preventing residents from returning and re-establishing an Israeli military occupation, followed inevitably by resettlement.
Meanwhile, Gaza itself has become a humanitarian disaster. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed — yes, including militants and terrorists, but also including thousands of children and entire families. The U.N. estimates that women and children make up 70% of those killed. Large-scale hunger and disease will likely only grow worse if and when Israel implements its recently passed laws that would prevent UNRWA, the main U.N. agency serving Palestinians, from operating there. In the West Bank, settlers carry out near daily violence against Palestinian villagers and farmers, with near complete impunity, often with the protection or assistance of the army.
The news that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (along with Hamas’s Mohammed Deif, who is likely dead) engendered the expected cheers from the global left and defensive outrage from the Jewish and Israeli establishment. But for anyone who cares about Israel’s future, these arrest warrants should be cause for deep sadness and alarm. It is a tragic moment when the prime minister of the Jewish state has sunk so low — and brought the country so low — that he can credibly be accused of war crimes, while simultaneously torpedoing any internal inquiry that could have staved off the ICC warrants.
An anti-Palestinian slogan in Hebrew, which reads “Revenge” and “Death to Arabs” is seen on a Palestinian home after a reported attack by Israeli settlers in the village of Turmus Aiya near Ramallah in the West Bank, on Feb. 18, 2024. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP)
In early 2023, it seemed like the electoral ascendency of Israeli extremist parties, combined with the mass anti-government protests that rocked Israel, might shock mainstream American Jewry out of their usual uncritical support. A September 2023 protest against Netanyahu’s speech to the United Nations drew thousands of Israeli expats and American Jews, including prominent rabbis and communal leaders. Even some legacy Jewish organizations, not accustomed to criticizing Israel, registered their disapproval of the attempted judicial overhaul.
The horrific massacres of Oct. 7 moved many American Jews back into the more familiar narrative of “Israel under attack.” The shocking willingness of some pro-Palestine activists to justify or deny Hamas’s atrocities and to dehumanize Israelis, coupled with a rise in violence against Jews and Jewish institutions, channeled communal energy into fighting antisemitism. And the real threat from Iran, including direct missile attacks as well as more than a year of rocket fire from Hezbollah before this week’s truce, has generated existential fear for Israel.
Mourning and fear must not distract us from the reality that the biggest existential threat to Israel, and indeed to Judaism itself, is coming from Israel’s governing coalition. Israel is not an object of worship or vehicle for Jewish identity. It is a real country with an increasingly authoritarian government committed to perpetual war and settlement. This is both a moral travesty and a danger to the state and to Judaism.
More than 50 years ago, the religious Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned, “A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.” Jews wearing kippahs and tzitzit who ransack Palestinian villages, sometimes even violating the basic laws of Shabbat to do so, who recite Shema while burning down a mosque, or who build a sukkah in a Palestinian village or in the middle of Gaza, have replaced worship of God with worship of power and sovereignty. They would happily destroy the actual state of Israel in order to achieve their dangerous vision of Jewish control over the entire biblical land of Israel, no matter the human or political cost.
Three decades ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu famously accused the left of “forgetting what it means to be a Jew.” But it is Netanyahu and his allies who have forgotten the basic foundations of Judaism. These include pidyon shevuyim — redeeming captives — considered one of the most important commandments, and the most basic commitment of a Jewish state, not to abandon its own people.
Some American Jews believe that we have no right to comment on matters of Israeli security, or that any criticism of Israel fuels antisemitism. And yet, too much of the American Jewish community gives a pass to organizations that have supported Netanyahu’s drive toward autocracy and settlements, and even refused the pleas of hostage families to call for a deal that will end the war in Gaza and bring their loved ones home. American Jews must not stand by as Israel descends into authoritarianism and messianism which are doing irreversible, generational damage. Supporting Israel can no longer mean sporting flag pins, attending “unity” rallies, or trying to shut down any speech critical of Israel.
Rather, support for Israel and its people must mean standing with the Israelis desperately working to save their country from fanaticism, never-ending war and the settler agenda. Painful though it certainly is, supporting Israel today requires setting aside our disbelief that Israeli leaders could act with total disregard for the wellbeing of Israelis, let alone Palestinians. It means no longer giving Netanyahu and his ministers the endless benefit of the doubt.
American Jews can begin by sending our charitable dollars to the brave Israeli civil society organizations rather than to groups that explicitly or implicitly promote settlement and anti-democratic legislation. It means putting pressure on both the Netanyahu government and the U.S. administrations — outgoing and incoming — to end the war. We can demand that the U.S. follow its own laws and require Israel to adhere to the same guidelines for military aid that other countries do, including ensuring transparency in how aid is used. This includes enforcing the deadline for increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Such measures are not an abdication of the security of Israelis, but rather a means of pressuring Netanyahu to end the war and bring home the hostages, allowing Israel to move toward internal investigations and new elections. And we can insist that our communal organizations stop burying their heads in the sand and instead push back on the Israeli government’s dangerous agenda.
It’s time for American Jews to take a strong moral stance for human life and human rights. This would be the truest expression of support for Israel and Israelis, as well as Torah and Judaism.
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