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August 2, 2026
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- Nearly half of all Americans think Netanyahu should be arrested and more than 40% think that Israel has committed genocide. It's hard to chalk this up to antisemitism when polling of the Jewish community shows similar sentiments.
- Israel has a reality problem, not a public relations problem. That reality is Benjamin Netanyahu and his government's policies. A change in Israel's government will improve Israel's security and strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship.
- But we have to do our part: A new Israeli government might improve Israel's standing among Democrats, but the problem that increasingly influential isolationist Republicans have with Israel is not Israel's policies, but Israel itself, which different Israeli policies will not address. The solution is a change in Israel's government accompanied by a change in our government, starting by electing more Democrats in the midterms.
- The word "genocide" is used by different people to mean different things. We need to understand how we define "genocide" to have intelligent conversations about it.
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Friends,
It's not just that guy in New York: A July 25 - 27 Economist/YouGov Poll found that 49% of Americans think that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested. 43% think that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians. 47% think Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes. The poll did not define "genocide" for the respondents.
Using the legal definition of genocide (more on that below), a Washington Post poll from October 2025 found that 39% of Jewish Americans think Israel is guilty of genocide, 10% had no opinion, and 51% think Israel is not guilty of genocide. Had I been polled, I would have been among the 10%; I don't know. The poll used the correct methodology for polling Jewish voters and also found that 61% of Jewish Americans think Israel committed war crimes.
I don't think antisemitism explains why the views of Americans in general toward Israel are similar to the views of Jewish Americans toward Israel.
It is not a settled fact that Israel is committing genocide, but it is not a far-fetched, fringe claim either. It is not antisemitic to think that Israel is committing genocide, whether one is right or wrong. It would be antisemitic to claim that all Jews are responsible for Israel's actions, real or imagined.
Accusing those who say Israel is committing genocide or war crimes of "blood libel" proves nothing other than the person using the term does not understand what "blood libel" is. The term "blood libel" has a specific meaning. We should not distort it, and we should not distort history, to suit our political agendas.
Israel's image in the U.S. is based on its conduct. Blaming it all on antisemitism is tempting because that absolves Israel of all responsibility. Americans have supported Israel through most of its modern history, including in the days and weeks following October 7.
What has changed is not that substantial numbers of Americans woke up one day as antisemites. What has changed is that substantial numbers of Americans see Israel's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank and wonder why their tax dollars seem to be supporting this conduct (as opposed to other terrible suffering throughout the world not inflicted using arms subsidized by the U.S.).
The answer is not to blame Israel's standing on antisemitism, but to change Israel's conduct by changing its leadership. Benjamin Netanyahu's policies, not a handful of DSA Democrats, are primarily responsible for the rupture in U.S.-Israel relations and the deterioration of Israel's public standing in America.
On Monday, I attended the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative's in-person fireside chat with Yair Lapid, leader of the Israeli opposition. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro spoke with Lapid for about an hour.
Lapid said that Israel must "send Netanyahu out to restore bipartisanship" and that "the Democratic Party is not the enemy."
Israel has a reality problem, not a public relations problem, and the reality is Netanyahu, for whom Lapid had some advice:
“If a minister in your government says a nuclear bomb should be dropped on Gaza, fire him. If a minister in your government says there are circumstances in which it is acceptable to starve the civilian population, fire him. If a minister stands over a large group of handcuffed activists lying on the floor of a detention facility, waving a flag and mocking them, fire him." (h/t Ron Kampeas.)
Watch Lapid's to-do list (less than three minutes) and if you have time, watch the full hour.
If you don't have time, read Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib's concise and accurate summary.
Lapid also said that the violence in the West Bank could be easily stopped; "it's not complicated." Just send some army battalions and police to stop it. But Netanyahu won't because "he thought he could ride the tiger," and now the tiger (Jewish extremists and terrorists) is riding him.
What should we do? Lapid told the largely Jewish audience that "the best solution is to speak your minds. It is a betrayal of the concept of family not to speak out."
The answer to Jewish American alienation from Israel is not to turn away from Israel or oppose the concept of Israel. Mickey Gitzen suggests that we "turn toward Israel, to face down violent settlers in the West Bank and support the Israeli activists and leaders who are fighting for safety and dignity for all."
That's how we can be proud of Israel, support Israel, and shift American opinion back in support of Israel.
Of course, it's not that simple. It is true, as Michael Koplow points out, that Israel's decline in support among Democrats is primarily caused "by what people are seeing on the ground, whether it be the wasteland in Gaza or the constant Jewish terrorism that goes unaddressed in the West Bank...which can be alleviated with a change in Israeli government and a set of different policies."
So far, so good. But on the isolationist right that is ascendant in the Republican Party, Koplow explains, the issue is not what Israel does but what Israel is: a "small country that is allegedly manipulating American foreign policy...into doing things that are not in American interests."
A new Israeli government and new policies will not solve the isolationist right's problem with Israel. The best we can do on that score is to work not only to change Israel's government, but to change ours by returning Democrats to office.
What does "genocide" mean, anyway? For some, "genocide" is synonymous with the Holocaust (in which case nothing else is genocide) or it means killing or attempting to kill everyone, in which case what Israel did in Gaza is not genocide.
For others, "genocide" seems to mean causing widespread death and suffering, especially if its legitimate military necessity is unclear. To those people, what happened in Gaza might be genocide.
Others use the legal definition of genocide: Certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories: Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Under the legal definition, it is not enough to prove the acts that constitute genocide. Intent to commit those acts must be proven.
Based on the legal definition, scholars such as Omer Bartov think Israel is committing genocide.
Bartov's article is essential reading, but it might not convince you. The experts could be wrong. But after you read Bartov's article, you'll see why charges of genocide against Israel cannot be dismissed as easily as some might like.
An expert in the field told me privately regarding Israel and Gaza that "Evidence of genocidal intent is overwhelming; the question is whether the conduct flowed from that intent. [This expert's] view is that there is no question that there are Israeli officers and soldiers who could be successfully prosecuted for genocide. Their words and deeds are closely linked. The question of whether the State of Israel as such is responsible for genocide is more complicated."
Jay Michaelson writes that despite evidence that Israel may have committed genocide under the legal definition, "it is still an open question, one that should be settled in courts of law."
Michaelson concludes that "the left was wrong to make the word 'genocide' into a yes/no test of one’s political acceptability, and these would-be defenders of Israel are wrong to make it a test of whether one is an antisemite."
The International Court of Justice did not find that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. That determination has yet to be made. The ICJ concluded that some of the acts complained about, if they were proven, could fall under the United Nations’ Convention on Genocide. This article explains the confusion about the term "plausible" as used in that decision.
Some argue that because Israel has not been found guilty of genocide by an international court, allegations of genocide should be stated as that: allegations of genocide, not assertions of the fact of genocide. Michael Plitnick explains this argument and its flaws.
Most of us agree that Germany committed genocide against the Jews during World War II and that Turkey did not commit genocide against the Armenians earlier in the century even though neither Germany nor Turkey was tried and found guilty of genocide.
Moreover, part of the purpose of identifying genocides is to stop them before they are completed, not to call them out only retroactively, it being understood that saying genocide is being committed does not mean that a court of law has made this determination.
If you want to understand allegations of genocide against Israel that pre-date October 7, read documentation of Israeli actions against Palestinians in 1948, which contradict what some of us were taught to believe, that "close to 800,000 Arabs fled at their own initiative and at the directive of their leaders." (tl;dr: What we were taught was wrong; many were expelled or murdered, but whether Israel's actions constituted genocide is another question.)
In Case You Missed It:
- T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights organization, condemned escalating settler violence as a danger to both Palestinians and Israelis, and warned that Netanyahu and his allies are exploiting and promoting the violence to pursue their goals of settlement and annexation, and to lift their election prospects.
- Gershon Baskin explains the truth that we need to be reminded of again and again: "There are no military solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are only military operations, tactical victories, devastating defeats, and temporary changes in the balance of power. None resolves the central reality: Two peoples live in the same land, and neither will abandon its national future."
- Shaul Magid reflects on the hate at the “United Against Hate” Jewish anti-Mamdani rally in New York last week.
- In a long but vital article, Peter Beinart writes that mainstream Jewish organizations (he names them and provides receipts) have abandoned the democratic solidarity that animated establishment American Jewish politics for roughly eighty years because "defending persecuted minorities would alienate the vindictive white Christian supremacists who run the federal government."
Jewish Insider Fail of the Week. Turning this week's fail over to Ilan Goldenberg, who asks us to "imagine if liberal and moderate Democrats religiously consumed Fox News every morning and then spent the rest of the day reacting to its framing of political events. We’d immediately recognize that as problematic. Yet something similar happens every day in the Jewish political ecosystem." Follow his advice: Stop Reading Jewish Insider as Straight News.
Social Media of the Week. mindflakes and Internet Hall of Fame.
Video Clip of the Week. Police Squad: All Six Intros in One Video.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, John Mayall - Messin' With The Kid.
The Fine Print. Read the fine print before you reply or send me anything.
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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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