This Week: Tell Trump: You Don’t Speak for Us 💪 | Passover Lessons for Fighting Modern Day Pharaohs ✊ | Tragedies in Gaza and the West Bank ⚠️ | Huckabee Confirmed – Despite Massive Democratic Opposition 🚨 | Policy Center Corner 🔍 | This Week’s Must Reads 📖 | Our Pro-Democracy To-Do List 🗳️ | And much more.
💪 Tell Trump: You Don’t Speak for Us: Since he entered office, Trump has been exploiting genuine fears about antisemitism as cover for his anti-democratic assault on higher education. It’s time our community stands up and pushes back.
- Together, we’re saying the president doesn’t speak for us: Not when he threatens research funding. Not when he tramples procedural rights and due process. Not when he deports peaceful protesters. Add your name now >>
- The fight against those fueling antisemitism must be taken seriously – and we cannot allow Trump and the MAGA movement to hijack it for their own distorted agenda.
✊ Passover Lessons for Fighting Modern Day Pharaohs: Four Passover lessons to share and send to family and friends, joining you at your Seder table. Read the full piece here >>
- Pharaohs are Bad for the Jews: Jewish history is packed with stories of suffering at the hands of tyrants. The Egyptian Pharaohs were just the beginning. In the Seder, we read that “in every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us." Maintaining our freedom requires standing up to modern-day tyrants and would-be Pharaohs.
- “Next Year in Jerusalem” and the Dream of Returning Home: Jewish longing for return to Jerusalem and the land of Israel has been part of Jewish tradition and liturgy for centuries. But, one people’s connectivity to a land does not negate another’s to the same land.
- Nachshon and the Need for Courageous Leadership: The Jewish people hesitated on the shores of the Red Sea. Nachshon took a first step into the waters and they miraculously parted. Too many leaders – university presidents, corporate and media executives, communal leaders – are bending the knee. We need modern-day Nachshons, who will plunge in and speak truth to power.
- Drops of Wine and Empathy: As we recount the ten plagues during the seder, we traditionally spill one drop of wine from our cups for each plague to remember that our joy at our own liberation is diminished by the suffering of others, even our worst enemies. The suffering of one’s own people provides no justification to oppress another people.
- Interested in more resources for your progressive seder?
⚠️ Tragedies in Gaza and the West Bank: On Tuesday, Trump met with Netanyahu at the White House. He made no mention of the 14-year-old Palestinian-American shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, nor the clearly marked, clearly lit ambulance convoy fired upon by Israeli forces. Instead, he continued his calls for displacing Palestinians from Gaza.
- Our Response: “It is deeply disturbing that this administration continues to turn a blind eye to such horrors, and to the pleas of hostage families and Jewish Americans who want President Trump to press Prime Minister Netanyahu back into the ceasefire and hostage release deal.” Read our full statement >>
🚨 Huckabee Confirmed – Despite Massive Democratic Opposition: Mike Huckabee has told us what he believes in many times: annexation, embrace of extremist settlers and total indifference to Israel’s democratic future and Palestinian Rights.
- Overwhelming Democratic Opposition: “It’s deeply heartening to see wall-to-wall Democratic opposition in the Senate to Governor Huckabee’s nomination, with 46 out of 47 senators in the Democratic caucus voting against the nomination, including every single Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
- Our Response: “This appointment plays to the Evangelical, Christian Zionist base of today’s Republican Party and has little to do with actual concern for the Jewish people or the safety of the Jewish homeland.” Read our statement >>
🔍 Policy Center Corner: The latest from the J Street Policy Center.
- Netanyahu’s War of Survival: J Street Policy Fellow Yael Patir and J Street Policy Intern Liam Hamama write, “The majority of the Israeli public, including many of its reservists, explicitly prioritize the lives of the hostages over any other war aim, which could result in concerningly low rates of reservists reporting for duty and widespread protests.” Read the powerful piece here >>
- The Iran Tipping Point: Why 2025 Could Bring a Deal or a War. Ilan Goldenberg, J Street’s Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer, writes, “I’ve been working on and following Iran for the past 15 years since the start of the Obama Administration. As the Trump Administration heads into indirect negotiations with Iran this weekend in Oman, I cannot recall a time where things were as unclear as they are today, and where both the likelihood of a deal and of a conflict seemed so high.” Read the full piece >>
📖 This Week’s Must-Reads (And Listens):
- My Jewish Moms Group Ousted Me Because I Work for J Street. Is This What Communal Life Has Come To? In a heartfelt piece, Emily Kaiman, J Street’s Deputy Director of Jewish Communal Engagement, writes, “Jewish identity must not be subject to loyalty tests. It’s a sacred inheritance, shaped by centuries of debate, resilience and moral wrestling. If we narrow our tent to extend only over those who say what we want to hear – if we exile one another over differences – we will lose more than just membership in Facebook groups. We will lose the very heart of our community.” Read in The Forward here >>
- Deluzio Calls for Renewed Peace Efforts After Visiting Sites Devastated by Hamas: “[Congressman Chris Deluzio] traveled to Israel on a trip organized by J Street’s Len Hill Education Travel Program, led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and accompanied by Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street.” Read here >>
- The University President Willing to Fight Trump [Podcast]: “President Trump has frozen billions of dollars in federal funds in an attempt to rid higher education of what he calls its woke ideology. Rachel Abrams speaks to the president of Princeton University, Christopher L. Eisgruber, who has vowed to fight.” Listen here >>
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J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy Americans who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the Jewish people. Working in American politics and the Jewish community, we advocate policies that advance shared US and Israeli interests as well as Jewish and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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