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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jesus was a Jew, born to a Jewish family, living in the Jewish homeland, speaking to Jewish audiences, teaching from the Hebrew Bible, and making pilgrimages to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The word “Palestine” was not even the name of the province during His lifetime. The Roman renaming of Judea to Syria Palaestina occurred about a century after His death.
Yet the claim persists because it serves an ahistorical but political purpose: If Jesus can be transformed from a Jew into a Arab, then the central figure of Christianity can be detached from Jewish history and reinserted into a modern political narrative. Suddenly, Jews are no longer obvious indigenous people in the Holy Land, but Arabs – who did not arrive en masse to region for another six centuries – are the real Jews.
The article does not explicitly call Jesus a Palestinian. Instead, it wraps a Gazan narrative in the language of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. Gaza becomes the tomb. The refugee becomes the suffering servant. The journey out becomes resurrection.
The symbolism is unmistakable.
For centuries, Christians looked to the suffering of Jesus as a uniquely sacred story. Increasingly, anti-Israel agitators are attempting to woo parts of the Christian world by recasting that story through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinian Arabs occupying the role once reserved for Christ Himself.
The war in Gaza did not begin with suffering descending from heaven. It began with decisions made by thousands of Gazans. Hamas invaded Israel, murdered civilians and took hostages. Hamas launched a war that it knew would bring devastating consequences to Gaza as it hid it tunnels and refused to let women and children enter the shelters.
Does that resemble Jesus?
Genocidal psychopaths are being transformed into the innocent sufferer. The political and military context disappears from view. Agency gives way to symbolism.
What makes this especially troubling for many Jews is that the institution promoting this narrative is no longer just fringe anti-Israel groups or university protest movements.
It is the Vatican itself.
For two thousand years, the Church has wrestled with the consequences of separating Christianity from its Jewish roots. In recent decades, Catholic-Jewish relations made enormous progress by reaffirming the Jewishness of Jesus and Christianity’s historical connection to the Jewish people.
That progress is undermined when contemporary narratives replace Jesus the Jew with a new symbolic figure: the Palestinian sufferer who cheered Jews being burned alive.
They are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin, and others. They are children going to school, parents going to work, soldiers defending their country, and grandparents hoping to see their families thrive. Like people everywhere, they seek safety, opportunity, dignity, and peace.
Those aspirations should not be controversial.
Yet few nations are asked to justify their existence as frequently as Israel.
That is why the phrase “Let Israel Live” matters.
At its most basic level, it is an affirmation of a simple principle: a people has the right to live in security in its homeland. Israeli children should not grow up under the threat of rockets, missiles, terrorism, kidnappings, or calls for their destruction. Families should not have to wonder whether a bus ride, a concert, or a holiday celebration will become the target of violence.
In October 2003 – well before there was a blockade of Gaza – 89% of Palestinian Arabs supported killing Jewish civilians in the West Bank and Gaza; 54% supported killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Gazans were much more blood-thirsty than West Bank Arabs.
Security is not a privilege. It is a right.
To say “Let Israel Live” is to recognize that Israelis are human beings rather than symbols in a political debate. Discussions about Israel often revolve around governments, borders, diplomacy, and conflict. Lost in those discussions are the millions of ordinary people whose lives are directly affected by them.
The phrase carries an even deeper meaning for the Jewish people.
For centuries, Jews lived at the mercy of rulers, empires, and majorities. Again and again they were expelled, persecuted, or denied the ability to determine their own future. Israel represents the restoration of Jewish self-determination in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
To say “Let Israel Live” is therefore not merely a statement about physical security. It is an affirmation that the Jewish people, like all peoples, possess the right to govern themselves and shape their own destiny.
The phrase “Let Israel Live” asks for nothing extraordinary.
It asks that Israel be granted what every people seeks for itself: the right to live, the right to flourish, and the right to exist in peace.
The Tikvah Society recently gathered in lower Manhattan to celebrate America’s 250th birthday and make the Jewish case for American exceptionalism.
It was an impressive gathering. Jonathan Silver moderated a conversation between Ruth Wisse, Bret Stephens, and Eric Cohen. Yet as the evening unfolded, a question lingered:
Who was missing?
Not from the audience, but from the conversation itself.
The answer matters because the people in the room represent a remarkably small slice of both America and American Jewry. Jews comprise roughly 6 million people in a nation of 330 million (1.8%). Within American Jewry, the Modern Orthodox and strongly Zionist non-Orthodox communities that dominate much of American Jewish intellectual life represent only a fraction of the next generation. And the attendees represented the most engaged of that small sliver.
The setting itself made the omission more striking. The discussion took place in the very neighborhood where some of the foundational events of the American Republic unfolded. Within walking distance stand the sites of Washington’s inauguration, the first Congress, and the earliest experiments in American self-government. Yet for an event dedicated to celebrating America, surprisingly little attention was paid to the place itself.
American flags on Fifth Avenue (photo: First One Through)
Instead, the conversation focused on the future of Jews, universities, religion, and politics.
The panelists disagreed on important questions. Wisse argued that Jewish unity is not paramount if unity comes at the expense of conviction: better a smaller community of committed Jews than a larger one saturated in ambivalence. Stephens returned to a theme he has emphasized before: stop obsessing over the haters and invest in Jewish education. Cohen broadened the argument, suggesting that both Jewish and Christian religious education are essential to strengthening America itself. The country’s experiment with secularism, he argued, has weakened the civic and moral foundations on which the Republic depends.
Jonathan Silver, Eric Cohen, Bret Stephens and Ruth Wisse address audience at Tikvah Society event on June 9, 2026 in New York City (photo: First One Through)
Both Stephens and Cohen spoke favorably about Chabad. It is not difficult to see why. Chabad has become one of the few institutions capable of reaching Jews across virtually every level of observance. The Rebbe’s army continues to grow because it understands something many institutions have forgotten: people are attracted to confidence, purpose, and personal relationships. Tikvah has absorbed this – it is curious how it plans on applying it.
Education
The discussion of education was compelling. Nothing is more important than good teachers, and few things are more destructive than bad ones. The panelists lamented the continuing flow of Jewish philanthropy into institutions such as Columbia University, where many faculty members and students openly disparage Zionism, America, and increasingly Jews themselves.
Yet the evening largely avoided a more uncomfortable reality.
In the greater New York area, roughly 490,000 Jewish students attend K-12 schools. Only about 40,000 (8.2%) are found in the Modern Orthodox and Zionist day-school ecosystem (“The 8%”) that forms the backbone of many organizations such as Tikvah. The largest and fastest-growing populations are elsewhere. The majority remain in public and secular schools. Even more significant is the extraordinary growth of Chassidic and Yeshivish communities, which now educate approximately 145,000 students (“30% and Growing”).
Those numbers matter.
Ultra-Orthodox
A strategy centered solely on strengthening the already committed may preserve one segment of Jewish life. It does not answer the larger demographic question facing American Jewry. The central challenge is will Tikvah and “The 8%” engage the overwhelming majority of Jewish children who are either in public schools or in the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox world.
The same demographic blind spot appeared later in the discussion. Cohen argued that religious Jews and religious Christians should work more closely together to defend the values that built America. There is logic to that argument. Tikvah itself appears to be moving in that direction through its decision to award its Herzl Prize to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, one of Israel’s most outspoken Christian supporters.
Yet there is a striking irony here. As Jewish leaders search for allies among millions of religious Christians, they overlook the “30% and Growing” communities. Leaders commend Chabad for successful outreach to the secular but don’t consider building bridges to the Chasidic and Yeshivish communities, and engaging the majority of students in public and secular schools.
Public Schools
The challenge facing American Jewry is therefore not simply how to build alliances with Christians who share Jewish concerns. It is also how to build relationships among Jews whose lives increasingly unfold in separate educational, cultural, and social worlds.
The same issue applies to America’s educational crisis. If America is worth saving, public schools matter. Any serious defense of American exceptionalism must include an effort to improve the institutions educating most American children. Reforming public education should not be viewed as somebody else’s problem. It is central to the future of both America and American Jewry.
American Jews need to become highly engaged in local school boards. They need to help moderate and defend the institutions form the worst influences which are overwhelming America’s public schools, poisoning America’s future. The evening was silent on this crucial point.
Universities
The conversation about universities also requires greater precision.
Harvard is not a monolith. Columbia is not a monolith. Administrations, trustees, faculty, students, and donors often have different interests and agendas. Too often Jewish philanthropists write nine-figure checks in exchange for buildings bearing their names. It is a poor investment.
The activists and professors who dominate many campuses are not impressed by another Jewish donor’s name on a wall. In some cases, they actively mock the very people who funded the buildings in which they teach.
A better approach would be to invest in people rather than structures: scholars, faculty, teachers, fellowships, civic education programs, and scholarships for students committed to the values that made America successful. Buildings create monuments. Educators create generations.
Area
Tikvah Approach
Reality
Better Tactic
Ultra-Orthodox
Ignore. Focus on Christian groups
Fastest growing population
Engage, perhaps via important issues for both like public funding for religious schools
Public Schools
Unaddressed
Largest current segment
Engage school boards
Universities
Don’t fund or send students / make new ones
Still prevalent and dominant
Redirect contributions
Perhaps the most important lesson from the evening is that preserving American exceptionalism requires more than celebrating it.
American exceptionalism was never simply a belief that America was superior. At its best, it reflected an understanding that liberty is fragile and must be constantly renewed by citizens willing to sacrifice for something larger than themselves.
The people gathered in that room care deeply about America and about the future of the Jewish people. Their commitment is admirable. But commitment alone is not enough. The arithmetic cannot be ignored.
A movement centered on “The 8%” in a community of 1.8% of Americans (0.15%) cannot secure the future.
The challenge is larger than preserving one vision of Jewish life. It is rebuilding the institutions that form Americans in the first place: families, schools, synagogues, churches, civic organizations, and local communities. That is where outreach to BOTH Christian and Ultra-Orthodox groups matters.
And that work begins with Humble Faith. Humble faith built the America being celebrated in lower Manhattan. Humble faith may also be the only way to bridge the growing divides within the Jewish community itself. As we search for a better America, American Jews may first need to rediscover one another.
The children who dominate New York’s Israel parade are no longer the children who dominate Jewish education.
Each spring, Fifth Avenue fills with students from Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist schools waving Israeli flags, singing Hebrew songs, and celebrating the Jewish state. Yet these students represent only a small fraction of Jewish children in the New York metropolitan area. The largest group of Jewish children attends public and secular private schools. The largest group attending Jewish schools is Chassidic and Yeshivish.
Jewish yeshiva day school students and faculty march up Fifth Avenue in New York City’s Israel parade, May 31, 2026 (photo: First One Through)
That reality raises an important question about the future of one of American Jewry’s most visible public events.
The parade’s own history reflects the evolution of American Jewish identity.
When it was founded in 1964, it was called the Youth Salute to Israel Parade. The name reflected its era. Israel was only sixteen years old. The Holocaust was still within living memory. American Jews were not merely celebrating Israel; they were standing with it.
In 2011, the event became the Celebrate Israel Parade. Israel was no longer a struggling young state. It was a global technology center, a military power, and home to millions of Jews. The emphasis shifted from solidarity to celebration.
After October 7, the parade adopted a third name: Israel Day on Fifth.
The parade’s three names trace the evolution of American Zionism itself. The first generation saluted Israel. The second celebrated Israel.
Today, the challenge is different. Support for Israel can no longer be assumed, and Jewish unity can no longer be taken for granted. The question is whether Israel can continue to serve as a bridge connecting an increasingly diverse Jewish community.
The challenge is particularly visible when looking at Jewish children in the greater NYC area.
The best available estimates suggest that roughly 450,000 to 500,000 Jewish school-age children live in the greater New York metropolitan area. About 170,000 attend Jewish day schools and yeshivot.
Of those, roughly 130,000 to 140,000 attend Chassidic and Yeshivish schools, compared with only 20,000 to 25,000 in Modern Orthodox schools. Outside the day-school world are another 280,000 to 330,000 Jewish children attending public schools, secular private schools, Catholic schools, and other educational settings.
Yet anyone watching the parade could be forgiven for drawing the opposite conclusion.
The schools most visible on Fifth Avenue are overwhelmingly Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist institutions. They are among the most committed supporters of Israel in American Jewish life. But they represent only a small share of Jewish youth. The fastest-growing segment of Jewish education is Chassidic and Yeshivish. The largest segment of Jewish children overall attends public and secular private schools.
The parade therefore showcases some of the most engaged Jewish children in America, but not necessarily the full spectrum of Jewish youth.
That matters because Israel remains one of the few ideas capable of connecting Jews across denominational, ideological, and educational lines. At a moment when Jewish attachment to Israel is increasingly challenged on college campuses, contested on social media, and questioned in parts of American public life, institutions that connect young Jews to Israel have become more important, not less.
If the goal is Jewish unity in the decades ahead, the parade may need to ask a different question.
Rather than “How do we celebrate Israel?” the question may be “How do we bring the Jewish people together around Israel?”
A future parade organized around Am Yisrael rather than a particular expression of Zionism could create room for every community to participate in its own way.
Charedi schools could march under banners celebrating Torah in the Land of Israel.
Public-school students could march through camps, youth groups, synagogue programs, and community organizations.
Modern Orthodox schools could continue expressing their Religious Zionist vision.
Israeli cultural groups, charities, universities, first responders, and innovation organizations would all still have their place.
This would be Am Yisrael Day on Fifth Avenue.
The original parade was created to demonstrate solidarity with a young Jewish state. The next challenge is ensuring that future generations of American Jews remain connected both to Israel and to one another.
Should the future of the parade remain with the niche schools that already fill Fifth Avenue, it will become a symbol of the fragmentation of Israel support even within the Jewish community, let around the broader world. That would not bode well for Jewish New Yorkers or Israel.
The first generation saluted Israel. The second celebrated Israel. The challenge for the third generation is to ensure that Israel remains a force capable of uniting the Jewish people.
A lecture on the archaeology of ancient Israel and Judah was supposed to take place at the British Museum this month. Instead, it was postponed after organizers learned that protesters intended to disrupt the event.
The subject was not the Gaza war nor settlements nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It was archaeology.
It has happened before. In 2014, UNESCO canceled an exhibition on the Jewish people’s 3,500-year history in the Land of Israel after objections from Arab states. More recently, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly denied that the Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem, at one point claiming they were actually located in Yemen.
These episodes share a common thread. The dispute is no longer simply about the modern State of Israel nor its policies or actions. It is increasingly about the history of the Jewish people themselves.
Yet the evidence is overwhelming. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah are among the best-documented societies of the ancient Near East. Their existence is attested through inscriptions, seals, coins, manuscripts, monuments, and the records of neighboring civilizations. The British Museum itself houses artifacts that tell this story.
Seal of King Hezekiah found in Jerusalem, around 700 BCE
That is why archaeology poses such a problem for those who seek to portray Jews as foreign interlopers – colonizers – with no ancient connection to the land. Artifacts cannot be pressured into changing their testimony. Every discovery points in the same direction: the Jewish story in the Land of Israel stretches back thousands of years, before the births of Jesus and Mohammed.
Few people would tolerate a museum debating whether ancient Egypt existed or whether Rome stood in Italy. Yet Jewish history is increasingly treated as uniquely negotiable.
Curiously and alarmingly, the protest at the British Museum had a much more immediate backdrop than the current war. This talk was to take place during Jewish Culture Month and the protestors were assembled by an anti-Israel group called “Jewish Artists for Palestine.” The museum’s efforts to highlight Jewish history in the land of Israel during a period of focus on Jewish culture brought out Jewish anti-Israel protestors.
Institutions are backing away from Jewish history and culture with the backing of fringe extremist Jews and anti-Israel Arabs. So basic history becomes debate, and the debate has moved from the policies of the Israeli government to Jews themselves.
The Nazis physically annihilated the Jews of Europe as it sought to place their culture as historical artifacts in museums. Now, museums and institutions seek to erase Jewish history and culture as a prelude to eradicating Jews in the Middle East.
For nearly two thousand years, Jews have ended prayers with the hope of returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding what once stood there. It is the location of the First and Second Temples. Jewish longing for Jerusalem is woven into daily prayers, holidays, weddings, and mourning rituals.
Yet major international bodies have passed resolutions referring to the site primarily through its Muslim names while minimizing or omitting its central place in Jewish history. Imagine a resolution discussing the Vatican without mentioning Christianity, or Mecca without mentioning Islam. The absurdity would be obvious.
The issue extends beyond language.
Official United Nations map labeling the Temple Mount as holy only to Muslims
The international community supports a protocol under which Muslims may pray freely on the Temple Mount while Jews are restricted from praying at Judaism’s holiest site. The result is extraordinary: the world’s only Jewish state is expected to enforce a policy under which Jews do not support a basic human right at their holiest location in favor of members of another faith.
The Temple Mount is not merely a religious site. It sits at the heart of a larger question: whether the Jewish people are entitled to the same rights afforded to every other people.
Around the world, international institutions celebrate indigenous peoples reconnecting with ancestral lands, reviving ancient languages, protecting sacred sites, and preserving cultural traditions. Yet only in the case of the Jewish people does a return to the place where their civilization, language, religion, and national identity were born become a form of “colonialism.“
International institutions routinely describe the Temple Mount and the Jewish Quarter as part of “occupied Palestinian territory.” Yet these are the very places where Jewish civilization was born, where the ancient Temples stood, and where Jewish communities lived for centuries.
Jordan’s capture of eastern Jerusalem in 1948 resulted in the expulsion of its Jewish population and the denial of Jewish access to the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, and the Jewish Quarter for nineteen years. It granted citizenship to residents as long as they weren’t Jewish. The UN seemingly liked this. International discussion of the Old City of Jerusalem begins after the expulsion of Jews, as though their absence were the natural condition and their return the disruption.
The same pattern appears in discussions of territory.
The Green Line was never intended to be a permanent border. The 1949 Armistice Agreements explicitly stated that the line was not a political boundary and would not prejudice future negotiations. It was a military ceasefire line drawn after a war.
Yet decades later, much of international law treats that armistice line as though it were a sacred border whose crossing transforms ordinary Jews into international criminals.
A Jew who moves across that line becomes a “settler.” An Arab who moves into the same building does not. The geography is identical. The identity of the resident is what changes.
International institutions frequently oppose changes to the “demographic character” of eastern Jerusalem. But demographic character relative to what date?
The answer is effectively 1949, the year after Jordan captured eastern Jerusalem and expelled every Jew from the Jewish Quarter and surrounding areas. Why should the demographic baseline for justice be the moment immediately following the ethnic cleansing of Jews?
Why not 1980? Why not 2000? Why not today?
Human beings move. Cities evolve. Neighborhoods change.
The only way to preserve a specific demographic snapshot forever is to decide that one particular population must be prevented from returning.
In Jerusalem, that population happens to be Jews.
Then there is the question of refugees.
The same international system that opposes Jews moving into neighborhoods beyond the Green Line frequently endorses claims that millions of Palestinian refugees and descendants should be allowed to settle inside Israel.
Movement in one direction is described as a right. Movement in the other direction is described as a violation of international law.
The asymmetry is impossible to miss.
Every era develops its own vocabulary for antisemitism. In medieval Europe it often spoke the language of theology. In the nineteenth century it spoke the language of race. Today it increasingly speaks the language of international law.
Around the world, international institutions celebrate indigenous peoples reclaiming ancestral lands, reviving ancient languages, protecting sacred sites, and restoring cultural traditions.
Jews have done all of those things.
They returned to the land where their civilization was born. They revived Hebrew from a language of prayer into a language of everyday life. They restored Jewish sovereignty to the city that has stood at the center of Jewish life for three millennia. They reestablished communities at many of their most ancient holy sites.
Yet only in the case of the Jewish people does this story become one of colonialism rather than return.
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