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June 7, 2026
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- Israel's government and the Republican Party want to phase out all aid to Israel. It makes no sense to fixate on Democrats who want to do the same or to use that as a litmus test.
- We should be outraged not at those who did not attend New York City's Israel parade but at the Israeli government officials who did attend and whoever decided that they could attend. There is no contradiction between loving Israel and recognizing the danger posed by its government.
- Those of us who support Israel cannot expect Americans to close their eyes to what they see, even if we would prefer that they do (or worse, even if we close our eyes and truly don't see it). American support for Israel is dropping because of this particular Israeli government's policies, not antisemitism. We can increase support for the State of Israel by opposing those policies instead of defending the indefensible.
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Friends,
The first time I joined the Walk With Israel, it was one mile for every year since Israel's founding. Then it was one kilometer for every year. Then it was a parade of arbitrary length.
What they all had in common was that everyone stood with Israel. We saw no difference between Israel and Israel's government, nor did we see any difference between the ideal Israel and the real Israel. The walks and the parades were for us. No one seemed bothered by who did and did not march with us.
What changed? Back then, Israel was militarily weaker relative to its neighbors. It was not yet the start-up nation. Now it is a regional military and economic superpower. Yet despite Israel's insecurity, we felt secure in our identities and in our support for Israel. If the reality of Israel and our vision of Israel diverged, we were unaware of it.
Last week, the president of the United States told Israel's prime minister, "You're f***ing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this." No complaints, not even from the no daylight crowd. Not even after Trump confirmed it.
Yet when New York City's mayor provides heavy security for the Israel parade but does what he said he'd do before he was elected and does not attend the parade, we go ballistic. Have we lost our minds?
Joel Swanson writes that the parade was a shanda, not because of Mamdani's absence, but because far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich, Ofir Sofer, and Amichai Eliyahu attended. Smotrich seems to have been a surprise. The other unsavory officials were on the guest list.
Some American elected officials who marched in the parade said they were surprised that Smotrich, Sofer, and Eliyahu showed up and distanced themselves from their views. They didn't say whether they would have attended had they known Smotrich, Sofer, and Eliyahu would attend. Many of these American elected officials are good people. Maybe we should not be so quick to condemn those who appear at other events with those whose views we find abhorrent.
As much as we'd like to believe otherwise, Smotrich, Sofer, and Eliyahu are not outliers. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) wrote in their May 29 op-ed on Israeli efforts to annex the West Bank and what we can do about it that "today, there is not a single supporter of the two-state solution in Israel’s current governing coalition, and ministers frequently call to destroy the possibility of a two-state solution and encourage, in the words of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the 'voluntary emigration' of Palestinians."
For many, supporting Israel and marching in the parade is not about any particular Israeli government but Israel itself and the ideal of Israel, just as marching in a Fourth of July parade does not signal support for Trump (or Biden, for that matter). Loving Israel, as Rabbi Yael Dadoun writes, does not require that we apologize for Israel's government.
I've long argued that we should distinguish the State of Israel from the government of Israel, but when major Israeli government officials attend the parade, that demarcation becomes harder. Just as we should not condemn those who did attend the parade, perhaps we should not condemn those who choose not to attend the parade.
If that's difficult to accept, ask yourself this: Are you attending Fourth of July events? You probably are. Are you attending Fourth of July events organized by Trump? If you live in the DC area and you subscribe to this newsletter, you probably aren't, even though you love America.
But what about those who don't attend the parade because they are not Zionists? When did we become so needy? Speaking for myself, I don't need anyone's approval, not even the mayor's approval, for my Zionism or support for Israel.
I define Zionism as support for a Jewish state in all or part of our ancestral homeland, which seems to be the traditional definition of Zionism. I agree with Jeremy Ben-Ami, who wrote, "My 'pro-Israel' positioning flows from a belief that the aspiration of the Jewish people to be a free people in their own land is legitimate and vital."
When someone says they are not a Zionist or that they oppose Zionism, when I see polling showing that only 37% of Jewish Americans consider themselves Zionists, I am open to the possibility that their definition of "Zionism" is not mine.
You could define Zionism as I do, prescriptively, or you could view Zionism descriptively and see it as a movement that has led to mass destruction and death in Gaza and a system akin to apartheid in the West Bank.
If it's hard to accept that view of Zionism (how else to explain that 37% of Jews consider themselves Zionist while nearly 90% say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state), try this experiment: Ask someone if they are a communist.
My guess is that they'll say no. If they do, ask why. I doubt that they will walk you through where Marx and Engels got it wrong in the Communist Manifesto. Instead, they'll probably point to the Soviet Union, Mao's China, or Castro's Cuba as examples of how communism plays out in the real world.
Many see today's Israel as what Zionism means in real life, and they don't like what they see. Unless we reverse the path Israel's government is on, history will judge them as correct. Israel's drive toward annexation of the West Bank is leading toward the end of Israeli democracy and isolation from the rest of the world, including the United States.
The question is whether Zionism inherently leads to something like Netanyahu's government (read Nathan J. Robinson's account of how a 1920s journalist came to oppose Zionism) or whether Zionism can go down another path, just as (we hope) Trump is an aberration rather than just a matter of time under a democratic system.
That's why it's important for those who support the traditional definition of Zionism to oppose Netanyahu's destructive policies. Retired IDF brigadier general Yoni Shimshoni, who I interviewed last month, last week urged Jewish Americans to speak out against Netanyahu's government because its policies "sound the death knell of modern liberal Zionism."
That's why we should stop acting as if "pro-Israel" means hawkishness and opposition to Palestinian national aspirations and start seeing that blind support for Netanyahu's policies is not pro-Israel and that those who speak out against those policies speak for most Jewish Americans (67% of Jewish Americans view Netanyahu unfavorably and 55% oppose the way Israel conducted the war in Gaza).
If you think that Zionism inherently leads to what we are seeing now, then you will not support Zionism and might be among the 24% of Jewish Americans who support a binational state (the same poll found that 51% of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 support a binational state).
Given that nearly 90% of Jewish Americans support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, my guess is that support for a binational state might reflect despair that a two-state solution is out of reach rather than a preference over a two-state solution.
Both the Republican Party and Israel's current government have rejected a two-state solution. The answer should not be despair, but to vote both governments out of office.
As Israeli journalist Rachel Fink writes, "The people of Israel do not need you to stand with Israel in a show of blanket solidarity. We would much rather you stand with us, in active opposition to our government."
We will get nowhere if we argue about who rejected what and whose history in the land is longer. As Danny Seidemann, an Israeli who has advised several Israeli and American governments about Jerusalem, once told me, it is regrettable that when opponents of a two-state solution say "mine is longer than yours," they mean history.
Seven million Palestinians and seven million Jews live between the river and the sea. They are not going anywhere, regardless of how they got there. They both have legitimate claims to the land between the river and the sea. What happened in the past is important. We cannot let it dictate our future.
In Case You Missed It:
- Rabbi Rachel Timoner, explaining her decision to resign from the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn following its decision to boycott Israeli products, writes that "the only hope for the over 14 million people who live in Israel and the occupied territories is a vision that is both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli." She writes that unlike other boycott movements, BDS attempts to effectively eliminate a country rather than change it, and that BDS has succeeded only in strengthening the Israeli right and weakening the Israeli left.
- Someone must have said Israel-diaspora relations cannot get much worse, to which Netanyahu must have replied, "hold my beer." Esther Solomon writes that Netanyahu is "pushing the appointment of eye-poppingly far-right pundit and advisor Caroline Glick to the post of consul general in New York."
- It's not a coincidence that the dumbest replies to my newsletter come from people who send me Instagram or other videos instead of spelling out in their own words why they disagree. Here's why, and it applies to everyone who thinks scrolling is thinking, not just students.
Jewish Insider Fails of the Week. Daniel Bral nails Tuesday's fail.
On Wednesday, for some inexplicable reasons, the American Jewish Committee chose to pair an unrepresentative spokesperson for the Democratic Party, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), with Rep. Dave McCormick (R-PA) to talk about antisemitism. Jewish Insider uncritically "reported" on what they said, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and talking about the fringes of the Democratic Party (a handful of Democrats out of 435 House members) but not the head of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, and his record on antisemitism.
The most powerful Republican in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), displays a Christian Nationalist flag outside his office and "is deeply connected in political practice and philosophy to Christian Nationalism, more so than any other Speaker in American history," as documented in a Congressional Freethought Caucus white paper. Note to JI: Christian Nationalism is not good for the Jews. No mention at all of Mike Johnson or the 20 or so other Republicans who display Christian Nationalist flags outside their offices, but those handful of Democrats...gotta watch out for them.
Tweets of the Week. Leah Greenberg, Damon Linker, Dow, and Hunter Biden.
Facebook Post of the Week. Elad Nehorai.
Video Clip of the Week. Just as relevant now speech about immigrants by Shakespeare.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. The Small Faces - Itchykoo Park.
The Fine Print. Read the fine print before you reply or send me anything.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read. If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, your luck continues. You can subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday for free. Just click here.
Be sure to read my posts on distinguishing anti-Zionism from antisemitism, understanding the words Zionism, apartheid, and genocide, how to heal the generational rift on Israel and antisemitism, and the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
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