Friends,
This year, we celebrated the 75th year of Israel’s independence – three-quarters of a century since the country issued its Declaration of Independence championing justice, equality and peace.
With parents and grandparents who helped found Israel and work for its independence, it’s a milestone of which I am personally proud.
This month marks another anniversary: 56 years since Israel’s surprise victory in the Six Day War, defeating yet another threat to the country’s very existence.
It’s also the anniversary of a far less proud chapter in the country’s history: 56 years of military occupation of the captured territory and the people living there.
Military occupation – under the terms of international law – is supposed to be 'temporary.' Yet, from the moment the Six Day War ended, a coalition of nationalists and extremists have sought to make the occupation permanent.
Year after year, they’ve claimed more and more land through settlements, demolitions and restrictions on Palestinian life. That has brought more than five decades of deepening conflict, intensified extremism and democratic corrosion.
Generations of Israelis have been sent to enforce occupation. To guard settlements and settlers while imposing restrictions on their Palestinian neighbors.
Generations of Palestinians have grown up without the full civil and political rights enjoyed by their neighbors.
Today, thanks to those nationalists and extremists, Israel is straying ever further from the vision of its founders that it might be a “light among nations.”
June 1967 seems a long time ago, yet what's happened since then explains where we find ourselves now. But today, too many “pro-Israel” voices in the United States are looking to move on from ever resolving the occupation, the conflict or even the question of Palestinian freedom:
- In Washington, too many legislators are giving in to lobbyists’ efforts to delete any mention from Congressional action of settlements, Palestinians, international law or even the need to support Israel’s liberal democracy.
- Political groups like AIPAC – whose Super PAC spent over $25 million in the 2022 Democratic primaries – are working to impose a cost on candidates who express even minimal concern about settlements, Palestinian freedoms and the need to resolve the conflict.
- Across Jewish organizational life, there’s a growing desire to “keep politics out” of the Israel conversation, as if we have no moral or critical duty to question whether what is happening is right by our values or best for our people.
- The Netanyahu government and many US advocacy groups now promote President Trump’s “normalization” agreements to argue that peace no longer requires addressing the actual conflict on Israel’s doorstep with its neighbors.
This comes at great cost to our values, safety and democratic future:
- Right wing nationalists have pushed Israel into a democratic crisis, pursuing anti-democratic ‘reforms’ in part to make it “much easier” (the Justice Minister’s words) to demolish homes, build settlements and ultimately annex the West Bank.
- Those who seek to make the battle against antisemitism revolve around Israel – and who seek to broadly label criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic – distract from our shared fight against those actively using antisemitism, conspiracies and online radicalization to build political power and push their own agenda.
- Rather than using the push for normalized relations with the broader Arab world as a lever to ease the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too many pro-Israel advocates are doubling down on the Trump approach of giving more advanced arms and political favors to anti-democratic dictatorships in the region. They view expanding the Abraham Accords as a tool for bypassing the Palestinian issue.
Meanwhile, Israelis and Palestinians remain stuck in a never-ending cycle of injustice, terror and violence.
Israelis grow up practicing runs to bomb shelters, fearing indiscriminate rocket fire and horrific acts of terror. Far-right ministers push toward outright annexation. Extremists on the Palestinian side continue to push for Israel’s elimination. And another Palestinian generation grows up without basic freedoms or hope for a better future.
There is no escaping this hard truth after 75 years of Israel and 56 of occupation: If Israel is to be a safe, thriving liberal democratic homeland for the Jewish people, it must end the ongoing, undemocratic occupation of millions of Palestinians.
“Managing” or ignoring the occupation – and the millions of people in Gaza and the West Bank with real lives and fears and families and aspirations – is not a solution; it’s a recipe for moral and political catastrophe.
This is a warning that countless Israeli security experts have issued, from former Prime Ministers to former IDF leaders to former leaders of Shin Bet.
On the 56th anniversary of the occupation, J Street’s mission continues to be what it has always been: To live our values, tell hard truths and fight for our vision of a truly safe, just and democratic Israel.
- We’ll continue taking Members of Congress and their staff to Israel and the West Bank to show them the dangerous, painful realities on the ground.
- We’ll press for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy legislation on Capitol Hill – and we’ll fight those pushing for occupation denial and Palestinian erasure.
- We’ll continue to fight MAGA extremists and look to transform our politics here at home.
- We’ll fund and support proud, courageous pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy candidates – from primaries to general elections to re-elections.
And we’ll continue organizing and advocating in our communities.
Bringing more people into the fold, providing resources and education, and building a welcoming political home for the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans who know that being pro-Israel does not mean we have to leave our Jewish, liberal democratic values at the door.
Thank you, Friends, for joining with us in this struggle.
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Founder and President, J Street
