Two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian terrorists near Hebron on Friday. Staff Sergeant Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, and Sergeant Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, were killed, and three other soldiers wounded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a major operation in the Hebron neighborhood from which the attackers came. Soldiers would search homes, confiscate weapons and demolish terrorist infrastructure, repeating the model employed in Jenin and Tulkarm.
What exactly had Israel uncovered in those Palestinian cities?
In Jenin, Israeli soldiers reported discovering more than 100 explosive devices in just two days, along with a weapons-manufacturing workshop and a command center containing materials for making bombs. Explosives were even found hidden inside a washing machine.
In Tulkarm, soldiers found a weapons storage facility containing approximately 100 pipe bombs, eight additional explosive devices and equipment for detonating explosives. They discovered a drone-production laboratory and another bomb-making facility. Some 45 explosive devices had been planted beneath roads to attack Israeli soldiers and vehicles.
Across the broader northern West Bank operation, the Israeli military reported seizing more than 1,300 weapons and destroying over 50 terrorist infrastructure sites.
And how did the New York Times describe these discoveries?
Following Netanyahu’s announcement, the newspaper characterized Israel’s earlier operations in Jenin and Tulkarm as a massive crackdown, emphasizing that tens of thousands of Palestinians had been displaced, homes demolished and roads torn apart. It compared the destruction to Gaza, adding that the Israeli military said it was targeting militants.
The weapons factories, drone laboratories and explosives caches disappeared from its account when it was providing context to that specific account.
New York Times claims that Israeli military simply displaced people and ripped up roads without discussing the enormous weapons the IDF cleared out WHEN SPECIFICALLY GIVING CONTEXT TO THAT OPERATION
The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, offered an even more extraordinary account of Friday’s shooting. Its headline declared, “Preliminary reports of two Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire in Hebron.”
The article described Israeli forces opening fire on “two young Palestinians,” causing them to fall to the ground. It omitted the two Israeli soldiers killed in the attack and the gunfire reportedly initiated by the Palestinians.
Two Palestinian gunmen who killed Israeli soldiers became two young Palestinians shot by Israeli forces.
According to Palestinian Authority media, Israelis shot and killed “two young Palestinians” without stating that they were armed and killed Israelis first
WAFA turned Palestinian gunmen who killed Israeli soldiers into victims of Israeli gunfire. The New York Times turned the dismantling of terrorist weapons factories into seemingly senseless destruction of Palestinian neighborhoods.
Different newspapers. The same distortion: remove the Palestinian terrorism, and Israel becomes the aggressor.
The Torah moves from humanity’s failed attempt to make a name for itself at Babel to God’s promise to make Abraham’s name great. Between these two visions of greatness lies the foundation of Jewish peoplehood.
In last week’s portion, the people of Babel gather to build a great city and tower, united by a common language and ambition. They declare, “Let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). God disperses them across the earth, dividing humanity into different peoples and languages.
Gustave Dore’s Tower of Babel
Immediately afterward, in this week’s portion, Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1–17:27), God calls upon Abraham and promises, “I will make your name great” (Genesis 12:2). The same Hebrew word, shem, meaning “name,” connects the two stories. At Babel, humanity seeks greatness for itself. Abraham is promised greatness through a mission that will benefit others:
“And all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).
That mission begins with a journey to a particular land. God commands Abraham to leave his birthplace and his father’s house and travel to the land that He will show him. Abraham journeys through Shechem, Bethel and Hebron, places that remain central to Jewish history nearly 4,000 years later. God promises the land to his descendants, establishing the foundations of Jewish peoplehood through geography, ancestry and covenant.
These foundations shape Jewish life across the centuries. The Jewish calendar follows the agricultural seasons of Israel, prayers turn toward Jerusalem, and the pilgrimage festivals call Jews to appear before God at the place of His choosing, ultimately Jerusalem. The land remains central to Jewish identity even during centuries of exile, preserved through ritual, language, memory and the longing to return.
Jerusalem at dawn (photo: First One Through)
The Torah presents a vision of humanity in which a particular people, rooted in a particular land and bound by a covenant, carries a mission extending to the entire world. Jewish distinctiveness becomes a source of universal blessing.
For thousands of years, Jews have carried this dual obligation: preserving their own peoplehood while contributing to the wider world. Yet today, Jews are increasingly told that acceptance into movements proclaiming universal justice requires abandoning their attachment to Israel. Jewish peoplehood is reduced to a religious preference, while the essential character of Judaism as a land-based religion is dismissed as a political invention. Even some Jews adopt this framework, treating the abandonment of Jewish national identity as evidence of moral enlightenment.
Lech Lecha teaches that Jewish identity and universal responsibility are intertwined. The covenant connects Jews to their ancestors, their land and one another, providing the foundation from which their obligations to humanity extend.
The Torah’s promise of blessing to all humanity begins with a particular people, a particular land and an enduring covenant. Those demanding that Jews surrender these foundations in the name of universal justice are asking them to abandon the very mission through which Abraham was called to bless the world. Their vision leads back to Babel: an impressive structure, a polished veneer of unity, and a common project built in defiance of God.
Gaza’s daily reported fatalities plunged by more than 90% following the October 2025 ceasefire, falling from over 90 per day during intense fighting in July to roughly four during much of 2026. Meanwhile, adult men’s share of newly identified fatalities climbed from 42% to over 63%, although they represented just 24.4% of Gaza’s population. Hamas combatants likely accounted for a substantial portion of those deaths. These extraordinary shifts tell a story buried beneath three years of cumulative death toll headlines.
For three years, Gaza’s death toll has dominated headlines. The number rises, newspapers report the latest milestone, politicians condemn Israel, and the world is reminded of the mounting casualties.
Yet the underlying data tell a story that has received remarkably little attention.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health under the direction of Hamas publishes detailed fatality figures, reproduced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Those figures reveal dramatic changes in who was dying, how frequently deaths were being reported, and how the cumulative death toll was being assembled.
Together, they offer a very different perspective on the progression of Israel’s military campaign.
The Remarkable Shift Toward Adult Men
Before the war, children represented approximately 47% of Gaza’s population. Adult men ages 18–59 accounted for just 24.4%, adult women 23.9%, and the elderly 4.8%.
The composition of reported fatalities changed substantially as the war progressed.
Among deaths newly identified between April and October 2024, adult men accounted for 42%, children 34.4%, and adult women 14.1%. By July–October 2025, adult men’s share had risen to 59.5%, while children’s share had fallen to 25.1% and adult women’s share to just 9.9%.
Adult men were therefore accounting for nearly two and a half times their proportion of Gaza’s population, while women and children represented substantially smaller shares of fatalities than their respective population shares.
The pattern continued after the October 2025 ceasefire. Among 1,076 fatalities verified by the UN Human Rights Office through July 2026, 63.4% were men, 24.9% children and 11.7% women. The UN’s categories differ from the earlier Ministry of Health breakdown, but the disproportionate representation of men remains striking.
Hamas combatants are overwhelmingly adult men. The growing concentration of fatalities among this demographic is consistent with Israeli forces increasingly engaging combatants as they gained control of the battlefield and improved their ability to identify and target Hamas and other terrorist group’s positions.
From More Than 90 Deaths a Day to Fewer Than Five
The changes in the daily death toll are equally dramatic.
During the first eleven months of the war, Gaza reported an average of approximately 124 fatalities per day. Following the January 2025 ceasefire, the rate declined sharply before rising again when major military operations resumed in March.
During intense fighting in July 2025, the Ministry of Health reported more than 90 deaths per day. Following the October 2025 ceasefire, that figure collapsed. By September 16–23, 2026, just 24 fatalities were reported over seven days, an average of 3.4 per day. That represents a decline of more than 96% compared with the July 2025 reporting interval.
The numbers demonstrate how dramatically the intensity of military operations affected fatalities. They also reveal how misleading it can be to treat Gaza’s cumulative death toll as though it describes an unchanging level of violence.
The Death Toll Includes Deaths From Earlier Years
Another remarkable feature of Gaza’s reported death toll is how many fatalities are being added retrospectively.
Hamas’s Ministry of Health continues identifying bodies, reconciling records and approving deaths that occurred in earlier periods. Those deaths enter the cumulative total when they are registered, regardless of when or how they occurred. In several 2026 reporting periods, retrospective registrations accounted for the majority of additions to the published total.
Between September 16 and 23, for example, 24 fatalities were reported for the period while another 85 earlier deaths were added after their identification details were approved. Retrospective registrations therefore represented 78% of the combined increase.
That distinction is almost entirely lost when the media simply announces another increase in Gaza’s cumulative death toll.
What the Numbers Say About Israel’s Campaign
The world has spent three years judging Israel’s military campaign largely through a steadily increasing cumulative death toll. Yet the underlying statistics reveal a campaign whose reported fatality patterns changed dramatically.
As Israeli forces gained control of the battlefield, adult men accounted for an increasingly disproportionate share of identified fatalities. Women and children represented progressively smaller shares, well below their proportions of Gaza’s population.
These patterns are consistent with a military increasingly able to distinguish and target Hamas combatants. They challenge the portrayal of a campaign conducted without regard for the distinction between fighters and civilians.
Meanwhile, the reported daily death rate has collapsed, and much of the recent growth in the cumulative total during selected periods has come from deaths registered long after they occurred.
The accusation of indiscriminate slaughter collapses when looking into the data. The numbers have been available. The story they tell has largely gone unread.
Sources: Gaza Ministry of Health fatality figures published by UN OCHA; Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2023 population estimates; UN Human Rights Office verified-fatality reporting. Demographic identification cohorts and UN-verified post-ceasefire deaths use different methodologies and should not be interpreted as directly comparable measures of battlefield fatalities.
Pal-Awda is organizing a protest in Riverdale, Bronx, on October 24 to stop what it calls the sale of “stolen Palestinian land.” Its target is a Jewish real estate event organized by My Israel Home.
The accusation is enormous. The evidence is missing.
The protesters identify no stolen property, no dispossessed owner, no fraudulent deed and no evidence that anyone offering a home for sale acquired it unlawfully. They simply declare the land stolen and demand that the sale be stopped.
And what exactly makes a privately owned home “Palestinian land”?
There has never been an independent sovereign country called Palestine. Even if there had been, that would establish nothing about ownership of a particular house.
Imagine a homeowner in Dallas selling a house to someone from Los Angeles. Protesters descend on the transaction, shouting, “Stop the sale of stolen Dallas land!”
Stolen from whom? The homeowner? The city? Everyone who ever lived in Dallas?
Dallas describes an actual place. It does not own every home within its boundaries. A homeowner can sell to another person, regardless of where the buyer was born or lives.
The same is true in Judea and Samaria. Land owned by an Arab is the property of that owner, just as land owned by a Jew is the property of that owner. Lawful ownership can change hands. A property’s location or the ethnicity of its former owner establishes neither permanent ownership nor theft.
Pal-Awda previously celebrated forcing a Jewish gathering out of Queens. It targeted an event at a synagogue in Manhattan. Now it is targeting Riverdale, seeking to stop Jewish families from gathering to consider buying homes in Israel.
“It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared! We need to make them scared! We need to make them scared.” – people at PAL-Awda protest in front of a synagogue event helping Jews move to Israel in November 2025
Congressman Ritchie Torres, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and Council Member Eric Dinowitz condemned the campaign in a joint statement, calling it “an attack on Jewish New Yorkers” and declaring that “the Bronx will not tolerate it.”
The campaign has a documented pattern: targeting Jewish real estate gatherings, pressuring venues and celebrating when Jewish events are driven out of New York City. And this is in regards to ALL of Israel, as Pal-Awda has condemned all Jews making aliyah regardless of where they intend to live.
“Settler, settler, go back home, Palestine is ours alone!” – PAL-Awda’s Instagram
The protesters have identified no stolen home. But they have identified their target: Jews.
Simply allowing the event to take place is an inadequate response. The entire Riverdale community – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – should stand together in visible opposition to those who gather to harass and intimidate Jewish homebuyers. Elected officials who condemn antisemitism in statements should stand alongside the people being targeted.
Antisemites should never be allowed to decide where Jews can gather, where they can buy homes or whether they can live openly as Jews. Riverdale should make that unmistakably clear.
More than 100 Jews gathered in Brooklyn this month to plan a network of anti-Zionist synagogues, schools and summer camps. The emerging Jewish Diaspora Movement brought together people associated with Jewish Currents, Rabbis for Ceasefire, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) and the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Alissa Wise, formerly of Jewish Voice for Peace, is among its founders. Discussions included plans for a Jewish day school in Boston in 2029.
The gathering is part of a broader effort to reshape what future generations of American Jews learn about their religion, history and relationship to Israel.
The “intellectual” groundwork is expanding. Temple University professor emerita Carolyn Karcher’s Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism, featuring 47 Jewish contributors, includes a guide encouraging readers to bring anti-Zionist arguments into synagogues and families. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Benjamin Moser’s Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History profiles twelve Jewish opponents of Zionism, placing their dissent within a longer Jewish intellectual tradition.
Jewish opposition to modern Zionism has a history. Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel has a far longer one.
Judaism is an ancient, land-based religion. Abraham traveled to Canaan. The Israelites returned from Egypt. Jerusalem became the center of Jewish worship. The Torah commanded pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times annually, during Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. For millennia, Jews have prayed toward Jerusalem, mourned the destruction of its Temple and concluded the Passover Seder with the aspiration of returning there.
Opposing modern Jewish statehood is a political or theological position. Denying the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the Land of Israel is a historical falsehood. The distinction matters because Judaism’s scriptures, laws, holidays and prayers are rooted in a particular people and their ancestral homeland.
A Jew may reject God, violate Shabbat, oppose circumcision or denounce Israel and remain Jewish. Jewish belonging encompasses believers and atheists, the observant and secular, Zionists and anti-Zionists.
A Jew can reject a teaching of Judaism and remain Jewish. But that does not transform the rejection into a teaching of Judaism.
A Jew who eats ham makes a personal choice. A rabbi who certifies ham as kosher betrays the trust of Jews who rely on that certification to observe their religion. Similarly, a Jewish school that teaches children to deny their ancestral connection to Israel betrays the trust of parents who expect it to transmit Jewish history and tradition faithfully.
Jews who disagree with established organizations are free to create alternatives reflecting their beliefs. Existing institutions have the same right to preserve their missions. The Jewish identity of an institution’s founders establishes its origins. Its teachings and conduct determine whether it deserves the community’s trust.
Rabbi Brant Rosen, founder of the anti-Zionist congregation Tzedek Chicago, described his community as “consciously not an inclusive community.” His congregation establishes boundaries around its beliefs. Yet Open Hillel challenges Hillel’s restrictions on sponsoring organizations that advocate boycotts of Israel or reject its legitimacy as a Jewish state.
Hillel welcomes Jews across denominations, levels of observance and political beliefs while maintaining a mission that includes strengthening Jewish connections to Israel. Anti-Zionist congregations defend their own ideological boundaries while demanding that Hillel loosen its own. BDS supporters advocate withholding institutional support from organizations whose values they oppose, yet object when Jewish institutions apply similar standards to BDS.
At Emory Hillel, Rabbi Nikki Golomb was dismissed in August, weeks after beginning her position. She attributes the decision to her fiancé’s fierce criticism of Israel; Hillels of Georgia disputes that account, citing concerns about transparency and alignment with its mission. Golomb was affiliated with Rabbis for Ceasefire, founded by Alissa Wise. Whatever the disputed circumstances, Hillel has the right to expect its religious educators to uphold its mission.
Jewish disagreement has produced competing religious movements and institutions for centuries. But religious harm occurs when an institution entrusted with Jewish education misrepresents foundational elements of Jewish history or tradition. A school that teaches children to deny the Jewish people’s connection to Israel can legitimately have its claim to teach authentic Judaism challenged by the broader Jewish community. Opposition to modern Jewish sovereignty alone does not establish that denial.
Physical harm presents a separate and more urgent threshold. Organization that campaign to deprive threatened Jewish schools or synagogues of reasonable security protections, or to deny Israeli civilians protection against attack – like JVP, JFERJ, IfNotNow NYC and the American Council for Judaism – know that they expose Jewish lives to danger. The Jewish community has the right to challenge such conduct, withdraw communal recognition and support, and defend institutions that faithfully serve their missions.
Jewish Voice for Peace is against defensive weapons for Israel
Every Jew belongs to the Jewish people. Every institution founded by Jews does not automatically speak for Judaism. And when an institution uses the Jewish name to falsify Jewish history, betray Jewish trust or endanger Jewish lives, the Jewish community has a responsibility to confront it.
On February 20, 1939, more than 20,000 Americans packed Madison Square Garden beneath enormous swastikas, American flags and a portrait of George Washington. The German American Bund called its rally “Free America,” while its leader, Fritz Kuhn (1896–1951), promoted Nazi ideology, denounced Jewish influence and envisioned a radically different American society.
The crowd looked admiringly toward Hitler’s Germany, but its ambitions were directed toward America.
Crowd at Madison Square Garden allied with Nazi Germany, February 1939
On October 17, 2026, France erupted in demonstrations over living costs, public services and economic inequality. Rioters burned vehicles, looted businesses and attacked public buildings. In Paris, protesters climbed the monument to Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, and raised the French tricolor alongside a Palestinian flag.
The grievances were French. The revolutionary symbolism was international.
A Palestinian flag at a demonstration about Gaza represents a foreign cause. At a demonstration about French economic policy, it suggests something more: a foreign struggle adopted as a symbol of domestic upheaval.
Across different eras and ideologies, foreign struggles have supplied the symbols for movements seeking to remake their own countries.
A Generation Looking for a Different Future
Revolutionary politics becomes attractive when people lose faith in their institutions and their prospects for a better life.
The Great Depression shattered economic security for millions of Americans. The German American Bund exploited the resulting insecurity, offering national renewal, authoritarian certainty and enemies to blame for the country’s troubles.
Nearly a century later, Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign mobilized younger Americans disillusioned with an establishment they believed protected wealthy donors and political insiders. Revelations about Democratic National Committee favoritism toward Hillary Clinton reinforced those suspicions, while subsequent political upheaval deepened distrust of established leadership.
COVID disrupted education and livelihoods, inflation and housing costs eroded economic opportunity, and artificial intelligence raised fears about the future of employment. The concealment of Biden’s decline and Harris’s selection without a new nationwide primary reinforced perceptions of political decisions controlled by insiders. Harvard’s 2026 Youth Poll found that only 15% of young Americans trusted the federal government.
For people who believe established institutions protect the wealthy and powerful while their own opportunities diminish, promises to redistribute wealth, ownership and political authority become increasingly attractive. That dissatisfaction is producing electoral victories.
The Revolution Enters City Hall
The Democratic Socialists of America have translated economic frustration into electoral power, most visibly through Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election as mayor of New York City.
Celebrating his victory, the DSA described a defeat for billionaires, corporations and the Democratic Party establishment. Its agenda connected housing, public transportation, childcare, policing and for some bizarre non-local reason, “Palestinian liberation,” within a campaign for what the organization explicitly called a “political revolution.”
The DSA advocates public ownership of major industries, higher taxes on wealth, stronger tenant protections and a larger government role in housing and essential services. These proposals would change who owns economic resources, who makes investment decisions and how much authority government exercises over everyday life.
The movement also reaches younger Americans through influential online broadcasters. Hasan Piker, one of the most prominent socialist commentators on the internet, combines criticism of American capitalism with outspoken support for Palestinian Arab violence. He promoted Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign, hosted him on his livestream and appeared at campaign events. In April 2026, Piker extended his electoral involvement to Michigan, campaigning alongside Abdul El-Sayed in his U.S. Senate race.
Anti-Israel influencers of the alt-left Mehdi Hasan, Hasan Piker and Jamaal Bowman celebrate Zohran Mandani’s victory for NYC mayor in November 2025
The revolution has an economic program, a political organization, influential broadcasters and elected officials. It also has a flag.
Why Palestine Became the Revolutionary Symbol
Palestine offers a ready-made narrative for movements organized around the struggle between privilege and liberation. The popular revolutionary image casts wealthy, technologically advanced, Western-backed White Israelis against poorer, brown Palestinians fighting dispossession. That imagery translates readily into American arguments about racial inequality, colonialism, policing and economic power.
The narrative fictionalizes history and present. Jews are indigenous to Israel, and its “white” Ashkenazi population is less than one-third of the Israeli population. But Israel’s prosperity makes the image of privileged rulers and dispossessed subjects politically compelling.
Representative Rashida Tlaib and former Ohio state senator Nina Turner made the domestic connection explicit in their 2024 essay Black Liberation and Palestinian Liberation Are Interconnected, linking Detroit, Cleveland and Gaza through a common struggle against injustice. Others have done the same like CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill back in 2015.
The anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime has combined “Globalize the Intifada” with slogans including “Land Back,” “Kill Capitalism” and “Defund the Police.” The vocabulary connects Palestinian nationalism with American disputes over property, policing and political authority.
On October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, demonstrators gathered beneath Palestinian flags in Times Square. A speaker mocked the victims of the Nova music festival, while protesters chanted slogans including “Resistance is justified” and “Globalize the intifada.”
The latter slogan called for extending a Palestinian Arab slaughter beyond its original geography, invoking a violent history which included suicide bombings and attacks on civilians.
Across Western democracies, Palestine has become more than a foreign policy cause for many revolutionary activists. It offers a common identity for movements seeking substantial changes to established economic and political institutions.
Canary Mission video on the socialist-jihadi alliance coming for the United States
The Old Accusation Returns
Every revolutionary narrative needs an explanation for why some people possess wealth and power while others struggle. When that explanation turns into a search for a privileged group supposedly responsible for everyone else’s suffering, an ancient accusation becomes available: Jews control the system.
The German American Bund accused Jews of exercising illegitimate influence over American finance, politics and public opinion. Father Charles Coughlin (1891–1979) brought similar conspiracies into millions of American homes through radio, presenting Jewish power as an explanation for the economic suffering of ordinary Americans.
The accusation survives across otherwise opposing political camps. On the far right, Nick Fuentes promotes conspiracies about Jewish control of American institutions. In entertainment, Ye has accused Jewish executives of controlling and exploiting Black performers. In a different context, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten described American Jews in 2021 as part of the “ownership class,” arguing that Jews were keeping minorities down.
The danger intensifies when the language of liberation is used to excuse violence against people assigned to the category of oppressor.
“No Kings Rally and March” in Chicago on June 14, 2025 featured Palestinian flags and call for “Revolution” (Photo by The TRiiBE)
Following October 7, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described Hamas’s breach of the Gaza barrier as “exhilarating.” CAIR executive director Nihad Awad invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation about riots on the morning of the massacre and later expressed happiness that Palestinians had broken through the barrier.
The consequences of importing a foreign conflict into American life became terrifyingly tangible in March 2026, when an attacker drove a vehicle carrying incendiary materials into Temple Israel in suburban Detroit while children and adults were inside. Abdul El-Sayed, then campaigning for the United States Senate, condemned the attack but also discussed the attacker’s family losses in Lebanon, explaining that “hurt people hurt people.”
The attacker brought a foreign war to an American synagogue. The political explanation brought the grievances of that war into the response. The victims were Americans, including children gathered in a place of worship who had nothing to do with a war thousands of miles away, yet the socialist-revolutionary lens pivoted longingly to the attacker.
The Stakes Extend Beyond Jews
The German American Bund’s vision in 1939 threatened far more than America’s Jews. Its members admired an authoritarian foreign power and sought to transform the political and social character of their own country.
Today’s movements pursue different visions through different means, including democratic elections. Their ambitions to change ownership, wealth distribution, policing, education and government authority will shape the lives of Americans far beyond those attending demonstrations.
Jews have particular reason to recognize the danger when political movements portray them as privileged beneficiaries of an unjust system. History has shown how readily that accusation becomes collective blame. But the consequences of sweeping transformations of political and economic power extend far beyond the Jewish community. Jews will suffer twice – first as Jews and then as Americans – regardless of whether they refer to themselves as American Jews or Jewish Americans.
The revolution is local. It waves a foreign flag. And the country it seeks to remake is our own.
Understanding Judaism as the ancestral religion of a people changes the entire debate over Zionism, indigeneity and colonialism.
Everyone wants to define antisemitism and Zionism. Jewish organizations, politicians and academics spend enormous energy debating these terms, convinced that better definitions will produce greater understanding.
Yet they overlook a more fundamental question: What is Judaism?
The conventional answer, that Judaism is one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, is technically correct but profoundly misleading.
Christianity and Islam are universal religions, with messages directed toward humanity and traditions of bringing the world into their faiths. Their religious communities transcend ancestry and geography, helping explain why each has spread across continents and attracted more than two billion adherents.
Judaism, meanwhile, has approximately 15 million people after more than three thousand years. It has survived empires, expulsions, massacres, forced conversions and genocide, yet remains extraordinarily small.
The three religions are grouped together because of their historical and theological connections. Jesus was Jewish, forever connecting Christianity to the Jewish people. Islam incorporates Abraham, Moses and other biblical figures into its tradition. Both transformed elements of Judaism’s religious inheritance into universal faiths. The historical irony is that the world subsequently began interpreting Judaism through the framework of its successors, making the original religion appear to be the peculiar exception.
Jewish religious leaders often explain the difference by describing Judaism as a particularist rather than universalist form of monotheism. Jews have a special covenant with God, while humanity can live righteously without becoming Jewish. Judaism generally does not seek converts.
But particularism merely modifies the conventional classification. There is a more fundamental distinction: Judaism is an ancient tribal folk religion, or more precisely, an indigenous ethnoreligious tradition.
Jonah is thrown Overboard by Fishermen, by Dirck Barendsz (1534-1592). The people on the boat were much like Jonah, each praying to their respective deity.
Consider the Yazidis, a small ethnoreligious community whose ancestral homeland lies in northern Mesopotamia and whose sacred sanctuary at Lalish remains central to their identity despite centuries of persecution. Or the roughly one million Māori of New Zealand, whose understanding of ancestry, tribal identity and sacred geography binds people to the land of their forebears. The world readily recognizes that these peoples’ relationships with their ancestral lands are embedded in their identities.
Judaism belongs in this same family of land-rooted traditions.
The Torah itself reveals the difference. It begins with the creation of humanity but quickly narrows to the story of one family, its descendants, its covenant, its laws and its promised land. Genesis traces a family. Exodus describes the formation of a nation. Numbers organizes that nation into tribes. Deuteronomy prepares it to reenter its ancestral homeland.
The Torah is sacred scripture, but it is also the founding history and constitution of a people. Jews call themselves Am Yisrael, the People of Israel, carrying the name given to Jacob, ancestor of the twelve tribes, thousands of years before the establishment of the modern state.
The Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs is over 3,000 years old, located in Hebron. It is the only burial site of any religion to have six of its founders at a single location, mostly because they are of a single family. The other founding mother, Rachel, is buried roughly 14 miles away in Bethlehem.
Even conversion reflects this understanding. A person converting to Judaism joins the Jewish people, assuming the obligations and identity of the community. Ruth’s famous declaration captures the union: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The people come first in the sentence.
Most revealing is how thoroughly Judaism is rooted in the physical land of Israel.
Jewish law governs the cultivation, harvesting and distribution of produce grown there. The sabbatical year requires the land itself to rest, shmita. The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of national worship. And the Torah commands Jewish males to appear before God at the designated sanctuary three times annually, for Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.
Sign in field in Israel – “here we observe shmita (resting the field every seventh year” (photo: First One Through)
Consider the extraordinary geographic assumption: Three times every year, Jewish men were commanded to journey to the national sanctuary, eventually established in Jerusalem. These commandments were written for a world of footpaths, centuries before mechanized transportation. The Torah envisioned a people living within reach of a common sacred center, cultivating the same land and celebrating its agricultural seasons.
Judaism was conceived as the religion of a people living in the land of Israel. Its commandments were embedded in the soil, seasons, cities and sacred places of that homeland. Its God was universal, but its religious civilization was profoundly local.
The destruction of Jewish sovereignty and the dispersal of much of the population forced that land-based religion to adapt. Jewish communities developed religious institutions and practices that could survive thousands of miles from Jerusalem, and without a Temple. Yet the homeland remained central to their prayers, calendar, holidays and collective memory.
Jews continued living in Israel under successive foreign rulers, while communities in Poland, Yemen, Ethiopia and Iraq preserved the same ancestral orientation. A Jew could speak another language, adopt different customs or even reject belief in God and remain part of Am Yisrael.
For Christianity and Islam, the faithful carry their religion wherever they go. For Jews, wherever they went, their religion carried them back to Israel.
Thousands of Jews at the Western Wall Plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem on Passover, unable to ascend to the Temple Mount
The consequences of misunderstanding this relationship are visible today on the Temple Mount.
Imagine the United Nations defending a prohibition on Lakota Sioux praying in the Black Hills because American ultranationalists threatened violence if they approached Mount Rushmore. The world would be outraged. The Black Hills are sacred ancestral territory, and Mount Rushmore was carved into that landscape following the conquest and dispossession of indigenous peoples.
Yet UN bodies have defended the Temple Mount “status quo,” under which Jewish prayer is forbidden, and have labeled Jewish religious activity there as “provocative.” The First and Second Temples stood on that mountain, the center of ancient Jewish national and religious life. Jews have prayed toward Jerusalem for two thousand years. It is the holiest location to only one religion: Judaism.
But the threat of jihadi violence has become a justification for limiting the religious rights of an indigenous people rather than confronting those threatening them. Political sovereignty and religious structures have changed repeatedly, but the Jewish ancestral attachment endures.
This same failure to understand Jewish indigeneity distorts the contemporary debate over Zionism and colonialism.
Modern political Zionism emerged in the nineteenth century, but the Jewish relationship to Zion began thousands of years earlier. Zionism gave modern political expression to the aspiration of an ancient people to restore national life in its ancestral homeland.
Colonialism generally describes the expansion of power by outsiders who establish control over another territory and its inhabitants. European colonial enterprises extended the authority of distant imperial capitals into foreign lands.
But how can a people be considered foreign colonizers in the very land at the center of their religion? How can their return be understood through the framework of European imperial expansion when their prayers, festivals, laws and sacred geography have been tied to that land for thousands of years? If the Māori were expelled from New Zealand for hundreds of years, would their return be labeled imperialism or colonialism?
To call Jews foreign colonizers in the center of their own ancient folk religion is to misunderstand the very nature Judaism.
Jewish law still sanctions Jews who deliberately harm other Jews. Why has the community become so reluctant to consider that authority when the harm threatens thousands or millions?
In 1656, the Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicated a 23-year-old philosopher named Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). Its leaders pronounced a devastating herem, a religious ban that severed him from communal Jewish life. Members were forbidden to associate with him, speak with him or read his writings. The condemnation became one of the most famous excommunications in Jewish history.
For centuries, Jewish communities disciplined members whose conduct threatened religious obligations or communal life. Jewish law developed several levels of sanctions, most notably nidui and herem.
Nidui was the lesser punishment, a form of temporary religious and social ostracism, traditionally lasting 30 days in diaspora (non-Israel) communities. It restricted ordinary social interaction, sometimes requiring others to maintain a distance of four cubits, roughly six feet. Its purpose was to induce repentance and correction of the offending behavior.
Herem was more severe, imposing deeper and potentially indefinite exclusion from communal life. Depending on the circumstances, it could restrict social relationships, commercial dealings and religious participation. In tightly integrated Jewish communities, exclusion could devastate a person’s livelihood and standing in society.
Maimonides, the Rambam (1138–1204), enumerated 24 grounds for nidui in his Mishneh Torah. They included maintaining dangerous conditions, such as a vicious dog or unstable ladder; refusing to obey a religious court; and preventing the public from performing a commandment.
That last provision is particularly important. Jewish law recognized that obstructing a community’s religious obligations could warrant religious discipline.
These sanctions remain part of modern Jewish life. Orthodox communities still employ religious and social pressure against husbands who refuse to grant their wives a get, the Jewish divorce document required for remarriage under Jewish law. When a rabbinical court determines that a husband must grant a get and he refuses, communal measures may include exclusion from synagogue honors, religious gatherings and other forms of participation. Depending on the circumstances, formal nidui or herem may also be considered.
The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) organizes communal pressure against recalcitrant spouses, including public demonstrations and campaigns encouraging synagogues to impose restrictions, with appropriate rabbinic authorization.
Jewish communities recognize that one Jew’s deliberate conduct can cause another such serious harm that communal intervention becomes necessary. Yet these sanctions are rarely discussed when the threatened harm extends beyond an individual to an entire Jewish community.
A husband who refuses a get may face public ostracism for trapping one woman in a marriage. What of a Jew who deliberately works to prohibit circumcision, obstruct synagogue security or prevent entire communities from fulfilling religious commandments?
Three fundamental obligations provide a framework: protecting Jewish lives, preserving religious observance and sustaining Jewish communal continuity.
Protecting Jewish Lives
Jewish law places the preservation of human life, pikuach nefesh, above almost every other religious obligation. Leviticus commands, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” The Talmud extends this principle into an affirmative obligation to rescue someone facing danger.
The clearest case involves a Jew knowingly facilitating violence against other Jews or deliberately obstructing their rescue from an immediate threat. Such conduct directly violates the obligation to protect human life and demands serious religious and communal accountability.
Consider a person deliberately sabotaging essential security at a synagogue or yeshiva facing credible threats. Jewish institutions increasingly depend on trained guards, controlled entrances and protective infrastructure. Knowingly interfering with necessary safeguards could expose worshippers and children to foreseeable danger.
A related question arises when someone campaigns to eliminate protective buffer zones around synagogue or school entrances. Where violent intimidation or obstruction threatens access, removing necessary security measures could endanger the community.
The issue becomes more complicated when the discussion moves to Israel’s national defense. Israeli missile-defense systems, including Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow, protect civilians against incoming rockets and missiles. Campaigning to eliminate essential defensive capabilities without adequate alternatives could foreseeably increase the danger to millions of people.
Broader opposition to American military assistance to Israel presents a less direct case. Military assistance encompasses different weapons, defensive systems and strategic objectives. A Jew who advocates eliminating defensive funding despite a demonstrated threat raises different questions from someone disputing a particular military appropriation.
Jewish law has long required Jews to address threats to human life. Religious authorities should be prepared to examine whether deliberately undermining essential security, whether at a synagogue or across Israel, violates that obligation.
Protecting Jewish Religious Observance
A Jewish community can endure poverty, exile and political upheaval while preserving its identity through religious practice. The covenant of circumcision, the laws of kashrut, prayer, Torah study and communal institutions have sustained Jewish life across generations.
Maimonides explicitly includes preventing the public from fulfilling a commandment among the grounds for nidui. This provides a classical foundation for examining deliberate interference with Jewish observance.
Consider a Jew actively working to outlaw brit milah, the covenant established with Abraham. A successful prohibition would directly prevent Jews from performing one of their foundational commandments. A campaign specifically intended to achieve that result should invite serious halachic examination.
A campaign to prohibit kosher slaughter, shechita, presents a similar concern. Such a law would prevent traditional ritual slaughter within the jurisdiction and could make religious observance substantially more difficult.
The same questions arise when Jews advocate prohibitions on synagogue worship, Torah education or the construction of religious facilities such as mikvaot. Restrictions on kippot and other religious clothing can also interfere with Jewish practice, depending on their scope.
These are precisely the kinds of conflicts in which religious authorities should examine whether conduct constitutes the deliberate obstruction of commandments. Where a recognized court determines that a violation warrants nidui, continued defiance may raise the question of stronger sanctions under Jewish law.
Further along the spectrum lies the controversy over government funding for yeshivas. Some advocates want public funding conditioned on students meeting secular educational standards in English and mathematics. Such requirements may create financial pressure on religious schools, while educational oversight also serves legitimate public purposes.
Jewish law must distinguish legitimate public oversight from deliberate obstruction of religious commandments. Where that boundary is crossed, religious authorities should be prepared to act.
Protecting Jewish Communal Continuity
The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is integral to Judaism. Jerusalem occupies a central place in Jewish prayer, religious memory and law. Nachmanides, the Ramban (1194–1270), regarded settling the Land of Israel as a positive biblical commandment, although later authorities have debated its precise scope and application.
Consider a Jew advocating a prohibition on Jewish immigration to Israel. Such a restriction would interfere with the ability of Jews to settle in their ancestral homeland, an act that major halachic authorities regard as religiously significant.
Preventing Jews from visiting or praying at their holy sites raises related questions about religious access and worship. Restrictions on Jewish homeownership introduce another dimension, particularly where they specifically target Jewish purchasers.
These concerns are already entering American legislation. In October 2026, Representative Joaquin Castro introduced the Stop the Settlements Act, backed by dozens of Democratic lawmakers. The bill would impose sanctions on certain foreign persons involved in “settlement” activities and prohibit imports from covered settlements. Its reference to the West Bank raises a disturbing question: Would eastern Jerusalem, including the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, fall within its reach?
If so, Jewish organizations involved in purchasing and renovating homes, restoring historic synagogues such as Tiferet Yisrael, or supporting archaeological projects at the City of David could face sanctions-related consequences. The bill leaves critical questions about its application to these activities unresolved. Its sponsors should be required to explain whether Jewish religious and communal institutions in Jerusalem could become targets.
The possibility that American Jewish lawmakers would support legislation reaching Jewish religious institutions in Jerusalem is extraordinary. If Jews knowingly work to obstruct other Jews from maintaining synagogues, owning homes or fulfilling religious obligations in Jerusalem, why should their conduct escape the scrutiny of Jewish law?
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) co-sponsored the Stop the Settlement Act
Further along the spectrum are efforts to boycott Israeli universities, exclude Israeli rabbis or educators, or discourage purchases of Israeli goods. Such actions may weaken educational, economic and communal relationships, although their connection to established grounds for nidui is less direct.
The case for religious sanctions is strongest where conduct directly obstructs an identifiable commandment or violates another established halachic obligation.
From Nidui to Herem
Jewish communities have historically imposed sanctions on individuals and movements. In 1772, rabbinic authorities associated with the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) supported bans against the emerging Hasidic movement, a precedent that also illustrates the danger of communal authorities misjudging religious differences. Today, institutions such as Hillel restrict partnerships with organizations supporting BDS such as Jewish Voice for Peace, while the Conference of Presidents rejected J Street’s membership application in 2014. Between silence and herem lies a range of communal measures, from public censure to restrictions on institutional membership and leadership. These measures require clear standards and responsible authority.
The Jewish community is fraying. Its religious institutions, security and connection to Israel face growing internal conflict. Jewish law already recognizes that deliberate harm to another Jew can warrant communal sanctions. Qualified religious leaders should be prepared to examine serious violations, distinguish them from political disagreement and apply appropriate measures where justified.
If Jewish law can sanction a man for trapping one Jewish woman in a marriage, how can Jewish leadership refuse even to consider sanctions against those who deliberately endanger Jewish communities or obstruct their commandments?
In October 2023, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described Hamas’s massacre of Israelis as “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Weeks later, a Cornell student threatened to shoot Jewish students, rape Jewish women and murder Jewish babies. Three years later, Rickford remains on the faculty, socialist organizations have gained political influence across campus, and anti-Israel activists have transformed Cornell’s student government and political culture.
Cornell Professor celebrated the October 7 massacre of 1,200 in Israel
Cornell’s socialist revolution has unfolded alongside a disturbing deterioration in the environment for Jewish students. Organizations promoting socialism and campaigning against Israel have become political partners, winning elections, organizing demonstrations and challenging the university’s institutional relationships with Israel.
Rickford’s October 2023 remarks were captured on video just days after Hamas terrorists murdered, raped and kidnapped Israelis. Jewish students questioned whether they could safely express opposing views in his classroom. Cornellians for Israel president Zoe Bernstein and Hillel executive vice president Simone Shteingart publicly challenged his remarks. Rickford apologized, took a leave of absence and eventually returned to teaching, including a course titled Socialism in America.
Within weeks, Cornell student Patrick Dai threatened to attack the university’s kosher dining hall, shoot Jewish students, rape Jewish women and murder Jewish babies. The threats terrified Cornell’s Jewish community, prompting a police investigation. Dai was arrested, pleaded guilty and sentenced to federal prison.
Cornell student Patrick Dai
Cornell’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter lists more than 300 members in the university’s student organization directory. One Cornell organizer advanced to national YDSA leadership, while another won election to Ithaca’s Common Council.
YDSA increasingly works alongside Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and Cornell Progressives. Their joint campaigns seek divestment from weapons manufacturers, opposition to Israeli institutions and an end to Cornell’s relationship with Israel’s Technion. The broader Coalition for Mutual Liberation has claimed participation by more than 40 campus and community organizations.
The transformation is particularly striking when measured against Cornell’s recent history.
In 2014, Cornell’s Student Assembly voted 15–8–1 to table an Israel divestment resolution. A decade later, nearly 70% of participating undergraduates supported a divestment referendum. Graduate students approved another referendum in 2025. By 2026, every Student Assembly candidate jointly endorsed by SJP, YDSA and Cornell Progressives had won.
That political ascent was accompanied by increasingly confrontational activism. Protesters established encampments, disrupted a career fair involving defense contractors and interrupted an appearance by former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. Cornell imposed disciplinary sanctions and temporarily suspended SJP before reinstating it under conditions.
The Anti-Defamation League assigned Cornell a C in its 2026 campus antisemitism report card.
The relationship between socialism and anti-Zionism became especially visible in September 2026, when Hasan Piker addressed approximately 450 students inside Cornell’s Sage Chapel at an event involving YDSA and other anti-Israel organizations.
Piker had previously declared that Hamas was a thousand times better than Israel. When challenged about that comparison on Pod Save America, he responded, “I stand by that.”
At Cornell, Piker celebrated socialist electoral victories, including the rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and joined a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Governor Hochul sits on Cornell’s Board of Trustees by virtue of her office. Together, the university’s leadership and trustees bear responsibility for protecting the freedom of political expression while ensuring that Jewish students can participate in university life without intimidation.
Cornell has spent three years demonstrating how much ideological extremism its academic culture can accommodate. A professor celebrated the slaughter of Israelis. A student threatened to murder Jews. Socialist and anti-Israel organizations expanded their political influence, and a speaker who publicly stood by his favorable comparison of Hamas to Israel was welcomed into Sage Chapel.
Cornell’s Jewish students have watched this transformation from the receiving end of threats and intimidation.
Cornell has decided to shut down fraternity events and parties for the rest of the year after a suit alleging gang rape at a fraternity in 2024 came to public attention. Will the school take similar action against the socialism and anti-Israel clubs?
Four Latin American countries have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, all headed by conservative presidents. Argentina’s Javier Milei wants to be next, and Brazil’s conservative opposition has promised to follow. A new political map of Latin America is emerging, and Jerusalem sits at its center.
Colombia became the latest country to join this movement in October 2026, following Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. The pattern is unmistakable: conservative governments are embracing Israel and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, while much of the Latin American left increasingly identifies with the Palestinian cause and opposition to the Jewish state.
Colombia offers the clearest illustration of this ideological divide. Left-wing President Gustavo Petro severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 2024, halted coal exports and embraced international efforts to isolate the Jewish state. His conservative successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, reversed course, restored relations and opened an embassy in Jerusalem.
The same country, the same Israel, the same Jerusalem. A different president and an entirely different worldview.
For Latin America’s conservatives, Israel represents national sovereignty, religious heritage, technological achievement, military strength and partnership with the United States. For much of the Latin American left, Israel is viewed through the language of colonialism, Palestinian dispossession and opposition to American influence.
Religion reinforces this divide. Guatemala and Honduras have substantial evangelical Christian populations whose attachment to Israel is rooted in biblical belief. Conservative movements throughout Latin America increasingly draw support from these communities, for whom Jerusalem is central to Jewish history and Christian faith.
Christian pilgrims enter the Old City of Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate during Easter, 2017 (photo: First One Through)
Argentina’s Javier Milei has become its most enthusiastic champion. In April 2026, Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the Isaac Accords, a framework intended to strengthen Israel’s political, economic and security relationships across Latin America.
The name carries deliberate biblical symbolism. The Abraham Accords brought Israel together with Arab nations through the shared heritage of Abraham. Isaac, Abraham’s son, represents the continuation of God’s covenant through Jacob, whose name became Israel. Where the Abraham Accords emphasize common ancestry between Jews and Arabs, the Isaac Accords invoke the particular biblical heritage of Israel and its connection to nations identifying with Judeo-Christian civilization.
Milei has committed more than speeches to this vision, directing his $1 million Genesis Prize award toward establishing an organization to advance the initiative. Legislators from across Latin America have already gathered to promote stronger relations with Israel, combat antisemitism and encourage additional embassy relocations.
The movement also has a powerful strategic adversary: Iran.
Iranian-backed terrorism has already devastated Jewish communities in Latin America. Argentina suffered the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 people. Argentine authorities have attributed both attacks to Hezbollah and Iran.
The Isaac Accords seek cooperation against Iranian terrorist networks, antisemitism, drug trafficking and transnational criminal organizations. Israel offers intelligence capabilities, cybersecurity expertise, military technology and experience confronting Iranian proxies. Latin American governments offer regional partnerships capable of disrupting hostile networks operating across the Western Hemisphere.
Jerusalem thus becomes both a declaration of political identity and the gateway to a broader security alliance.
The next major test comes in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been among Israel’s harshest regional critics, while his conservative challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, has promised to relocate Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem. Their October 25 presidential runoff could determine whether the region’s largest economy joins this emerging alignment.
Flávio Bolsonaro, candidate for President of Brazil
There are vulnerabilities. Paraguay moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, reversed the decision months later under a new president, and restored it in 2024. Diplomatic commitments can change with elections. The Isaac Accords seek to build deeper economic, security and institutional relationships capable of surviving those political shifts.
The Abraham Accords brought Israel closer to the Arab world. The Isaac Accords seek to bring Latin America closer to Israel. Conservative presidents are leading that transformation, turning recognition of Jerusalem into a declaration of political identity, shared heritage and strategic allegiance.
Jerusalem has become a dividing line in Latin America’s ideological struggle, and its conservatives are choosing sides.
