Tonight, as Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron) begins, I am expanding my circle of remembrance. For years, I remembered my friend David Rosenfeld, murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 1982. This year, I remember all victims of terrorism, including innocent Palestinians.

I will certainly remember the Israeli soldiers who fell in battle defending Israel from attack. But I will not remember terrorists, whether Jewish or Palestinian, who set out on a mission to take innocent lives.

And I know what some will say: there are a whole lot more Palestinians who chose terrorism than Jews. Yes, that is true. But so what? I am remembering the innocent, non-terrorist Palestinians killed in this goddamned conflict. And there are a lot of them.

Because if we cannot hold all of their humanity at once, then we have already lost something essential: our humanity.

So, I remember David Rosenfeld.

David was a friend. An American from Philadelphia who came to Israel and built a life here. He worked at the bank where I deposited my dollars. We began talking and became fast friends.

In March 1981, as I was preparing to leave Israel after an extended stay, David told me he was moving with his wife and two small children to the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, very near the archaeological site of Herodion. I must have looked at him with unbelieving eyes because he quickly said he was not “one of those” settlers, gun-toting, wild-eyed. David told me what drew him to Tekoa was Rabbi Menachem Froman, who believed Jews and Palestinians might yet meet not only across lines of conflict, but across lines of faith and shared humanity. It was that fragile, improbable hope that took him there, and that he chose to live by. He specifically said he would not carry a weapon. I bid him farewell, we hugged. I never saw him again.

On July 2, 1982, during the Lebanon War, David was alone at Herodion (one of King Herod the Great’s palaces and his tomb) where he was the director of tourism. Two Palestinians attacked him, stabbing him over one hundred times. I learned of his death in an article in the Boston Globe. It was a thunderclap. Something shattered inside me. For years, I carried that loss as a monster-sized chip on my shoulder. I nursed the anger, and in the process, blocked off my soul.

Decades later, it still sits with me.

And, this year, I also remember the Dawabsheh family in Duma.

In the early hours of July 31, 2015, Jewish terrorists crept into the village and firebombed the family’s home while they slept. Molotov cocktails were thrown through the windows, engulfing the house in flames within moments. Hebrew graffiti was left on the walls – slogans of revenge, marking the attack as an act of extremist, ideological violence.

Inside that home were a mother, a father, and their two young children. Eighteen-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned to death. His parents, Saad and Riham, suffered catastrophic burn injuries and died in the weeks that followed. Their older son, Ahmed, survived, but with severe burns and the trauma of witnessing the destruction of his family. It was not an abstract tragedy. It was intimate, deliberate, and horrifying in its cruelty.

The Jewish terrorist was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

I know Yom HaZikaron is for us Israelis, to remember our losses. I know it is a big ask to extend that grief to Palestinians. I know, because up until now, I also thought that. Felt that.

Yom HaZikaron, I now believe, asks more of us. Maybe even the impossible.

I say this knowing another thing. That in the years after David’s murder, in my own grief I closed my eyes and ears to Palestinian grief. I didn’t want to hear it. I was in my twenties, and I carried this anger into my thirties and forties. That is my confession.

Yet, this anger and hate gave me some insight: we Israelis and Palestinians, in our mutual pain and trauma, fear each other, dehumanize each other, objectify each other, and can’t see beyond our own tribes.

That is indeed a tall order.

Yes, Palestinians in Gaza who were not terrorists, who were caught in a war not of their choosing, should be remembered. Did some or most support Hamas? Yes, but we are not a mob. Israel is a state governed by law. We do not decide who lives or dies based on what we think they might believe.

That is what Hamas does. And I sure as hell don’t want us to be like Hamas.

I firmly believe Hamas bears tremendous responsibility for this state of affairs. It possesses a violent, genocidal and antisemitic ideology that seeks our destruction. Its leadership initiates a major war and then hides while its own civilians remain exposed. It built some 500 kilometers of fortified tunnels and refused to open them to its own people as shelters. Like all totalitarians in history, this is a leadership that treats its own people as expendable.

No. We don’t want to become like that.

So tonight, as the siren sounds, I remember…

David Rosenfeld, my friend.

Ali Dawabsheh. His parents, Saad and Riham. And their older son, Ahmed, who survived, badly burned and alone.

All victims of terror, no matter the perpetrator.

Our soldiers who stood in the breach.

If we cannot hold all of that, if we cannot insist on moral clarity about terrorism while also refusing to surrender our humanity toward innocent life, then we have lost something essential. Our souls.

And yes, many of us have lost that essential something. How else did we get this current government?

This Yom HaZikaron let’s remember our own – and theirs, too. To give all these death a deeper meaning, Yom HaZikaron must also be about who we choose to be in the shadow of our unfathomable losses.

There is something deeply concerning that I keep hearing from American Jews I care about. It’s usually said with concern, often with anguish. It goes like this:

‘What Israel is doing right now, especially under this government, is making Jews around the world less safe, its policies are putting a target on Jewish backs everywhere.’

I understand the instinct behind that. But we need to confront it honestly, because it is wrong. And more than that, it is dangerous. Lethally dangerous.

Let’s start with reality. Antisemitism is rising globally. The latest data, including a Tel Aviv University report released days ago, confirms what Jews already know: this is not a blip, but a surge, and in too many cases it is deadly.

But here is where we go off track.

Too many of us respond by looking inward, asking what we did wrong. Asking whether different Israeli policies, a different government, a different tone might have prevented it. That instinct feels responsible. It is not.

Why? Because antisemites are responsible for antisemitism.

Not Israel. Not its government. Not us.

For decades, those of us who worked for American Jewish organizations were trained into a framework: “anti-Zionism” is not necessarily antisemitism, but it can “cross a line” into antisemitism. Our job was to identify when that happened.

That framework no longer describes reality, if it ever did.

What we are seeing today is a global movement that maps Jews everywhere into the actions of Israel, assigns them collective responsibility, and increasingly justifies hostility and violence.

We are living through a third historical wave of Jew-hatred. The first was theological anti-Judaism. The second was racial antisemitism. The third, unfolding now, is political and ideological, but it follows the same pattern: Jews are cast as uniquely conspiratorial, uniquely illegitimate, uniquely malevolent, uniquely deserving of punishment.

Today, that language is best understand as antizionism. (Yes, the spelling is correct.)

We are told this is about policy. About settlements. About Gaza. About the maddening Netanyahu government. It is not. It is about whether Jews are allowed the same human right as every other people: the right to self-determination. Once that right is framed as a crime, everything else follows.

If Israel is evil, and since most Diaspora Jews support Israel (if not all its policies), then they become legitimate extensions of that evil. And once that happens, anti-Jewish violence is normalized. It is “resistance by any means necessary.” It is “globalizing the intifada.” That is how someone justifies shooting Jews in Sydney because of a war thousands of miles away.

And here is the part we must confront:

When we ourselves respond by asking what Israel did to provoke this, we reinforce the logic that makes those attacks possible. We validate the premise. We tell the world that when Jews are targeted, there is something to explain when in fact there isn’t.

If Chinese Americans were expected to answer for Beijing, what would that be called?

Racism.

If American Muslims were expected to answer for the policies of 57 Muslim states, what would that called?

Islamophobia.

But there is a Jewish exception. Its not new. Its been with us, well, forever. And too often, we mistakenly accept that burden. There is a reason for this, and it runs very deep in our collective memory and cultural DNA.

Many of us were raised with a reflex shaped by generations of vulnerability. My grandfather, born to Yiddish-speaking immigrants fleeing Russian pogroms, once nervously whispered to the 8-year-old me as I counted my allowance in public, “Put that away, everyone will think you’re a kike.”

The Yiddish phrase “Sha, shtil! Es iz a shonda far di goyim” (“Be quiet! Don’t be a disgrace in front of non-Jews”) sums it up.

In the Diaspora, Jews learned that visibility could be dangerous. That the actions of one Jew or a group of Jews could bring consequences for all. So, we internalized it, baked it into our bagels.

That instinct made sense once upon a powerless time. But can we now all agree it failed us completely in the 20th century? I mean, Auschwitz was not a protest of West Bank settlements.

Today, this reflexively defensive instinct leads many of us believing that antisemitism is something we can manage through better behavior. That if we are careful enough, critical enough, we can reduce the danger.

When we understand lethal antisemitism on an Australian beach as a reaction to Israeli actions, we reinforce the oldest lie about us: that Jews are collectively responsible. Can we all just agree that antisemites do not need our help to justify their hatred?

So, what must we stop doing?

We must stop internalizing the accusations, translating hatred into self-critique, and believing that if we just say the right things, the hatred will subside. Why? Because it is not about what we say or do. Or what those Jews over there are doing. It never was. It is and always has been about what Jew-haters imagine who and what Jews are.

This does not mean abandoning criticism of this or any Israeli government. It does not mean silencing debate. But, it does mean drawing the line on our own terms.

So, yes, by all means criticize Israel’s policies! Demand better from us thick-headed Israelis! Support from afar (please!) the many millions of Israelis who are also sick of this current government (yours truly for one).

But never, never, never! accept that antisemitism is a reaction to Jewish behavior.

Never accept that Jews anywhere are legitimate stand-ins for a state.

Never accept that our safety, an inalienable human right, is conditional.

And never accept that when Jews are murdered at a Hannukah celebration (Bondi Beach) or in their synagogues on Yom Kippur (Manchester), the first question we ask is: “what did we do wrong?”

FFS! We did nothing wrong. Nothing.

We Jews must stop with this self-effacing narrative because it gives permission to antisemites to be antisemitic. Whatever our personal positions are on the Israeli government’s policies we must never internalize the narrative that somehow antisemitism becomes a rational and understandable response.

Because Jewish behavior does not cause antisemitism.

Antisemites cause antisemitism.

Full. Stop.

There’s a growing conversation in Washington about conditioning, restricting, or even ending U.S. military aid to Israel. J Street’s April 13 statement is part of that shift. It’s worth taking seriously. It’s also worth pushing back on it.

First, let’s be clear about categories. J Street is not the same as the Democratic Socialists of America, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other antizionist groups that openly call for ending all military aid to Israel, or even ending Israel. That distinction matters. But timing matters too. Those voices, along with efforts in Congress to block weapons transfers, are the backdrop here. So, when J Street steps in with a “conditional” approach, it’s hard not to read it as trying to split the difference. Maybe that’s the strategy. Maybe not. Either way, it raises some real concerns.

Here’s the core of J Street’s argument:

“When Israeli policies do not align with American policies and interests, Israel should not be able to use American weapons for those policies. That is why J Street supports the Ceasefire Compliance Act (CCA), which makes clear that Israel must adhere to the October 2025 ceasefire agreement and 20-point plan for Gaza that it previously agreed to, facilitate the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza, prevent de facto and de jure annexation of the West Bank and take material steps to prevent settler violence. If these conditions are not met, the CCA dictates that Israel cannot use U.S. weapons in Gaza or the West Bank.”

Before I get into why I think that’s a problem, let me say something upfront. J Street is correct about Jewish terror in the West Bank. That is real, and I’ve written about it here and here. The slow drift toward annexation is also real. And yes, the Netanyahu government has enabled or tolerated that. If you care about Israel long term, that should bother you. It bothers me. A lot.

But here’s where I part ways with J Street.

No serious person argues that the United States should have no say in how its weapons are used. Of course it should. That’s legitimate. But there’s a difference between setting general rules and turning those rules into real-time political pressure during an active war. In an existential conflict, the battlefield changes faster than Washington can keep up. If access to critical weapons depends on shifting political judgments, you’re not just guiding an ally, you’re introducing uncertainty into its decision-making at exactly the wrong moment.

If the question is how to pressure Israel, the answer is not to do it in real time during an existential war. Pressure is legitimate, but timing matters. When it’s applied only to Israel while Hamas keeps rearming, recruiting, regrouping, and reasserting control, the message to Iran and Hezbollah is simple: keep going, it’s working.

I get it when antizionists seek precisely that outcome, but I expect much more from J Street.

At first, I thought the J Street statement just left things out. On a second read, I found a built-in asymmetry.

Israel gets conditions. Enforceable ones. Hamas gets context. Other U.S. allies that support Hamas and receive billions in American arms… no mention.

Let’s be honest about what we’re dealing with. Hamas started this war on October 7, backed by Iran and Hezbollah, which joined the fighting the day after. What’s happening now is not some new conflict. It’s the same war, just a later phase. Hamas has not disarmed. It has reasserted control over parts of Gaza, with catastrophic consequences for Gaza’s civilians. (See Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib for a Palestinian Gazan’s POV on Hamas’s repression.)

Hamas is testing the ceasefire and rearming at the same time. And none of that triggers anything in J Street’s statement. No mechanism. No consequence. That omission is a built-in imbalance.

And here’s the irony. The actual Ceasefire Compliance Act explicitly says Hamas has to stop attacks, stop rearming, dismantle its military infrastructure, and move toward disarmament. So, the bill itself at least gestures at symmetry. But J Street’s framing mostly leaves that out.

Then there’s the consistency problem. If the principle is that U.S. support should reflect U.S. interests and values, fine. Apply it. But apply it across the board. Qatar and Turkey are major U.S. allies who have played real roles in supporting Hamas politically and materially. Both receive major U.S. arms systems worth billions. Where’s the call to reassess those relationships? Why is the standard only being sharpened in one direction? I would expect a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization to demonstrate awareness of the geopolitical realities Israel faces.

There’s also a disconnect here that’s hard to ignore.

You can’t run a war where access to critical weapons systems depends on shifting political judgments in Washington. Who decides there’s been a violation? How fast? What happens to operations already underway? War doesn’t pause while that gets sorted out. That kind of uncertainty has real consequences on the battlefield.

J Street also leans on the idea that Israel should reduce its dependence on U.S. military aid. That’s actually a serious point, and I agree with it in principle. But again, details matter. A gradual, coordinated ten-year drawdown as proposed by the Israeli Prime Minister is one thing. A near term (2028) major restructuring tied to conditions is something else entirely. One is strategic planning. The other risks looking like pressure, sending a message to Israel’s enemies that their Muqawama Doctrine works and now is the time to double down.

And this is not only about Netanyahu. It applies to any Israeli prime minister, present or future. The question is whether Israel’s ability to conduct a war for its own survival should be subject to evolving political conditions set elsewhere in real time.

Signals matter. If support starts to look conditional or shaky right now, Israel’s enemies notice. The message becomes: keep pushing, the U.S. will eventually pull back. At the same time, regional partners who have aligned themselves with Israel start recalculating. That’s not a message you want to send in the middle of an ongoing war.

For what it’s worth, I actually do support phasing out U.S. military aid to Israel over time. Not because I think the relationship is a problem, but because dependence is. October 7 made that clear. When your war effort depends on external supply that comes with political conditions, your room to maneuver shrinks exactly when you need it most. Long term, Israel should be more self-sufficient. That’s just strategic reality.

But that’s not what J Street is proposing here.

What they’re proposing feels, to me, like introducing a conditional leash in the middle of an ongoing war. That is not the right move.

That said, this is a conversation worth having. I’m open to other approaches. Civil responses are always welcome.

This is a long one, please bear with me.

On Passover, we tell the story that defines us: we were enslaved, powerless, at the mercy of others, strangers in a land not our own. We had no sovereignty, no army, no ability to defend ourselves. Our fate was determined entirely by those who ruled over us.

And we are commanded to remember that experience even today, as we live as a “free people in our land.” This power of a state is new to us. While we have much to be proud of, holding sovereign power comes with built-in moral snares.

Exile (galut) was not just geographic dispersion. It was both a political and spiritual reality. We lived without power, surviving under the authority of others, often under their boot. Over time that condition shaped our identity. We became accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a people acted upon, rather than a people acting in history.

We made powerlessness a virtue.

That changed in 1948 when the State of Israel was established. For the first time in nearly two millennia, we regained sovereign power. We built a state and an army to defend it. We took responsibility for our own fate.

Yet, while Zionism solved one political problem, it created a new moral challenge: what does it mean for a people that was powerless for so long to become empowered?

I first encountered that question in a serious way in 1989 when I read an essay, “Ethics of Jewish Power,” by Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, one of the 20th century’s most influential Jewish thinkers. It made a deep impression on me then, and it feels even more relevant now.

Greenberg understood something that many of us were not yet ready to face. The return of Jewish sovereignty would not simply restore Jewish safety. It would transform the entire moral framework in which we lived.

Powerlessness may be a virtue, but one that is forced on you. For centuries, we had developed what he called an “ethic of powerlessness.” It was shaped by exile, by vulnerability, by the fact that we lacked the ability to impose our will on others. It emphasized restraint, moral aspiration, an “innocence of powerlessness” that was “not simply moral superiority, it is also a result of the lack of capacity to act,” Greenberg argued.

This all changes the moment you take power.

Greenberg’s central claim was stark and uncomfortable: power is morally dangerous; but powerlessness is worse.

The Holocaust made that undeniable. It revealed that in a modern world of states and industrial violence, powerlessness is not just a disadvantage, but it was a death sentence. Zionism’s restoration of Jewish power was therefore not optional. It was necessary.

But necessity does not resolve morality. It complicates it, by creating moral dilemmas Jews didn’t have to face for centuries.

Jews were not the only ones facing this problem. In the 20th century, countless peoples faced a similar reality: life under empire meant vulnerability, not virtue. Greeks, Armenians, and others did not romanticize their powerlessness, they rejected it. They chose sovereignty, understanding that the moral burdens of power are real, but far preferable to the moral illusion of living at the mercy of others.

Palestinians, too, are pursuing state power, and if they achieve sovereignty, they will face the same unavoidable truth: power brings moral dilemmas that cannot be escaped, only managed.

In a follow-up essay, The Ethics of Jewish Power Today, Greenberg sharpened the argument. Once we have power, we no longer live in a world of moral clarity. We live in a world of tragic choices. We are forced, at times, to choose between competing goods, or between a greater and a lesser evil. The question is no longer whether harm can be avoided entirely. It is whether we are using power in a way that maximizes life and minimizes death.

The same state that protects Jewish life makes decisions that affect millions of non-Jews. The same army that defends can also inflict harm. The same sovereignty that secures our future forces us to confront not just our ideals, but the consequences of our actions in a flawed and dangerous world.

Greenberg warned that we would be tempted in two directions.

One would be to cling to the old ethic of powerlessness, to judge ourselves as if we still lacked power, to demand of ourselves a kind of moral purity that no state can sustain. This urge is heard among some Jews for whom the innocence of powerlessness is preferable to the moral ambiguities, dilemmas and challenges of exercising power. The other temptation would be to abandon moral restraint altogether, to justify anything in the name of survival, to give ourselves a moral blank check.

He rejected both.

What we need, he argued, was a new framework: an ethic of power that accepts the necessity of power, but insists on limits, accountability, and moral judgment in how that power is used.

Not perfect outcomes, but responsible ones.

Not moral purity, but moral seriousness.

Not self-justification, but self-criticism.

And crucially, all the while daily confronting the moral ambiguities of defending your citizens against enemies all too willing to murder as many as they can get their hands on. That is what October 7 taught us.

What then when we stumble morally? An ethical society is not one that never errs. It is one that builds into itself the capacity to examine its own actions, to investigate failure, to correct itself over time. Power must never be self-validating. It must always remain under judgment.

And that framework is exactly what is under strain today.

Many of us look at the current Israeli government and feel disillusionment. We see Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and other ministers, and we ask: is this what Jewish empowerment was meant to produce? Is this far-right, ultra-nationalist, messianic government what Jewish statehood could only ever produce? Has something gone fundamentally wrong and power itself corrupted the Zionist project beyond repair?

But such a conclusion misreads the moment.

Greenberg did not argue that Jewish power would make us better. He argued that it would severely test us by exposing tensions we had never had to face before. If we are troubled by what we see today, that does not mean his argument failed. But, it means we are living through the case that proves why he wrote it.

The temptation now, especially for Jews outside Israel, is to step back and disengage. But that response carries its own danger, and given what we saw on October 7, the lives of millions of Israeli Jews — half the world’s Jewish population — would be imperiled.

Jews abandoning Jews to mortal danger — which is what antizionist Jews do when they support (even tacitly) Hamas — is not a return to a more authentic or moral Judaism, but a direct violation of the obligation not to stand idly by the blood of one’s fellow. It also betrays the foundational Jewish principle that all Jews are responsible for one another.

There is a persistent idea, especially among some Diasporist Jews, that Judaism was somehow more authentic, more ethical, even more “pure” when we lacked power. Jewish power, embodied in the State of Israel, thus represents a kind of moral fall.

Greenberg rejects this view outright, and for good reason. The so-called “innocence of powerlessness” is a chimera mistaking constraint for virtue. For centuries, we did not refrain from harming others because we had perfected our ethics. We refrained because we lacked the capacity to act. Powerlessness did not elevate us above moral compromise. It simply removed the possibility of certain kinds of moral failure.

Moreover, powerlessness was not morally neutral. It carried its own moral cost. It meant vulnerability to violence, dependence on the goodwill of others, and, at its most extreme, annihilation. The Holocaust exposed this with brutal clarity. To choose powerlessness in a world that permits, and at times encourages, the destruction of the weak is not a moral position, but a dangerous illusion.

Greenberg’s point is not that power guarantees moral behavior. It clearly does not. It is that moral responsibility only begins once power exists. The task is not to retreat from power in the name of purity, but to confront the far harder challenge: how to exercise power without surrendering our humanity.

To respond to the moral failings of a particular government by turning away from Jewish power altogether is a retreat from responsibility, not a moral stance.

The real question is not whether we should have power, but rather “how should we use it.” And how should we judge ourselves in the process?

Here too, Greenberg’s warning is essential: the moment we begin to generalize, demonize, or collapse individuals into an irredeemable collective enemy, we erode the very moral restraints that an ethic of power requires. And here, our own tradition offers a model that is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.

The Torah returns to one mitzvah (command) no fewer than 36 times in different formulations of “Do not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger as you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 23:9) This teaching is a direct confrontation with the reality of power. It assumes that we will one day hold power over others, and it warns us in advance what that power can do if left unchecked.

This is not about being “nice.” It is about memory as a moral constraint. We know what it means to be vulnerable, to be at the mercy of others, to have no recourse. That memory is supposed to shape how we act when the roles are reversed.

And today, those roles have been reversed.

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we are no longer the powerless minority. We are the sovereign power. The IDF is the most powerful in the region. We control borders, movement, security, and, in many cases, the daily lives of millions of Palestinians. That reality does not erase the threats we face from Palestinian terrorism. It does not negate the right to defend ourselves. But it does mean that our moral responsibility is no longer theoretical. It is immediate, constant, and unavoidable.

This is where the current Israeli government is failing that test.

A government that fuels division within Israeli society, that undermines democratic institutions, that threatens the freedom of the press, that privileges narrow political interests over the common good, is not strengthening Jewish sovereignty, but is weakening its moral foundation. A leadership culture marked by corruption, political opportunism, and the normalization of extremist rhetoric is not simply a political problem. It is a moral one.

And in its approach to Palestinians, the failure is even more profound. When policy drifts toward permanent control without political horizon, when language dehumanizes, when power becomes an end in itself rather than a means of securing life, we are no longer operating within an ethic of power.

This is precisely the danger Greenberg warned about: not that we would have power, but that we would come to justify its use without sufficient moral restraint. This is what undergirds the government’s inaction over extremist settler violence (Jewish terrorism) while conversely passing a law just yesterday permitting the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists.

Which is why the story of Nathan and King David is not ancient history but remains a timely warning.

In the Book of Samuel (II Samuel 12:1–13), the prophet Nathan confronts King David after David abuses his power, sending Uriah to his death so as to take his wife Batsheva.

Nathan does not begin with accusation. He tells a story. A rich man, with many flocks, takes the one small lamb of a poor man rather than draw from his own abundance. David is outraged and condemns the man to death.

Nathan then turns to him and says: Ata ha’ish! (You are the man!)

In that moment, the king is held accountable. His power does not shield him. It demands judgment. That is the standard our tradition sets for holding power. Not its rejection, but its moral constraint. Not the denial of sovereignty, but accountability within it. Even our greatest leaders are not above moral scrutiny.

If Greenberg was right, then what we are living through now is not the failure of Jewish power, but severe testing of it. The answer to the misuse of power is not to abandon power as that path leads back to a condition that, in a post-Holocaust world where antisemitism is resurging, is unsustainable. But the answer is also not to defend everything done in the name of the state. That is not Zionism; it is the surrender of moral judgment.

What is required is something harder.

We need a Zionism that is strong enough to defend Jewish life and honest enough to confront the ways in which power can be misused and abused. We require a Zionism that understands that sovereignty is not the end of the Jewish story, but the beginning of a more demanding chapter. We need a Zionism that accepts that we will sometimes fall short, but insists that we remain accountable, self-critical, and committed to doing better.

This requires engagement, criticism, and the willingness to say, as Nathan said to David, that power does not place any of us above the law and we all will be judged equally before it.

Zionism succeeded in restoring power to the Jewish people. That was the easy part. Now comes the harder task: ensuring that we are worthy of it.

May your Pesach be thoughtful and self-reflective in these difficult, troubling times.

I wrote recently that while Israel is fighting an existential war against extremists abroad, we are tolerating our homegrown violent extremists. I warned that settler violence in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria was not isolated, not random, and not contained. Since then, the evidence has only become more overwhelming, and the consequences more dangerous.

Even the Israeli security establishment is now saying this openly and bluntly. The IDF chief has called settler violence “unacceptable” and warned that it is causing “extraordinary strategic damage” to Israel.

Think about that for a moment. Not activists. Not critics abroad. Not journalists. The IDF, which is fighting Iran and Hezbollah, taking casualties, facing international criticism. That is how serious this has become.

And it is not just about morality, though the moral failure is obvious and shameful. It is about Israel’s ability to function as a state.

At the same time, the strain on the military is already reaching dangerous levels. The IDF chief has reportedly warned the cabinet that the army risks “collapsing in on itself” due to manpower shortages.

Will this government listen?

Another layer on top of that is the need to divert forces fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon to deal with Jewish terrorism in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria. This is not sustainable. This is self-inflicted damage, and it is happening in the middle of a war.

Internationally, the cost is mounting just as quickly. Even Israel’s own ambassador to the United States – himself a settler – has acknowledged that settler violence is a “stain” that is costing Israel friends.

And pro-Israel Democrats in Washington, people who have consistently supported Israel despite internal pressures not to do so, are now calling settler violence a “national security threat.”

Let that sink in. This is not coming from Israel’s enemies. This is coming from our allies. From our friends.

For months, many in the pro-Israel community stayed silent. Out of loyalty. Out of fear of giving ammunition to Israel’s ideological enemies. Out of a belief that criticism during wartime should be restrained. That silence is backfiring.

Finally, more than 1,000 Diaspora Jewish leaders have now publicly called for action against what they explicitly described as “Jewish extremist terror” in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria. That’s a good start. But why not 10,000? Or 100,000?

That matters. It is overdue. And it is still not enough.

Where are you pro-Israel advocacy organizations including those for which I was a senior staff member? I know you are having internal discussions about this.

Not good enough.

Speak out if you wish to remain credible supporters of the bigger picture, which is Israel writ large. Otherwise, your silence becomes consent. You cannot fight antizionism while remaining silent about this.

And, you are not doing Israel any favors.

The problem is not just the violence itself. It is the political system that enables it. Our government includes, empowers, and depends on messianic religious fanatics who see this violence not as a problem, but as a means to their vision: turning Israel into a theocracy and annexation of the West Bank/Judea and Samaria.

The result is a growing perception, inside and outside Israel, that the state is either unwilling or unable to control its own extremists. That perception is corrosive. It erodes Israel’s legitimacy abroad. It undermines the IDF’s effectiveness. It fuels Palestinian rage and radicalization. And it stains the very idea of Zionism.

I do not use that word lightly. Zionism was founded to be the answer to Jewish powerlessness, to antisemitic lawlessness, to the vulnerability of living at the mercy of mobs. Now we are watching mobs act in our name.

That is a moral failure. It is also a strategic disaster.

There are signs, finally, that people are beginning to wake up. That voices within Israel, within the security establishment, and within the Diaspora are willing to say clearly that this cannot continue. But awareness is not action. Statements are not policy. Condemnations are not enforcement.

What is needed now is something far more basic: a government that is willing to govern. A government that enforces the law, restrains extremists, and understands that power carries responsibility.

Israel has elections coming. That matters.

Because what is at stake is not just a coalition, not just a policy debate, not even just the West Bank/Judea and Samaria. What is at stake is the character of the state.

Whether Israel remains a democratic, law-governed state rooted in Jewish values, or whether it allows itself to be dragged, slowly but steadily, into something else.

As I wrote before, and I will say again now with even greater urgency:

This is not Zionism.

And if we do not stop it, it will continue eroding Israel from within and leave us totally isolated from the world, including our best friends.

To my dear liberal American family and friends:

I see you. Please read and try to see me.

Right now, millions of Americans, especially liberals, centrists, and traditional conservatives, look at the Trump presidency and see something deeply dangerous: a threat to the rule of law, to democratic norms, to civil and civic rights. For them, this is not just another political cycle. It is an existential struggle over the future of the 250-year-old American democratic experiment.

I understand that instinct because, as an American ex-pat, I share it.

But living in Israel, especially after October 7, forced me to shift priorities. My existential reality is now very different.

Because here, the threat is immediate and physical. For me it is measured in sirens and running to shelters, in loud explosions nearby, in funerals for soldiers and civilians. It is the knowledge that those who seek our destruction spent decades and billions of dollars building the means to carry it out.

In the US, the fear is of failing democratic guardrails, weakening institutions, the undermining of the rule of law. ICE in Minneapolis is emblematic of that.

Both fears are real. Both are grounded in lived experience. But they are not the same. And that difference shapes how the war in Iran is seen, understood, and judged by us and by you.

You know the saying “where you sit determines where you stand”?

I once thought of that as a pithy abstraction. Its not. It’s literal.

Fifteen Years, and Then Suddenly…

We made Aliyah fifteen years ago. We built a life and raised a family here.

But in an important sense, I was still very American. My mental map of the world ran through U.S. politics and media. I lived here physically while experiencing American political reality as though I was still in the Bay Area.

Then came October 7, which collapsed all that instantly.

We watched in horror as the massacre unfolded on live TV. That same day, our youngest daughter was called up to the IDF reserves in a combat role. A friend’s grandson was seriously wounded fighting in Gaza. We attended funerals. We stood in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv among thousands, waiting, hoping, grieving.

Something shifted, fast and irreversibly.

I became Israelized.

Not as a matter of ideology, but of proximity. And necessity.

I stopped watching American cable news. It suddenly felt distant, underinformed, irrelevant to the reality unfolding around me. Instead, I turned fully to Israeli media, constantly and intensely, trying to understand what was happening, what might come next, how people here were processing it.

And that had an unexpected consequence. My Hebrew improved dramatically.

Because it had to.

When the stakes are this immediate and your brain is filled with cortisol, you do not wait for translation. You do not rely on summaries. You listen. You absorb. You struggle through the language because understanding is not optional.

Becoming Israelized, for me, was not just about adopting a different perspective. It was about living inside the reality. It became a matter of survival.

No more monsters on our borders

From this vantage point, the war in Iran looks different. It isn’t a separate or new war. The Iranian regime spent decades building a network of proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others – organized around a single objective: our destruction.

They were monsters on our border.

The mass murder, rape, kidnappings of October 7 demonstrated exactly what that destruction would look like: genocide.

So, when Israelis talk about this war, they (we) are not talking about something they (we) chose. They (we) are talking about something that was brought to them (us), and now, finally, as a counter-offensive brought back to its source.

Tehran.

Supporting the War, Despite Netanyahu

Anyone who knows me knows my deep contempt for Netanyahu. He is corrupt. He’s been in power for too long. He’s enabled the worst instincts of Israeli society by bringing into his government messianic fanatics. I fervently hope that this year’s election will finally put him out of power.

And yet, paradoxically, I support this war. As do over 90 percent of Israelis, including many who were in the streets (including yours truly) protesting this very government. From the outside, that may look contradictory. From here, it is not.

Or, as the classic Israeli song goes: d’varim she’ro’im misham lo ro’im mikan (things you see from there you can’t see from here).

When the threat is existential, political divisions do not disappear, but they reorder themselves. The question becomes less about who leads and more about whether the threat itself can be neutralized.

There is also a hope, cautious, maybe even unrealistic, that this moment could reshape the region. That weakening or even toppling the Islamic Republic could undermine the engine driving so much regional violence. That a Lebanon free of Hezbollah, and a Gaza free from Hamas may open new pathways to regional stability, and dare I even whisper it, peace.

Maybe that’s too optimistic. Maybe there will be blowback. History suggests there often is. But it is hard to imagine a worse outcome than allowing Iran to continue rebuilding its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and tightening the “ring of fire” the ayatollahs spent decades constructing around us.

Two Realities, One Conversation

This, my dear liberal American family and friends, is the disconnect between us.

Americans, especially you, look at this war through the lens of your own existential fears of the Trump presidency. Israelis look at it through ours. Both are shaped by real experiences. Both feel urgent. Both feel morally clear from the inside.

But they are not the same.

And if we are going to have an honest conversation about this war, about Iran, about Israel, about what comes next, we must begin by acknowledging that difference. Not dismissing it. Not flattening it. Not turning it into slogans.

Just understanding it and being accepting of the differences in our experiences that brought us to the positions we hold.

Because where you sit shapes what you fear most.

And what you fear most shapes everything else.

While Israel is fighting a dangerous war against the Islamic Republic regime in Iran (and its proxies) with Iranian and Hezbollah missiles striking us day and night, something deeply troubling is happening. In the hills of the West Bank, extremist settlers have escalated attacks against Palestinian civilians — shootings, arson, intimidation, and assaults — that are driving families from their homes and land.

If I am to be a “salty Zionist” I need to say this plainly: this violence is intolerable, unacceptable, immoral, profoundly un-Zionist and decidedly un-Jewish.

The violence is not random. For key figures in Israel’s government, particularly Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, the long-term goal is annexation of the West Bank/Judea and Samaria. Their agenda is to prevent a Palestinian state while reducing the Palestinian presence on the land.

This violence serves that warped agenda.

Smotrich recently called to cancel the Oslo Accords, annex the West Bank and “encourage” emigration. Ben-Gvir, a disciple of Meir Kahane — the far-right American-Israeli rabbi who founded the extremist Kach movement and advocated expelling all Arabs — built his political career on racist anti-Arab provocation and confrontation. For years he displayed in his living room a portrait of Baruch Goldstein who in 1994 murdered 29 Muslim worshipers in Hebron.

Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir have openly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

There is also a blunt political reality. Netanyahu’s coalition depends on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Both have threatened to bring down the government if their agenda is challenged. Reining in extremist settlers would mean confronting the very ministers who keep Netanyahu in power. For a prime minister on trial for multiple corruption charges, staying in power is everything.

Since the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 7 Israeli security data shows attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinians surged dramatically. Palestinian communities in parts of the West Bank have abandoned their villages after repeated harassment and violence.

Just last week, with attention on the war with Iran, there was a wave of settler attacks on Palestinians, killing five. These incidents include shootings, arson attacks, destruction of farmland, and intimidation of shepherds and farmers trying simply to make a living.

Israeli security officials acknowledge and condemn the attacks and that enforcement is weak. At times the army does intervene, arresting suspects, dispersing riots, or declaring closed military zones after attacks, but these actions are inconsistent and often come only after violence has already occurred.

At the same time, while Netanyahu has promised “forceful action” against the violent settlers, prosecutions of extremist settlers remain rare and many suspects are quickly released, reinforcing the perception that the phenomenon is not being effectively stopped.

The result is a disturbing reality: even while Israel fights Iran in a major war, the state has often failed to stop extremist settler violence in the West Bank.

And that failure carries consequences far beyond the immediate violence.

I believe Palestinian nationalism, in its current form, is not ready for a viable two-state solution. The Palestinian political system is fractured, corrupt, and too often captive to extremist forces of its own.

But settler violence ensures that the possibility of any future political solution with the Palestinian national movement disappears entirely.

Even if peace is impossible today, destroying the possibility of peace tomorrow is strategic madness. If Palestinian communities are pushed off their land through intimidation and violence, diplomacy becomes impossible, coexistence becomes unimaginable and radicalization becomes inevitable.

There is also a deeper moral dimension that we, of all people, should understand.

Jewish history is filled with memories of pogroms, massacres, expulsions, and mob violence tolerated or encouraged by governments. Zionism emerged as a specific Jewish liberatory response to that history, as a movement to ensure that Jews would never again live as a powerless minority at the mercy of lawless mobs.

A people whose history is shaped by pogroms cannot tolerate pogrom-like violence carried out in its own name.

Burning fields, terrorizing shepherds, and attacking civilians is not Zionism. It is the betrayal of Zionism.

And this brings me to my friends and colleagues in the organized American Jewish community.

For decades, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, and StandWithUs — institutions over the decades I proudly worked for in senior positions — have done yeoman’s work defending Israel against unfair accusations and hostile propaganda.

That work remains vital. But defending Israel also requires moral clarity. Silence in the face of extremist settler violence is assent.

Even during wartime, and I would say especially during wartime, the pro-Israel community must insist on something fundamental: that Israel be a state governed by the rule of law and Jewish moral values.

Extremist settler violence does not protect Israel. It endangers its future and it endangers the broader Jewish future. The pro-Israel community must urgently find its voice on this.

Why? Because Zionists, salty or not, have an ethical Zionist responsibility to say so, loudly and clearly.

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Donald Trump is a convicted felon whose behavior has damaged American democratic norms.

Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for multiple corruption charges, is passing the buck over the greatest security failure in Israel’s history on October 7, and governs with a coalition that includes ultra-nationalist extremists.

If these were the only facts that mattered, the conclusion would be simple. But reality rarely cooperates with the human desire for easy moral clarity. Because another truth also exists at the same time: confronting Iran is strategically justified.

This is where much of our public conversation breaks down. Too many assume that if the messenger is flawed, the message must also be false. If Trump is involved, the policy must be reckless. If Netanyahu is involved, the war must be cynical. It makes the world easier to understand. It is also intellectually lazy.

Start with Iran. The Iranian regime is authoritarian, massively repressive, anti-American, openly antisemitic and fully dedicated to Israel’s destruction. For years Iran built its Axis of Resistance strategy, a “Ring of Fire” of governments and proxies around Israel: Hamas and PIJ in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthies in Yemen, the now defunct Asad regime in Syria.

The idea was simple and deadly. Arm and position proxy forces all around Israel’s borders so that, when the moment comes, they can attack simultaneously from multiple directions.

Each group is a piece of a larger design. Taken together they formed a regional network designed to overwhelm Israel’s defenses.

October 7 did not appear out of nowhere. Hamas did not suddenly wake up that morning and carry out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The attack was part of a strategy that Iran had spent years cultivating through training, funding, and weapons.

Which means something important.

The war we are watching now did not suddenly begin last Saturday. It began on a different Saturday (October 7, 2023) when Iran’s proxy network ignited the first phase of a broader confrontation.

There is another layer to this story too often ignored. Iran is not operating in isolation. Tehran sits inside a growing geopolitical alignment that includes Russia and China.

Iranian drones have been used extensively by Russia in Ukraine. Iran and China have deepened their economic and military cooperation. This axis of repression among authoritarian states shares a common interest in weakening and defeating Western-style liberal democracy.

Seen from that angle, the confrontation with Iran is not simply another Middle Eastern war. It is one theater in a much larger global strategic contest.

Let’s go back to the two men whose names (correctly IMHO) trigger so much political reaction.

No beating around the bush. Donald Trump is a convicted felon who has shown repeated contempt for democratic norms and institutions. His political style is built on grievance, intimidation, and personal loyalty rather than constitutional restraint. It is hardly surprising that so many Americans see him as a destabilizing force.

Trump is also staring at midterm elections this November. The political stakes for him and for the Republican Party are enormous. A war that goes badly could damage him and his party for years. Even within his own MAGA movement there are visible splits between isolationists who want the United States out of foreign conflicts and those who believe Iran must be confronted.

This escalation is a massive political gamble. But a political gamble can still intersect with a real strategic threat.

The same uncomfortable duality applies in Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s record is hardly cleaner. The catastrophic failures that led to October 7 occurred on his watch after years of policies that empowered Hamas and neglected Israel’s broader strategic reality. He remains on trial for corruption. His attempt to ram through a judicial overhaul fractured Israeli society, and his coalition includes some of the most extreme figures ever to sit in an Israeli government.

And yet none of those facts erase the reality that Iran represents a long-term existential threat to Israel. On that, there is wall-to-wall consensus among Israelis.

Just like the US, Israel is also approaching elections this year. Netanyahu’s political survival will always shape his calculations.

But elections alone do not explain the war.

The Iranian threat does not disappear if Netanyahu leaves office. It does not go away if Democrats win back Congress in the midterms. It does not fade if Donald Trump fades from the political stage altogether.

The deeper problem in today’s politics is the demand for moral (read binary) simplicity. People want a world where good leaders do good things and bad leaders do bad things. Reality has never worked that way.

Flawed leaders sometimes confront real threats. Cynical political calculations sometimes sit beside genuine strategic danger. And sometimes several truths exist at the same time.

That is the uncomfortable reality.

You can believe that Donald Trump is dangerous to American democracy.

You can believe that Benjamin Netanyahu is corrupt, bears responsibility for the failures that led to October 7.

Yet, you can still recognize that confronting Iran is a strategic necessity.

And you can hold all these contradictory truths to be self-evident because that is what this moment demands.

I do not support Donald Trump. I never have. I never will. He has damaged American democracy, debased political discourse, and yes, he is a convicted felon.

And yet, from inside my home bomb shelter in northern Israel, listening to sirens and feeling the concussions of intercepted missiles just a few hundred meters overhead, I am stunned by what I keep seeing online from my American friends: this war is just a distraction, a “wag the dog” maneuver, a cheap political ploy to change the subject from legal troubles or the Epstein files.

You can distrust Trump, but let’s try harder to understand the world.

The war is not a press release. It is a strategic campaign aimed at reshaping the balance of power in the Middle East (and beyond), including potentially collapsing the Islamic Republic itself.

Operations of this scale do not materialize because of a bad news cycle. So, let’s zoom out to get a better understanding.

For years, Iran survived sanctions because the regime had economic lifelines. Most importantly, it had China. Beijing remained the primary buyer of Iranian oil despite crippling American sanctions. Discounted Iranian crude flowed east through shadow fleets and opaque shipping networks.

That money funded the IRGC, the regime’s Praetorian Guard. It also funded Hezbollah, Hamas, and the missile and drone capabilities that send my family and millions of Israelis dashing into reinforced concrete rooms, and also kills Israeli civilians.

But Iran is not just a Chinese partner. It is also a Russian arsenal having sent $2.7 billion worth of missiles to Moscow.

The drones raining down on Ukraine over the past two years were largely Iranian. The Shahed suicide drones (renamed Geran by the Russians) became a central tool in Putin’s war. Iran supplied Russia not only with drones but with ballistic missile components and military technology.

A sanctioned regime in Tehran became a wartime supplier to another sanctioned regime in Moscow.

Yes, read that again.

China buys the oil that keeps Iran solvent. Iran builds the drones that help Russia prosecute its war. Russia and Iran coordinate militarily. North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia in the war. Tehran and Pyongyang have cooperated on missile technology and weapons design over decades. Venezuela under Maduro helped Iran and Russia evade sanctions through shared shipping networks. This is a loose but very real axis built around resisting American leverage.

Historian Niall Ferguson calls this Cold War II, a new systemic confrontation between a U.S.-led order built on sanctions, finance, alliances, and technological dominance, and a China-centered network that enables authoritarian states to survive Western pressure.

Iran became a proof of concept.

If Tehran could withstand sanctions, fund proxies, arm Russia, repress its population, and still function because China kept buying oil, that would signal something dangerous: that American coercive power can be neutralized.

That is this war’s backdrop.

If the Iranian regime collapses, China loses more than a cheap oil supplier. It loses proof that its parallel system works. Russia loses a military supplier. The entire sanctions-resilience model takes a severe blow.

If the regime survives and rebuilds with continued backing from Beijing and coordination with Moscow, the message is equally clear. Defy the West. Endure. Wait it out.

You can be sure Taiwan is anxiously watching all this unfold.

So, yes, oppose Trump – as I do – and still recognize that this war sits inside something much larger than him.

Great power struggles do not erupt because of a news cycle scandal. The China–Iran–Russia–Venezuela alignment existed long before this war.

You can despise the man and still misread the moment. Trump is not trying to change the subject, though that may be a temporary side-effect. This is a system testing another system. China underwriting Iran. Iran arming Russia. Russia reshaping Europe. Venezuela playing the middleman. All this existed long before this war and it will outlast it. Reducing it to a tail-wagging-the-dog theory may be self-soothing but it is not terribly clever.

Sorry, my American friends, but from inside a reinforced concrete room with Iranian missiles arcing overhead, this is not a dog-wagging distraction. It is a truth-telling moment in today’s great power struggle.

For his family, this is closure. Painful, incomplete, but real. For Israelis we need it to be something else: A moment of reckoning, a din v’heshbon. One moral account has been settled, but another remains dangerously open.

There is relief in knowing that Ran Gvily is home. His return allows his family to mourn properly and to reclaim the dignity stolen by Hamas.

That matters. It matters deeply.

But it does not absolve the Netanyahu government for its failures to prevent October 7.

October 7 was not a force of nature. It was not an unforeseeable surprise. It was the product of long-term policy choices. Chief among them was a deliberate strategy to freeze the Palestinian issue in place. No negotiations. No political horizon. No effort to reduce friction or desperation. Instead, there was the fantasy that the conflict could be indefinitely managed while Israel expanded settlements and empowered the most radical elements in the settler movement.

Hamas was tolerated, even indirectly strengthened, because it was seen as useful and mistakenly believed to only want to govern Gaza. This divided Palestinians, weakened the Palestinian Authority, and provided a convenient excuse to do nothing. October 7 was the bill coming due.

This failure was compounded by another act of reckless irresponsibility. From January 2023 until October 7, the Netanyahu government deliberately tore Israeli society apart with its so-called judicial reform.

So alarmed were millions of Israelis that the largest sustained civil protest movement in Israel’s history was launched. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government chose to ignore warnings from economists and dismiss counsel from allies. Most unforgivably, warnings from senior IDF and intelligence officials were treated as political sabotage.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned publicly that the damage to military readiness was real and dangerous. Senior reservists said plainly that cohesion was cracking. Netanyahu chose to press on anyway, prioritizing coalition and personal political survival over national security.

Thus did Israel enter the most dangerous period in its history distracted, divided, and weakened from within.

All on Netanyahu’s watch. He owns it.

Yet his response since October 7 has been to evade responsibility at every turn. To blame the IDF. To blame intelligence. To blame political opponents. To blame anyone other than himself. Accountability, to him, is a threat rather than an obligation.

That is not leadership. It is moral cowardice.

Israel is a state governed by law, and is not a personal shield for one man. The Commissions of Inquiry Law, 1968, is clear. Events involving massive loss of life, systemic state failure, or collapse of public trust fall squarely within its purpose.

By any legal or historical standard, October 7 meets and exceeds the threshold contemplated by the law. What we are getting instead is a coalition friendly committee, headed by Netanyahu himself, to determine who will sit on the political commission of inquiry.

Israelis are not fryarim (suckers). We have paid too high a price to be fooled by this evasion of civic and legal accountability.

The hostages and their families deserve the truth. The families of those murdered on October 7 deserve the truth. The families of fallen soldiers deserve the truth. We the citizens of Israel who collectively experienced the war, watched our children drafted into the reserves and spent uncounted hours hunkering down in our safe rooms, deserve the truth.

Without it, there can be no healing.

This is not politics. This is an existential matter. Societies that refuse to confront their failures repeat them. Leaders who evade judgment guarantee the next disaster.

The return of Ran Gvily closes one chapter with dignity. It also leaves no excuse for avoiding the reckoning that must follow.

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There. I said it.

For over four decades – in the United States and now in Israel – I toiled in the fields as a senior Jewish communal professional focused on pro-Israel advocacy and combatting antisemitism.

Over the years I’ve gotten salty.

A salty Zionist with much to say.

This Substack is not about rebelling against institutions or burning bridges with colleagues who, like me, dedicated their lives to the Jewish people.

No, another urgency now drives me: the growing fissure, some say chasm, between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, especially in the United States. This includes the gap between what many pro-Israel institutions say publicly and what serious Jewish leaders are saying privately.

This space is meant to hold advocacy for Israel and critique of Israeli policies together. These are not opposites but are inseparable. Advocacy without critique hardens into dogma and denial. And I’m done with that.

Especially after the last three years.

So, going forward I’ll be doing a balancing act based on these principles:

1. I am fully on board with defending Israel’s legitimacy, its existence as a Jewish and democratic state, and the right of Israel to self-defense.

2. Yet, I will criticize those Israeli policies I believe are harmful, self-destructive or immoral.

3. I will argue clearly that antizionism today operates as a hate movement. Antizionism is not good faith political critique, but an ideology that treats the Jewish state as uniquely illegitimate, morally toxic, uniquely evil, and undeserving of national rights. Antizionism speaks over Jews. It erases our history and self-definition as a people deserving of the right to national self-determination in at least part of our indigenous homeland.

4. Confronting antizionism is a central task of Jewish advocacy today, and it must be done with seriousness and intellectual rigor.

5. But this does not mean defending every policy of the Israeli government. It certainly doesn’t mean staying quiet when my government does wrong. The current Likud-led government of Benjamin Netanyahu is doing real damage. Its far-right, racist, and messianic coalition partners is alienating large segments of Diaspora Jews (especially young people) and severely weakening Israel’s standing in the West especially the US.

6. Naming this reality is not disloyalty, but responsibility.

7. I will be open to critique and will stand corrected if convinced.

That young Jews are asking hard questions about Israel doesn’t concern me as much as the many pro-Israel organizations who cannot answer them honestly and fully. For years, Israel education relied on telling people what to think rather than teaching them how to think.

I get it. Israel’s critics are legion and many don’t criticize but demonize. Circling the wagons is a natural response.

I just think this approach no longer works, if it ever did.

Young people are not wrong to demand moral coherence. They are wronged when they are handed simplified narratives that collapse the moment they encounter complexity. They then feel betrayed and lied to. Many walk away.

Teaching Israel with its flaws, contradictions, moral tensions and failings is not weakness and not betrayal. Israel is a democracy and Israelis vociferously criticize our government from every political direction.

I am convinced most Diaspora Jews want to build a durable commitment to Israel. But if they are told they must accept everything Israel does, many will balk. Blind support produces loyalty that shatters under pressure. Thoughtful engagement produces supporters who can stay in the conversation even when it is uncomfortable.

This also requires moral clarity about Palestinians. It is possible to affirm Palestinian humanity as we demand the same for Israelis. It is necessary to feel genuine sorrow for Palestinian suffering. It is possible to criticize Israeli policies while also holding Palestinian national leaders accountable for their decades of rejectionism, ultra-nationalism, religious fundamentalism, terrorism, and antisemitism.

There are Palestinian voices that recognize how self-destructive their own leaders have been, and these voices need amplification even when they criticize Israel. Realign for Palestine, whose mission is to “end the violence, start the future” is one such voice.

Many Jewish leaders understand these tensions, even if they rarely articulate it publicly. Across federations, foundations, advocacy organizations, and educational institutions, there is deep unease about Israeli policies and the erosion of trust between Israel and the Diaspora. There is a sense that old assumptions no longer hold.

Jewish advocacy is entering a more demanding era that requires intellectual honesty, moral seriousness, and a willingness to rethink old habits.

I offer no apologies if my new project both unsettles and reassures, that is intentional.

Israel advocacy today requires both.