This Week: House Democrats Take Action to Save Children in Gaza 📣 | Every Bomb is a Choice 💣 | Time for Jewish Institutional Leaders to Get Off the Sidelines ✡️ | The Message from Israel: End the War. Bring them Home ✊ | Israel’s Breaking Point, Washington’s Turning Point 🧭 | The Danger of Conflating Antizionism with Antisemitism 🇮🇱 | This Week’s Must-Reads/ Listens 📖 | Our Pro-Democracy To-Do List 🗳️ | And much more.
📣 100+ House Dems Join J Street-backed Gaza Letters: A massive thank you to the thousands of J Streeters across the country who signed petitions and called their representatives to rally support for two major congressional letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
- Humanitarian Visas: Representatives Debbie Dingell and Kim Schrier led a letter signed by 142 Members of Congress – more than two-thirds of House Democrats – urging the State Department to reinstate humanitarian visas for Gazans – including children in need of urgent medical care.
- Get Baby Formula Into Gaza: Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Brittany Pettersen championed a second letter signed by 103 Members of Congress calling for a surge of humanitarian aid – with a focus on infant formula.
- J Street welcomed these letters, stating: “The United States has the power to save innocent lives by restoring the visa program and ensuring a surge of humanitarian aid. Failure to do so is not an inevitability of war – it is a deliberate policy choice.” Read more >>
Tell Secretary Rubio: Stop punishing Gaza’s children >>
💣 Policy Chief Ilan Goldenberg: Every Bomb is a Choice: Earlier this week, Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Gaza, killing 20 people, including five journalists. Netanyahu expressed regret for the “tragic mishap.” The Israeli military later said the target was a “Hamas camera.” Videos verified by the New York Times show journalists regularly filming from that location.
- “I don’t believe Israel deliberately targeted journalists, but at this point I don’t know if that even matters. The pattern is clear: two years into this war, Israel continues to weigh the marginal value of killing a Hamas operative against the enormous moral, legal, and strategic costs of striking civilian facilities – and keeps choosing to strike.” Read more >>
✡️ National Director of Communal Relations Sam Berkman in The Forward: "Avoiding any acknowledgement of responsibility the Israeli government has in ending the Gaza war, much of Jewish institutional leadership today appears to have reverted back to old tendencies. Placing themselves on the sidelines, they have enabled extremists in Israel to drag the country down a path of endless conflict, occupation and fading democracy that most U.S. Jews are against." Read and share here >>
✊ The Message from Israel: End the War. Bring them Home. J Street Israel Executive Director Nadav Tamir writes, "I wish I could convey to you the energy on the streets this past week. I wish you could stand here with me and feel the red-hot anger. Hear the demands from the mothers and fathers of those still held captive by Hamas. See the proud peace advocates holding up images of Gaza’s children, refusing to let anyone look away." Read more >>
🧭 Israel’s Breaking Point, Washington’s Turning Point: In the latest Word on the Street Live, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami and Ilan Goldenberg discuss the situation on the ground: The devastating hospital bombing in Gaza, reports of confirmed famine, and the growing frustration inside Israel itself as hostage families and hundreds of thousands of protesters defy Netanyahu and demand a ceasefire deal. Watch here >>
🇮🇱 The Danger of Conflating Antizionism with Antisemitism: J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami writes, “Some criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism, just as criticism of any country can spill into prejudice. But declaring that opposition to occupation or even Zionism itself is inherently antisemitic erases legitimate dissent and equates Jewish identity with the policies of a state. And if Jewish identity is tied to Israeli behavior, then when Prime Minister Netanyahu pursues extremist policies — from his judicial coup to de facto annexation — the message to the world becomes: This is what all Jews want.” Read Jeremy’s full Substack here >>
📖 This Week’s Must-Reads/Listens:
- What Are 'Snapback Sanctions' and What Comes Next?
The latest J Street Policy Center explainer unpacks the implications of the 'snapback' mechanism, which allows any participant in the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) to reimpose the UN sanctions that the deal had lifted. That mechanism will expire on October 18, 2025. The E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) announced this week that they would trigger snapback to reimpose the sanctions due to Iran’s continued violations of its commitments. All of this could have been avoided if President Trump had not withdrawn from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018.
- The Zionist Case for Palestinian Statehood (And Against Fatalism)
Yehuda Kurtzer writes for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “A better way forward is for supporters of Israel to embrace – with caveats, and in partnership with the many Israelis and Palestinians who are working to change the status quo – the process of building towards Palestinian statehood by encouraging it to take root under a set of conditions that are in Israel’s long-term interest.”
- Israel’s Unprecedented Slaughter of Journalists in Gaza
Ishaan Tharoor writes for The Washington Post, "As international media has not been allowed by Israel to freely enter or report from Gaza, local journalists have shouldered the burden of covering the war alone – and paid a bitter price. The latest example came Monday when the Israeli military killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, when it struck Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, hitting the facility once shortly after 10am local time and then targeting it again in what’s known as a 'double tap' strike as reporters and first responders gathered at the scene."
- Israel Needs Women in Leadership
J Street Israel Executive Director Nadav Tamir writes for The Jerusalem Post, "Every Israeli poll tells the same discouraging story, and not because of the numbers but because of the photos above them. They are all men: the current leaders, the aspiring leaders, the future leaders. Today, not one woman heads a political party or is considered a serious candidate for national leadership."
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