This Week: Tell Congress You Oppose the Gaza War 📞 | Jeremy Ben-Ami Debates Einat Wilf: Is Trump Good For Israel? 🎤 | 600 Days Of Hell 📅 | Terror and Death Come to Washington 🏛️ | Trump-Netanyahu ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ Devolves Into Chaos 🌾 | The Growing Chorus Against Netanyahu’s War 📢 | This Week’s Must-Reads 📖 | Our Pro-Democracy To-Do List 🗳️ | And much more.
📞 Tell Congress You Oppose the Gaza War: In both Israel and the United States, clear majorities of both nations' Jewish communities want a hostage deal and ceasefire. But while most of us want the war in Gaza to end, too often it’s pro-war voices that are grabbing the megaphone.
🎤 Jeremy Ben-Ami Debates Einat Wilf: Is Trump Good For Israel? In a fiery debate moderated by Emmy Award-winner John Donvan, Jeremy Ben-Ami took on former Knesset member Einat Wilf’s zero-sum view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and her support for Trump’s interventions in the region.
- Two Peoples With Legitimate Claims: Jeremy shared his conviction that the both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples “have legitimate claims to national self-determination in the exact same land.” Watch and share the full debate >>
📅 600 Days Of Hell: This Wednesday marked 600 days since October 7. 600 days of captivity for the hostages. 600 days of Palestinian families fleeing bombardment and struggling to survive. It's past time to end the war, free the hostages and bring relief to Gaza.
- “Israel once defeated its enemies in six days. Under Netanyahu, the Gaza war has just reached day 600,” Amir Tibon wrote in Haaretz. “The contrast between the two wars reveals a deep crisis of leadership and direction.”
🏛️ Terror and Death Come to Washington: The horror of last week’s anti-Israel terror attack which left two embassy staff dead continues to reverberate across the city and across our community.
- “It’s painful when the worst of our fears are realized – fears of what can happen when anger over the actions of Israel’s government thousands of miles away is shamefully warped and manipulated into hatred of Jewish people everywhere,” Jeremy writes. “The horror at the Capital Jewish Museum must not harden our hearts or cause us to lose faith that there’s a way forward out of the darkness.” Read the full Word on the Street Substack >>
🌾 Trump-Netanyahu ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ Devolves Into Chaos: This week saw haunting, desperate, chaotic scenes as Trump and Netanyahu’s ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF) attempted its first aid deliveries.
- This man-made crisis has been fueled by Netanyahu's decision to block all supplies from Gaza for months – from baby food to vaccines to women's health supplies. His government continues to obstruct aid despite easing the blockade in recent days.
- Humanitarian agencies have refused to work with GHF, in part over concerns that it is being used as a tool to displace and transfer a desperate civilian population. As the group’s own Executive Director said in his Sunday resignation, “it is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”
- As J Street has consistently said: Israel and the US should heed warnings from many of Israel's own former top military veterans who say blockades are unnecessary and that they need to let humanitarian aid agencies do their job, with safeguards for distribution.
📢 The Growing Chorus Against Netanyahu’s War: In Israel and around the world, a growing number of leaders are condemning the Gaza war.
- Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes: “Recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals. The government sends our soldiers – and the military obeys – to wander around Gaza City, Jabalya and Khan Yunis neighborhoods in an illegitimate military operation. This is now a private political war. Its immediate result is the transformation of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster area,” wrote Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
- German Chancellor: Israel's Gaza Offensive No Longer Justified. “Germany has a clear position: no expulsions of the Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip, an end to hunger. And the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank belong to the Palestinians, on the path to a two-state solution,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Merz is only one of many European leaders who have taken a stronger stance against the war in recent days.
📖 This Week’s Must-Reads:
- Children in Gaza Are Starving. Let the UN Do Its Job: "What we need is for UNICEF and its humanitarian partners to be allowed to do our jobs. We have proven that essentials like medicine, vaccines, water, food and nutrition for babies can reach those in distress, wherever they are, when we have unfettered and safe access. We are not asking for the impossible. We are asking for international humanitarian law to be respected and applied,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell writes.
- Riots, Racist Slurs, Religious Ecstasy: What Was Familiar and What Changed This Jerusalem Day: "Far-right and right-wing participants clashed with Palestinian shop owners and passersby, with left-wing Israeli activists who have increasingly attended the march to protect Palestinians and their property, as well as with journalists and police. At least two elderly Palestinian men were knocked to the ground, and light property damage was reported at several businesses," Rachel Fink reports.
- Israel Is Becoming a Pariah State. Here’s What American Jews Must Do. New Israel Fund CEO Daniel Sokatch writes, "to those who are searching for another way to stay in relationship with Israel without betraying their values: Support those who share the same values and vision for Israel’s future that you believe in. One that is inclusive, just and peaceful. Two peoples live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and neither of them are going anywhere. They must live together."
🗳️ Our Pro-Democracy To-Do List:
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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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