Will Israel look in the mirror on its 77th birthday?

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.

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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. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

1. Bills, Resolutions
2. Letters
3. Hearings
4. Selected Members on the Record
5. Selected Media & Press releases/Statements

NOTE: Congress is on Spring Break this week.

1. Bills & Resolutions

S. 558, Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025, and S. 163, Protecting Students on Campus Act of 2025 are back on the Senate HELP Committee schedule for markup on 4/30/25. See Section 3, below, for details.

(TARGETING SETTLER TERRORISM?) HR XXXX: On 4/24/25, Rep. Nadler (D-NY) posted on X: “Today I spoke at a rally in New York protesting Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit and making clear that Ben-Gvir is not welcome here. We must be crystal clear about who Ben-Gvir is: he is a racist, terrorist, Jewish supremacist, bent on enacting Meir Kahane’s vision. He has prevented the hostages from coming home and pushed for an unending war in Gaza. Ben-Gvir is the inciter-in-chief of settler violence in the West Bank, and I invite my colleagues to join me in supporting new legislation I will introduce next week to combat all violence in the West Bank in response to Ben-Gvir’s visit.” [emphasis added]