Are the neighbors impressed? (Yossi Alpher - July 14, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Have the IDF’s recent military achievements, culminating in the blows inflicted on Iran, enhanced Israel’s relations with its neighbors?

A. That depends which neighbors, and what the circumstances are. Certainly not the Palestinians, with whom the situation gets worse and worse.

But let’s come back to that later. Instead, we can start with Israel’s veteran peace partners, Egypt and Jordan. Quite a few Israelis stranded abroad by the 12-Day War’s freezing of commercial aviation to and from Israel returned home overland without incident via Egypt and Jordan. Moreover, the Israel Air Force overflew Jordan unhindered on its way to and from Iran. And Jordan’s air defenses were activated repeatedly against Iranian UAVs headed for Israel.

All this strategic interaction is not exactly new to the countries involved. But it appears to have been upgraded last month when Israel needed it.

Q. The IAF also overflew Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon repeatedly, unhindered, on its way to bomb Iran. What does this tell us about Israel’s relations with these countries?

A. Damascus and Beirut recently witnessed dramatic leadership changes that installed anti-Iran forces in power. Then too, neither country has an air force that might conceivably oppose IAF overflights. But this is not the case with Iraq, whose regime is Shiite-dominated and broadly pro-Iranian. That Iraqi aircraft and air defenses did not oppose the IAF speaks volumes about the Arab perception of the evolving balance of forces in the region and the need to adjust, pragmatically.

Q. Will we now see additional Arab countries joining the Abraham Accords? Making peace or normalizing relations with Israel?

A. Speculation centers on Syria, where a revolution installed a pragmatic ex-jihadist anti-Iranian, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in power last December. Al-Sharaa has already met with US President Trump and his regime has reportedly established clandestine security links with neighboring Israel. While Turkey, which backed the anti-Assad Syrian resistance led by Al-Sharaa, is considered a more dominant neighbor than Israel, Al-Sharaa is known to be wary of trading Tehran’s Assad-era hegemony for that of Ankara. 

An overt, not-too-warm Israel link focusing on mutual security and commerce could conceivably help to balance things for Syria. So could ties to Azerbaijan, which has security links with Israel and is reportedly mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus.

If there is going to be a post-12 Day War breakthrough in Arab relations with Israel, Syria is the prime candidate. Trump administration pressure and financial links, backed by Saudi and UAE generosity to Al-Sharaa, are key. Trump has already removed Assad-era US sanctions. Turkey for its part is cooperative, particularly insofar as it wants to send home some three million Syrian refugees from the Assad era. 

Then, too, because of Lebanon’s delicate ethnic composition, including several hundred thousand Palestinians and a large Shiite sector, Beirut is not likely to warm up relations with Israel even after the latter’s defeat of Hezbollah, unless Syria does first. Meanwhile, with Washington’s help, the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire is taking root, expanding, and laying the groundwork for a possible future Israel-Lebanon peace breakthrough.

One more pressing and delicate issue in Syria-Israel relations is the Druze minority. In Israel, the Druze are influential, particularly when it comes to the welfare of their brethren in neighboring states; in Syria they fear oppression by the new Islamist regime. Along with the territorial issue, Israel needs to negotiate with Syria regarding the status and welfare of Syrian Druze.

Q. And the territorial issue? 

A. In the post-October 7 era, Israel fears surprise Islamist attack along its borders – even, conceivably, attack by Islamists connected with the not-yet-stable Al-Sharaa regime in Syria. Accordingly, the IDF wants to hold onto fortified outposts it has built on the Syrian side of the Golan over the past half year of anarchy in Syria. Al-Sharaa demands Israeli withdrawal, even as he acknowledges that Israel will hold onto the remaining Golan territory it conquered in 1967.

Q. Leaving aside Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, the 12-Day War reminded old-timers that belligerents Israel and Iran were once friends and even allies…

A. Prior to the fall of the Shah’s regime in Iran in 1979, Israel, Iran, and Turkey were allies in a strategic pact known as “Trident.” They collaborated against shared Arab and Soviet enemies alike. Now not only is Iran Israel’s enemy, but an increasingly Islamist Turkey under President Erdogan is hostile too. 

Back before 1979, these three regional non-Arab powers – Israel, Iran, and Turkey – confronted an often hostile Arab world. Now Israel finds itself contemplating a hostile non-Arab Islamist northern belt and a friendlier Sunni Arab world. Notably, prior to 1979 the only Arab actor that aided the anti-Shah Iranian Islamist opposition led by Ayatollah Khomeini was the Assad regime in Syria with its Alawite quasi-Shiite ethnic orientation. 

In the Middle East, what goes around comes around.

Q. In the course of recent decades, Israel has destroyed an Iraqi military nuclear program, a Syrian nuclear project and now, together with the United States, an Iranian nuclear project (or at least a portion of it). What is the message for the Middle East?

A. That a hegemonic Israel wants to keep the region nuclear-free, except for itself. This image of Israel after the recent 12-Day War says a lot about the real nature of an evolving Israel-Arab relationship: built not on warmth but on deterrence and deference. 

Q. But let’s get back to the Palestinians. Are improved Israel-Arab relations conditioned at all on ending the war in Gaza and restraining settler violence in the West Bank?

A. The 2019-2020 Abraham Accords, which witnessed breakthroughs in Israel’s relations with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, had the flimsiest of Palestinian linkages. The message then was that commercial and security ties with Israel, and a Trump administration payoff, were more important to the Arab countries involved than the Palestinian issue. Now, conceivably, the message could once again focus on security ties with Israel (against Iran) and a Trump payoff.

Q. Perhaps in the case of Syria. But Saudi Arabia?

A. The Saudis appear to have made it clear that they will not normalize ties with Israel until and unless the Gaza War ends and Israel at least commits to the emergence of a Palestinian state. As matters stand, this is not about to happen. Last week the IDF attacked the Gazan town of Bet Hanoun, scarcely one kilometer from the Gaza-Israel border, for the fourth time in two years. This was yet another costly attempt to clear Hamas fighters from tunnels bordering on Israel. To watch this happening yet again is to appreciate that Israel has no formula for outright victory in this war.

Q. And a formula for peace?

A. Not as long as PM Netanyahu and his messianist supporters insist that the war on Hamas has to continue even after yet another partial hostage-for-prisoner exchange. (This, despite the view of some 75 percent of Israelis--in the latest Channel 12 poll--that Israel should end the war now.) And not as long as Hamas for its part insists that the IDF has to clear out of Gaza and leave the Islamist movement in power before it hands over the last hostage.

Q. So where does that leave Israel?

A. Severely hemorrhaging internally as the Palestinian issue and renewed ‘judicial reform’ erode Israeli democracy and society from within. And as a largely indifferent Arab world looks on, benefitting from economic and security ties to Israel while addressing the Palestinians as “Israel’s problem.” 

In other words – as Israel increasingly resembles the rest of the Middle East: non-democratic, tribalized, and militarized.

Our White House rally (July 7th, 2025)

So many of you came out and joined your voices together to call for an end to the war, for all of the hostages to be brought home, and for aid to be sent into Gaza. Thank you -- for showing up despite the rain, for demanding better for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and for calling for accountability and responsibility from both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.  

Click here to see a handful of photos from the rally.

In-person rallies like this one are a bright spot in these dark times. We are grateful to be in this work with all of you.  

How you can help: Support a health clinic in Gaza

Nearly every day I get asked “how can I help?” Sometimes my answer is to suggest you reach out to your elected officials. Sometimes it’s for you to speak up in our Jewish communal spaces. Today, it is helping to fund a new health clinic that is being launched in Gaza by Project Rozana, a long-time partner of ours. New Jewish Narrative is raising funds to support this initiative and I invite you to be a part of it. 

Make a donation to help fund a new health clinic in Gaza. Put “Gaza Clinic” in the comments field on this form and every dollar of your gift will go directly to support this effort.

Among the many terrors of this war has been the impact on the civilians in Gaza, who lack food and medical supplies. NJN stands for the principle that humanitarian supplies must never be used as weapons of war. Sadly, the Israeli government has failed to live up to this standard. 

That’s why our Gaza Clinic campaign is so important to me. It is an opportunity to both provide tangible support while also sending the message that the Jewish community rejects the Israeli government’s weaponization of humanitarian aid. 

If you want to provide tangible support to Gazans through a trusted partner, click here to donate to the Gaza Clinic campaign.

The new clinic is being set up by Project Rozana, a longtime partner of ours that works on healthcare issues with communities in conflict. Rozana has a track record of working in Israel, in the West Bank, and in Gaza. Another clinic that Rozana supported in Gaza during this war provided more than 50,000 medical services in just eight months. The new clinic—which is to be set up in Beit Lahia in central Gaza—is projected to provide a comparable amount of services. 

This is an uncertain moment. Ceasefire talks are ongoing. Prime Minister Netanyahu is in Washington holding multiple meetings with President Trump. We are actively engaged in supporting diplomatic efforts to end this war, return the hostages, and provide aid to people in Gaza. 

I do know with certainty, however, that the clinic we are supporting in Gaza will provide desperately needed services—and it matters that a group like NJN is supporting it. I hope you join me in this campaign.

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? (Hadar Susskind - July 7, 2025)

Hadar Susskind is the President and CEO of New Jewish Narrative.

Alligator Alcatraz. Gaza City. Hostage Square. Texas Hill Country, and wherever the next mass shooting happens. Some days it’s overwhelming. Some days I ask myself, “how can I continue to do this work?” 

On Friday, I went to my local 4th of July parade. I’m sure many of you did so as well. But I also know plenty of people who felt that, given our circumstances right now in the U.S., they didn’t feel like they could celebrate. But I went, and I watched as a woman marched in the parade with a sign declaring Langston Hughes’s famous words:

“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.”

America was established as a deeply flawed country. But at its heart was a promise to live up to the high ideals articulated in our Declaration of Independence: We could be a democracy that upholds the rights of all, where it is a self-evident truth that every person was created equal, that every person has inalienable rights.

And even on the 4th of July, Israel, the other country where I have spent years of my life, is never far from my mind. That country too was established as a deeply flawed democracy. While America’s original sin was slavery, Israel’s was the dispossession of the Palestinians followed in 1967 by the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. 

But Israel too, was born with an articulation of high ideals. Its founding document promises that “it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” 

We all know that the Israel that exists today falls short of these ideals, and that there have always been very significant shortcomings. 

The shift away from these ideals has been strongest since Benjamin Netanyahu came into power in 2009. Instead of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, we saw wars and a decision to prop up Hamas with suitcases of cash. Instead of new basic laws that enshrined individual rights like the two that passed in 1992, he passed the Nation State law, which, among its many faults, discriminates against Israel’s non-Jewish citizens.  

So what do I do? What can any of us do when the countries we love are shedding the values we cherish?

Here’s what I did with the rest of my July 4th weekend: I organized.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is set to meet with President Trump at the White House on Monday. We at New Jewish Narrative are organizing a rally at the White House to call for an immediate end to the war, a return of ALL of the hostages, and a rush of humanitarian supplies into Gaza. 

When I came home from the parade, I opened my laptop and I started sending out emails. I opened my phone and I started making phone calls. I am doing what I can to make this rally a success, to make it clear that we want this war to end now. And hopefully, this rally can be a part of a push to a ceasefire and, eventually, a peace agreement that can bring Israel closer to those aspirational values that I refuse to let go of. 

This Independence Day, I recommitted myself to working to close the gap between the ideals that my two countries were born of, and the painful reality of what they are today. It is hard to take in all that is happening, and to take on the many challenges that we face. But I will not pretend that I just don’t see. 

Will potential deals with Syria and Saudi Arabia help Netanyahu end the Gaza War? (Dina Kraft - June 30, 2025)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

I woke up just before dawn in Sydney, Australia the morning of June 12, and sleepily got out of bed. It was my last day in the country, and I was determined to see the famed sunrise over Bondi Beach with my friend hosting me. (I had travelled to Australia to speak to the Jewish community at Limmud, a festival of Jewish learning, with a stop planned in New Zealand.) Under a pink sky, and amid its cliffs and coves, legions of swimmers, surfers, rugby players, and runners come out at daybreak, despite the chill of Down Under winter, to seize the break of day together.  

It was indeed a breathtaking scene, but I had trouble relaxing and taking it in. Just before setting out I had glanced at my phone and noticed my fellow Middle East correspondents from The Christian Science Monitor had been busy updating the group chat while I slept. 

Their texts were full of speculation of a possible Iranian strike amid reports U.S. embassy and CENTCOM staff were packing up and ordering non-essential staff and dependents’ departures across the region. Those initial reports morphed into news the next day (at which point I was in Auckland, New Zealand) that Israel had attacked Iran. I felt my body freeze at hearing of the attack. I was basically the furthest point in the world from Israel. My husband was on a work trip in Boston and our two teenagers were home alone in Tel Aviv. I describe the excruciating situation more here. 

Now that there is a ceasefire after 12 long, terrifying days for the people of Israel and Iran, a war within a war is over – an unprecedented one which saw massive destruction in Israeli cities as well as death even for those sheltering in supposedly safe rooms in some cases. 

For Israelis the pressing question now returns to when will the 22-month war with Gaza end. The war that scores of retired generals and security officials and even some past prime ministers have said has exhausted itself and no longer holds any military purpose. Some 70 percent of Israelis have long said it needs to end in order to bring the hostages home. 

In Israel public pressure has been on for months, poured into anguished cries and street protests, but it seems to be intensifying now in light of 20 soldiers killed in the month of June, the ongoing agony and mortal peril of the surviving hostages, and the contrast of seeing how relatively quickly the ceasefire with Iran was forged.

There are also those who find the ever-growing death toll and suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza unbearable. But most Israelis are shielded from images and news of the Palestinian civilian experience in Gaza by a mainstream media that only scarcely reports on it and emotionally removed from it by embracing the oft-repeated line that all Gazans are Hamas supporters. 

But in recent days a change of tone has been emanating from the corridors of power. A pair of ultra-orthodox ministers in the coalition openly questioned the point of continuing the war in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself said the most important goal of the war was to release the hostages, a notable turn of phrase considering he had always in the past coupled it with the other stated war aim: eradicating Hamas. 

Throughout the war Netanyahu has been under pressure from the extreme right flank of his government, i.e. Ministers Bezalal Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, to keep the war in Gaza going to do just that.

On Monday Smotrich said the government should break off any talks with Hamas. “No more dialogue with murderers, no more deals with the devil, no more releasing murderous terrorists.”

Speaking to his fellow Religious Zionism party members, he said:  “It’s time to continue the momentum of victory over the Iranians into a high-intensity war that will destroy the enemy in Gaza and remove the threat for decades to come.” 

But Trump has been pushing for Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza. He is reportedly working on a plan to incentivize ending the war by expanding the Abraham Accords such that Syria and Saudi Arabia might make deals to normalize ties with Israel. 

Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that Trump’s successive Truth Social posts calling for an end to Netanyahu’s ongoing trial are tied to such an ambitious deal in the works, citing an “unnamed senior official close to Netanyahu”.

“It is part of a larger move that is meant to bring an end to the war in Gaza, the release of all the hostages, an end to Netanyahu’s trial, and a serious regional move,” said the anonymous official.

The carrot of Saudi normalization has long been on the table, but it has come at a cost deemed too high by the Netanyahu government – consistently linked by the Saudis to making headway towards a future Palestinian state. But according to some analysts, Israel’s prowess in the Iran war might provide a golden off-ramp for Netanyahu – if not his coalition, which would likely crumble should he approve that deal. 

“The negotiations between Israel and the new Syrian regime are bolstered by a rare confluence of interests. Syrian leader Ahmad al-Sharaa needs foreign investments and sanction relief, while Israel seeks security on its northern border,” Yediot Ahronot reported Monday. 

This deal would also help resolve the puzzle of who would help rebuild and de-radicalize Gaza post-war: the Saudis and the Emirates together. What it means for Netanyahu’s personal political survival, however, is another question. 

From Trump’s perspective and his fixation on a potential Nobel Peace Prize (and potentially Netanyahu’s too) including Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia would be a most viable way to end the Gaza War – far-fetched and overly optimistic as it may sound today. 

Iran has missiles, Israel has an air force and Trump… and then there’s Gaza (Yossi Alpher - June 23, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. How do you ‘distill’ the meaning of Israel’s ‘Rising Lion’ war with Iran at a time when it is still ongoing and metamorphosing almost by the hour?

A. First, we must recognize that Israel’s June 13 preemptive attack was a resounding military maneuver that will apparently have a profound effect on the Middle East and beyond. Whatever happens from here, this achievement cannot be erased. Israel’s demonstration of aerial and intelligence domination of Iran is unprecedented. So is Syrian and Iraqi passivity or neutrality when confronted with Israel’s massive overflights. Even the historic US B2 attack on Fordow could only take place after the Israel Air Force had cleared the skies over Iran.

A lot of the Israel Defense Force’s audacity in attacking Iran reflects and responds to Israel’s trauma from October 7, 2023. That is a topic for separate analysis. Here we attempt to ‘distill’ the meaning of the war by focusing on strategic underpinnings that continue to underlie and inform events. And by focusing on the dangers of overreach by Israel and/or the United States.

Q. Start with the strategic underpinnings . . . 

A. There are aspects of this war that fit classic definitions. 

This is a ‘war by choice’ for both Israel and the US. They are not responding to direct attack. They set the timing and took the initiative. Further, this is not a ground war: none of the belligerents has a common border with another, and none has landed troops on enemy territory. 

As this is an air war, it is hard to conceive of a direct military victory. By and large (and despite the boasts of air force commanders), wars are not ‘won’ from the air, but on the ground. On the other hand, Iran has been stripped of its air defenses and is today helpless against attack from the air.

While the US--unless attacked directly by Iran-- can cease its own war with Iran at any time, and may already have, Israel needs an exit strategy if it is going to wind down Iran’s missile and UAV attacks against its territory. While Prime Minister Netanyahu gets near-universal credit for daring and initiative in taking the war directly to Iran, he is also being criticized for starting a war with Iran, precisely without having an exit strategy.

Q. Isn’t Israel’s coordination with the US sufficient in this regard?

A. It is hard even to comment on this issue when we are dealing with President Trump, whose remarks on the war, as on all issues, are totally unpredictable and whose strategic insights are practically nonexistent. Yet in attacking Iran directly, Trump was prepared to take a major risk and go up against many of his advisers and much of his frequently declared MAGA and America First political philosophies. Can Israel under Netanyahu--himself a highly flawed leader--put its faith in this man and engineer an exit from Iran? 

On the other hand, I cannot recall an instance of US-Israel strategic and tactical coordination such as we have seen since June 13 and particularly on Saturday, June 21. Will that coordination prevail during the exit phase?

Meanwhile, Iranian missiles keep falling on Israel and doing genuine damage.

Q. Apropos those missile attacks, how is Israeli morale?

A. The best indicator is the fact that, despite everything, Israelis trapped abroad by the outbreak of war with Iran are going to extreme lengths, and expense, to find a way home and endure the war in bomb shelters.

Q. You give Netanyahu credit for daring and initiative in attacking Iran. But doesn’t the war serve his domestic and political agenda?

A. Definitely. Netanyahu’s trial is on hold. His coalition, under threat due to the Haredi conscription issue, is again stable. The political opposition--Lapid, Gantz--is rallying around the flag. 

But before we define the Iran war as a cynical maneuver, recall that Netanyahu is notoriously risk-shy. Like the IDF offensive in Gaza, which he hesitated to initiate after October 7, this war, too, however successful it looks in the short run, could degenerate into a violent stalemate and a humanitarian disaster.

Q. Let’s go back to basics. Was Israel justified in attacking Iran?

A. Look at Iranian intentions and capabilities. Iran has been threatening to destroy Israel for 40 years. For decades, the international community did nothing when one United Nations member repeatedly threatened to obliterate another. Iran clearly had belligerent intentions toward Israel. 

As for capabilities, in recent years Iran had a rapidly growing stockpile of fissile material, an expanding enrichment infrastructure, and a growing number of undeclared nuclear facilities. Leaving aside a variety of unverifiable ‘scare countdowns’ for Iran ‘getting the bomb,’ all these were indicators that Tehran was swiftly building an unstoppable weaponized nuclear capability. It was also rapidly expanding a missile arsenal easily capable of reaching Israel.

In Israeli (and American) eyes, Iran was an imminent threat. Lately, a conflict-shy American president, Trump, gave Iran 60 days to enter into constructive nuclear demilitarization negotiations. It did not. True, that same US president rashly threw away nuclear control arrangements negotiated by one of his predecessors. Still, here he was trying to renegotiate them, without Iranian cooperation. 

European mediation with Iran had just failed. International nuclear control institutions were condemning Iranian violations. Israel and the US had apparently reached a high level of operational coordination capability. Even allowing that additional diplomatic efforts with Iran may have been possible and advisable, all the stars were aligned from the Israeli and US standpoints.

Q. Yet everything could still go wrong. . . 

A. Absolutely. Iran could retaliate by attacking neighboring Arab oil producers and their production facilities. It could close the Hormuz Strait and ask its proxy, the Yemeni Houthis, to close Bab al-Mandeb, thus potentially throwing the global energy market into chaos. It could attack American forces in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. It could unveil, whether bona fide or not, a ‘secret A-bomb plan’ to project the specter of nuclear escalation. It could unleash terror resources embedded worldwide. 

Iran could, in short, endeavor to drag the United States and/or Israel into its own version of a Vietnam- or Iraq-style war of attrition. Toward Israel specifically, Iran could keep firing missiles and UAVs until its reserves run out, then endeavor to build more.

Q. Israel has declared it wants to dismantle Iran’s military nuclear project. Here, it enjoys fairly broad support. But we also encounter Israeli threats, and some American threats, to kill Supreme Leader Khamenei. And we have seen Israel target Iranian nuclear scientists, generals, a broadcast station. Is this expanded target list-wise?

A. Some of the threats seem to be attempts to intimidate as a kind of reinforcement of nuclear demands. Some of the assassinations, e.g., of nuclear scientists, dovetail with attacks on nuclear installations as part and parcel of Israel’s broad strategic anti-nuclear objective. 

But some of the attacks, e.g., assassination of generals, make no sense--if only because Iran has no difficulty replacing the generals and their removal serves no obvious lasting anti-nuclear or anti-missile purpose. Indeed, these assassinations are reminiscent of IDF bragging about killing this or that Hamas battalion commander in Gaza, then killing his replacement, as if Hamas has no manpower reserves and this is an achievement worthy of trumpeting. 

Imagine an enemy obliterating the entire IDF general staff, some 20 generals, with one strike. There would be a new general staff within a day. Iran is almost certainly no different.

As for trying to assassinate Khamenei, and on a broader level trying to catalyze regime change, this is a mistake. Killing a legitimate sovereign leader of another country crosses a glaring red line in terms of international morality. Catalyzing regime change has rarely if ever succeeded for the US and never for Israel, e.g. in Lebanon in the 1980s and today in Gaza.

Q. Why is no one helping Iran?

A. Hezbollah, Iran’s southern Lebanon Shiite proxy, has been defeated by Israel and is licking its wounds. The Houthis have fired a missile or two, but nothing more. The rest of the Muslim world is Sunni, hence wary of Shiite Iran and its expansionist aims, or is mixed Sunni-Shiite (e.g., Pakistan, Afghanistan), hence anxious not to catalyze domestic tensions.

The most intriguing refusal to help Iran came Saturday from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who noted laconically that “Israel is almost a Russian-speaking country today” (hence, by implication, presumably enjoys immunity). This did not stop Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi from traveling to Moscow this week to invoke the Iran-Russia “strategic partnership.” At the broadest regional and global level, disdain for Iran’s military needs at its time of (self-induced!) crisis may, over time, be understood as an indicator of the decline of Iran as a regional power--and/or the decline of the Islamic Republic regime.

Q. A word about the Gaza war?

A. Since the October 7 debacle, Israel has defeated Hezbollah and now inflicted a major defeat against Iran, patron and financial backer of all Israel’s Islamist enemies. Israel’s military achievements helped bring down an Iranian-proxy regime in Syria. But while the IDF has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip and decimated much of Hamas, Israel has not defeated Hamas and has not freed all the hostages it holds. Worse, it has allowed Jewish messianist thinking and beliefs to interfere with the war and its objectives. And it has inflicted extensive death and destruction on Gazans. 

Will its dramatic gains against Iran somehow impel Israel to keep trying militarily against Hamas despite repeated failure? Or will they give even the likes of Netanyahu the confidence and courage to end the Gaza War through diplomacy? Egypt, Qatar, and the Palestinian Authority, even Trump’s administration, are waiting to help.

What the Iranian missiles are doing to Israel (Noam Shelef - June 16, 2025)

Noam Shelef (he/him) joined New Jewish Narrative in 2025 as the Vice President of Communications. The issues that NJN champions have always been close to his heart, and he began his career in 1997 as an intern for Americans for Peace Now. In the years since, Noam has advocated in support of progressive causes in Israel, fighting for LGBTQ rights, and to end practices harmful to girls in Africa.

It has been four days since the Israeli government started bombing targets in Iran, prompting Iranian ballistic missile attacks, and opening up a new war. 

Israelis have never lived through this type of war before. Israel’s missile defense system is able to intercept more than 90% of the missiles that Iran is launching, but those that penetrate are doing tremendous damage. This morning’s attack killed at least eight people, bringing the death toll in Israel to 24 with more than 500 injured. We’ve all seen the photos of entire buildings destroyed. On the morning radio shows there is talk about how the damage from the shock wave extends blocks in every direction—with damage to vehicles and more buildings, some of which are now clearly uninhabitable. 

In 2024, there were two rounds of Iranian ballistic missile attacks at Israel, in April and in October. After each, Israeli spokespersons and the talking heads of the Israeli mainstream media boasted about how little impact the missiles had. They made out the Iranian missile threat to be a paper tiger. 

But after the attack in October, I felt very differently: One of the missiles hit an empty school in the city of Gedera. I know exactly where that school is. My grandparents’ farm, the site of so many of my childhood memories, is only a couple of miles south. And Gedera is no longer the same sleepy town it was in my childhood. Its population mushroomed with the construction of new densely populated neighborhoods. In the October attack, I saw just how lucky Israel got. The school happened to be empty because the attack struck outside of school hours. Had the missile veered a hundred meters, it would have hit some of those new apartment buildings. However capable Israel’s missile defense system was, it had allowed a missile to slip by and land in an urban area.

That apprehension came back to me on Friday. A colleague told me that the Kirya, the IDF’s headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv, had been hit. It would be hours more before I saw the video footage in slow motion and could see a missile go down near the iconic Marganit Tower at the center of the Kirya. Did the missile land inside the grounds of the military base? Or was it just outside? I couldn’t quite tell. I also knew that Israel’s censor would not allow details of the strike to be reported by the press. All I had access to was social media rumors. This is the fog of war. 

On the news broadcasts, as the television and radio hosts try to fill the time, a new mantra has emerged, “Shelters save lives.” We are told once and again how important it is to be in a bomb shelter or safe room that meets the building codes. If one is not available, then we go to a staircase or an interior room. It’s never safe to shelter in a bathroom. The tiles can explode from the pressure. But are the shelters really safe? An expert comes on the air to answer. There are no guarantees, he says. But none of the bombing casualties in Israel’s history were killed in a shelter. It’s the best choice Israelis have. Shelters save lives.

Buildings constructed in recent decades have safe rooms. The buildings that were new when I was a kid have bomb shelters, usually in the basement. But older buildings might have no shelters at all. In those cases, time permitting, Israelis are told to find a public bomb shelter. 

For Jewish Israelis the lack of shelters within buildings is a particular problem in cities like Tel Aviv with older buildings. But it’s a far bigger problem for Palestinian citizens of Israel. On October 7, and during the war that followed, we saw how the Bedouin towns in the area around Gaza did not have any safe spaces. There was a mobilization after October 7, with the help of groups like the New Israel Fund, to create temporary shelters so that the residents would have some place to go when rockets were fired. It’s a Band-Aid. Decades of discrimination have created enormous disparities between Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel.  

The scale of the problem is on display now. On Saturday night a missile from Iran struck in Tamra, an Arab village near Haifa. Only 40% of Tamra’s 37,000 residents have either a safe room or a shelter, according to the town’s mayor. I’ve seen entrances to public bomb shelters across Israel. But those are rare in Arab cities and towns. There are none in Tamra. When the Iranian missile hit the Khatib home, it killed four: Manar Khatib, a teacher, her two daughters, Shatha and Hala, and her sister-in-law, Manar Diab. Manar Khatib’s husband, Raja, and their youngest daughter, Razan, survived. 

This is a war that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to start now. The political analyst in me knows that he saw a moment of opportunity marked by Iran’s loss of proxies in Hezbollah and the Syrian regime, weakened Iranian air defenses, and the lack of progress in the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran. I see too the domestic benefits for the prime minister in terms of stalling his criminal trial, holding his coalition together, and changing the narrative.

How long will this war go on? How much damage will be done to the Israel I know? How many lives will be lost both in Israel and Iran? Can Iran’s nuclear program really be stopped by military force? Is regime change in Iran just another neocon fever dream? These are the questions all of us are asking. I pray that an end will come soon, but I think that it will take some time for us to find our way through this. 

Integrated failures: coalition, Gaza, Iran (Yossi Alpher - June 9, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. What is the most obvious factor linking Netanyahu’s failures on all three fronts: the coalition, the Gaza war, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

A. The most obvious factor is war.

The ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties that support Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition also support the ongoing Gaza war effort--but refuse to participate in it as soldiers. The right-messianic-settler parties support the war and covet the Gaza territory; if the war ends, they will leave the coalition.

In other words, if the war in Gaza ends, Netanyahu’s coalition loses its right-messianic support and the government falls. On the other hand, as long as the war continues, the issues of conscription of the Haredi sector and the financial penalties that collective draft-dodging incurs for the Haredi community remain volatile and unsolvable. This virtually guarantees that the war will eventually catalyze Haredi departure from the coalition, bring it down, and usher in new elections.

If the Haredim leave in the days ahead--a distinct possibility in view of current Knesset initiatives--Israel could witness new Knesset elections as early as October 2025. Otherwise, elections are mandated by law no later than October 2026. But Netanyahu has already hinted that continuation of the Gaza war could lead him to seek to postpone elections beyond that deadline (there is a precedent from the Yom Kippur War of October 1973).

Q. War in Gaza for another year at least?

A. Meanwhile, the prime minister is going all out to prolong the war with minimum losses for Israel and somehow manageable or eventually reversible international condemnation--yet persuade the Haredim to remain in the coalition. Because of his legal difficulties, Netanyahu needs to remain in office at any cost, including Israel’s well-being.

Q. How is all that supposed to happen? So far it looks like a fiasco.

A. Currently the key appears to be the mysterious Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). It was registered in Delaware in February 2025. Its objective appears to be to demonstrably feed Gazan civilians without a direct connection either to Israel or to United Nations and other recognized international relief organizations, all of whose efforts the IDF has in recent months blocked.

Note that in the eyes of many Israelis the international humanitarian relief community, led by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), is tainted by long-term collaboration with Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorists. UNRWA, it is further alleged, has essentially prolonged the refugee status of Gaza’s Palestinian refugee population rather than rehabilitating and resettling refugees. Yet UNRWA also efficiently fed, clothed, and educated Palestinian refugees in Gaza for several generations until Israel expelled it from the Strip early this year.

By comparison (or in contrast--take your pick), the GHF has thus far established four food distribution points in the Strip. So far, they are open intermittently and have been plagued by extreme violence and heavy Palestinian civilian casualties that are generally attributed to clashes between rioting Gazans and the IDF. The original head of GHF has resigned in protest at its operations, as has the Boston Consulting Group which was hired to help establish and run it. The organization’s funding sources are unclear and are alternately attributed to the IDF Southern Command and anonymous American Christian evangelicals, with the Trump administration reportedly offering $500 million in support.

Note, too, that the GHF operation, which looks more scandalous by the day, is accompanied by an Israeli effort to arm non-Hamas Gazan Bedouin clans that have family connections with neighboring Negev Bedouin. At least one part of the southern Strip near Rafah has reportedly been ‘liberated’ by these new ‘militias’. Their attraction for Israel is apparently their lack of a political agenda for Gaza that could compete with the schemes of right-messianic-settler factions in Netanyahu’s coalition who seek to resettle and annex the Strip.

Q. Déjà vu?

A. Definitely. In past decades, Israel armed local militias in Lebanon and in the West Bank as part of its efforts to combat Hezbollah and Palestinian opposition. These schemes never succeeded; they generally ended in violence and (e.g., the Lebanese Phalangists) in international scandal. In the case of Gaza, the emergence of the GHF was preceded by a concerted Israeli attempt to prevent the supply of food as a means of forcing the civilian population to pressure its Hamas rulers. This is starvation by any other name and, like its predecessors, also failed. Its proponents, misinformed IDF and government adherents of classic medieval siege tactics, have blackened Israel’s name.

Once again, as witnessed on October 7, 2023, Israeli security strategists have failed to understand their enemy. The GHF operation, however clumsy and misconceived, is intended as a means of rectifying the starvation accusations. So far it too has failed.

Q. A failure to understand the Hamas enemy presumably also explains the ongoing absence of a new ceasefire and hostage release on the Gaza front.

A. US-Hamas ceasefire/hostage talks have again stalled. Despite GHF and the militias, Hamas is still the dominant Arab actor in the Strip and its demands have not changed.

It should have been clear to both Israel and the US from the start of this war on October 7, 2023 that release by Hamas of all living hostages would be contingent on ending the war and leaving Hamas in at least partial control of the Strip. Under any alternative arrangement, Hamas understands that by releasing the last hostage it is signing its death warrant. Netanyahu, for his part, knows that both leaving Hamas in power and obtaining release of the last hostage will be understood as a failed end to the war and the end of his coalition.

Paradoxically, then, Hamas and Netanyahu both need to extend the war for their political survival. Under these circumstances, only overwhelming Israeli public pressure or overwhelming Trump administration pressure can end the war in Gaza. Trump has little reason to pressure Netanyahu as long as the US is not dragged into the Gaza war and as long as the Trump romance with the wealthy Persian Gulf oil states prospers despite the war in Gaza.

As for Israeli public pressure, in view of Netanyahu’s governing coalition majority, only the extreme religious parties in the government, each with a highly objectionable agenda for the war and for Israeli society, can conceivably apply it in the foreseeable future.

Q. The Gaza war connection is relevant to failure on the Iran front as well?

A. In the eyes of Israeli Intelligence--not just the Netanyahu government with its twisted agendas--Tehran remains bent on Israel’s destruction. Israel’s successful retaliation against Iran mere months ago rendered the regime there at least temporarily vulnerable to an attack designed to destroy Iranian nuclear capabilities. Such an attack would enjoy far more sweeping Israeli public support than the current war in Gaza.

But to be successful, an Israeli attack on Iran requires far-reaching collaboration with the US. Yet the Trump administration, which seeks to disengage from Middle East conflicts, is currently trying to negotiate with Tehran a nuclear freeze reminiscent of the JCPOA deal originally negotiated by the Obama administration and scuttled by Trump. At present, those negotiations are stalled, but not defunct.

From Netanyahu’s standpoint, a successful Israeli-American attack on Iran’s nuclear project--in effect, renewed war with Iran--could offer a popular excuse for disengaging from Gaza. Haredi and messianist threats to dismantle the coalition would then presumably have to wait. So here Trump is the obstacle.

Not that a renewed JCPOA-type US-Iran agreement, which Trump could yet salvage, is ideal from Israel’s standpoint. It would leave Iran’s extremist Islamist regime in place. And it would leave Israel to face, virtually alone, an Iran weakened by Israel’s earlier counter-attacks but still bent ideologically on Israel’s destruction and determined to exploit any new understandings with the US in order to rearm.

Q. Bottom line?

A. Barring (as usual) unforeseen circumstances, the only likely opportunity for change in Israel’s disastrous approach to Gaza and Gazans is if the Haredim leave the coalition over the issue of compulsory conscription, against the backdrop of a war that is draining Israel’s manpower reserves.

Yediot Aharonot columnist Sima Kadmon summed it up last Friday:

“What we’ve just seen is inconceivable: Not October 7, nor the endless war, nor abandoning the hostages in Gaza tunnels, nor the soldiers who have fallen for the sake of coalition survival, nor reservist fatigue, nor the situation of war-front evacuees, nor the economic and family tragedies, nor the international situation--none of this has led to coalition collapse. The only factor that (perhaps) is leading to collapse is the prime minister’s failure (not for lack of trying) to arrange for Haredim not to serve in the military while maintaining the riches they have accumulated at the expense of the other sectors, those who produce, work and serve.”

Meanwhile, arming Gazan anti-Hamas clans will come back to haunt Israel, just as did the pre-October 7 arming of Hamas--then, as now, with Netanyahu’s tacit approval. 

For Israelis, Glimmers of Gaza’s Misery Begin to Penetrate a Wall of Silence (Dina Kraft - May 27, 2025)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

In the almost 600 days since the October 7 attack, Zeev Engelmayer has posted on social media a color-drenched daily cartoon “postcard” of war-related pain and trauma.

Until recently, most of the creations, painted in acrylics or drawn with felt-tip pens and signed “Shoshke,” Engelmayer’s pen name, depicted Israeli agony: The hostages and their families, and occasionally the bereaved and the displaced. 

But in recent weeks he has turned his brush and pen to the escalating Israeli attacks on Gaza dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots” that have left hundreds of Palestinians killed, among them women and children. He has depicted the effects of widespread hunger in Gaza in the wake of an Israeli blockade on food aid, now only partially lifted. 

On Sunday his subject was the nine children of Doctors Alaa and Hamadi al-Najjar who were killed in an Israeli airstrike over the weekend at their home in the Gazan city of Khan Yunis. 

He painted their nine small bodies wrapped in white shrouds, faces still visible. Next to each of them was a single small white flower. He wrote out their individual names and ages, from Yahaya Al Najar, 12, to Sidar Hamdi Al Najar, seven months old. He notes only one sibling, an 11-year-old, survived, severely injured. 

“Nine innocent little children were killed,” he wrote in his caption. “Why doesn’t our media tell us their names? I found them easily in the foreign media, for example on CNN and in The Associated Press. Are their names more relevant to Americans and Europeans than Israelis? Why is it that every Israeli who was injured has a name and the Palestinian children who were killed do not?”

He chastised the Israeli media, its post-October 7 trauma and jingoism, its war coverage with a tight focus on Israeli suffering. He asked whether the absence of such images, of reporting of the details of the victims, makes it “easier” to accept the sweep of so much death.

The media’s filtered coverage, he charged, “deprives us of the ability to understand the dimensions of the tragedy… How can we talk about a shared future when we are unable to name nine innocent children who lost their lives?”

Englemayer’s recent turn signals a still small but noticeable crack in the overall silence in the Israeli discourse on Gaza. 

Other indicators include the scathing criticism of Israel’s conduct by Yair Golan, a political party leader and retired general; growing numbers of anti-war protesters holding pictures of children killed in Gaza since the most recent ceasefire ended; and reservists who are refusing -- either tacitly or explicitly -- to continue serving in a war that has no clear end in sight. 

“I am definitely seeing a change in mood around the Israeli attack in Gaza, specifically around the Zionist left/ center circles,” said Dana Mills, an Israeli activist and the resource development manager for +972 and Local Call, Israeli left-wing news organizations. 

“Discussion of starvation and killing of citizens, which was once limited to the radical left, is slowly entering more mainstream (though still left-leaning) discourse,” she said. “I think this is very much in line with the fact that discussions of refusal [to serve in the reserves] have also entered mainstream discourse.” 

She cited as factors spurring the change the growing international outcry against the broadening operation in Gaza, including threats of sanctions by Britain and the European Union; the reported disapproval from the Trump administration of Israeli actions; and a rising chorus of criticism from former Israeli politicians. 

Among these are former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Defense Minister Bogie Yaalon who warned that Israeli soldiers are at risk of carrying out war crimes in Gaza. 

Golan, the retired general who heads the Democrats party, said Israel was in danger of becoming a pariah nation. 

Mills noted that these figures, deeply embedded in Israel’s establishment, are now “being quoted as ‘radicals’ in the mainstream media.” 

Golan, under fire from across the political spectrum, backtracked Sunday from his comments last week in which he appeared to accuse Israel of killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby.”

He said that did not believe that was what was currently happening but that he feared it was something Israel’s extremist cabinet members hoped would happen. 

In an interview with Channel 12, he quoted government ministers and politicians on the far right who had called in the past for Gaza to be destroyed. 

“I said something simple: that it’s unacceptable that we’re resuming fighting in Gaza, and that the political goals set for the IDF, which unfortunately are not goals connected to Israel’s national security at all… are shaped by people with such a worldview,” he said. 

Also Sunday, Ron Feiner, a major who like so many other reservists has done multiple rounds of service -- in his case 270 days to date -- refused to enlist in the ongoing operation which Netanyahu has said would only end with “total victory”. 

For Netanyahu that means not only the release of the hostages and Hamas’ total defeat, but the mass removal of Gaza’s population, according to what the prime minister has called “Trump’s plan” – an act that critics warn could be defined as a war crime and an idea the White House appears to have backed away from. 

“I’m shocked by the never-ending war in Gaza, by the abandonment of the hostages (by the government), and by the ongoing deaths of innocent people,” Feiner reportedly said. “I am morally unable to continue to serve as long as there is no change.” 

Anti-war protesters surrounded Feiner as he arrived to serve his prison sentence for refusing service, chanting “You are not alone. We are with you.” 

The chant carried a poignant echo: The protesters had co-opted a phrase commonplace at events supporting hostage families.

On Saturday night, Israelis lined two city blocks on both sides of Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. They stood in silence holding the photos of children from Gaza, all of them killed in the days and weeks since the Israeli government ended the ceasefire in March.

The number of protesters had doubled since the previous week. 

Trump Trumps Bibi (Yossi Alpher - May 19, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. How different does the Middle East look following last week’s sweeping visit by US President Trump?

A. Superficially, more of the same. The same appalling and depressing news. This week opened with yet more hostage talks in Doha, an expanding IDF offensive in Gaza, and the death toll there spiraling from famine and destruction. There was a pointless Arab League summit meeting in Baghdad. 

And President Trump, home from the Middle East, reportedly suddenly decided it was possible to resettle one million homeless Gazans in Libya. Which Libya? Does he even know there are two Libyas, locked in enmity?

Q. Yet not superficially, at a more substantial level? Did Trump not introduce a deeper dimension into the regional dynamic from the standpoint of the US, the Arab world, Iran, and Israel?

A. Seen barely a few days later, it looks that way. I have to put aside my total antipathy toward the man--his shallowness, his arrogance, his ignorance, his dislike for democracy, for immigrants, for basic values--and recognize that his ‘style,’ his approach, was effective last week.

Q. Do you mean the massive arms and AI deals with Arab potentates?

A. Leave those aside. We don’t really know how effective and comprehensive they will be. It is questionable just how deeply rooted the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula really are and how capable they are of providing effective commercial and military partnerships.

But Trump put in place a dynamic of a US-Iran détente and nuclear deal. He welcomed to the fold an Islamist revolutionary regime in Syria, along with its patron, NATO-member Turkey. He opened direct negotiations with Hamas in Gaza. He ended the US war with the Houthis in northern Yemen. 

These are far-reaching departures, all in scarcely a week. Trump seems not to have consulted Israel, a US ally, about any of this…

Q. Stop here. Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and launching armed incursions into Syria. It is bombing the Houthis. So does all this put Jerusalem at loggerheads with Washington? Where is PM Netanyahu, who supposedly knows how to ‘handle’ Washington?

A. Trump completely outflanked and neutralized Netanyahu last week. He seemingly put the Israeli leader on notice that Washington has more important interests at stake. The US has run out of patience with Israel, its extremist coalition, and its endless multi-front conflict. 

Meanwhile, there are indications that Trump will be arming Saudi Arabia and Turkey with weaponry that could, in the future, endanger Israel. And in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Trump is betting on states that are weak both demographically and democratically. Indeed, the US president offers no value-judgment whatsoever regarding the genuine net worth of America’s emerging military and commercial partners in the Arabian Peninsula.

To promote America’s (and his family’s) business interests, Trump wants a Middle East free of conflict and open to investment. Islamists--Iranian, Syrian, Yemeni, Gazan— do not deter him. In terms of cynicism and hard-knuckle business, this takes your breath away. But so far, it seems to be projecting a stabilizing effect on the region. 

Netanyahu looks like he missed the boat of normalization with the likes of Saudi Arabia. In response, instead of ending the war with Gaza, thereby ceasing Houthi missile attacks and rescuing the hostages, Netanyahu is doubling down on yet another pointless and counterproductive military campaign in Gaza. Direct US negotiations with Hamas, behind his back, make Bibi look silly.

Q. Indeed, the US negotiated directly with Hamas to free Israeli-American IDF soldier Edan Alexander. Netanyahu failed at this task. Now Israelis are asking whether they need to equip their kids with a second passport before they are called up for service by the IDF.

A. This is yet another sad commentary on Netanyahu’s performance as reflected in last week’s events. I cannot help but reminisce that it was not always this way. 

I entered the IDF in 1964. The US Consulate in Tel Aviv immediately revoked my US citizenship, filed my canceled US passport in its “Look Out File,” and for several years treated my visa applications--to see my parents in Washington--as somehow subversive. All that changed after the 1967 Six-Day War victory, American recognition of Israel’s military value to US Middle East interests, and a US Supreme Court Decision that awarded me and many others dual-citizenship status.

Now, Trump’s success as a regional player operating completely independently of the US-Israel alliance begs speculation: notwithstanding the efforts of right-wing pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington, could we once again see new thinking there about Israel? Are we seeing it already?

Q. Bottom line?

A. Last week’s American accomplishments in the Middle East present Israel with the opportunity of ending the war in Gaza, ending Houthi missile attacks, gradually enhancing relations with Syria, accepting a US-monitored armed non-nuclear détente with Iran, and beginning normalization with additional Arab countries. Of course, not all Arab and Iranian Islamists are necessarily going to be even remotely friendly toward Israel. But presumably Trump will help, by hook or by crook. 

Or not. A great deal depends on Netanyahu’s disastrous coalition, particularly messianist partners Smotrich and Ben Gvir, on the Netanyahu family’s dangerous influence and Bibi’s own personal legal and legacy calculations. For all its crassness and money-grubbing, Trump’s Middle East jaunt last week glaringly highlighted how badly off Israel is with Netanyahu. 

Between the two of them, Trump and Netanyahu are isolating Israel in the Middle East and internationally. Worse, US-supplied F-35 aircraft in the hands of the Saudis and Turks, both at heart Islamist regimes, could in a few years seriously disturb the Middle East military balance to Israel’s detriment. Imagine all this, with ever more messianist Israeli governments and a US president totally devoid of gut sentiment for the Zionist enterprise…

Meanwhile, note that Trump’s Middle East trip completely ignored Egypt, the region’s lynchpin and a key military ally of Israel. That is a risky proposition. In parallel, Trump's attempt last week to bring about a ceasefire in the Ukraine-Russia conflict was a failure.

Beyond the arms and AI deals, Haaretz regional affairs commentator Tzi Barel summed up: 

“Trump’s half-hour meeting with Syrian President Ahmed a-Shar’a, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin-Salman and (by Zoom) Turkish President Erdogan describes the new axis emerging under the US president. Saudi Arabia is the leader, Turkey the strategic partner, Iran is invited to join, while Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in general, are sidelined.”

And back on that Gaza sideline, we now witness no fewer than four parallel yet contradictory dynamics: a renewed IDF offensive against Hamas; a renewed major aid effort; in Doha– hostage and even end-of-war negotiations; and in Jerusalem--Haredi and messianist coalition pressures that neutralize everything.

No wonder Trump is looking elsewhere in the Middle East…

Of Microphones and Diversity of Thought (Rabbi Sarah Krinsky- May 12, 2025)

As a rabbi, I have the privilege of spending much of my time engaged in deep, thoughtful, personal conversations about some of life’s most important and existential matters. Family. Identity. Literal life and death. 

I also spend a lot of time talking about microphones. 

Our congregation is a diverse one on almost all metrics. We are from many places; we do many things; we look many ways; and we are drawn to and practice many facets of Judaism. Some are quite traditionally observant, heeding the myriad strictures of Shabbat, kashrut, and holiday rules. Others come to synagogue for reasons outside of classic obligation, and construct Shabbat and holiday experiences that live alongside but not necessarily within the conventional structure. (Others, we know, often do not even come at all.)

Hence the microphones. For a large subset of our community, microphones fall outside the bounds of halakhic observance and therefore should be prohibited, especially in public spaces, on Shabbat and holidays. For others, this is not a consideration. For others still, disability or other factors require a microphone for full and active participation. And so the negotiations begin. What kind of microphone will we have where? When will it be on? Can it be moved? Should it be goose-necked and standing or should it lay flat? (Yes, this is a real live debate). 

On one recent Shabbat morning in which - rather than leading from the bimah - I was sitting in the pews, I received critiques and complaints on this from all sides. One person articulated explicitly what I think many felt: “There is no place here where I’m totally and completely comfortable.” 

There is no place here where I’m totally and completely comfortable. 

This was meant, I assume, as criticism - based on an underlying assumption that the role of a synagogue is to provide just such a place to each of its members. And to be sure, we do strive to be a place that is and can feel like home to each of our diverse constituencies. But “totally and completely comfortable?” Even if feasible, I’m not sure that is the goal. And not only that. Indeed, this interaction helped me realize that, in fact, l’hefech - the opposite. Our role - or a role of ours - is to be a place in which people have to exercise the muscle of not always being totally and completely comfortable. 

This is not a muscle that gets a whole lot of attention. Our information bubbles are typically as curated and monolithic as our social media feeds. The line between news and opinion has blurred. And in an era in which even facts are apparently relative, it can be so easy to move through a moment with righteous (and sometimes even deserved) anger and indignation at an opinion, or group of people, that is actually wholly apart from and non-intersecting with our own. Our interlocutors become caricatures; those with whom we disagree so quickly and easily become enemies. And this is only compounded when there are parties and forces who are trying to manipulate even the justice system itself to formalize homogeneity of thought, to outlaw certain opinions. Tolerating disagreement is a spiritual muscle, but it is a political one too, and if not given attention, space, or affirmation, it can and will quickly atrophy with dire consequence. 

I can observe and even bemoan these national and international trends as a human. But I combat them as a rabbi. And in such a role, I am blessed to have a tradition that has my back. It is impossible to engage with Judaism with any degree of seriousness and emerge with uniformity - of thought or practice - as a value or goal. From our earliest texts (Genesis 1 and 2, for instance, and the many discrepancies between them) to our latest, from pages of the Talmud to the floor of the Knesset, we are a people who prize and preserve multivocality. Even when it’s hard. Even when it feels hopeless. Even when it is totally and completely uncomfortable. 

We’ll start by disagreeing about microphones. And selections for kiddush. And tunes for Adon Olam. And in so doing, we will strengthen both our muscle and resolve to make space for the previously-only-imagined Other: For the opinion that’s hard to hear; for the narrative that feels fraught to engage with; for the protest that may genuinely shake us to our core. We don’t have to agree - but we do have to listen, to make space, and to let it in. Our democracy likely depends on it. Our authenticity to the tradition certainly does.

Rabbi Sarah Krinsky is part of the leadership team at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC. She has served as a member of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Social Justice and Public Policy Staff, and a Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. She has developed social justice programming, including community engagement opportunities, for all age groups. She is the recipient of several awards from UJA and JTS. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

The current crisis in civil-security relations is Netanyahu’s worst transgression (Yossi Alpher- May 5, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Head of Shin Bet Ronen Bar has resigned after leveling unprecedented accusations against PM Netanyahu. No fewer than 21 former heads of services publicly back Bar. Why this crisis? What is it about?

A. The Netanyahu-Bar clash is symptomatic of Netanyahu’s attempt, over a period of years, to politicize Israel’s security establishment and bend it to his ideological and personal-political goals. This has generated a crisis in civil-security relations that is at least as dangerous as Netanyahu’s ‘judicial revolution’ that preceded and in some ways catalyzed the events of October 7, 2023. 

Nor is the crisis confined to the Shin Bet domestic security service. Netanyahu and his minions have also lately attacked the heads of Mossad and the IDF.

This is a crucial test of the viability of the governance system in Israel. One of the first signs of creeping fascism is when the security services are called upon to serve the regime rather than the wellbeing of the country and the public. Or when, alternatively (e.g., Watergate; January 6, 2021), the leader sets up his own security arm.

To be sure, in the past there have been problematic relations between the prime minister and/or defense minister (on occasion the same person, e.g., Ben Gurion, Rabin, Barak) and security chiefs. But they never became full-fledged public crises and never threatened the viability of governance like the present crisis, for at least three reasons. 

For one, in the early years everything in Israel was smaller and ‘cosier’, Prior to 1977 only one party (Mapai) ruled, and service heads did not benefit from Knesset legislation that fortified their independence. Then too, the Palestinian issue--which is at the heart of the current tensions--was not nearly as central as it became after 1967 and particularly as it is since October 7. 

Third, the identity of Mossad and Shin Bet heads and, indeed, the very existence of these intelligence arms, was secret: government-security relations were to a large extent hidden from the public. The ‘Lavon Affair’ of the 1950s, which had nothing to do with the Palestinians, was not public knowledge for decades. As a Mossad official in the 1970s, my kids and my neighbors knew only that I worked for the “security establishment.” The only Mossad that the public-at-large was aware of was the ‘Mossad LeBituach Leumi,” the government’s social security arm.

Moreover, then as now, that same security establishment shunned politics. I still recall how, as I was briefing a Knesset delegation in Mossad headquarters regarding the soon-to-erupt revolution against the Shah of Iran, the Head of Mossad cut me off when I chanced to compare a branch of Iran’s Islamist revolutionaries to an Israeli political party.

Then, as now, the heads of the security branches took responsibility. They admitted and analyzed their failures. The difference is that, back then, Israel’s heads of government--Begin, Rabin--did the same. Not so Netanyahu, who in recent years has presided over a broad strategic failure (October 7) and a major domestic disruption, while remaining set in his megalomaniacal ways.

Q. Explain what has changed…

A. Here is former Shin Bet head (2011-2016) Yoram Cohen, last month, after Netanyahu attempted to fire Bar and the High Court intervened: 

“I have no words to define the personal attacks that we are witnessing by the prime minister and his lackeys against the head of Shin Bet and the IDF chief of staff (who took responsibility publicly and resigned accordingly). The manner of these attacks is unprecedented. They stem from avoidance of responsibility, they are condemnable and they seriously damage the morale of Shin Bet personnel who risk their lives daily at the front.”

And here are five former Shin Bet heads, six former chiefs of police, four former heads of IDF Intelligence, three former heads of Mossad and three former IDF chiefs of staff, in a totally unprecedented full page ad on April 25:

“We have complete faith in the declaration of the head of Shin Bet [to the effect that] the prime minister ordered him to act against the law and against the citizens of Israel: to prioritize personal loyalty over state loyalty in the event of a constitutional crisis; to monitor citizens who violated no law in order to maintain his political power; to provide a biased opinion with the aim of advancing his [Netanyahu’s] personal interests, thereby deceiving the judicial system.”

That is the gist. Bar’s documentation of the Netanyahu government’s offenses against good government and the Israeli citizenry as well as the illegal orders Netanyahu tried to give him, goes on and on. It comes on top of ample evidence that Netanyahu has consistently prioritized his own values and lackeys over independent civil servants and security chiefs.

Q. How are Israel’s enemies reacting to this evidence of cracks in the Israeli institutional security structure?

A. They are reacting much as they reacted to Netanyahu’s pre-October 7 ‘judicial reform’ and the widespread public protest it engendered. Back then, early in 2023 Gaza-based Hamas leader Yihya Sinwar wrote that “the crisis is deep and reflects the melting of the glue that enables Israel to exist. It will lead to a stronger crisis than the [1973] Yom Kippur War.” Just recently, commentator Wadia Auda wrote in a Qatari daily on Israel’s “curse of the eighth decade” that “In the Arab world the Netanyahu-Bar confrontation… reflects a substantive controversy within Israel that can lead to a deep schism.”

We recall, of course, that on October 7 Sinwar acted on his assessment of Israel’s ‘deep crisis’ and attacked, with consequences we are living with to this day. As in the months leading up to October 7, once again we must beware of Israel’s enemies rejoicing over the glaring failure and violations of democratic norms by its elected government.

Q. Bottom line?

A. To keep the record straight, note that Bar has long been duty-bound to resign, and has openly acknowledged this, because of his share in the blame for the disaster of October 7. He has now set May 15 as the date of his resignation--a move that takes some of the pressure off the High Court and partially dulls the urgency of the current crisis over government-security establishment relations. 

(With Bar’s resignation, all senior Israeli security officials involved in October 7 will have resigned. All… except the prime minister.)

If is also true that in Israel’s democratic parliamentary system, the prime minister is within his rights to reject advice and assessments delivered by the security chiefs, even if this is not prudent. But Netanyahu is not within his rights to demand--of Bar and others--“loyalty” at the personal level. That demand and related behavior smack blatantly of fascist inclinations. 

Further, when 21 former security heads, men of the highest public integrity, publicly warn the prime minister about his “growing incitement against the Shin Bet and its personnel,” his “leaking intelligence in order to influence Israeli public opinion,” and his enabling of “intelligence penetration and influence operations of a foreign country [Qatar] on the prime minister’s closest advisers” -- you know something is seriously wrong.

Still, two dynamics currently militate in Netanyahu’s favor. First, his government still enjoys a solid parliamentary majority, backed by large religious, messianic and settler segments of the Israeli public who are happy to ignore his anti-democratic behavior. Second, in the Israeli reality the public is easily distracted by the need to focus on ongoing security developments: currently, by preparations for yet another futile and (for the remaining hostages) deadly IDF operation in Gaza; and, on Sunday, by a Houthi missile that easily evaded Israel’s interceptors and struck so close to Ben Gurion airport that a host of international carriers cancelled service to Israel.

Will Israel look in the mirror on its 77th birthday? (Dina Kraft- April 28, 2025)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Israel is in the midst of the country’s annual trio of “national days”. They kicked off with Holocaust Remembrance Day last week and Tuesday night begins the back-to-back commemoration of Memorial and Independence. This revered, even sacred, time in the Hebrew calendar typically signals not just a time of mourning and remembrance followed by a jarring shift towards celebration, but also introspection. Or to borrow a Hebrew term, a time of “cheshbon nefesh,” translated imperfectly an accounting of the soul.

Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, the notion that time has stopped, that the country has still not psychically exited the shock and grief stage of the deadliest day in Israel’s history is a common one. The ongoing hostage crisis in particular and the way the Israeli media has focused almost entirely on Israel’s ongoing trauma in its coverage of the Gaza War has helped maintain this sense of living in suspended animation.

But close to 600 days into the crisis, time of course has done anything but stop. Israel careens forward, war footing and all, digesting new losses, tragedies, a government at war with its own security establishment, and a creeping brain drain along the way. Some look across the border at the destruction of Gaza and the civilian death toll and suffering there in growing awareness and horror. Some do not.  

Headlines now trumpet news of certain Hamas commanders or operatives killed, but there’s little dwelling on the civilians, among them children, who have been killed alongside them – so many that since the second ceasefire ended in March the number of dead children now surpasses the 1,200 killed in Israel on Oct. 7th.

For me, the large number of civilians killed during these strikes – and the relative lack of news it makes in Israeli media — recalls the 17-year-old Palestinian boy named Ibrahim Bagdadi I met in Gaza City in 2005, shortly before Israel’s withdrawal of troops and settlers from the enclave. He told me how he was still haunted by the memory of a woman’s head and other body parts rolling into his bedroom on a sweltering July night three years earlier when an Israeli missile apparently aimed at Sheik Salah Shehade, a founder of Hamas's military wing, hit the building next to his family’s home. At the time the bombing sparked controversy in Israel because it killed not only Shehade and his wife, but 13 others, including nine children.

He would be 37 now. Is he still alive? If he has children, are they?

In recent weeks, and especially the last week, including on Yom HaShoah last Wednesday, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, photos of children killed in Gaza are cropping up more in public view. At a rally calling for an end to the war held last Thursday in Tel Aviv, a row of oversized posters were held high in the night sky – a mix of both hostage portraits and pictures of children killed recently in Gaza. 

The combination was a striking statement: it was the first time since the war broke out I had ever seen the images of the hostages and the Palestinian victims side-by-side. On Saturday night, a silent vigil of Israeli activists holding the photos of children killed in Gaza had mushroomed from a handful of people to about 500 in recent weeks. Still, these voices exist mostly on the edges of the conversation, although they are beginning to merge with those who have been protesting daily and weekly in the streets since soon after the war began, calling for an immediate hostage release.

Since early March when the second ceasefire ended, putting an abrupt halt to the deeply emotional return of hostages, most of them alive, some of them not, the ongoing cries from the public for a hostage deal and an end the war have intensified. 

The impact of seeing women and men emerging alive from behind the curtain of Gaza captivity during the second truce cannot be overstated. Among those who returned alive was Yarden Bibas, father of the red-headed boys Kfir and Ariel and husband to Shiri, forever seared into Israel’s book of tragedy, who came back instead in caskets. A photo of Yarden holding a hand-written sign that states, “There’s no independence as long as they are still there,” referring to the remaining hostages, is making the rounds on social media.  

The polls remain consistent: a majority of Israelis seek a deal that would win the release of all the remaining 59 hostages, 24 of whom are thought to be alive, in return for an end to the war in Gaza. On Monday, it was reported that Israel had rejected Hamas’ offer of a five-year truce. 

As Israel prepares to mark Memorial Day and Independence Day families and friends are grieving the most recent soldiers to die in Gaza – including two killed Friday and another, reservist Master Sgt. Asaf Cafri, killed Wednesday on Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same day Magda Baratz, his great-grandmother (a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen), and his father received the news when they were in Germany at Bergen-Belsen marking 80 years since the notorious concentration camp was liberated.

During this time of fracture and pain six families who are among those who lost the most in the aftermath of October 7 and the Gaza war that has ensued asked the Israeli public to imagine what unity and healing could look like.  They include Jonathan Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of Hersh Goldberg Polin, along with five other families of the “Beautiful Six” who were executed together in a narrow, cramped tunnel by Hamas last summer. They billed it as a rare, “politics-free event” bringing together left and right, secular and religious, and even Jerusalem’s rival soccer teams.

Together thousands gathered in a Jerusalem square for an evening of song for the return of the hostages.  Rachel Goldberg told the crowd, “Come together our family, our city, our country, our nation, our hostages. Together let’s sing and pray. Come!”

The crowd sang as one, reading along from lyrics of classic Israeli songs on a large screen. Music can be a balm, making people feel more deeply, but also think more deeply. The example of togetherness and common cause Sunday night from across Israel’s societal spectrum might also help lead those there and those who saw it to reflect on what the country could look like as it turns 77 years old. It’s a painful time to look in the mirror. But it’s never been a more urgent mission.

Trump and Netanyahu: New Episode (Yossi Alpher - April 21, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Was the dramatic Trump-Netanyahu White House meeting two weeks ago a turning point in the Israeli learning curve regarding Trump’s Middle East intentions? What has emerged since then in Israel-US relations?

A. Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early April with the expectation of getting a green or perhaps amber light from President Trump regarding an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. A secondary objective of the meeting from Netanyahu’s standpoint was apparently to persuade Trump to reduce or cancel newly imposed tariffs on Israeli goods. Also on the two leaders’ agenda were Syria and Gaza.

Netanyahu walked out of his meeting with Trump not only empty-handed (‘four billion a year is enough’), but with marching orders that effectively contradicted the Israeli leader’s designs and desires for the region regarding key issues: Iran, Syria, and Gaza. What emerged, to Netanyahu’s evident discomfort, were Trump tactical moves for at least temporarily reducing conflict and lowering the US military profile throughout most of the region.

Q. Since that Oval Office meeting, more-or-less direct US-Iran nuclear negotiations have commenced. Yet Netanyahu had reportedly come to Washington to persuade Trump to attack Iran. How do you explain the gap or dissonance here?

A. Trump’s envoy, man-for-all-missions Steve Witkoff, is apparently renegotiating the 2015 Obama-era Iran-nuclear deal that sufficed with reducing enrichment levels. Lest we forget, Trump in his day --egged on by Netanyahu-- first viciously maligned and then cancelled the 2015 JCPOA.

True, the original JCPOA was a bare-bones approach that ignored Iran’s missile build-up, hegemonic regional aims and open resolve to destroy Israel. It left in place an Iranian nuclear project that could be quickly upgraded. But it was doable, and it united the entire international community against Iranian military nuclear aspirations.

Now that very same much-maligned JCPOA is being renegotiated without participation by Washington’s partners in the 2015 deal: Russia, China, the UK, Germany and France. In other words, it reflects an international strategy that disdains the notion of global partnership and still ignores Israel’s basic security concerns vis-à-vis Iran beyond a partial lowering of Iran’s military nuclear profile. The new Trump approach also ignores the strategic window of opportunity to attack Iran’s nuclear project that the Israeli security community insists it opened when it decimated Iranian missile defenses a few months ago.

On the other hand, like its Obama-era predecessor, the Trump-Witkoff approach is doable, and quickly. At one and the same time diplomatic, tactical, pragmatic and short-term, it could well produce partial but beneficial results for everyone concerned, including Israel. The Israeli approach, which Trump has at least temporarily rejected, is strategic, a military long-shot, and would likely endanger regional stability, particularly for the Persian Gulf countries that could bear the brunt of an Iranian retaliation.

Both the Trump and the Netanyahu approaches reflect a short-term and shallow attitude toward Israel’s real strategic needs on the part of two leaders known for twisting the facts to fit their requirements and whims. Trump’s approach prioritizes a reduction in potential US military requirements in the Middle East, possibly at Israel’s expense. Netanyahu’s reflects his over-riding need for at least some level of regional conflict to distract the Israeli public and his coalition from his personal-political difficulties at home, at least until 2026 Knesset elections.

Nachum Barnea summed up Trump and Netanyahu, following their DC summit, in Yediot Aharonot:

This is Trump. The joint air exercises, the aircraft and air defense systems that arrived here, thousands of hours invested in joint planning, the threats to open the gates of hell, the compliments to Netanyahu--all these were no more than a message to Iran: I’m ready for a deal.

Where we are going it is early to tell… but the process of Israel’s sobering up from Trump has to commence. If we did not get this in the Oval Office, we have understood nothing.

Q. Trump seems to have invoked a negotiation rather than confrontation strategy regarding, as well, the Turkish military presence in Syria that troubles Israel.

A. And regarding the US military presence in Syria, which Israel values and Trump is already reducing. Whereas Israel sees Turkish President Erdogan with his Islamist ambitions for Syria as an alarming danger, Trump praises Erdogan effusively and sees Turkey as a worthy replacement for the American military in maintaining stability, with reduced US risk, in and around Syria and in neighboring Iraq.

One immediate outcome of the Netanyahu-Trump meeting two weeks ago is Israeli-Turkish discussions of stability in Syria, held in Baku, Azerbaijan. As with Iran, this could provide a helpful short-term fix. But it does not address the basic threat to Israel posed by Ankara-led militant Islam.

Q. And Gaza and the hostages?

A. As with the Russia-Ukraine conflict (where Secretary of State Rubio is threatening to withdraw Washington’s mediation efforts since they cannot produce a Trump-style quick fix), gone in Gaza are the bombastic promises of quick solutions and the dramatic visits of Trump emissaries. Israel and Hamas are as far apart as ever.

The latest Israeli offensive began a month ago. That Israel just recorded its first IDF fatality bears witness to a very cautious Israeli approach that inevitably favors heavy Palestinian civilian casualties caused by IAF airstrikes. The absence of parallel IDF casualties is welcomed by the Israeli public. And it allows the IDF Spokesman to herald the elimination of this or that Hamas battalion leader and ignore the awful collateral damage as well as the fact that that battalion leader’s two predecessors were also ‘neutralized’ over the past 18 months with no effect whatsoever on the course of the war.

Hamas, along with a sizeable portion of the Israeli public and security veterans, insists that the only realistic deal is for Israel to end the conflict and withdraw from the Strip in return for all the remaining hostages, alive and dead. But this falls well short of the ‘total victory’ that Netanyahu insists Israel needs if the PM is to stay alive politically.

No wonder Trump and Witkoff are keeping their distance from Gaza. They can concentrate their efforts on more productive ventures with a short-term payoff: Iran and Syria/Turkey. No wonder Netanyahu, his coalition and their messianist supporters among the Israeli public can assume that the smaller the number of hostages still alive (21 at last count), the less pressure will be exerted on Netanyahu to live up to both Zionist and basic human values and give priority to their release.

If ‘total victory’ - meaning eliminating Hamas - were possible, Netanyahu’s hard line might sound vaguely practical. But, as yet another Gaza offensive by the IDF is demonstrating daily, the Islamist-barbaric Hamas is effectively implanted in Gaza as a grass-roots guerilla force. Moreover, the Netanyahu coalition has no Palestinian replacement to offer; and no one in Israel will accept the cost in IDF deaths and Gazan civilian deaths that would be incurred in the pursuit of an elusive complete conquest and reoccupation of the Strip.

Q. Bottom line?

A. Netanyahu, still the master politician in the Israeli context, managed to walk away from the Trump ‘hazing ceremony’ a fortnight ago declaring that all is well. Despite total failure in recruiting Trump’s backing for his Middle East objectives and the diplomatic isolation this implies, there were no cracks in Netanyahu’s coalition backing.

Of course, it helps that Trump can be expected to contradict himself any day regarding the Middle East issues at stake. And it helps Netanyahu that the political opposition in Israel is again proving ineffective and is fumbling the current opportunity provided by his bumbling international isolation.

Choosing Freedom and Agency Within Bondage (Rebecca Bardach - April 15, 2025)

Rebecca Bardach is a writer and practitioner in building Jewish-Arab shared society in Israel, with thirty years of experience in migration, conflict and development issues. You can follow her on Substack Between Despair and Determination. She is a periodic blogger for The Times of Israel, and contributor to Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, and is currently working on a book. Originally from Berkeley, CA, she has lived in Jerusalem with her family for more than two decades. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

The fact that 59 hostages are still held in Hamas captivity after more than 550 days and that war, death and destruction continues has made this Passover one of the most excruciating many Israeli as well as Diaspora Jews have experienced. How can we celebrate this holiday of freedom with whole hearts given the horrific conditions and abuses of their bondage?

I have been involved in hostage release efforts from the beginning as both a family member (having a cousin who was held in captivity and then executed by Hamas – Hersh Goldberg-Polin z”l) and as part of the broader public insisting that the hostage issue is core to who we are as a country and society. As enormous as the relief and gratitude are for every returned hostage, it’s impossible to feel a sense of dayeinu – it would have been enough – until everyone is home and the war is over.

But even as the hostage situation represents a literal form of current bondage, many Jews in Israel and the Diaspora feel that they are becoming captive to threatening forces which they fear they can’t oppose or overcome, in ways which feel unique to this era, even as they feel hauntingly familiar. We seem to be at a historical turning point. But we are uncertain which way to turn, where we need to go, how to get there and who might be our trustworthy travelling companions.

Many Israelis have been on the streets demonstrating week after week for the hostages’ release, insisting that the state has a fundamental commitment to do absolutely everything in its power to rescue its citizens. But what began as an apolitical act of solidarity, has become increasingly political as the governing coalition has opposed and even explicitly and proudly torpedoed hostage release efforts in pursuit of a political and social reordering that most Israelis oppose.

Hamas and the Iranian axis are responsible for starting this war, and many Israelis feel that their security and even the country’s existence are held captive by these extremists. Tragically, this has made it harder to disentangle the legitimate desire of the Palestinians for freedom from Israeli control, from the illegitimate desire of Hamas to eliminate Israel. As much as innocent Israelis have suffered enormously, innocent Gazans and Palestinians are suffering incomprehensible multiples of that, crushed between internal extremism, the war and Israeli actors or actions which contribute to the violence.

But alongside the external threats to Israel there lies a very real internal threat, with many Israelis increasingly feeling they are held hostage by a governing coalition which is going to astonishing lengths to undermine fundamental aspects of the country – through the courts, in the halls of the governing institutions, in the security forces and in the media – and is working actively against core interests, hopes and values.

Hence the protest efforts, which have been going on, week after week, in various forms for the last two and a half years. Even as I have been part of these protest efforts, I also fear that the protests risk becoming a form of captivity. They are essential to help keep the roof from caving in, but they also risk coming at the expense of urgent work needed to strengthen the walls holding up the roof.

And even as Israelis are reeling from all this, as an American-Israeli I also am acutely aware of the ways that Diaspora Jews feel shackled and fearful of the waves of anti-Semitism and pernicious forms of anti-Israel attitudes which have emerged since October 7. And by the ways that America’s newly elected leadership is attacking the core institutions, norms and values which Jews in America proudly and wholeheartedly protected and advanced throughout their history.

But even in the face of all of these threats, perhaps the greatest sense of bondage comes from the paralysis which the onslaught of events in this situation generates. Wave after wave of events have revealed threats that are genuinely profound and systemic. This generates bewilderment, grief, anger and trauma, and a sense that it is all insurmountable. In turn, these emotional tides leave us in a state of exhaustion and despair, in which inaction and a turning inward towards personal and communal wellbeing seems like the only viable option.

Of all the threats, I believe this is actually the greatest, and of all the shackles perhaps this is the one which most ensures we remain captive to these forces. Because they mean that even when we could fight for freedom, we fail to do so. Remember, the Israelites had already been freed from Pharoah’s bondage when they begged to go back to Egypt and when they gave into the temptations of the Golden Calf, posing their own pits and barriers to getting to the Promised Land.

Giving into despair, exhaustion or overwhelm is the only thing that guarantees that we won’t get there – and if not to a mythic promised land, than at least to a better place. As much as these current dilemmas resonate with historical precedents, this is not the Pharoah or bondage of yore, just as what we are experiencing are not the pogroms, persecution or Holocaust of yore. Even within this place of captivity, we can’t forget that we do still have extensive agency and the obligation to use it to reach a better place.

The key is to remain clear-eyed about both what we are fighting against, but also what we are fighting for. At a time where there are so many attacks on Israel it is important to state explicitly that it is legitimate for the Jewish people to have a state representing them and characterized by their story. We must fight for an Israel that sees its Jewish, liberal and democratic characteristics as working in alignment not contradiction to each other. And we must still pursue a resilient Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation which enables, through both its policies and practices, both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people to live side by side in dignity and security as individuals and collectives.

It’s true that is not exclusively up to us. Even prior to October 7 Israeli Palestinian reconciliation felt almost impossibly beyond reach in so many ways – how much more so after what our two peoples have experienced at each other’s hands since then? But it doesn’t fundamentally change the reality that neither of us will be leaving and we must – eventually - find a way to live together. And there is still more we can do to advance this. My years of working with partners in the spaces of both Jewish-Arab shared and Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation has shown me that there are people in all of our myriad communities who share this vision, even as the situation threatens to overwhelm us all.

Remember – the Israelites experienced 400 years of slavery, and 40 years of wandering in the desert. It’s impossible to know how long it will take to work our way out of this current situation with its myriad threats. But I do know that the Israelites only got to the Promised Land because they embarked on the journey, and step by step, day by day, year by year, generation by generation, they proceeded until they got there.

Most of all, we have to remember that redemption – or, in this case, being a people or maintaining a state – is not ever really a final resting place. Rather, it is a state of both being and doing, debating and creating, striving and pursuing, which ultimately defines us.

NJN in Action- NJN joins Amicus Brief challenging Trump’s anti-free speech agenda

New Jewish Narrative is one of 27 Jewish organizations that have filed a request to submit an amicus brief in federal court objecting to the arrest, detention, and potential deportation of a Tufts University student because of her political speech. 

A motion was filed yesterday in Vermont. The student is Rümeysa Öztürk. She was apprehended on the street last month and is being held in an ICE facility in Louisiana. The Trump Administration revoked Öztürk’s visa under a rarely invoked statute because she co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper supporting certain resolutions of the Tufts student senate that were harshly critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

“Without presuming to speak for all of Jewish America—a diverse community that holds a multitude of viewpoints—amici are compelled to file this brief because the arrest, detention, and potential deportation of Rümeysa Öztürk for her protected speech violate the most basic constitutional rights,” we say in our brief. 

While we may disagree with some of Öztürk’s statements, we firmly stand behind her right to voice her dissent. Moreover, we strongly object to the Administration’s claims that its actions against Öztürk support efforts to combat antisemitism. As we wrote in our brief: “The government... appears to be exploiting Jewish Americans’ legitimate concerns about antisemitism as a pretext for undermining core pillars of American democracy, the rule of law, and the fundamental rights of free speech and academic debate on which this nation was built.”

Hatikvah Slate Pesach Haggadah Insert

Our colleagues and fellow leaders of the Hatikvah Slate wrote a haggadah insert for Pesach 2025/5785. As we get ready to lay our seder tables this weekend, we hope that these intentions will resonate with you.

Trump, Netanyahu and ‘Deep States’ (Yossi Alpher- April 7, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote: "In America and Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people's will. They won't win in either place!" Can you explain?

A. The explanation is multi-dimensional. Both Trump and Netanyahu refer frequently to a “Deep State” that by any objective standard does not exist in either the US or the Israeli context. That quote also hints at a broad phenomenon whereby Trump has become an object of emulation by authoritarian leaders globally. Netanyahu is a key case-in-point. And Israel’s current “Qatargate” scandal poses the frightening question of who is ‘deepstating’ whom.

Q. Start by defining what a deep state is and is not.

A. According to the Cambridge online dictionary, a deep state consists of “organizations such as military, police, or political groups that are said to work secretly in order to protect particular interests and to rule a country without being elected.” In recent years, a leader like Trump or Netanyahu who, once elected, attempts to alter the constitutional checks and balances of a democratic system and is frustrated precisely by that system, has responded by labeling institutions within that system, without justification, ‘deep state.’ 

Q. Did you ever encounter a real ‘deep state’ in your work?

A. The original use of the term ‘deep state’ was, to the best of my knowledge, in Turkiye prior to the end of the twentieth century. Turkiye’s Deep State consisted of the country’s security and intelligence establishment, which often operated without the knowledge of its democratic institutions like the parliament and the foreign ministry. 

In 1958, Israel entered into a strategic security alliance, “Trident,” with Turkiye and Iran. In Turkiye’s case, the alliance lasted decades. The two countries engaged in secret strategic cooperation--e.g., the two army chiefs-of-staff once planned a joint invasion of Syria from north and south--without the knowledge of Turkiye’s democratic institutions. 

About a decade ago, long after Israeli-Turkish relations had soured, I queried a high-level Turkish diplomat about that alliance. “We were strategic partners,” I reminded her, only to confront a blank stare and abject denial on her part. The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s narrative of Turkish-Israeli relations simply did not mention Trident.

Here it bears noting that Israel’s role in Trident was approved in Jerusalem by the prime minister and Foreign Ministry. In Israel, Trident represented strategic policy conceived at the highest level and known to the establishment. It also bears noting that Turkiye under President Erdogan, however distasteful his pro-Islamist and thuggish policies, does not appear to have a deep state: there is no gap between the president and his intelligence establishment and army. 

Q. And Israel?

Just to clarify, regardless of Netanyahu’s complaints--he recently went so far as to dub the Israeli security establishment a “junta”-- Israel does not have a deep state. Neither does the US. 

It is Israel that interests us here. Ben-Dror Yamini reminded us in Yediot Aharonot on Sunday that virtually all the judges, generals, spy chiefs, holders of the state purse-strings, and senior government officials whom Netanyahu today accuses of being “Deep State” are his own appointees over a span of more than 15 years. “Considering the government’s priorities and the nature of its decisions,” Yamini writes provocatively, “most Israelis would feel much better if indeed there were a strong deep-state mechanism at work. But there is none.”

I take exception to Yamini’s implied approval of an imaginary anti-Netanyahu deep state. But it is significant because Yamini himself is a right-of-center columnist.

Q. Talk a bit about authoritarian emulation of Trump. . . 

A. This is worrisome. Everywhere you look--Israel, Turkiye, Russia, Hungary, India--authoritarian leaders are invoking Trump and his policies regarding state finances, the judicial branch and the security establishment. And territory: there is an in-your-face correlation between Trump’s overt greed regarding Greenland and the ease with which Netanyahu approves IDF ‘temporary’ expansion into Syria and Lebanon and in Gaza and the West Bank. I don’t hear Trump calling Netanyahu to order.

(Here it is interesting to note that Israel and Turkiye, both apparently feeling reassured by Trump’s behavior, are encroaching on Syria’s territory from the south and north, respectively--albeit without coordination and in an atmosphere of mutual hostility.)

Netanyahu and Hungary’s PM Orban just held an unprecedented three-way conversation with Trump. Indeed, Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary this past week is understood as an overt snub to the rest of Europe, where Gaza-related International Court of Justice arrest warrants await Netanyahu. Meanwhile, the pro-Trump media in the US increasingly dismisses the European Union as weak and feeble. Lest Netanyahu forget: France and the UK were active participants a few months ago in the air defense of Israel against Iranian missiles. The EU and NATO are Israel’s strategic depth vis-à-vis the Islamist world.

Q. That Islamist world includes Qatar, a funder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Prior to October 7, 2023, Qatar allied with Israel in funding Gaza-based Hamas. It is now accused of high-level sabotage and bribery in Israel, in cahoots with Netanyahu’s corrupt government.

A. Reserve General Noam Tibon, one of the individual heroes of October 7, 2023, summed it up recently: “An enemy country [Qatar] successfully penetrated the holy-of-holies of the State of Israel and advanced its interests through the PM’s Office and his trusted advisers.” This produced influence campaigns against the families of the hostages. It produced false accusations regarding Egyptian intentions toward Israel that threatened to raise tensions between Cairo and Jerusalem. 

If there is a deep state to be found anywhere, it is one operated by Qatar in Israel, with the full knowledge of Israel’s prime minister. “The Qatar story is but one symptom of a chronic disease that threatens to dismantle Israel’s security strength from within,” adds Tibon. 

Q. Where else in Israel is that disease rampant?

A. Here are three outrageous examples that can be traced directly to the prime minister. First, and worst, to keep his right-messianic coalition together, Netanyahu has restarted the Gaza war and effectively frozen attempts to free additional hostages. More and more Israeli strategic and military observers today understand that this is a counterproductive reversal of national priorities. 

As we write, the IDF is conquering the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza for the fourth time. Or is it the fifth time? It is easy to lose track while Gazans are being starved and slaughtered yet again. Mysterious schemes seem to be afoot to encourage emigration by homeless Gazans to Albania, Indonesia, and breakaway provinces of Somalia. These are hopeless schemes, all eventually denied by the countries in question. No wonder Netanyahu is welcomed in Europe only in semi-fascist Hungary.

Second, still on behalf of his unholy coalition, Netanyahu continues to ensure that Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) youth are not conscripted. Meanwhile, the IDF lacks manpower. More and more reservists are avoiding yet another round of service. If anything ever “dismantled Israel’s security strength from within,” this is it.

And third, Netanyahu has hopelessly entangled his personal legal problems--he is on trial on three counts of corruption--with the security establishment. This is the exact reversal of his ‘deep state’ obsession. He is trying to fire Shin Bet Head Ronen Bar because he, the prime minister, has ‘lost confidence’ in Bar. The latter just explained in a letter to the High Court of Justice how Netanyahu tried to recruit Bar’s connivance in avoiding his corruption trial: “Netanyahu demanded of me [to inform the courts] that the security situation does not permit him to testify continually in his trial. That is what generated his claim of loss of confidence. The Head of Shin Bet is not the prime minister’s ‘trusted servant’.”

Q. Bottom line?

A. Deep State? Likud Member of Knesset Moshe Saada just explained that the next head of Shin Bet must emerge “from the correct political circles.” Now we get it: the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, must become Netanyahu’s own private Deep State!

So what is really new here? Step back and observe: Israel is now the target of manipulation by one Arab state, Qatar, which is trying to sabotage Israel’s relations with another, Egypt, and all at the expense of a third Arab people, the Palestinians. Isn’t this just business as usual in the fragmented, undemocratic Arab world? Isn’t this but one additional aspect of Middle East normalization? Isn’t Israel now just ‘one of the guys’ in the neighborhood?

Huckabee Demands Our Attention (Noam Shelef - March 31, 2025)

Noam Shelef (he/him) joined New Jewish Narrative in 2025 as the Vice President of Communications. The issues that NJN champions have always been close to his heart, and he began his career in 1997 as an intern for Americans for Peace Now. In the years since, Noam has advocated in support of progressive causes in Israel, fighting for LGBTQ rights, and to end practices harmful to girls in Africa.

Eight years ago, when President Trump's nominee to serve as ambassador to Israel was announced, our community -- American Jews committed to progressive values -- mobilized in opposition. The nominee, David Friedman, had been a major financial backer of the settler movement. With the Senate under Republican control, there was little hope that his nomination could be stopped. But we still needed to send the message that this nomination was at odds with the views of the American mainstream and the American Jewish community.

In this, we succeeded. While all previous ambassadors to Israel were confirmed by more than 90 senators, only 52 voted for Friedman. 

Last week, President Trump's new nominee for ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a hearing. In light of President Trump's "Flood the Zone" strategy -- and Netanyahu's imitation of many of Trump's neo-authoritarian tactics (not to mention the hostilities in Gaza and across Israel's northern border) -- you could be forgiven for missing the news about this hearing. We at New Jewish Narrative, however, are paying attention. And we are working to mobilize our community and our allies to make sure that this nomination is not understood as an endorsement of Huckabee's radical views by the public at large. 

Here's a sample of what we know about Huckabee's views:

1.  Huckabee strongly opposed the ceasefire deal that freed 38 hostages from Gaza. He said that “there’s no valid reason to have a cease-fire with Hamas” and that a ceasefire should not even be entertained until after the hostages are released.

2. Huckabee has repeatedly denied national Palestinian identity, claiming that there “isn’t such a thing” as a Palestinian. 

3. Huckabee argued that Israel’s rule over the West Bank and Gaza is not an “occupation,” and that the Israeli connection to the West Bank is stronger than the American connection to Manhattan.

4. Huckabee has actively participated in actions that undermine US diplomatic credibility, including ceremonial cornerstone laying ceremonies in settlements. 

5. Huckabee compared the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration to the Holocaust, saying it was leading Israelis "to the door of the oven." 

In his hearing last week, Huckabee had the opportunity to renounce these views. He did not. 

If all of these were not sufficient reasons to oppose Huckabee, I have one more: I find myself deeply concerned by the religious language that Huckabee deploys to express his views on Israel, on Jews, and on the conflict. I came of age at a time when secular political movements -- the Israeli Labor party and the Palestinian Fatah party -- embarked on a peace process that offered the best hope for Israel's survival and would allow both Israelis and Palestinians to have a future worth living in the same land. I remember what the violence perpetrated by religious zealots like Baruch Goldstein and Hamas suicide bombers did to shake confidence in the peace process. At this moment, when the impact of religious fanatics is growing in the bodies politic of both Israeli and Palestinian society, we do not need an American envoy guided by his own end-of-days-motivated reasoning. 

I am privileged to be part of the push-back to this extremism in the American Jewish community. That's why I joined New Jewish Narrative one month ago. It’s about pushing back on Huckabee (and NJN will be in touch with you when it’s time for you to reach out to your senators) and about all the other opportunities when our narrative -- as Jewish, as progressives, as people who care about Israel, peace, and justice -- needs to be heard. I’m thankful for NJN and the work we’ll get done together. 

Is Israel Veering Towards Civil War? (Dina Kraft- March 24, 2025)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly the opinion editor of Haaretz English.

So much is happening these days. Sometimes it’s the snapshots that say the most.

A Jerusalem sky heavy with storm clouds looming over a group of anti-government protesters opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to fire Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet. It’s another anti-democratic step they say in the government’s slide towards autocracy.  Israeli flags flap in the wind. In the foreground an older man in a black wool hat is being shoved by five border police.

A leaked quote: “Yesterday you accused me of treason. Today you are threatening to send me to jail. Tomorrow you will execute me,” Bar reportedly told government ministers, according to a Channel 12 report.

A tweet by Netanyahu liked by Elon Musk: “In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will. They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”

A text from my daughter while babysitting for our neighbors’ young children upstairs: “If there’s an azaka (Hebrew for air-raid siren) can one of you come help bring them down to the shelter?”

In the last week Israel resumed fighting with Hamas in Gaza, in a surprise air assault that has killed and wounded hundreds, shattering 42 days of a cease-fire, the beginning of relief in Gaza, the emotional return of some of the hostages to Israel. 

And if war resuming was not enough, the some 70 percent of Israelis who don’t support the government felt the gut punch of a resumption of its plan to overhaul the judiciary (code opponents say for a power grab to weaken the courts) and attempts to fire not just Bar but the attorney general too, accusing Gali Baharav-Miara of blocking its agenda.

Tens of thousands of protesters have been packing the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the past seven days straight, mass demonstrations of the likes not seen since before the war. On Saturday night in Tel Aviv over 100,000 marched through the streets.  They are back to chanting not just “Why are they still in Gaza?” referring to the remaining hostages and demanding a truce and a deal for all of them to be released from the Hamas tunnels under the rubble of Gaza, but also to chanting “Democracy! Democracy.”

Netanyahu appears indifferent to the sounds of protesters literally outside his home, on Gaza Street (yes, Gaza Street) near the official prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. He is laser focused instead on pleasing the 68 members of his government, ensuring they will vote for the state budget Tuesday. Shoring up that solid government majority has meant assuring the ultra-Orthodox they will continue to be exempt from being conscripted into the army. It’s also featured welcoming back far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir to his job as national security minister along with his party back into the government.

Amid the government’s latest moves and the deep fracture they are creating – and at wartime no less – and the spiking police violence against demonstrators, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak said he fears the country could be being pushed towards civil war.

Noting “the severe rift between Israelis and themselves,” he told Yediot Ahronot, the Israeli daily. “This rift is deteriorating and in the end, I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges into a chasm causing a civil war.”

Shmuel Rosner, a political analyst and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, says of potential civil war, “We need to define it before we can say if [it is] close or remote. If we are talking about people putting up barricades in streets or taking out pistols, I don’t think we are close to that.”

One of the potential dangers is people regarding the police as Ben-Gvir’s militia rather than the government body intended to also protect them, he notes.

Those warning of civil war, Barak among them, are “not alarmists, but are raising the flag early… It’s important to say we [Israelis] are not that unique to assume that no such thing can happen in Israel,” he adds. 

As a measure of the growing sense of lawlessness, and the fear and uncertainty that accompany this moment, I offer another snapshot. This one from Monday evening. A post on Bluesky, a social media network, from Yuval Abraham, the Israeli co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”

It reads: “A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film ‘No Other Land’. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.”