This Week: Another Horrific Antisemitic Terror Attack ⚠️ | J Street Mourns, Honors Lives of Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gadi Haggai 🕯️ | Trump-Netanyahu Aid Plan Is Entirely Insufficient 🌾 | We Reject Trump’s New Travel Ban 🧳 | An Open Letter to the American Jewish Establishment 📄 | A Reckoning is Coming in Israeli Society 🇮🇱 | Next Saturday Join the NO KINGS National Day of Action 👑 | This Week’s Must-Reads 📖 | Our Pro-Democracy To-Do List 🗳️ | And much more.
⚠️ Another Horrific Antisemitic Terror Attack: Last Sunday, we were horrified by news of another horrific antisemitic terror attack on a peaceful hostage solidarity walk in Boulder, Colorado during which twelve people were injured by an assailant with incendiary devices shouting “End Zionists.”
- Our Response: “Right now, some of the worst fears of our community are being realized here on our shores. This is the second act of anti-Israel, antisemitic terror in the past two weeks. This growing climate of violence, fear and intimidation cannot be allowed to escalate any further,” J Street Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer Ilan Goldenberg wrote. Read more >>
- Authoritarianism Does Not Protect Jews: “There's a bright-red line between free speech and political violence. These attacks are horrific and our hearts are with the victims of this sickening attack," J Street Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff Adina Vogel Ayalon told Newsweek. “We must also not allow this attack to be used to justify the Trump Administration's ongoing authoritarian attacks on higher education and medical research that have been undertaken under the guise of fighting antisemitism. These actions trivialize the very real issue of antisemitism and do nothing to make our Jewish communities safer.” Read more >>
🕯️ J Street Mourns, Honors Lives of Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gadi Haggai: Following the recovery of the bodies of Israeli-American hostages Judi and Gadi, Adina wrote, “We stand with the family of Judi and Gadi, who said today, ‘Our hearts will not be whole until all hostages return.’ There are still 56 hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, and each and every one’s family is enduring unbearable grief as they fight tirelessly to embrace their children or give their loved ones a proper burial.” Read more >>
🌾 Trump-Netanyahu Aid Plan Is Entirely Insufficient: Dozens of people have once again been reported killed in desperate, chaotic scenes at or near aid distribution sites set up by the US and Israeli-backed ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF).
- Our Response: “It is beyond maddening that right now, thousands of tons of essential supplies – food, baby formula and women’s hygiene supplies – are sitting in trucks just miles away from those who need them, accompanied by personnel with the expertise and experience to deliver them. We urge the Israeli government to let aid in while working with those groups to ensure it reaches those who need it most and is not stolen by Hamas or other gangs,” Ilan wrote. Read more >>
- Our Advocacy: Representatives Jayapal, Raskin, Keating, Foushee and Balint introduced a House resolution this week urging the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Over 90 House Democrats have cosponsored the resolution in its first week, and this follows the introduction of a Senate companion resolution led by Senator Welch and supported by 46 out of 47 Democrats.
- Dig Deeper: Larry Garber, J Street Policy Fellow and former head of USAID’s West Bank-Gaza mission, writes, "Without doubt, Gaza’s population welcomes aid that becomes available from whatever source, but the number of meals required far exceeds GHF’s capabilities and the civilian casualties suffered en route to the hubs may discourage some Palestinians from making the trek in the future." Read more >>
🧳 We Reject Trump’s New Travel Ban: J Street Director of Government Affairs Hannah Morris wrote, “J Street strongly rejects the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to demonize immigrants and politicize the US immigration system while catastrophically failing to address the very real issues the majority of Americans face. These nonsensical blanket travel bans echo President Trump’s first-term ‘Muslim Ban,’ which undermines the US’s image as a welcoming nation, and will only serve to punish legitimate travel for tourism, education, work, family reunion and immigration purposes.” Read more >>
📄 On Unity: An Open Letter to the American Jewish Establishment: “I know Jewish communal leaders worry deeply about the damage that an open argument in Jewish America about Israel can do to our community. I worry more about the impact on Jewish America of NOT having this argument. Of not standing up and saying that the path being pursued by Bibi Netanyahu and the Kahanists and racists in his government is beyond the pale.” Read Jeremy’s full Word on the Street Substack here >>
🇮🇱 A Reckoning is Coming in Israeli Society: Ilan writes, “I had the opportunity to spend 10 days in Israel and the Palestinian Territories recently as part of a J Street delegation – the first of what I expect will be many such trips. What was most striking was that in all of my years of visiting the region I had never seen Israeli society so unmoored and untethered. It was in many ways depressing but I also came away hopeful.” Read the full Dialogue and Dissonance Substack >>
👑 Next Saturday Join the NO KINGS National Day of Action: Next Saturday, our movement is preparing to organize, march and stand against Trump’s authoritarian agenda. J Street is proud to join with pro-democracy groups all across the country to defend our rights, our democracy and our communities. Find a NO KINGS event in your area >>
📖 This Week’s Must-Reads:
- How My Pro-Israel Life Led Me to J Street: Board Member of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region Todd Kaufman writes, "Like me (and 90 percent of American Jews), J Street understands that it is possible to be pro-Israel and still publicly disagree with the Israeli government on what is in the country’s best interests, whether it is related to its war strategy or the health of its democracy."
- With Zionism, Its Time To Go Hard on the Problem, Soft on the People: “Demonizing all members of a group, particularly one as ill defined as ‘Zionists,’ is usually counterproductive. When that group is closely linked to a single community (with a long history of being scapegoated by a hostile majority), the slope to bigotry becomes more than merely slippery,” Mik Moore writes.
- The Two Things I Fear Most After the Horrifying Attack on Jews in Boulder: “I don’t know how to break this cycle. But I do strongly suspect that as a first step, American Jews — and Americans more generally — need to insist on our right to participate in civic life. That can mean running to raise awareness of the plight of the many hostages still in Gaza. It can mean attending an event for Jewish professionals, or showing up at a pro-Palestine protest, or writing an op-ed,” Emily Tamkin writes.
- Trump and Netanyahu Were Marching in Lockstep – Until They Weren’t: “Over the years, there have surely been tensions and surprises in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. But no administration, Republican nor Democratic, has acted as independently of Israel on matters deemed to be vital to Israeli security interests or to the political interests of an Israeli prime minister,” Aaron David Miller and Lauren Morganbesser write.
🗳️ Our Pro-Democracy To-Do List:
💡 More Resources:
- Watch our Webinars and Listen to our Podcast:
- Read More on Our Website:
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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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