Defining “Pro-Israel” in 2025

Using the fight against antisemitism as a pretext for an assault on higher ed, immigrants and the Constitution is neither pro-Israel nor good for the Jewish people.

A few months ago, I launched this Word on the Street Substack with a post examining what it really means to be pro-Israel.

I outlined briefly ten key principles, promising to examine each one more deeply in subsequent posts – which I was only partly able to do. Events – both here at home and in the Middle East – moved at such a breakneck clip that I didn’t succeed in revisiting all ten.

Today, I am excited to share a beautiful, new 28-page pamphlet titled “What It Means To Be Pro-Israel” that finishes the job – fleshing out a definition of support for Israel that I hope speaks to the majority of Jewish Americans in the 2020s.

The moderate middle of our community cares about the state and people of Israel and recognizes that perpetual conflict and occupation without affording the Palestinian people freedom, dignity and self-determination is a formula for disaster for Israel.

Some Jewish Americans – and organizations representing them – still hold to the notion that the only way to support Israel is with unquestioning support for every action and policy of the sitting government. There are also some Jewish Americans – anti-, non- or post-Zionists – who don’t support the idea of a state that is the national homeland of the Jewish people.

However, the majority in the middle of Jewish America holds moderate pro-Israel, pro-peace and pro-democracy views, and I hope this booklet speaks for them – and for you. Please take a look, share your thoughts, and pass this downloadable link and/or this post along to friends, family and others with whom you regularly discuss these issues.

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This week, the debate about what helps or hurts Israel and the Jewish community has centered on the Trump Administration’s attacks on Columbia University and other institutions of higher learning as well as on arrests and threats to deport individual students who protested Israel’s policies and actions in the Gaza war.

One of the ten principles in the new “What It Means to Be Pro-Israel” booklet is that, “We can fight the world’s oldest hatred without shutting down free speech.” Most Jewish Americans agree: we can have and enforce reasonable rules to ensure protests don’t interfere with other students’ rights to study and live in safety and at the same time not defund universities or deport students.

I happen to have two children in college and most of my social circle either has children of or just around college age. This is a sensitive and personal topic for all of them.

Some are deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of their children – and Jewish students generally – on campuses where there have been protests. They see the anger and vitriol on display at some of the protests against Israel, “Zionists” and Jews and ask why administrators have not done more to crack down on rule breakers.

Other friends are simply shocked at how the Trump administration and right-wing political agitators are weaponizing antisemitism and using the fight against it to advance their larger assault on higher education, immigrants and the Constitution.

Often, of course, the lived experience of actual students doesn’t align with the reactions parents have to what they’re reading and seeing. In early March, an incredible J Street U student, Meirav Solomon, testified in front of a Senate Committee about antisemitism. I urge you to listen to or read her testimony to hear a balanced, thoughtful take on the issue.

As I see it, antisemitism is real, and it is rising – in the US and around the world. It is the world’s “oldest hatred” and it’s still frighteningly prevalent – on the political right and on the political left.

On the right, it is often bound up with other forms of hatred and bigotry and tied into hard-core white nationalism that has found too much oxygen in the MAGA movement surrounding President Trump.

On the left, harsh criticism of the right-wing Israeli government and its policies at times bleeds into anti-Zionism and even into antisemitism in ugly ways, though the exact line where that happens is exceedingly difficult to define.

In our statement this week, J Street made the following call on the major institutions of the American Jewish community:

“We, the American Jewish community, must call out this upside-down world in which we find ourselves. A world in which the antisemitism of Christian Zionists is overlooked because of their support of Israel. A world in which the racism and bigotry of white nationalists and antisemites are excused when they support the politics of a far-right Israeli government. A world in which, under the guise of fighting antisemitism, the Trump administration is pursuing policies that will make Jews less safe.

“So J Street says to our fellow Jewish organizations: as we unite to battle against antisemitism, let’s also stand together for American democracy. Let’s stand up for higher education. Let’s stand for the rule of law and constitutional protections for speech and due process. And let’s make crystal clear that there must be no place for antisemites and racists in any US administration.

The Trump administration and the political right are abusing the Jewish community’s very real fears about antisemitism – using them as a pretext for a deeply frightening assault on three critical pillars of the American Jewish experience: higher education, immigration and constitutional protections for free speech and for minority rights.

This assault is the most significant threat in our lifetime to the very fabric of American life that has benefitted Jewish Americans over the last several generations.

The very necessary battle against antisemitism – and against hatred and bigotry more broadly – must not be weaponized in the service of efforts to undercut American democracy, the rule of law and our commitments to human and civil rights.