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antisemitism
Opening the Book of Life on the Day the Towers Fell
The convergence of September 11 and Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity to look back at what we did and did not do in the aftermath.
Sep 11, 2026
I am such a caricature of a native New Yorker that my first date, at age of 12, was at the observation deck of the World Trade Center. I thought there was nothing more romantic than showing someone a full view of the place that was simultaneously my shtetl and the greatest city in the world. I said a shechechiyanu when we walked up to the glass, because the beauty of the moment called for a blessing.
Years later I was a freshman in college in September of 2001, and when I came home for a long weekend that October, the air across Manhattan still smelled unholy, like burning wires, melted concrete, and mass organic decay. There were an unspeakable number of lives, whole universes unto themselves, lost that day, and their memories being a blessing remains a cold comfort. For many of us in the aftermath of that terrible day, we watched the national conversation shift to be entirely about who we should be afraid of—and too often, the answer was some of our fellow Americans.
This year, Rosh Hashanah begins on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The convergence is an opportunity and a gift. Together, Jews in New York and around the country will experience several hours of extraordinary potency: one part of our hearts focused on the opening of the book of life, and the other on the day the towers fell, and everything that came after.
This is an opportunity to understand what Jewish tradition offers us, as well as what it demands.
The legal frameworks this regime is currently using to terrorize immigrant communities were born in the fall of 2001 in New York City. And just like 25 years ago, these attempts to terrorize and target immigrant communities rely on fear.
Judaism teaches us that there is no pathway to atonement with God until you have first atoned with the people you harmed; the gateway to divine repair is closed until interpersonal repair is complete. Crucially, Jewish theology holds it as an impossibility rather than a preference: You cannot approach God while your neighbor still bears the wound you gave them.
There is no such thing as atonement without honest accounting. There is no repair without looking the harm in the eye.
This is the fundamental spiritual nature of the High Holidays. The convergence of September 11 and Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity to look back at what we did in the aftermath. But we must also simultaneously account for the acute political crisis unfolding around us. The multiracial democracy that has kept Jews safer in this country than anywhere else in the history of the world is under attack.
A legal fact that must be part of our accounting: It was in the increased pressure to target American Muslim and American Arab communities that Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) was formed post-9/11. There is a direct line from that targeting in the early 2000s to ICE’s attacks these past years in places like Portland, Washington, DC and Minneapolis. Immigrants have been terrorized—surveilled and made to fear their own government when leaving their homes. Immigrants and innocent bystanders alike have been shot and killed, and families have yet again lost loved ones to both violence and detention. The legal frameworks this regime is currently using to terrorize immigrant communities were born in the fall of 2001 in New York City. And just like 25 years ago, these attempts to terrorize and target immigrant communities rely on fear.
Twenty-five years ago we decided it was an acceptable trade-off for our safety to treat Muslim- and Arab-American men as suspects first and neighbors second. Indefinite detention, the erosion of due process, and the normalization of disappearing people were tested on them. Now, twenty-five years later, we are watching those same frameworks on steroids
If Jews, of all people, cannot recognize the peril here, then we are truly lost.
To be clear, some Jews spoke up in the fall of 2001. They joined the Jewish prophetic tradition of decrying injustice and protested the attack on civil liberties for Muslim- and Arab Americans. But most of us did not.
As Jews, we understand what it means to feel afraid. Antisemitism is a real threat to our safety, bigotry that manifests as real violence—in our places of worship, our neighborhoods, and in halls of power. Our immigrant neighbors, our American Muslim and American Arab neighbors, are not our enemy and we must not be silent when they are targeted in the name of our safety as Jews or Americans.
Those in power right now who are using their power to target so-called outsiders need our support to enact their agenda—to create a country only of people who look and think exactly like them. An agenda where white Christian nationalism is the norm, and where it’s become acceptable to use violence and force to keep the rest of us in line.
This is where our tradition meets us with exquisite moral clarity. Where we must account for what we did—or in this case did not—do. The Talmud teaches that someone who can protest the wrongs of their household, their city, their country, their world and does not is held responsible for those wrongs. English unhelpfully softens the words that matter here. What we translate as "protest"—limchot—really means rebuke or forceful confrontation; the Talmud is not asking for polite dissent. And what we translate as "held responsible"—nitpas—comes from a root meaning to physically grab, to catch, to seize. The sin snags you. It wraps itself around you until the injustice is indisputably as much yours as anyone else's.
This is the warning, and this is the theology of the season. We cannot atone for what we refuse to name. You cannot get right with God while you are still refusing to get right with your neighbor. And you cannot get right with your neighbor while you are still pretending you did not participate in the harm.
We must not treat the 25th anniversary of September 11 and the beginning of Rosh Hashanah as separate events. Instead, we should welcome this invitation to stand in our fear, and our pain, and our integrity, and face what we did. Only then can we truly move into a different world. Our spiritual health and the health of our democracy are both depending on it.
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Jewish Artists Condemn Corporate 'Smear Campaign' Against Mark Ruffalo for Israel Criticism
"The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out, this time in the defense of war, oligarchy, and AI domination."
Sep 01, 2026
A group of over 170 Jewish figures, including many who work in the entertainment industry, have come to the defense of actor Mark Ruffalo as he faces antisemitism accusations from executives at Paramount for criticizing the Israeli government and its ties to powerful corporations.
In a letter released Tuesday, prominent Jewish figures—including filmmaker Joel Coen, director and author Miranda July, actress Debra Winger, actress and director Ilana Glazer, actress and comedian Hannah Einbinder, and playwright Tony Kushner—accused Paramount of waging a "smear campaign" to shield corporate interests from legitimate criticism.
"Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism," the letter states, "against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact."
Ruffalo was accused of being an antisemite after he cited the work of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, in helping the Israeli military carry out a years-long assault on Gaza that has left an estimated 73,500 Palestinians dead.
The actor specifically said that Oracle was powering "an apartheid system of oppression" in the Middle East, which he warned could be exported everywhere if "merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world," a reference to the proposed $110 billion megamerger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.
However, the Jewish figures' letter points out that there is nothing at all antisemitic about expressing concerns about corporate megamergers that could fuse the power of mass media with the power of a technology giant.
In particular, the letter says that the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is part of "a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting—and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors."
The letter also slams Ellison for trying to create an "Orwellian world" as he "consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us."
"The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out, this time in the defense of war, oligarchy, and [artificial intellignece] domination," the letter concludes. "That tired playbook has run its course. We stand proudly with Mark Ruffalo, and with all decent people who are bravely rising and speaking truth to power."
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Jewish Safety Does Not Require Silencing Muslim Voices
A recent lawsuit where parents at Palo Alto Unified School District sued over a field trip to a mosque is one of the latest manifestations of the policing of California public schools over how Palestine is or is not taught.
Aug 29, 2026
As Jewish-Arab American, I feel the responsibility to work to overturn the dominating narratives that divide my people. I can see clearly the manufactured ill will that has fueled ignorance and the murder of ten of thousands of Palestinians and stripping of the survivors’ dignity. Misinformation about Islam and the silencing of Arab voices are shadows on the wall, distracting us from a deeper truth: that we share a common humanity, and that the best of our cultures and faiths calls us toward kindness, forgiveness, and humility, even as public attention so often fixates on separation.
California has seen a sustained campaign by pro-Israel advocacy organizations to reshape how Palestine is taught—or not taught—in public schools through a plethora of bills aimed to censor ethnic studies, and a recent lawsuit where parents at Palo Alto Unified School District sued over a field trip to a mosque is one of the latest manifestations of the policing of public schools. The lawsuit sparked serious debate on the discretion afforded to public educators in developing course content.
Claims made include that students were encouraged to wear hijabs, that other houses of worship were not included in the class plans, and that students were exposed to a speaker they deemed controversial, Zahra Billoo.
Whatever one’s personal views are on these topics, let’s ground back to facts: A field trip to a mosque isn’t illegal. Lawsuits are often made even in cases where the plaintiff is aware the law wasn’t broken, but the lawsuit itself can be used as a tactic of intimidation and to mobilize negative press attention toward the defendants, as is the case here.
This lawsuit is motivated by a desire to intimidate schools away from exposing students to Islam and speakers who represent the opposite of Israeli propaganda.
Starting with the claim regarding hijabs: Is it illegal to encourage a student to wear the proper attire to enter a space of worship that is optional to enter in the first place? I don’t think so.
Next, a main claim was that “the mosque was the only house of worship included in the program, according to the lawsuit,” as Jweekly put it. This one caused me to pause.
Should you be allowed to take students to a house of worship? If so, then where would we be able to draw the line?
There are hundreds of religions out there. Classes would be going to houses of worship everyday in order to meet the proposed standards. Does it have to be all or nothing? Surely students could be allowed to visit one or two houses of worship without visiting them all, as it would be impossible to determine a reasonable legal standard for this.
I think defining the purpose of the class in question is also very important here. If the purpose of the class is to expose students to minorities, which would be characteristic of a class called “Social Justice Pathway,” it is true that Muslims are minorities in this country. Islamophobia is ironically being triggered online in the responses to this incident.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a legal advocacy organization for Muslims. CAIR supports Muslims whose civil rights are directly targeted. It is appropriate to have a representative of that organization address a class focused on social justice. Muslims are materially being denied access and rights based on their religion and identity in the United States. With the other Abrahamic religions being dominant and widely represented, I would assert that Islam is the least represented of the Abrahamic religions in the US and is deserving of students getting a chance to experience it firsthand.
Recent national polling suggests that Muslim Americans experience religious discrimination at higher rates than any other faith group surveyed, including in consequential areas such as employment, housing, banking, healthcare, travel, education, immigration, and interactions with law enforcement.
Another thing that bothered me (but didn’t shock me) about this lawsuit is that it assumes students shouldn’t be exposed to “controversial” speakers. It is hardly illegal for students to hear controversial speakers in school. In fact, a balanced education relies on freedom of ideas and information rather than censorship. Even if a parent finds some of Billoo's statements deeply objectionable, does that mean high school students cannot hear her speak?
Zahra is a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, and it is convenient for Zionist groups to label her as antisemitic. Articles portraying her as antisemitic rely on the conflation of Judaism and Zionism. Zahra is a supporter of Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, which are composed of Jewish people who refuse to allow Israeli nationalist propaganda to define what it means to be Jewish.
If the plaintiffs are arguing that any discussion of and exposure to Muslims must be accompanied by a discussion of other religious groups—where does that requirement end? Such a rule would be impractical and inappropriate in many educational contexts.
Educators require the agency to make reasonable judgments about which communities and perspectives are relevant to a particular lesson. This lawsuit is motivated by a desire to intimidate schools away from exposing students to Islam and speakers who represent the opposite of Israeli propaganda.
Ultimately, all of this is to say: I reject the premise that protecting Jewish students requires shielding them from Palestinian advocacy or Muslim voices. My Jewishness does not require that.
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A Top Law Firm Is Suing Animal Activists So That a Restaurant Can Keep Serving Foie Gras
Force feeding is not kindness. It's a violence against living beings that must be stopped.
Aug 22, 2026
Since last fall, I and a group of fellow animal rights activists have been holding protests at the upscale Lincoln Park restaurant Galit, urging it to stop serving foie gras. Each weekend, activists hold signs, chant, shout through a megaphone, write on the sidewalk with chalk, and pressure Galit to remove foie gras from its menu. We are a grassroots group of people from all walks of life who care about animals. Our group is made up of people with diverse occupations and perspectives, but we are united by an opposition to the worst abuses animals face. Now, Galit and one of the top law firms in the country have dragged us into court, calling our protests “harassment.”
Our group chose to protest at Galit—after emailing the restaurant for two months, initially seeking to remove foie gras from its menu through dialogue—because of its progressive values. The restaurant prides itself on paying its workers well, and providing a robust benefits package, including paid time off, substantially subsidized health insurance, and retirement benefits. The restaurant is closed on major holidays, allowing employees to have a holiday as well. It reports inclusive hiring practices and provides harassment and bystander intervention training. Galit’s website notes that its two co-owners have Israeli and Palestinian-Cuban-Spanish backgrounds. Galit is rightly proud of these practices, which are uncommon in service industries. But all too often, such values exclude the most vulnerable of all: animals.
Foie gras is a luxury product made from the fattened liver of ducks and geese, using a process called gavage, in which birds have a pipe forced down their throats in order to force-feed them to the point that their livers become painfully engorged and diseased. It is, frankly, systematic torture. That’s why entire countries, states, and cities have banned it, including nearly all of Europe, the UK, Australia, Israel, Türkiye, India, Argentina, California, New York City and, just last month, Portland, Oregon. Each of these bans is based primarily on the cruelty involved in foie gras production.
In the US, animal rights activists have been protesting this for around 30 years. Over the last few years, these protests have intensified and largely focused on specific restaurants—holding protests just like those I’ve participated in at Galit. Our movement has succeeded in getting 400 restaurants across the world to permanently remove foie gras from their menus. Our protests urge Galit to join the ranks of restaurants that have made this ethical choice, extending the same concern to animals as it has to so many other important values.
Instead, Galit went to court. After attempting to limit our protests by urging police to issue tickets to demonstrators—each of which has been dismissed—Galit and its general manager have filed for anti-stalking orders against me and other protesters.
The restaurant is represented, for free, by the top law firm Jenner & Block. This is rather stunning. Jenner & Block is known for handling major litigation, including arguing several cases before the US Supreme Court. The firm is also notable for the stand it took early in the second Trump administration, refusing to cave to Trump’s demands that it not represent the president’s political foes, while other large law firms folded. Jenner & Block described its position as a principled stance against political interference with a client’s right to vigorous, uncompromising representation. For this, it was targeted by a Trump executive order. The firm vowed to remain “fearless.” But once again, when it comes to animals, principles go out the window. Jenner & Block knows full well that protesting is not harassment or stalking, that it is protected by the First Amendment. Yet the firm has provided its prestige legal services—and attached its name—to an effort to protect a local restaurant from a dozen animal advocates armed with megaphones and chalk.
There is yet another odd twist to this story. While Galit has refused to remove this single product, the result of extreme animal cruelty, from its menu, some have begun accusing us of protesting not to stop it from serving foie gras, but because we are antisemitic. They argue that, because we are protesting against Galit and not other Chicago restaurants that serve foie gras, we are targeting it because one of its owners is Israeli (the critics do not explain how such a motivation makes sense in light of Galit’s own website reporting that the other owner identifies at Palestinian-Cuban-Spanish). But some members of the group protesting against foie gras at Galit, too, are Jewish and Israeli, and Israel itself is among the countries that have banned the production of foie gras.
Accusations of antisemitism are cynical at worst and intentionally ignorant at best. First, it underscores how so many people simply cannot see that animals might be worthy of treatment short of torture. Apparently, it makes more sense that we would target Galit due to antisemitism than that we chose to protest there because we want it to bring its treatment of animals into line with the restaurant’s otherwise admirable values. Antisemitism makes more sense than that a commitment to values like workers’ rights, community, and equality should include a commitment to animal welfare. It is not out of hatred for Galit, but out of respect for its stated values, that we chose to press it to stop serving foie gras.
It also saddens me because I, myself, am halachically Jewish. That is to say, I am Jewish on my mom’s side of my family. In recent years, I have been a regular at a Chabad house. For a while, I was there every shabbos evening. I have spent the last year teaching middle school math at a haredi school in West Ridge, wearing a kippah every day at work.
To be clear, across the country, protests to stop restaurants from selling foie gras have proceeded one restaurant at a time. This is a decision based on strategic value and activist capacity, and it has proven remarkably successful. Were Galit to provide a written commitment to, and stick to, a foie gras free policy, we will move on to another restaurant.
In the meantime, activists will continue to protest Galit. (Unfortunately, for now, I cannot personally participate in these protests because of Galit’s baseless lawsuit against me.) The judge presiding over Galit’s request for a protection order—again, oddly, filed by the top law firm Jenner & Block—threw out the complaint. But Galit has amended its complaint and continues to seek restraints on our protests.
It is worth wondering why one of the nation’s top law firms is representing a local restaurant, pro bono, in an effort to restrain the protests of a dozen animal rights activists. We may also wonder why Galit is so committed to serving a product that multiple entire countries have deemed too cruel to allow its production. All of this, rather than simply adopting a foie gras free policy.
I do believe there will come a time when Galit sees foie gras for what it is, and agrees to a foie gras-free policy. Force feeding is not kindness. It’s not food, it’s violence.
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Conflating American Jews With Israel Is Wrong and Dangerous
Criticizing individual Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu should not be seen as an attack on all Jews.
Aug 03, 2026
Does criticizing actions of the Israeli government or the behavior of its prime minister fuel antisemitism? Despite the stretch of logic required to make this argument and the danger its bizarre conflation presents to American Jews, some US pro-Israel organizations are working overtime to establish the case that criticizing Israel puts American Jews at risk. Their view on this matter has now been echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, before leaving Israel for his meeting with US President Donald Trump, used an interview with an American TV network to level this very charge against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
While tensions between Mamdani and pro-Israel groups have been brewing since his 2025 election campaign, it was recently reignited in the lead up to Netanyahu’s announced visit to the US. Mayor Mamdani was asked by a reporter whether he would fulfill a campaign pledge to arrest the Israeli prime minister as a war criminal, as per the indictment issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In response, the mayor convened a group of legal experts who concluded that the city, on its own, did not have the authority to make an arrest—only the federal government could do that. In an effort to put the matter to rest, Mamdani released a short video in which he acknowledged that he lacked the power to order an arrest but nevertheless called out Netanyahu as a war criminal responsible for the deaths of “more than 73,000 people” and stated that he would not welcome him in New York City. In his video, Mamdani did not mention Israel, nor did he mention the Jewish people or the citizens of Israel. This was, he observed, simply about Netanyahu’s crimes cited in the ICC arrest warrant.
Some pro-Israel groups immediately denounced Mamdani’s video and charges against the Israeli prime minister. They accused him of “repeatedly singling out the world’s only Jewish state…leaving many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome.” One group characterized the video as “blood libel and outrageous lies.” While still another charged Mamdani with “fomenting antisemitism.”
A few days later, a Hispanic man, whom police said had mental health issues, allegedly stabbed two people, one was Asian and another Jewish. In both instances, observers said they heard the attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
The same pro-Israel groups that have been conflating Israel with American Jews and relentlessly condemning Mamdani leapt into the fray, blaming the mayor for making New York unsafe for Jews by “using his platform to viciously attack Israel.” One prominent Jewish leader called on the mayor to resign, charging him with “dereliction of duty.”
Mamdani immediately responded to these charges condemning the stabbings as “hateful and despicable attacks that have no place in our city” and noted that his administration had already dramatically increased investment in hate crime prevention “so that we can start to address the root causes of this bigotry and hatred, as we look to root out the scourge of antisemitism.”
The mayor added: “When it comes to my comments about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are critiques based not on my personal analysis, but rather on objective facts. They are critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith or religion or background. And my responsibility as mayor of the city is to keep every New Yorker safe, no matter where they come from, what they believe in or frankly, even if they agree with my politics. My job is to keep them safe.”
The mayor was not without defenders in the Jewish community. Brad Lander, who describes himself as a liberal Zionist and who recently defeated a pro-Israel congressman, described the attacks as “almost certainly an antisemitic hate crime and quite likely an anti-Asian hate crime, but they are not the fault of the mayor for calling Netanyahu a war criminal.” Lander added, “The effort to connect the mayor to that… is a political effort to shut down criticism of Israel,” and called it “weaponizing antisemitism.”
Peter Beinart, one of America’s most thoughtful progressive Jewish thinkers, directly took on the pro-Israel Jewish establishment by noting that it was they, not the mayor, who are conflating Israel with the Jewish community. Beinart wrote: “Zohran Mamdani keeps saying again and again that his critique of Israel… has nothing to do with his feelings toward Jews in New York, because he separates Israel, as a state, from Jewish New Yorkers. The people who are making this conflation… are the very establishment Jewish leaders who are now attacking Mamdani.”
The problem here is two-fold. Antisemitism is real, and conflating American Jews with Israel is wrong and dangerous whether it is done by pro-Israel advocates who want to identify all Jews with Israel for political purposes, or by haters of Jews who want to hold Jewish people, in general, responsible for the crimes committed by that state. In the first instance the effort is designed, as Lander notes, to silence criticism of Israel claiming that charges leveled against that state put all Jews at risk. In the second instance, the conflation serves to fuel the preexisting bigotry of some by holding all Jews responsible for the crimes committed by others.
The bottom line is Mamdani, Lander, and Beinart are right, and the pro-Israel establishment is wrong.
Attacks on Mamdani Prove Israel's Supporters Can't Even Tolerate Criticism of Netanyahu
It should go without saying, yet must apparently be said again, that Benjamin Netanyahu is not the Jewish community.
Jul 28, 2026
The United States should not roll out the red carpet for a foreign leader who has systematically starved and slaughtered thousands of people, including children.
This simple principle is what led New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to declare that Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in the Big Apple and call on the federal government to honor the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.
By publishing this speech, which is now the most popular video he has ever posted on social media, Mayor Mamdani did what no mayor before him dared: speak the truth about American complicity in the Israeli government's human rights abuses.
For decades, New York City's leaders have gone out of their way to embrace all things Israel. From Eric Adams to Rudy Giuliani and beyond, past mayors have praised Israeli leaders, traveled to Israel, encouraged the purchase of Israeli bonds, and supported policies designed to suppress criticism of the Israeli government, including unconstitutional anti-boycott orders.
Mayor Mamdani has made clear that he will not stay silent when a mass murderer of children plans to visit New York City. Most New Yorkers agree with him.
Rather than engage honestly with the substance of Mayor Mamdani's change in course, most Israel advocacy organizations responded to his speech by effectively claiming that criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu is somehow equivalent to criticism of Jewish people. The Anti-Defamation League and other prominent pro-Israel groups even tried to blame the mayor, without any evidence whatsoever, for an attack on an Asian man and Jewish man that occurred in the days after the speech.
The argument that criticizing Israel is inherently antisemitic—which has been used to silence college students, elected officials, and other critics of the Gaza genocide—is both dishonest and dangerous.
It should go without saying, yet must apparently be said again, that Benjamin Netanyahu is not the Jewish community.
Conflating Netanyahu with Jews around the world undermines the fight against real antisemitism. It also insults the many Jewish Americans who have vocally criticized Netanyahu's war crimes in Gaza and called for an end to US support for those crimes.
What the Israeli government's worst enablers have revealed through their hysterical response to Mayor Mamdani's speech is that they simply cannot tolerate any criticism whatsoever of the Israeli government, even criticism focused exclusively on Benjamin Netanyahu, and that they are willing to conflate the entire Jewish community with Netanyahu in a bid to protect Israel from legitimate criticism.
As for those who try to justify the antisemitism smear by claiming that Mayor Mamdani gives an inordinate amount of attention to Israel, this claim ignores three important points.
For one thing, Israel is actively committing its crimes with billions in American taxpayer dollars and weapons, which is why it warrants so much attention from the American people.
Second, the Israeli government's supporters are the ones who insisted that mayors of New York City embrace Israel's policies, defend Israel from criticism, and make Israel their first foreign visit. Mamdani has given Israel far less attention than Eric Adams, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani.
Third, national and local reporters keep asking Mamdani about Israel, sometimes the exact same questions about whether Israel has a right to exist. Don't blame Mamdani for answering the questions
Mayor Mamdani has made clear that he will not stay silent when a mass murderer of children plans to visit New York City. Most New Yorkers agree with him. So do many Americans; a recent poll showed 46% of Americans believe Netanyahu should be arrested if he comes to the United States. Another poll showed that Mamdani has a higher favorability rating among Jewish Americans than Netanyahu.
The claim that criticizing Israel's human rights abuses is antisemitic no longer works on the American public, and it is long past time for Israel's supporters to stop telling it.
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California Public Records Expose Israel Lobby Censorship
History will not look back kindly on those demanding investigations of educators who dare to teach about Palestine during a documented genocide.
Jul 11, 2026
As a long-time anti-Zionist activist and retired teacher, I submitted a Public Records Act request to the California Department of Education for copies of all formal complaints, filed from October 7, 2023 to May 26, 2026, alleging discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying that was so “severe” and “pervasive” as to violate federal or state law in California schools.
If a local education agency (LEA), a school district or county office of education, receives a complaint—a Uniform Complaint Procedure (UCP)—the LEA must, within 60 days, conduct an investigation, interview parties involved, and decide whether to order “corrective action.” Sometimes the UCP ends there. If, however, the complainants are dissatisfied with the LEA ruling, they may appeal to the California Department of Education (CDE).
I reviewed the appeals.
The CDE lacks authority to discipline school personnel, and the appeals I reviewed did not recommend teacher discipline. Teachers, however, have been told by their school districts to remove their keffiyehs and steer clear of stating as fact that Israel exemplifies “settler colonialism.” If an LEA or CDE finds a complaint has merit, it may order school districts to implement teacher training in antisemitism in consultation with a Jewish or Israeli organization. These orders open the door for Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to teach teachers that criticism of Israel is antisemitic and discriminates on the basis of national origin.
Teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the district’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations based on someone’s birthplace or ancestry—but does not prohibit criticism of a sovereign state, which is protected speech according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The CDE’s release of files reflects the department and school districts’ tendency to conflate anti-Zionism (opposition to Israel) with antisemitism (bigotry toward Jews for being Jewish). Under AB 715 (D-Zbur) legislation that establishes an antisemitism coordinator to police instruction and teacher training, this confusion could get a lot worse because AB 715 incorporates the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which promotes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition and examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Teachers and their allies can, however, revolt: March on Sacramento, challenge Zionist teacher training, file their own complaints, and collectively teach Palestine across school departments and districts.
The following is a review of some of the CDE’s cases addressing allegations of antisemitism or discrimination against Jews or Israelis.
Banned!
Sammy Obeid speaks on "The Abortion Joke That Got Me Banned From High School" (Image via Comedy Calculus)
In 2025, the principal of Mountain View Los Altos High School banned popular Lebanese-Palestinian American comedian Sammy Obeid after he cracked jokes about Israel at an after-school on-campus event in 2025 hosted by the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The school investigation report (IR) read, "During the event, the comedian made antisemitic remarks: about the Israeli Prime Minister getting cancer, calling the Prime Minister a supervillain, and how Israel does not believe in abortion so it can bomb more Palestinians.”
Months earlier, on November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Nevertheless, the district concluded, after berating the Muslim students for inviting Obeid—that the comedian’s performance was antisemitic. The CDE agreed and ordered the district to further revise its guest speaker policies to include strict vetting and get-off-the-stage intervention should an administrator believe the speaker’s conduct discriminated against a protected group on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, and physical or mental disabilities.
P.S. For the record, abortion is legal in Israel as long as women obtain approval from the Israeli Pregnancy Termination Board.
San Ramon Valley HS
In another example of conflation, the CDE ordered (11/24/25) San Ramon Valley High School to deliver teacher training on antisemitism to all social studies teachers after the department ruled a teacher’s class statements were proof of discriminatory bias against Jewish and Israeli students. The department’s fact finding said the teacher told students that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Hardly breaking news. Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Doctors without Borders, and the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry had all determined Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Nonetheless, the CDE said the appeal had merit because the teacher did not cite sources and present an opposing viewpoint. The Department ordered San Ramon Valley High School to provide the CDE with evidence by January 30, 2026 that the school had delivered training from someone not affiliated with the school district to ensure that classroom instruction “does not promote a discriminatory bias.”
Anti-Palestinian Racism
The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) defines anti-Palestinian racism as a form of racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.”
A CDE ruling involving New Haven Unified School District might serve as an example of erasing the human rights and worth of Palestinians. After teachers in the summer 2025 Ethnic Studies Social Justice Academy (ESSJA) presented a slide deck describing actions by Israelis against Palestinians as potentially constituting “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism,’ the department said instruction lacked adequate balance and historical context, and cast Israel in a negative light. The department acknowledged that the slides for students also discussed the horrific impact of the Holocaust, the ancient connection of Jews to the land also claimed by Palestinians, and how “the Israeli government is separate from innocent Israeli/Jewish people who stand for justice,” but still...
The department then ordered the school district to train ESSJA teachers and administrators in the “obligation to comply with Education Code 51500, which states that a teacher shall not deliver instruction, and a school district shall not sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias.”
Points for the MAGA team.
Teacher and Community Resistance
Oakland rank and file teachers included P Is for Palestine on their recommended list of resources at a December 2023 teach-in on Gaza; the Brandeis Center for Human Rights objected in a lawsuit against California.
Rank and file Oakland educators circulated an Open Letter in spring 2026 calling on the district “to resist the concerted attacks by political groups who slander as 'antisemitic' anyone who criticizes Israeli apartheid and genocide or Zionism.” Yet, the Oakland Unified School District, facing a lawsuit from the CDE, still mandated teachers watch and interact with an Anti-Defamation League 20-minute video “Antisemitism: What Do Educators Need to Know,” which defines antisemitism as “marginalization and/or oppression of people who are Jewish based on the belief in stereotypes and myths about Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel.”
The ADL training stands in dramatic contrast to a teach-in rank-and-file Oakland teachers organized in December 2023, two months after October 7, as Israel dropped 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Objecting to district resources from Zionist-funded organizations, the teachers provided workshop participants with a recommended list of books, films, and lessons.
Across the bay, in San Francisco, in the fall of 2024, a dozen teachers declined to participate in district antisemitism training with the American Jewish Committee, a Zionist organization that boasts on its website, “We stand up for Israel.” Teachers instead chose to attend professional development with PARCEO, a non-Zionist organization anchored in the belief that ending antisemitism is part of an intersectional fight for collective liberation of all people.
Down in Los Angeles, teachers and community members rallied (5/16/26) in front of the Downtown Business Magnet to protest the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) decree that ethnic studies and social studies teachers remove “Stop Genocide” posters and Palestinian and Black Lives Matter flags, as well as undergo teacher training on the use of “neutral terms” to describe sensitive topics, including Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Gaza.
Teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the district’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
In another act of resistance, K-12 Legal Defense, led by attorney Liz Jackson, and San Francisco law firm Leonard Carder, LLP, filed a motion (5/11/16) to intervene in Brandeis v California on behalf of a group of 10 California families—Jewish and Palestinian parents and students enrolled in public schools.
For teachers walking a tightrope under the watchful eye of an AB 715 enforcer, there are some lessons that lend themselves to a “both sides” debate: South Africa vs. Israel at the International Court of Justice or Zionists vs. non-Zionists on school board adoption of the IHRA definition and examples of antisemitism. In many instances, however, the “both sides” approach fails to acknowledge the power imbalance between Israel and Palestine to leave students confused.
History will not look back kindly on those demanding investigations of educators who dare to teach about Palestine during a documented genocide. Nor will history applaud those who conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism in lawsuits against states and school districts.
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DC’s Elections Were Divisive—But Embracing Partnership is the Path to Jewish Safety
History has taught us that Jews are safest in societies and political systems that pursue true safety for everyone who faces marginalization and hate.
Jun 28, 2026
During an election season, it’s natural to take sides—that’s what elections are for. But taking sides doesn’t have to mean dividing the Jewish community, or isolating Jews from the broader community around us.
As the Executive Director of Jews United for Justice and the JUFJ Campaign Fund in Washington, DC and Maryland, I lead a group that has worked for more than a quarter century to ensure that everyone in our region—no matter our religion, where we come from, how much money we have, or what we look like—can live with freedom, safety, and belonging. Unfortunately, in DC, we just witnessed primary elections that saw national political polarization impacting us locally. Disagreements and concerns within the Jewish community are intersecting with local electoral politics—in ways that I fear could leave us more divided and less safe. But there is another path forward.
The JUFJ Campaign Fund endorses candidates who we believe will use their voices and their offices to build a more just region for all of us, including Jews. In this month’s DC Primary election, all seven of the progressive candidates that we endorsed won. That includes Janeese Lewis George, the winner of the Democratic Primary for Mayor, and soon-to-be Councilmember Aparna Raj, both of whom have also been endorsed by local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Given DSA’s anti-Zionist positions, for some Jews, DSA’s backing is enough to warrant labeling these politicians as a threat to our community. Yet for myself and our organization, our personal experiences of these candidates could not be more contrary to that image.
When we feel alone and misunderstood, every disagreement can seem like a threat. Yet I know, from these past 20 years, that the way through this anxiety is relationships.
All of our endorsees, including Lewis George, Raj, and others endorsed by DSA, have shown up for my colleagues and me individually, our organizations, and their own Jewish constituents. They’ve cited our community’s needs and concerns as important to them, and recognized our community as part of their winning coalitions on election night. Even—and especially—when we have had disagreements, we have remained in relationships that allow us to recognize each other’s humanity and to build a strong Jewish presence in our shared political work.
At JUFJ’s community seders this spring, we hosted a dozen candidates for local and statewide office in DC, Montgomery County, and Baltimore. These candidates were Jewish and non-Jewish, ones who had received our endorsements and ones who hadn’t, DSA members and not, of many races and ethnicities—and they all came together to retell the Passover story and connect it to the struggles we face here in our region. I’ve seen these candidates build relationships and create space for conversation with our Jewish community over many years, and throughout this campaign season. And these relationships bear fruit during hard times.
After the terrorist attack against Temple Israel in Michigan this March, a non-Jewish, DSA-endorsed candidate wrote to one of my colleagues: “I saw the news coming out of Detroit and just wanted to say I’m thinking of you. It means a lot to be able to organize alongside you and others in the Jewish community to create a vision for a multiracial democracy where we’re all safe together. Hope you're doing ok.” Another non-Jewish DSA-endorsed elected official called all the senior rabbis in their jurisdiction on October 8, 2023, and has since worked to arrange additional security for Jewish institutions after antisemitic violence. In DC and Montgomery County, our endorsed candidates in elected office have voted time and time again to support funding for Jewish nonprofits and providing security grants for places of worship.
When I started at JUFJ in 2008, I didn’t see antisemitism as one of the pivotal challenges to address in our region. Today, that has changed. We’ve made dismantling antisemitism a key piece of our ongoing work, including working with candidates and elected officials to help them gain a better understanding of antisemitism, how it affects us, and what they can do. Unfortunately, we are living through a time when some politicians and community leaders attempt to build their own power by fueling antisemitism and exploiting divisions within our communities. They want Jews to feel isolated and alone. But isolation is not a path to safety. Anger and resentment is not a strategy.
When we feel alone and misunderstood, every disagreement can seem like a threat. Yet I know, from these past 20 years, that the way through this anxiety is relationships. Building and maintaining relationships with people who are different from me means that I have people to reach out to for a better understanding of our differences. As the great Black activist and musician Bernice Johnson Reagon put it, “Coalition work is not work done in your home.” To build coalitions with people who are different from us, we must resist the urge to isolate—despite fears and disagreements.
As DC’s next mayor and other progressive and democratic socialist candidates across the country take office, we in the Jewish community have a choice ahead of us. We can treat them as potential threats—even as they say they are working to build a city where everyone can thrive. Or, we can consider them to be potential partners and allies, despite any differences—and engage openly and honestly with them on that basis.
History has taught us that Jews are safest in societies and political systems that pursue true safety for everyone who faces marginalization and hate. That is why our movement here in the DMV has endorsed candidates who are committed to tackling antisemitism, and who are also looking out for my Black, brown, immigrant, and low-income neighbors. When we look out for and talk to each other, only then can our society be a place where all of us can live with respect and dignity.
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Jews as Prey and Conquerers
With Jewish identity focused on its ethnic nation-state rather than a worldwide people gifted Torah and obligations, its majoritarianism and contempt for others shows our vulnerability—as all other groups—to vice.
Jun 27, 2026
Separating the meaning of Jewish identity and learning, distinct from the Israeli state and its underlying doctrine, is worthwhile work.
It's also urgent work, overdue. This is a maniacal, genocidal post from Israel's Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir:
For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!
Repulsion from Israel's actions naturally affects how Jews are seen in the world, how we walk among others in the world—and ironically, for Zionists, validates their conception of the gentile world as forever hostile to Jews.
The existence of the State of Israel, the merger of Judaism with Jewish nationalism, has unavoidably changed what being a Jew is.
Identifying with a state perpetually in conflict, we retreat to the protection of our litany of noble sufferings, protecting from facts, from seeing ourselves as cruel or hurtful. Or—even—silly, annoying, not so significant.
Zionist theoretician Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in 1923 of the way that the Jewish state would have to be constructed, that “it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting ‘Palestine’ from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.”
Colonization would have to continue “only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population—behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”
When Jabotinsky wrote this, Jews were immigrating to Palestine under British protection to fulfill the League of Nations Mandate promise of a yet-to-be defined “Jewish homeland” there.
Population "transfer" to create a Jewish majority state was envisioned by Zionist leadership, from founder Theodor Herzl onwards.
The United Nations Palestine partition plan of 1947 and resulting civil conflict provided the opportunity for Jewish militias and then the Israeli army to target and empty communities—to become sites for Jewish settlements with Hebrew names.
Israeli statehood on May 14, 1948 was accomplished by dispossession of most of the Arabs of Palestine—the expulsion of 750,000 Arabs from what would become Israel. This is called the Nakba (catastrophe) in Arabic.
Those Palestinians remain exiled despite a pledge from Israel to the United Nations in 1949 to accept returning refugees, as part of their admission as a member state.
The “restoration” of our sovereignty inflicted a catastrophe on Palestinians which will be part of Jewish history forever.
The creation of the State of Israel is presented as necessary Jewish self-assertion.
In September 1948, Israeli diplomat Abba Eban wrote that in a “just world” consultation and agreement would have been preferred. “But the world is more realistic than just. The doctrine of ‘accomplished fact’ has been entirely vindicated against that of ‘prior consent.’”
That doctrine forces for Jews a necessity of either identifying with Israel, or maintaining the identity of “Jewish-not Zionist,” an awkward thing to maintain while well-provisioned Jewish organizations present Zionism as Judaism.
That doctrine also destroyed Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa, and as far as India. Exercising naked power to force Arabs from their homes to privilege Jews in Palestine poisoned the place of Jews who lived for many centuries as citizens in neighboring societies.
Thinking of the vulnerability and degradation of Jews in the past, I struggle to reconcile those moments with this moment of Jews as a menace—and Jewish nationalism as a personal imprisonment.
The Zionist movement which descended on Palestine to “ingather the exiles” is now a state dedicated to a philosophy of Jewish redemption by violence, “an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority,” as described by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others in a 1948 letter to The New York Times, of the faction that is now in control of Israel’s psyche.
Israel operates with a logic in which opponents to the Jewish state intend a Holocaust—mindless, causeless enemies as in the Passover or Purim or Hanukkah stories.
While most Jews in the diaspora live in accommodation and cooperation with gentile co-nationals, Israel has sacralized and militarized the “they always turn on us” belief.
We live in two models of Jewishness—the Jew living in civil cooperation with gentiles, and the militant Jewish supremacist in Palestine.
The contradiction of those two models of Jewishness makes us a problem to ourselves and others, with no clarity.
Complicating this is our belief in the grandeur of our own culture and learning.
As a child, I was buoyed by stories of Jewish learning and achievement—unlikely persistence through the ages—uniqueness.
I felt I was one of a fine, special group.
I also absorbed the other, paired, narrative of Jewish history. In the ritual reading of the Haggadah text each Pesach, I was reminded that we were enslaved in Egypt, and that in every generation They rise up to destroy us. And we survive, achieve, and show our high quality.
The theme of Jewish life is that we were chosen for a great mission, and have been persecuted since.
In these narratives, living a Jewish life is fulfilling the endowment of Torah and generations of scholarship, earnest and humane— targeted by malice, by jealousy from peoples less… fortunate? Not Jewish.
It may be that feelings Jews have about gentiles are as problematic as prejudices gentiles have against Jews. We suffer from not only how gentiles may see us, but limitations on how we see non-Jews.
Mitch Abidor, in the magazine Jewish Currents, describes a passage in Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint about a non-Jewish girl who tosses a flaming baton and catches it, and and its significance to the “nice Jewish boys in the stands." Portnoy observes that:
there was still a certain comic detachment exhibited on our side of the field, grounded in the belief that this was precisely the kind of talent that only a goy would think to develop in the first place.
Legendary Forverts newspaper editor Abraham Cahan wrote in his novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, of Talmudic education (an experience Cahan had shared with his character during his youth in Lithuania). The process of extended reasoning and disputation in religious study seemed the acme of human ratiocination:
"Can you fathom the sea? Neither can you fathom the depths of the Talmud," as we would put it. We were sure that the highest mathematics taught in the Gentile universities were child's play as compared to the Talmud.
This feeling of higher thought as a specifically Jewish achievement is useful to surface in discussion of how we see our not-Jewish fellows.
Torah study may be mostly a treasure of the observant now, but the habits and outlook of study and productive disputation persist. Might the assumption of superlative Jewish quality also?
To accept the World-Against-the-Jew construct, one must accept the idea that there is a unique quality to Jews.
Our religion revolves around identity, descent from tribes in a substantive relationship with the true God. When we pray, we are praying to a god that particularly cares that we are Jews doing the praying.
The central prayer of Judaism is the Shema:
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
The Yiddish phrase "pintele yid," Jewish spark or kernel, expresses the belief that there is an irreducible, distinct core of Jewishness that is in a born Jew, observant or secular or ignorant.
The story told about converts is that their nefesh (soul, spirit) was there at Sinai to hear Moses tell God’s covenant with his people..
This resolves Judaism as an embrace of Torah—fudges the membership story, in truth.
Is “Jew” a coherent national category, as we include Indians, Ethiopians, Yemenis, Poles, and Romanians?
When devotion to Torah is the center of this identity, it does not require ruling from imagined supremacy.
The poison brewed when mixed with a colonial enterprise designed at a time Britain could design a plan “natives” had to accept.
The Israeli government recognizes Israeli citizenship for Jews, Arabs, and others, but then records the “nationality” of the citizen separately, so that I, an American citizen, in their system share the same “nationality”—“Jewish”—as an Israeli Jew.
Ultimately the identity is based on magic, superstition, folkways, and spiritual truth. Am I required to believe in the existence of "The Jewish Nation" as the term is meant in the Zionist state?
The Zionist proposition for the world’s relationship with Jews is, “Love us, love our land.” This is articulated in their claim, “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”
In 1906, Jewish educator Solomon Schechter said that he feared assimilation of Jews, loss of identity, “even more than pogroms.” He wrote that in the Jewish “exile,” the Zionist project could form “the great bulwark against assimilation… an opposing force.”
As we Jews "fight for our existence," is it because diminishment of our self-held special place in the world feels like death?
American Jewish organizations promote connection with the State of Israel to nurture Jewish identity of the young.
Identifying with a state perpetually in conflict, we retreat to the protection of our litany of noble sufferings, protecting from facts, from seeing ourselves as cruel or hurtful. Or—even—silly, annoying, not so significant.
A popular 1970s Israeli song had the refrain, "The Whole World is Against Us.” It concluded,
The whole world is against us...
This song was taught to us
By our old fathers,
And we too shall sing it,
And after us—the sons.
And great-grandchildren of great-grandchildren will sing
Here in the Land of Israel,
And anyone who is against us
Can go to hell!
The whole world is against us…
It’s not clear how we wish to be regarded.
At the Enlightenment and revolutionary emancipation of Jews, converting from toleration to equal citizenship, there was a loss of community autonomy, statutory difference—the loss of definition as members of a nation within the nation.
Even stigmatized, community autonomy had its advantages. Jewish communities had their own recognized governance, internal taxation, regulation of their own personal affairs, and laws, courts.
That concept of modern citizenship as individual equality conflicts with Jews residing as their own self-governing polity with representatives to the larger society, as was often the practice. This is sacrificed with equal citizenship, where all live under the same law.
Max Nordau, speaking to the First Zionist Congress in 1897, made interesting comments that when Jews lived isolated in ghettos, they had society of their own. He says that while Emancipation had its intoxication, it left Jews in Western Europe in “misery” because they could not thrive as Jews among Jews.
We are people; people do evil.
Acceptance becomes a stressor; the more we become like our fellow nationals, the more desperate to maintain a difference.
By the logic of Nordau, the most salutary circumstance for Jewish happiness is isolation from the larger society—or living as the majority the Jewish state achieved in 1948.
UK Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in a 2016 address on antisemitism, presents the existence of Israel as a Jewish human right. “Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else.” (Emphasis added.)
Now, we've acquired the belief we're only meant to be happy if we rule our own “Jewish” land? Or only be safe if we do? The rationale toggles between the two, that Israel represents Jewish safety or Jewish fulfillment.
Jewish history treasures—curates—narratives of persecution. The meaning of that must be considered. If we have grievance, contempt, or pity for those outside our circle, are we healthy?
For me, there has been not just a feeling of kinship but a higher expectation of Jews, expecting less of gentiles as a rule. Prejudice absorbed growing up is painful to examine.
The origin story of our people—chosen by God to a special mission of glorifying Him and his laws—may instill confidence, a sense of identity, but I think is “worth another think” as a problem when, as Peter Beinart points out, it is empowered as a state.
He writes, “In most of the Jewish world today, rejecting Jewish statehood is a greater heresy than rejecting Judaism itself.”
Beinart's comment suggests that many Jews now have Zionism as their faith—and faiths are based on taking certain premises as fact. It may be a creator of a particular sort, or in this case a belief in the Jewish people as a reconstituted modern nation-state. In any case, faiths can't be debated.
Beinart, religiously observant and well-grounded in Jewish study, called his book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, and gave it the subtitle, A Reckoning. The necessary reckoning he forecasts for Jews I think will be ugly and with false starts and detours, and will necessitate re-evaluations of how we prejudge gentiles.
We number perhaps 16 million worldwide, and we Jews are at the pivot point of the USA’s wars on Iran, Iraq, and all sorts of involvement in bolstering Israel’s impunity in its neighborhood. Things at pivot points can get caught and mangled.
Dr. Michael A. Meyer wrote of American Jews: “For them the state is the flagship of the people to which they belong. Their Jewish identity is as much ethnic as religious, and their religious expression of that identity as much as affirmation of their peoplehood and the importance they attribute to preserving it…”
Polling shows this identification with Israel is less true than when written in 1994.
The American Council for Judaism, an anti-Zionist organization founded in 1943, is reviving the struggle within the Jewish community for Jewish life "free from the Zionist idea of Judaism as a nationality or the elevation of one nation above others…grounded in justice, solidarity, and humility."
We maybe are preserving ourselves without attention to what we become. An organized project to dispossess Arabs from their homes leaves us as what sort of people, declaring populations "human animals," and promising a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48”?
Israel is now again attempting a land grab of south Lebanon, methodically blowing up evacuated villages so that Lebanese have no homes to return to.
Israel has no declared borders, only armistice lines after various wars since 1948. It has claimed and settled part of Syria, and in a de facto manner acquired all of mandate Palestine, settled it with Jews, but without recognizing citizenship of non-Jews living there. Gaza, populated in majority by refugees from the 1948 Nakba, it tried to settle, and strangled it at the best of times.
Israel has, since 1948, and especially since the 1967 occupation, arbitrarily detained 1 million Palestinians, and subjected them to routine beatings, humiliation, and abuse, reaching new depths since October 7, 2023.
This abuse is enabled by indifference to the humanity of a classification of people—in this case non-Jews.
Having known abuse from both pogromists and cruel soldiers, we—we?—unleash them on Arab civilians.
Israel is a significant producer in the international arms trade, especially in mechanisms of surveillance and control of civilian populations.
One thing is taboo: anything other than seeing innocence in the actions of Jews in the world.
Cruelty, persecution, crimes against humanity are in a blind spot when it's “our own people” as perpetrators. Exceptions to a virtuous rule.
There is anger at Israel's blockade, bombing, and occupation of Gaza, and West Bank state terrorism, and the reaction of Israel defenders is often that the charged offenses match historic antisemitic canards—thus are invalid.
The problem with enumerating the package of common antisemitic slurs is that they always seem to create a kind of immunity: If something has been falsely charged of Jews, one needn't avoid the crime charged?
Is it a matter of seeing ourselves as others see us? Is it a matter of the struggle for some objectivity? Is every ethnic or tribal identity a devaluing of those outside it?
For me to see the Jewish story with objectivity is as impractical as performing a non-trivial surgical operation on myself.
Do I touch on something unmentionable, “feed antisemitism,” by separating our human value from our outsize mythologizing?
I defend myself: It cannot be betrayal to think of Hillel's teaching, the universal "What is hateful to you, do not do to another," with an eye to truths we thought established in the Nuremberg trials, not to mention learned from the object lesson of the Nuremberg rallies.
Zionist Israel is Chelm. The legendary town of Chelm (not the real Polish city) in Yiddish stories is inhabited by remarkably foolish people who begin from foolish premises and build on them to ridiculous solutions.
The first stupid premise—that “Israel” can be taken from “Palestine”—is compounded by more and more technological excellence in killing and surveillance.
For believers that the Jewish story must include a modern nation-state in Palestine, it’s a certainty that I am “betraying my people” by writing out these thoughts. Or, naive to the innate antisemitism of the world.
In the Passover ritual meal, the “wicked son” asks, “What does this mean to you?” By not asking what the Exodus story means to “us,” he separates himself from The Jewish People, showing his wickedness.
I think the only irredeemable sin, among Jews, is faithlessness to “Our People”—aligning with gentiles. As a comment posted on a Zionist website stated, “True Jewish morality begins with loyalty to our own people.”
If all Jews compose a Jewish nation in a literal rather than spiritual, figurative sense, the weight of treason comes into play for faithlessness.
Danish expatriate Israeli Jonathan Ofir wrote in an online essay titled “I Am Freed from Zionism”:
It's hard to define the line where people sense you're not loyal. But it is a kind of social control with cult characteristics. It’s like people have the understanding that you’ve gone too far and now you’re not with "us" but against "us."
Ofir's provocative suggestion that Zionism is cultish makes me ask if there is some vulnerability that Zionism exploits in Jewish hyper-fixation on identity. Are we prone to the cultish division of the world into members and outsider "enemies" that installs an inner policeman to monitor for betrayal?
Certainly there is the cult characteristic of devaluing views from outside of the cult as worthless, ill-intentioned.
Intrinsic to Zionist belief is that Jews are historically vulnerable and non-Jews are unreliable, and that Israeli security is achieved by "realism”—relying on military superiority, "teaching" non-Jews lessons by massive retaliation and iron control.
Zionism began as a secular movement. The secular seamlessly slid to the sanctified, as the words of the Zionist anthem “Hatikvah,” with no mention of the deity, evoke the “Jewish soul,” necessarily implicating a God that made Jewish souls.
Considered with a step back, it has impressive gravity, being a selected people of God. Add the patina of antiquity and who can match the distinction?
The Zionist solution is to be strong and a majority—jettisoning the aspiration of making a better world where the weak and less numerous can be safe.
When arms and sovereignty are grafted to this identity, we have Jewish identity transmogrified to something new—Jewish religious-nationalist power.
With Jews’ role of noble victim is the gentiles’ role of ignoble victimizers. In practice, we may view non-Jews as defective, lacking, having morally-vacant animality.
There is a witticism of uncertain origin, “Jews are like everyone else, only moreso.” I’d leave off the last part, and just say we’re human, with all the human prides and failings.
We are people; people do evil.
Israeli-born genocide scholar Omer Bartov has concluded that Zionism “became the ideology of the state. And it became not only militaristic and expansionist but also racist, extremely violent, and ultimately an ideology that deeply harms both the individual and the collective.”
Bartov continues that in Israel there was “a radical transformation of Judaism itself into a political religion, intertwined with a certain translation of Zionism... In Israel the specific version has, in effect, produced divine or rabbinic legitimation for genocide.”
Zionism becomes revenge, for correction of every humbled moment of Jews in history, and glorification of the god that selected us—to wreak on Palestinians reversal of centuries of obstruction of God’s promise of Jews being mighty and numerous in our land.
Fatally, omitted in the fury is remembering the promise of the land is conditioned on faithful following of God's mitzvot.
The “eternal Jewish vulnerability” narrative is available in Jewish learning to be turned to Zionist purposes. In February, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu laid out concisely the mental landscape of Zionism grafted to Judaism—eternal world antisemitism:
If you look at the course of Jewish history, then what you see is this was a fairly constant phenomenon:
I mean, once we lost our land, once we were scattered among the Nations, we were ready prey. We were ready prey. And eventually, when there was societal change the Jews always were blamed… And these attacks on the Jews were always preceded by vilification. Horrible vilifications that even so-called civilized and educated people adhered to: “The Jews poisoned the wells. The Jews spread vermin. The Jews slaughtered Christian children to use their blood for baking matzos.”
And this goes into modern times. The Nazis basically said the same thing. And all these vituperations, all these slanders were always accompanied, eventually, by exile or pogroms or mass murder.
That's what happened to the Jews one country after another into modern times.
PM Netanyahu then defines the rationale for whatever violence is necessary to preserve the Jewish state in Palestine:
The great change in Jewish history which [Theodor] Herzl saw very clearly is that when the Jews have their own independent state they will have the independent power to roll back the physical attacks against us.
Functionally, it is the strategy of a paranoid person holed up with weapons. As in any religion’s foundational literature, justifications can be found. In the Talmud is the imperative, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”
In territories under Israeli control, it has fostered land stealing and ongoing terrorizing of Arab residents by Jewish “settlers” drunk on ethnic self-assertion, protected by the army of the Israeli state.
When we live among others, the paradox of this outlook on Jewish history, and its "solution" by territorial Zionism, is the abandonment of Jews' right to be French, American, Indian, Syrian, Irani. In harmony with the Nazi legislation that German Jews were not German.
Zionist founding father, secular Theodor Herzl, in Der Judenstaat, summarized the basis of Zionism—that Jews carry antisemitism with them. He said we go where there is no antisemitism and there generate antisemitism:
The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution.
Herzl describes an irredeemable gentile world: “In the world as it now is and for an indefinite period will probably remain, might precedes right. It is useless, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the [French] Huguenots who were forced to emigrate. If we could only be left in peace... But I think we shall not be left in peace.”
Herzl's and Netanyahu's formulation is degrading of gentiles—that Jews cannot live among others. That there is something profoundly wrong with everyone but Jews.
This approach disregards the success story of a tribal cult from Judea maintaining and building culture over millennia, integrating converts wherever they’ve settled, up to our present.
Jewish pride can be consciousness of heritage, or be a sort of implicit contempt of gentiles.
The Zionist outlook, expressed by Maurice Samuel in 1924—talking of Jews' "wretched fate"—has Jews living in a trap which alienates us from humanity. One may be proud or lament the identity, but with no escaping it:
A century of partial tolerance gave us Jews access to your world. In that period the great attempt was made, by advance guards of reconciliation, to bring our two worlds together. It was a century of failure. Our Jewish radicals are beginning to understand it dimly...
The wretched fate which scattered us through your midst has thrust this unwelcome rôle upon us.
Do we demand safety, protection, because we share common humanity with rights to be respected, or because of our rare qualities—making us a special case?
Whether we think of ourselves as “ready prey” (Netanyahu) or precious unicorns of advanced civilization—or both—the point is we may think of ourselves as a different ilk than run-of-the-mill-humanity.
In America, the claim of being an extraordinary case makes a sisterly blend with Christians Zionist eschatology and “American exceptionalism” in Israel advocacy.
We are whatever we think we are. It isn’t a lament but a boast, that we are “a people that dwells apart.”
The Zionist solution is to be strong and a majority—jettisoning the aspiration of making a better world where the weak and less numerous can be safe.
In 1938, a Polish leader of the anti-Zionist socialist Bund forecast:
Zionism has always regarded the law of force, of nationalistic action, as the normal law of history and on this law has based its perspective on Jewish life…
If a Jewish state should arise in Palestine, its spiritual climate will be: eternal fear of the external enemy (Arabs); eternal struggle for every bit of ground with the internal enemy (Arabs)…
With Jewish identity focused on its ethnic nation-state rather than a worldwide people gifted Torah and obligations, its majoritarianism and contempt for others shows our vulnerability— as all other groups—to vice. Trauma has not ennobled us.
The whole of Torah revolves around the proposition of singular essential Jewish peoplehood.
Herzl’s proposition that we have “our right to exist as a separate people, according us our rightful place among the nations of the world” is built on it.
The inner policeman tries to stop critical examination of the identity—Disloyalty to faithful ancestors! Betrayal of my people!—to question Zionist corollaries of the statement, “I am a Jew.”
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Why the Mainstream Media Should Stop Using the ADL as Their Go-To Antisemitism Source
The group uses dubious reporting methods and tends to conflate right-wing racial extremism with pro-Palestine speech and activity.
Jun 14, 2026
More than a decade ago, a video (Mondoweiss, 8/7/14) showed Jodi Rudoren, then The New York Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief, having a casual and friendly meeting with Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League. The cozy relationship in the video was telling enough, but when the video captured Foxman complaining that the “Arabs” had taken over a famous New York City hotel, and Rudoren shrugging it off, many skeptics viewed this as a window into the Times’ pro-Israel bias.
The recently deceased Foxman (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5/12/26), famous for promoting the pro-Israel viewpoint and insinuating that critics of Israel were antisemitic, wasn’t Rudoren’s source in this video; they were pals.
Emmaia Gelman’s new book, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State, is a history of the group, framing it not as a racial justice organization but as a deputy sheriff for the US empire. Gelman shows how the ADL crafts a narrative for the public that pushes Western imperialism rather than equality. In recent years, the ADL’s main focus has been smearing criticism of Israel or support for Palestinian human rights as Jew hatred. As the group (4/4/23) says, “anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism.”
The book is loosely part of the #DropTheADL campaign, which encourages both progressives and schools to stop citing the group as a source on political extremism, because of its “racist and right-wing” track record. The movement has had limited success: The delegates of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, voted to sever ties with the ADL, a move that was overruled by the union’s governing board (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7/21/25).
Over the decades the ADL has established itself as a one-stop research depot for media when it comes to antisemitism.
When major newspapers write about the definition or prevalence of antisemitism, they frequently look to the ADL (New York Times, 2/27/28, 12/10/23, 10/6/24; Washington Post, 10/27/21; Wall Street Journal, 5/6/26; USA Today, 4/22/25, 5/6/26). In the Times obituary for Foxman (5/10/26), the paper wrote:
One reason Mr. Foxman was consulted by journalists and academics was that he made sure his organization could back up its claims with facts and statistics.
Gelman’s research challenges that record, arguing that ADL documentation of antisemitic incidents lacks context, allowing the group to “conflate small ambiguous acts like some kid writing a swastika on their desk with burning a synagogue,” Gelman told FAIR. That’s where their research “got fudgy” and “showed spikes” in antisemitism, leading to reporting filled with “stark terms without context.”
Bulwark of the West
Why is the ADL so influential? In Gelman’s telling, the ADL worked hard in the early days of the Cold War as a news source for Washington, DC officials. It blanketed congressional offices and newsrooms with briefings, newsletters, and press releases, making it a go-to source for civil rights information. Its stances neatly aligned with pro-US Cold War policy, unlike other other civil rights organizations, which anti-communists tended to view with political suspicion.
The book documents much of this history, including how the ADL produced influential media of its own:
One measure of the ADL’s reach into political culture was the ADL Bulletin, a glossy, often chatty magazine of news features and insider tidbits on domestic and international civil rights issues. The Bulletin started the decade with a paid circulation of 150,000—already a major publication, matching about 11% of the concurrent circulation of the New York Times. By 1967 it had grown to nearly 169,000 subscribers.
In particular, she cites the organization’s role in changing US perception of Israel after the 1967 war, establishing the Israeli side as the West’s bulwark against a Soviet-aligned Arab alliance. The group’s
reporting heralded a new project of blanketing US media with articles about Israelis as salt-of-the-earth Westerners, mixing human interest with political argument, and flatly denying Palestinian dispossession.
In the 1970s, the ADL created the radio series Dateline Israel, which “was distributed at no cost to thousands of radio stations and reportedly aired on 500 stations,” where “episodes presented Israel as bustling, hopeful, modern.” Gelman adds:
Dozens of 15-minute radio segments highlighted Jewish ingenuity, character, and desire for peace. They highlighted an ostensible pluralism alongside grateful and supportive Arabs who welcomed colonization.
‘A Bit of Selection Bias’
Gelman wants to see news organizations stop using the ADL as a go-to source, not just because of what she sees as dubious reporting methods, but because the group tends to conflate right-wing racial extremism with pro-Palestine speech and activity.
It’s a long road ahead, she said. “We have progressive media moving away from the ADL,” she said. “What’s left is the legacy media and the big-reach media. The only way I can see that shifting is if journalists themselves begin to revolt.”
Part of the problem is that over the decades the ADL has established itself as a one-stop research depot for media when it comes to antisemitism. Last year, for example, when FAIR asked the Southern Poverty Law Center about a rise in antisemitic and white supremacist content on social media networks like Facebook, a media handler suggested FAIR send its request to the ADL.
There are small signs of change. In a long interview with ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt, New York Times writer Lulu Garcia-Navarro (8/9/25) asked the leader about “young Jews who might self-describe as anti-Zionist or have problems with the state of Israel at the moment.” Greenblatt dismissed them, comparing them to “Hispanic people who support President Trump’s policies at the border.” “There are Blacks for Trump,” he added.
When the writer continued to press this issue, he bit back:
What polls are you seeing? I understand anecdotally you may have heard it from some people. I believe there may be a bit of a selection bias there. Have you gone to any of the mainstream synagogues in New York City, the ones with the largest membership, and asked them? I would encourage you to go to 92nd Street Y. Go to the West Side JCC. Go to Central, Park Avenue, Rodeph Sholom, go to KJ. Go to all these large Jewish synagogues and ask where their young people are.
Later that year, the Forward (11/21/25) reported that “younger Jews are more than twice as likely to identify as anti-Zionist than the overall population.” A Washington Post poll (10/6/25) taken in September 2025 found only 36% of Jewish Americans aged 18 to 34 saying they were emotionally attached to Israel, while 50% of Jews in that age group said that Israel has committed genocide.
A 2026 poll by the Jewish Voter Resource Center found 44% of Jewish Americans under 35 supported a democratic, binational government in Israel-Palestine elected by both Jews and Palestinians—”even as most major Jewish organizations classify calls for a single state as an expression of antisemitism,” the Forward (5/27/26) reported.
But in his interview with the Times, Greenblatt redefined which Jewish opinions mattered to him: not just pro-Israel opinions, but those of monied religious congregations in upper Manhattan, an elite that towers above Jewish communities elsewhere. The exchange makes the leader seem woefully out of touch.
He and his group still enjoy a kind of media access the rest of society can only dream about. But the pushback from the Times reporter is a small signal that some outlets are beginning to look at this group more critically.
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