Tag Archives: Jews

Britain’s Only Acceptable Ethnic Cleansing

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Britain is suddenly alarmed about supposed “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank.

The British government warns that Israeli policies could force Palestinian Arabs from parts of Judea and Samaria. It is sanctioning Israelis, condemning “settlements” and portraying demographic change in territory claimed by Palestinians as a grave moral offense.

Britain has seen ethnic cleansing in this territory before. Its reaction was very different.

In 1948, The Kingdom of Transjordan crossed the Jordan River and conquered Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. It then destroyed and expelled the Jewish communities that had lived across the territory. The ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City was emptied of its Jews. Jews were then barred from their holiest sites, as synagogues were destroyed or desecrated.

Interior view of a ruined building with crumbling walls and debris, featuring an archway and a soldier standing amidst the ruins.
Jordanian soldiers destroyed the Hurva Synagogue in 1949

The result was remarkably complete: the territory Jordan occupied was ethnically cleansed of Jews. And less than two years later, Britain formally recognized Jordan’s union with the territory it had invaded and conquered, one of the only countries in the world to do so.

Jordan then made the demographic principle explicit. Its 1954 nationality law extended Jordanian nationality to former Palestinian citizens residing in the kingdom while expressly carving out “the Jews.”

Jordan expelled and excluded the Jews in its holy land, and Britain’s response was recognition.

In 2005, Britain would celebrate again, this time in Gaza.

Israel decided to dismantle every Jewish community in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers physically removed roughly 8,000 Jews from their homes and twenty-one Jewish communities disappeared. A Jew-free Gaza emerged.

Britain did not describe this as ethnic cleansing. Prime Minister Tony Blair praised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “courage” and offered Britain’s “full support” for the withdrawal. His foreign secretary called it a hugely significant step toward peace.

Now consider 2026.

Britain warns against the possible displacement of Palestinian Arabs from Area C of the West Bank, territory that has remained under Israeli civil and security control under the Oslo framework pending a final agreement. It speaks of forcible displacement, imposes sanctions and treats the prospect of Palestinian Arabs losing their communities as intolerable.

The moral principle sounds admirable. It would be more convincing if Britain had ever applied it equally to Jews in the region.

When some Palestinian Arabs might be displaced from territory it hopes to use in a future Palestinian state, Britain suddenly discovers that removing a particular ethnic population from its homes is beyond the pale. Instead, England demands that the region be ethnically cleansed – of Jews – citing the antisemitic UN Security Council Resolution 2334.

There is a British consistency here: ethnic cleansing is only appropriate when Jews are removed.

For generations, British policy has treated the removal of Jews from disputed territory as compatible with peace. A Palestinian Gaza without Jews was progress. A Jordanian West Bank without Jews was acceptable. A future Palestinian state is still routinely imagined as a place where Jewish communities cannot remain.

Only the possibility of some Arab relocation produces moral outrage.

That exposes the deeper problem with the diplomatic vocabulary surrounding the conflict. “Two states” has quietly come to mean one multicultural Jewish state containing a large Arab minority alongside one Palestinian state expected to contain no Jews. One and one-half states for Arabs; half a state for Jews.

England understands the ethnic cleansing of Jews – it did it itself in 1290 – the only minority group to ever be expelled from the country. It seems to continue to only have a taste for that kind of hatred and ethnic cleansing, including in the Jewish homeland.

The Greatest Decolonization Story, Inverted

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The Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium (LESMC) has an ambitious mission. It calls for “anti-racist and decolonial pedagogy” in which students study imperialism and oppression, resistance movements and the struggles of peoples to reclaim their identity and agency.

By those standards, one extraordinary case study should sit near the center of the curriculum: The Jews.

Israel may be one of history’s greatest examples of successful decolonization.

Indigenous

Jewish civilization did not originate in Europe. It arose in the Land of Israel.

Israel, Judah, Judea, Jerusalem and Zion are not modern colonial names. They are ancient names embedded in Jewish history. Judaism developed there. The Hebrew Bible is centered there. Jewish holidays follow its seasons and agricultural cycles. Jerusalem became the religious and national center of the Jewish people.

1630 Map of the Israelite tribes in the holy land, together with images on the border from the life of the Jewish prophet Moses, and the Children of Israel’s exodus from Egypt

Even the people’s name—Israel—is ancient.

Colonized

Then came conquest. Jewish kingdoms were conquered by successive imperial powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans.

The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple and carried many Jews into exile. Rome later destroyed the Second Temple, crushed Jewish revolts and accelerated the dispersion that would define Jewish existence for centuries.

The Jewish people lost sovereignty in its own homeland but never its connection.

Dispossessed—but Not Disconnected

Dispersion scattered the Jews without eliminating Jewish peoplehood. Jews in Poland did not simply become Poles. Jews in Morocco did not simply become Moroccans. Jews in Iraq did not simply become Iraqis.

Across continents, they retained a common religion, history, calendar and connection to the same ancestral land. They prayed toward Jerusalem. They ended Passover with “Next year in Jerusalem.” Hebrew survived as the language of scripture, prayer and scholarship.

And Jews never disappeared from the land itself. Jewish communities remained through centuries of foreign rule.

Resistance

Jewish history is also a story of resistance. The Maccabees resisted Seleucid repression and restored Jewish sovereignty. Jews later rebelled against Rome.

Judah the Maccabee, Wood engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794 – 1872), published in 1860.

After military resistance became impossible, survival itself became resistance. A small, scattered minority endured expulsions, forced conversions, discriminatory laws and massacres without surrendering its identity.

Eventually came Zionism: the modern movement to restore Jewish national self-determination where Jewish national history began.

A stateless people sought to cease being stateless.

Decolonization

And then something extraordinary happened. The dispersed people returned in large numbers.

There was no Jewish Britain or France directing an overseas colony. Jews came from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere to the land at the center of their collective history.

They restored sovereignty.

And they accomplished perhaps their most astonishing act of cultural decolonization: they revived Hebrew.

Not Polish, Russian, German or Arabic. Their ancestral language became the everyday language of children, schools, newspapers, commerce and government.

They made Jerusalem their capital. They called their national movement Zionism, after Zion.

So apply LESMC’s vocabulary consistently: Indigenous. Conquered. Dispossessed. Resistance. Return. Cultural restoration. Self-determination.

The Jewish story fits remarkably well.

So What Happened?

Why does this seemingly perfect LESMC case study become almost its opposite when the curriculum reaches Israel?

Some of the people shaping the curriculum help explain the disconnect.

Samia Shoman, a Palestinian-American member of LESMC’s leadership, co-coordinates the Teach Palestine Project, which develops curricula for American schools. Her materials describe Israel as an “institutionalized system of oppression and apartheid.” After California rewrote its original ethnic-studies curriculum, Shoman blamed “Zionist and other rightwing lobbyists” for what she said was the destruction of its “anti-racist, decolonial and liberatory” approach.

Jody Sokolower, who is Jewish, co-coordinates Teach Palestine. Her student history says Britain promised Palestine to Zionists and describes Zionists as subsequently carrying out plans to push Palestinian Arabs and Britain out. The larger Teach Palestine curriculum explicitly seeks to put these perspectives into American classrooms.

Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, a founding member of Liberated Ethnic Studies, has spent her career developing what LESMC itself describes as “critical curriculum” and helped build the Liberated alternative after the original California curriculum was substantially changed.

This isn’t a peripheral connection. LESMC lists Shoman, Cardona and Theresa Montaño among its leadership, while Teach Palestine produces lessons connecting the conflict to forced relocation, criminalization and a “culture of resistance.”

“Zionism is a nationalist, colonial ideology that, from the late 19th century on, has called for the creation and expansion of Israel as a Jewish state in historic Palestine by any means necessary. As support for Palestine and criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies have grown in the US and internationally, Zionist organizations have stepped up their efforts to silence
discussion of Palestine/Israel in movement circles, on college campuses, and now in K–12 education.” – Teach Palestine’s Understanding Zionist Backlash

Now the inversion makes more sense.

A framework supposedly built to recognize indigeneity, dispossession, resistance and decolonization encounters a people whose history contains all four—but influential architects approach Jewish national restoration through an anti-Zionist and settler-colonial lens.

So:

The indigenous become settlers.
The dispossessed become colonizers.
Return becomes colonialism.
National liberation becomes oppression.

The Jews should be a textbook LESMC case study: an ancient people conquered and dispersed, preserving its identity and ancestral language for centuries, returning home, reviving that language and restoring sovereignty.

Instead, one of history’s most remarkable decolonization stories is recast as colonization.

The history didn’t change. The ideological lens did.

ACTION ITEM

Be involved in your local school board and investigate the materials used in the classroom.

When Did Jews Become a People?

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“This day you have become a people to the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 27:9)

It is a strange declaration in this week’s parsha, Ki Tavo.

Why now?

God had already called the Israelites “My people” while they were slaves in Egypt. They left Egypt together and crossed the sea together.

At Sinai, they received the Torah and entered a covenant with God. There, they were called “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6)

Yet forty years later, as they prepare to enter Israel, Moses declares: “This day you have become a people.”

What changed?

Ki Tavo opens with the answer:

“When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and settle in it…” (Deuteronomy 26:1)

Only then begins the commandment of Bikkurim, bringing the first fruits. Standing on the Land with its produce in his hands, the farmer must recount Jewish history: the descent into Egypt, suffering, liberation and finally:

Palm trees in the Jordan Valley (photo: FirstOneThrough)

“He brought us to this place and gave us this land.” (Deuteronomy 26:9)

The Exodus was not simply about leaving Egypt. It was part of a journey toward somewhere.

Egypt gave us freedom. Sinai gave us the covenant. The Land gave us responsibility.

Israel was already a people in Egypt and a covenantal community at Sinai. But entering the Land changed the nature of that covenant.

Now Jews would have land, property, businesses, courts, borders, wealth and poverty. They would no longer simply receive God’s laws. They would be responsible for effectuating them through a society of their own.

That is why Bikkurim matters. Sovereignty does not permit the successful farmer to begin his story with himself. Holding what he grew on his own land, he must recite the history that put him there.

History creates the claim. Covenant creates the obligation. Sovereignty makes both real.

That gives “this day you have become a people” particular resonance after nearly two thousand years without Jewish sovereignty.

A people is not fully defined by what happened to it, what it believes or even the laws it accepts. It is also defined by what it takes responsibility for building.

Names and Narrative: “Isolation”

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Words matter. They do more than describe reality. They shape it.

This week, the Palestinian Authority’s WAFA news agency reported that Israel had advanced a housing plan that would “further isolate Jerusalem from Bethlehem.”

The proposal involves building homes, roads, and infrastructure between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. In almost any other place on earth, connecting two urban areas with transportation and housing would be described as integration, development, or greater connectivity.

But not for West Bank Arabs. They object to more Jews living in the corridor connecting them.

In this narrative, Jewish presence itself is an obstacle, an impediment. Jewish life is redefined as separation.

The inversion is striking.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan once envisioned Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a single Corpus Separatum—an internationally administered area shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Whatever one thinks of that proposal, its premise was coexistence, not exclusion. Yet today, not only have the local Arabs refused coexistence, but so has the United Nations.

Contours from the 1947 Partition Plan which included Greater Bethlehem and Greater Jerusalem under a “Corpus Separatum”

Instead of asking how Jews and Arabs can both live, work, worship, and travel throughout the Jerusalem-Bethlehem region, many arguments begin with the assumption that Jewish communities are inherently illegitimate. Under that framework, the more Jews who live or travel there, the more “isolated” the majority-Arab areas are said to become.

“settlement expansion around the city is deepening its isolation” – United Nations January 20, 2026

That is a remarkable redefinition of language.

Connection becomes isolation. Coexistence becomes fragmentation.

When the Partition Plan was being conceived on February 18, 1947, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin (1881-1951) said “for the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.” Today, we are not only witnessing the continued entrenchment of that tenet, but the profound hostility to the basic presence of Jews.

Don’t let the word isolation fool you. It is not describing geography. It is describing Jews as obstacles, not neighbors.

Related:

Names and Narrative: “Right to Exist” (July 2026)

Jewish Values Are More Than Universal Values Articulated by a Rabbi

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Listen to many of today’s most prominent progressive Jewish organizations—T’ruah, Bend the Arc, Jewish Voice for Peace, and many rabbis who speak in similar terms—and a pattern quickly emerges. Their Judaism is explained through a familiar vocabulary.

  • Justice.
  • Human dignity.
  • Welcoming the stranger.
  • Repairing the world (Tikkun Olam).
  • Compassion.

These are presented not simply as Jewish values, but as the defining Jewish values.

It is an appealing message. It is also one the modern Western world already overwhelmingly believes.

Nearly every university, corporation, NGO, church, and democratic government affirms human dignity, equality, compassion, caring for refugees, and social justice. Whether one agrees with every application of those ideals is beside the point. They are no longer uniquely Jewish insights. They have become the common moral language of much of the modern world.

The progressive Jewish rabbis and organizations often remind audiences that many of those ideals trace their roots to the Hebrew Bible. That observation is true. Judaism profoundly shaped Western moral thought. Therefore the comment of them being Jewish values is seemingly to educate the western world that they only have their own universal values because of Jews. Also perhaps true, but to what end is the observation? Is it to inform those listening that Jews alone carry the essence of justice, with a transmission extending back thousands of years? That they alone are the actual guardians of values?

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah

Or that they are all on the same page – that the values the West holds dear and the progressive rabbis are one and the same? That one or the other may take the lead on a subject – say condemning genocide, for example – and the other will echo the sentiment?

That approach deliberately strips anything uniquely Jewish from values. It makes the adjective superfluous. Redundant.

Many non-progressive rabbis and the mainstream Jewish organizations have a different view, one that affirms the Jewish component of values. Those are values that are woven into the covenant between God and the Jewish people, as laid out in the Bible and holy books, and debated for thousands of years.

In such telling, justice is not equity as progressive rabbis champion, but based on fairness and balance.

Charity is not generosity. It is tzedakah – an obligation, and one in which helping someone get a paying job and being able to care for themselves is viewed as much greater than making them addicted to welfare.

Rest is not work-life balance. It is Shabbat, a holy day that interrupts commerce, technology, and ordinary life every seventh day because God commanded it. The notion of people adding holiness to something inanimate – like an idol – is actually prohibited in Judaism, while it is encouraged for something specified and incorporeal like the seventh day.

Environmental stewardship is not merely “sustainability.” It includes shmita, allowing the Land of Israel itself to rest every seventh year, because it is a special gift to the Jewish people, much like Shabbat.

Family is not simply important. Marriage, children, circumcision, honoring parents, and transmitting Torah from one generation to the next are sacred obligations.

The list goes on. Some Jewish values are absent from the umbrella of tikkun olam, while others stand in direct contrast to the T’ruah placards.

Recovering the definition matters. Otherwise, “Jewish values” risks becoming little more than progressive ethics wrapped in Hebrew vocabulary—a faith whose unique contribution is remembered mainly as history, while its living covenant is quietly left behind.

“U.S. Jews do not have a single, uniform answer to what being Jewish means…. Many American Jews prioritize cultural components of Judaism over religious ones…. Orthodox Jews are a striking exception…. A plurality of Orthodox Jews say that being Jewish is mainly about religion alone (40%), and they are the only subgroup in the survey who overwhelmingly feel that observing halakha is essential to their Jewishness (83%)… The vast majority of Jews of no religion say that for them, being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry (41%), culture (25%) or both (15%).” – Pew Research May 2021

At this moment in time, the distinction is not theoretical or esoteric. Many progressive left Jewish organizations have adopted stridently anti-Israel positions, some arguing that the Jewish State should be destroyed. They knowingly lock arms with antisemites to advance such future vision.

And should it be a surprise? If the essence of Jewish values for the non-Orthodox far-left is that there is nothing particular about Jews, and that both the noun and adjective “Jew” and “Jewish” are simply historic words without meaning, why should Jews have self-determination any more than left-handed people?

“Supporting Israel is not a battle of political orientation between liberal and conservative Jews. It is a philosophical break in the Jewish community with a fault line regarding the uniqueness of Jews and the Jewish State. The non-Orthodox denominations’ religious philosophy will only let it embrace an Israel that is: about people, not God; about rights not rituals; more secular than religious; more democratic than Jewish; and more universal than particular.” – The Non-Orthodox Jewish Denominations Fight Israel, January 2018

The broader Jewish community should be clear and confident to say that this simply untrue. Judaism and Jewish values are not ancient rock carvings on a cave from which sprang forth the Judeo-Christian values of today. Jews are a living people with a belief in an ongoing covenant which have particular Jewish values that extend beyond universal morality. We should not accept self-erasure in the current environment of cancelling Jews.

Pew poll of May 2021 showing that many young people and non-Orthodox people view being Jewish as simply a matter of ancestry and/or culture

More, everyone should fight this approach. Not only Jews but every people who care about their own unique culture and perspective. The lure of the “melting pot” is great but needn’t be absolute. Appreciate the universal AND the particular for Jews and every neighbor.

Judaism helped shape the modern vocabulary of universal values. But Judaism’s enduring contribution is not simply to teach those ideals but show how they are woven into a sacred way of living. One that sanctifies time through Shabbat, family through covenant, body through mitzvot, land through shmita and pilgimmage, and elevates communal responsibilities to a daily obligation.

Jewish values are not simply universal values. And we should not be ashamed to state it clearly.

Related:

Progressive Jews as the New Apostles (August 2025)

The Antisemitic Status Quo Must End

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The United Nations speaks constantly of justice, equality and freedom of worship in Jerusalem. Yet when confronted with the denial of the most basic religious freedom at Judaism’s holiest site, it demands that the discrimination continue.

This is not the position of one committee or one conference. It is the official position of the United Nations.

Following a recent visit by Israel’s National Security Minister to the Temple Mount, Secretary-General António Guterres declared that “the status quo at the Holy Sites must be upheld.” His spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, went further on July 23, insisting that “there is a status quo regarding the holy sites of Judaism, Christianity and, of course, Islam in Jerusalem” and that “the faithful of all religions are able to interact with those sites… in a free manner.”

Those statements cannot both be true.

On the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism—the “status quo” bars Jews from praying openly. Jews may visit during limited hours, but they are prohibited from conducting public prayer under the religious administration of the Islamic Waqf.

The United Nations therefore advocates preserving a system that denies Jews the freedom to pray at their holiest site while simultaneously claiming that people of all faiths are able to worship freely.

That is not religious equality. It is institutionalized religious discrimination.

Imagine the United Nations calling for the preservation of a system that prohibited Christians from praying at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or Muslims from praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Such a position would rightly be condemned around the world. Yet when the restriction applies to Jews, it is described as preserving the “status quo.”

The phrase has become a euphemism for unequal rights. For sanctioned antisemitism.

The UN states that the “Palestinian people” have “inalienable rights” in Jerusalem, while insisting that Jews have none

Peace is not built by requiring one religion alone to surrender the right to pray at its holiest place.

The United Nations should stop demanding preservation of the Temple Mount status quo and instead demand its reform.

  • The UN Human Rights Council should establish a permanent agenda item asking a single question: Why are Jews still barred from praying openly at Judaism’s holiest site?
  • Every report by the Secretary-General on Jerusalem should state whether that prohibition remains in force.
  • Every General Assembly debate on Jerusalem should require Jordan and the Islamic Waqf to explain why the ban continues and what concrete steps are being taken to end it.
  • Every UNESCO discussion of the Temple Mount should address not only Jewish history at the site, but whether Jewish freedom of worship is being respected there today.
  • Every UN conference on Jerusalem should repeat the same demand until the answer changes:

End the prohibition on peaceful Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.

The United Nations cannot credibly champion freedom of worship while defending a religious order that denies Jews that very freedom at Judaism’s holiest site.

The antisemitic status quo must end.

Palestinians and Their Supporters in the Global South Hunt Jews

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On June 27, 1976, Palestinian terrorists hijacked Air France Flight 139, a civilian airliner traveling from Tel Aviv to Paris. The operation by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine‘s external operations network diverted the aircraft to Entebbe, Uganda, where the hijackers, aided by Idi Amin’s regime, held more than one hundred civilians hostage while demanding the release of imprisoned terrorists.

Then came the moment that revealed the deeper nature of the conflict.

The hijackers separated Israeli and non-Israeli Jewish passengers from the rest of those on board. Many other passengers were eventually released. The Israelis and Jews remained in captivity.

Had nationality been the only issue, non-Israeli Jews would have been released alongside the other foreign passengers. Instead, Jewish identity itself became grounds for continued imprisonment. The selection demonstrated that the target extended beyond the State of Israel to the Jewish people themselves. Decades after the Holocaust, Jewish civilians once again found themselves sorted from their fellow passengers because they were Jews.

The crimes committed during the hijacking were numerous. Palestinian terrorists seized a civilian aircraft, held innocent men, women and children hostage, threatened mass murder to secure political concessions, and singled out Jews for continued captivity. Three hostages died during the Israeli rescue operation, and Dora Bloch, an elderly Jewish hostage who had been taken to a hospital in Kampala, was later murdered by Ugandan authorities.

Hostages saved from Palestinian terrorists in Entebbe Airport, Uganda, July 4, 1976

Palestinian terrorists and their sympathizers have often come for non-Israeli Jews. Synagogues and Jewish community centers were attacked in cities far removed from the Middle East battlefield. Rome. Athens. Istanbul. Hezbollah and Iran often acted in support of Palestinian Arabs, just as they have since October 7, 2023.

Palestinian Arab opened fire in the Great Synagogue in Rome, Italy October, 1982, killing a 2-year old and wounding 37

And the Palestinian Arabs don’t hide it. The 1988 Hamas Charter is not simply a terrorist manifesto, but a deeply antisemitic one. Palestinians voted Hamas to 56% of parliament with such screed and continue to vote for the group over Fatah in every poll.

Fifty years ago, on July 4, 1976, the Israeli Defense Forces saved over 100 Israeli and non-Israeli Jews who were held hostage by terrorists. The rescue operation only killed Ugandan soldiers and the terrorists themselves – no Ugandan nor Gazan civilian was harmed.

Yet countries still rebuked Israel in the week that followed:

  • Libya: “Israel’s wanton aggression is a serious and grave crime against international law.”
  • Benin: “act of aggression committed by Israel against Uganda.”
  • Somalia: “Israel’s flagrant aggression against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Uganda.”
  • Cuba: “The action of Israel… unquestionably constitutes a flagrant violation of the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter.”
  • Mauritius: “act of aggression.”
  • Pakistan: “the Council should demand that compensation for the great loss of life and property caused by the Israeli action be paid to Uganda.”
  • Mauritania, sponsored the complaint on behalf of the African Group.

“the Western Powers have manifested a racist and fanatic solidarity with the white minority settlement in Palestine. For them, the Israeli aggression merely demonstrated a highly successful operation performed by the white man against the blacks of Africa and against the browns of the Arab lands -against the blacks and the browns of another and hostile world, that of the Arab-African community.” – Libya regarding Israeli rescue of 100+ hostages held by Palestinian Arabs in Uganda

The total populations of Uganda and the countries above is roughly 373 million. The Jewish population in all of these countries combined is under 5,000, 0.001%. They are unwelcome and unwanted.

Wheelchair-bound, 69-year old American Leon Klinghoffer, killed by Palestinian terrorists October 8, 1985

Palestinian Arabs and their supporters in the Global South are ingrained with a deeply hostile view of Jews and the Global North. The latest manifestation has been seen since the barbaric attacks of October 7, 2023, but can be seen just as clearly fifty years ago, when Israel rescued other Jewish hostages.

Why Is Jewish Identity Treated Differently?

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New York has embraced an important idea: identity deserves respect.

Its laws explicitly protect both gender identity and gender expression, recognizing that identity is not merely an internal characteristic but something people live and communicate publicly through appearance, speech, names, clothing, and behavior.

That principle is admirable but is it applied consistently?

The Jewish people also possess an identity that is both internal and external. Jews express that identity through religion, language, holidays, history, culture, family traditions, symbols, and connection to their ancestral homeland.

For many Jews, that expression includes Zionism.

Contrary to its frequent caricature, Zionism is not a political opinion. It rests on two historical facts and one political principle: Jews are a people; they originated in the Land of Israel; and therefore they are entitled to national self-determination and sovereignty in their ancestral homeland.

Like wearing a kippah, lighting Shabbat candles, speaking Hebrew, or displaying a Star of David, affirming the Jewish people’s right to their homeland is, for many Jews, a basic expression of Jewish identity.

Yet this expression is increasingly treated as unacceptable.

President Biden’s U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism at the State Department, told Jews to hide expressions of their Judaism on May 21, 2021

Across universities, workplaces, and public institutions, “Zionist” is often used to describe a political viewpoint and as a label for exclusion. Students are told Zionists are unwelcome. Employees are pressured to distance themselves from Zionism. Organizations adopt anti-Zionist litmus tests that, for many Jews, require repudiating a central expression of their identity.

New York City subway where anti-Israel protestors call for Zionists to get out

If society recognizes that identity includes both who a person is and how that person expresses that identity, why should that principle stop with gender?

No one should be expected to abandon a central expression of identity in order to participate in public life, attend a university, or feel welcome in a workplace.

“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” – Columbia University student Khymani James

This is not a request for special treatment. It is a request for consistency.

If identity deserves dignity, then every community’s identity deserves dignity. If expression deserves respect, then that principle should not end where Jewish identity begins.

Was the JNS International Policy Summit Worthwhile?

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A friend noticed I had attended the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem and asked if it was worthwhile.

I paused. “That’s actually a harder question than it sounds. I have too many thoughts for a text message.”

This article is my answer.

The event. Alex Traiman, CEO of JNS, and Richard Heideman, Chairman of the JNS International Policy Summit, assembled an impressive three-day program. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, the “Green Prince” Mosab Hassan Yousef and dozens of leading policymakers, legal experts and advocates discussed nearly every dimension of Israel’s current challenges.

Topics: The summit covered twelve main topics with a few breakaway panels for each so people could listen to various subjects. It covered everything from antisemitism and regional security to international law, Judea and Samaria, Israel’s democracy, Christian-Israel relations and the narrative war playing out across traditional and social media.

JNS panel discussion on Regional Security

What makes a conference worthwhile? Many conferences share the discussions online – as did JNS – so people often question the value of devoting so much time to listening to so many speakers. I usually attend conferences to become energized and to meet like-minded people. That has been my experience at Tikvah events in New York, for example. I will share that it was not my feeling at this JNS conference.

For one thing, the attendees here were much more engaged in politics professionally than at a Tikvah Leadership Conference. Most of the people at the Waldorf Astoria knew everyone on the panels, worked with them and could have joined any of the discussions. It felt like the crowd was full of understudies ready to assume an empty chair on stage, or ready to have working sessions in side rooms. It made talking to fellow attendees extremely interesting for anyone looking to fully engage in the various subject matters.

However, the vibe of the Jerusalem News Syndicate conference was much more right-wing than I had anticipated. I had thought of JNS as simply an alternative to AP and Reuters, providing an Israeli perspective on the news. While I expected it to be right-of-center, I was surprised at how many deeply right-wing people were both speakers and attendees.

Two Themes: Trump-Iran/Lebanon: The backdrop for the event must be set, as events in the Middle East move quickly.

At the time of the conference, June 21-23, it appeared that the Trump Administration was striking a deal with Iran that was viewed by the speakers as profoundly weak regarding Iran, and deeply flawed as it related to Israel’s war with Hezbollah. Speakers went out of their way to say how much they love Donald Trump and Israel could never ask for a better friend, so such a skilled negotiator obviously just needed to buy time through July 4 celebrations and the World Cup, and would then return to finishing the Iranian nuclear and ballistic threats. Speakers avoided smearing Vice President JD Vance in public, but the quiet discussions near the cookies in the hallway were that they would like to see Marco Rubio as the president after Trump.

The opinions were definitely hawkish: Israel needs to maintain a buffer in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed and terrorist infrastructure is removed. The same format is required in Gaza for Hamas. Iran must continue to be attacked until a long-term favorable deal can be struck.

It was interesting to hear how the various speakers thought of the regimes and people in each theater: In Iran, the government is horrible and must be removed while the people are intelligent and wonderful allies-in-waiting. Hezbollah is a rogue Iranian proxy that must be expunged so Israel can develop a long-term peace with the legitimate government of Lebanon. However, the situation in Gaza had no rainbow at the end. While the determination to finish Hamas and disarm it was viewed as non-negotiable, the prognosis for peace with everyday Gazans was viewed as so distant in the future to not even warrant near-term discussions.

Antisemitism/ Narrative: The “eighth front” of the current war is sometimes referred to as the narrative war in the global media and social media by Netanyahu. I believe Israel’s deteriorating image around the world has fueled antisemitism, even if hostility toward Israel and hatred of Jews ultimately remain distinct phenomena.

Michal Cotler-Wunsh, CEO of the International Legal Forum, called “October 7 the Kristallnacht of our times” that will ultimately “come for all democracies.” Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the Deborah Project said that “teacher unions are like the Hamas tunnels in American education,” part of an insidious infrastructure that systemically vilifies Israel. David Brog of the Maccabee Task Force suggested bringing social media influencers to Israel to see the truth, and that those people will become strong advocates when they realize that they’ve been fed lies for years. Miss Israel, Melanie Shiraz suggested changing the entire dynamic: to engage in sports, cultural events and other places where people engage directly in a common arena. “Let them see Israel, not as an argument to be won but a beauty to be shared…. Not with better corrections but better invitations.”

Sara Friedman, CEO WJC Israel; Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Legal Director of the Deborah Project; David Brog, Executive Director of Macabee task Force, and Elan Carr, CEO Israeli-American Council

She received one of only a handful of standing ovations.

So, was the JNS International Policy Summit worthwhile?

Yes, but not for the reason I expected.

The speeches were informative, and many are available online for anyone willing to invest the time. What cannot be livestreamed are the conversations over lunch, the chance encounters in the hallway, and the immersion in an ecosystem of people who have dedicated their lives to defending Israel and Jews in ways most of us never see. Some fight in courtrooms. Others rewrite school textbooks, monitor the United Nations, expose campus antisemitism, advocate for terror victims, build alliances with Christians, or wage the daily battle for truth on social media.

Miss Israel, Melanie Shiraz, surprised the crowd with passionate advocacy for greater cultural exchanges and received a standing ovation

Like any gathering of passionate people, I did not agree with everyone. Some speakers left me inspired; others left me shaking my head. But perhaps that is part of the value of attending in person. A conference is not worthwhile because it confirms everything you already believe. It is worthwhile because it exposes you to the people, personalities, and competing ideas that shape a movement.

The summit reminded me that the defense of Israel and Jewish people around the world is no longer just the work of soldiers and diplomats. It is also carried by lawyers, educators, journalists, researchers, politicians, influencers, and ordinary citizens who understand that ideas, narratives, and public opinion have become battlefields of their own.

That, more than any individual panel, was the lasting lesson I brought home from Jerusalem.

Who Gets to Define the Jewish People?

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Parashat Balak contains one of the most unusual narratives in the Torah. For almost the entire portion, the Jewish people disappear from the story.

Throughout the Torah, we experience events through Moses, the Israelites, or God speaking directly to His people. This week is different. The Israelites continue their journey completely unaware of the drama unfolding around them. Instead, the Torah lifts us to the mountaintops of Moab, where King Balak and the prophet Balaam stand overlooking the Israelite camp below.

For the only time in the Torah, we see the Jewish people entirely through the eyes of outsiders.

That perspective is striking. The story told reminds us that long before anyone attempts to destroy a people, they first seek to define them.

Balak does not look upon Israel and see the descendants of Abraham returning to the land God promised their forefathers. He does not see a nation recently liberated from slavery or a people carrying a covenant that would shape the moral foundations of civilization. Looking down from the mountain, he sees only a threat. Once he reaches that conclusion, everything else follows naturally. A dangerous people deserve to be weakened. A dangerous people deserve to be cursed.

Before there is violence, there is narrative.

Balak understands that words have power. If Israel can be portrayed as an illegitimate menace, hostility becomes easier to justify. He therefore summons Balaam, believing that the right words can reshape reality itself.

But the Torah teaches exactly the opposite lesson.

Each time Balaam opens his mouth to curse Israel, God compels him to describe what he actually sees rather than what Balak wishes were true. The curses become blessings. The accusations become admiration. Instead of condemning Israel, Balaam proclaims, “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.”

The battle in Parashat Balak is ultimately not over land or military strength. It is over definition. Who has the authority to describe the Jewish people? A fearful king looking down from a distant mountain, or the God who entered into covenant with them?

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s “Balaam’s Ass”, 1626

That ancient struggle continues today.

Many of the loudest voices speaking about the Jewish people insist on defining them for themselves. Jewish history is recast as though the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel were a modern political invention rather than the foundation of Jewish civilization. Jerusalem is detached from the people who have been praying toward it for thousands of years. The descendants of ancient Israel become foreign colonizers in the very land where their national story began.

“European Jewish Zionists claimed to be descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews and to be merely “returning” to their ancient land.” – Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, July 2022

The same impulse appears in discussions of antisemitism. Increasingly, others claim the authority to determine what Jews should consider antisemitic while dismissing the experience of Jewish communities themselves. The people who are the object of hatred are told they cannot define the hatred directed against them.

The pattern is remarkably familiar.

Balak first decided the Israelites were a threat and concluded they deserved condemnation. The false identity justified the action.

The Torah overturns that process.

The only outsider whose words are remembered for eternity is the one whom God compels to abandon prejudice and speak truth. Balaam climbed the mountain intending to curse Israel, but he remained a prophet. He still recognized that there was a Judge above him. When God commanded him to bless, his own desires gave way to a higher truth.

Today’s loudest critics acknowledge no such authority beyond themselves. They do not seek God’s judgment but the approval of crowds, political movements, or academic fashions. Their words may echo through universities, international institutions, social media, and the halls of government, but they carry no weight in Heaven. They resonate only among fellow travelers who have already chosen contempt over truth.

Three thousand years ago, God refused to allow those who hated Israel to define Israel. That remains the enduring lesson of Parashat Balak. The Jewish people are not who their enemies say they are. They are who God says they are.