Democracy and Peace or Occupation and Conflict: You Have A Vote!

Voting closes today for the World Zionist Congress. Israel at 77 is at a crossroads, and Jews around the world do have a say.

In 1998 while living in Israel, I was lucky enough to attend official ceremonies marking Israel’s 50^th birthday. The events moved me deeply, connecting me to my father and his family who were part of Israel’s founding story and to thousands of years of Jewish history.

Living in Israel, I understood the contradictions boiling beneath the surface, most critically the challenge that two peoples, not just one, saw the same land as their rightful home.

On Israel’s 50^th, Bibi Netanyahu had been Prime Minister a little more than a year, and tensions between the nationalist right and the more liberal, secular center-left were already high. Only three years had passed since a right-wing yeshiva student from the West Bank, Yigal Amir, had assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Many reading this will remember the horrendous incitement against Rabin from the right and Netanyahu’s own participation in rallies where chants of “Death to Rabin” were heard. Perhaps you’re also aware that a young Itamar Ben-Gvir was filmed at the time holding the Mercedes ornament from Rabin’s car and saying “we got to his car, we can get to him.”

Back then, Ben-Gvir was arrested, convicted of terror and barred from reserve duty in the IDF over his extremism. Today, he’s the government minister in charge of the police, welcomed on Capitol Hill last week by Republican members of Congress.

Three decades later, Benjamin Netanyahu remains the central figure in Israeli politics.

In that time, the core tensions facing Israel have remained unaddressed, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has descended into an abyss of death, inhumanity and endless occupation.

Driven by a radical right-wing alliance between ultra-nationalists and the ultra-orthodox, the country is careening toward a non-democratic future to which the majority of Jews in the United States won’t relate. If we wonder why so many young Jewish Americans are turning away from Israel, we need look no further than the attack by a right-wing mob on a reform synagogue in Ra’anana livestreaming a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial service – an attack that an official from the ruling Likud Party called “a warning shot.”

American Jews should not think the hard right’s poison can be contained 6000 miles away. It will come here. Witness the mob of orthodox men harassing a woman – chasing her, kicking her and pelting her with garbage - near the site of a visit by Ben-Gvir to Brooklyn last week.

Right-wing activists regularly harass liberal Jewish leaders including me – who Betar-US calls “disgusting” – and feed lists of names to the Trump administration of students and other activists to deport.

If Jewish leaders both in Israel and in the US don’t demonstrate stronger, more forceful leadership, the right-wing fringe will not only drive the state of Israel off a cliff, they will prove destructive for Jewish life in America as well.

So, what can you do about all of this?

Today – Sunday May 4 – is the last day of voting in the election for the World Zionist Congress.

I and the other candidates on the Hatikvah slate are running to ensure that the liberal majority of Jewish Americans who care about Israel and are dedicated to our values are well represented in one of the governing bodies of World Jewry, which controls how over $1 billion annually in Jewish contributions to Israel’s future will be spent.

Please click here to vote TODAY for the Hatikvah slate (number 16).

Please vote and pass this email on to friends, family and colleagues.

In closing, I want to share some beautiful thoughts from my colleague Adina Vogel-Ayalon reflecting on Yom Ha’atzmaut (“Independence Day”):

I’ve just returned from a visit to the kibbutz where I lived for 12 years – where my daughter was born, where I still have beloved family, friends and community – and I found myself reflecting deeply on the past, present and future of the State of Israel this Independence Day.

Walking the familiar paths of the kibbutz, sharing coffee and conversations with old friends, I was struck by a profound sense of both home and heartbreak.

The Israel I once knew and still fiercely love – a place built on ideals of equality, community, and justice – feels increasingly distant from the Israel I see today.

When I think of Israel’s founding, I think of the values that defined my kibbutz life: Shared responsibility, democracy, a deep belief in human dignity.

I think proudly of the words etched into our Declaration of Independence – how the new state “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.” That was the dream. That was the promise.

Living in America hasn’t dulled my connection to Israel. If anything, the distance makes the pain sharper. I remain deeply connected to the people, the land, and the ideals at the heart of its founding.

And it is from this place of love that I must say: I am distressed.

Endless war. Occupation. An extremist government that seems more committed to holding power than holding onto democracy or getting our hostages home to families who have been in anguish far too long.

I see leaders determined to divide rather than unite, to marginalize rather than embrace, to ensure that Israel "lives by the sword" rather than strives for peace. I see a rejection of the foundational principles that made me proud to call myself a Zionist.

But even in the heartbreak, I found hope.

I stood in Hostage Square. I chanted alongside my peers at the Begin demonstration. I saw the faces of thousands who still believe, still fight, still love this country enough to demand better. I was reminded why my pro-Israel activism in the US matters so much.

Because the Israel we are fighting for is still there – in the streets, in the voices of dissent, in the peace advocates who speak out for the humanity of all, in the quiet resilience of everyday people.

The Israel I believe in is one that pursues peace, that embraces its Jewish identity not as a weapon, but as a source of spiritual and inclusive strength.

It’s a nation that remembers the power of community, that attends to the vulnerable, that doesn’t give in to despair even when the road ahead seems impossible.

That’s the Israel I saw glimpses of in the kibbutz. That’s the Israel I will continue to fight for – with love, with urgency, with hope.