Yes, Judaism is a very old tradition. But in the midst of the ongoing political and moral crisis that is Israel’s war on Gaza and the West Bank, we must not forget: it is also always being renewed. Since ancient days, rabbis have chosen how to understand and apply Torah in their times — giving those of us living now an obligation to do the same. When we fail to do so, Torah can become a regressive and dangerous weapon.
See Meir Kahane. An Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn who moved to Israel in 1971, Kahane not only preached that Jews were superior to our neighbors but urged violence against Palestinians. The slogan of the political party he founded? “They must go.”
Kahane’s views were seen as so extreme that he was widely boycotted by the people of Israel, and assassinated here in New York in 1990. But his ideas didn’t die. They have been festering for decades, particularly among right-wing religious settlers, just as white nationalism has been growing in this country.
Our Torah portion from last week makes the Jewish moral stance wholly clear: “Do not hate an Edomite, because he is your brother. Do not hate an Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land.” As understood by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, this verse is telling us: “To be free, you have to let go of hate…. Resentment, rage, humiliation, a sense of injustice, the desire to restore honor by inflicting injury on your former persecutors — these are conditions of a profound lack of freedom… You cannot create a free society on the basis of hate.”
And yet, today, followers of Meir Kahane sit in the Israeli government. His ideas are regularly heard in Israeli media. There are many reasons for this, including widespread despair and pessimism that there will ever be peace, and now deep fear and trauma from Oct. 7. But also, there is a small but powerful minority of the Israeli population that interprets verses of Torah to mean that G-d wants the Jewish people to dispossess their neighbors and take all of the land. And they believe that doing so will bring the messiah.
This messianic fanaticism, combined with the normalization of Kahane’s hate, Jewish supremacy, and eliminationist agenda, is animating the Gaza war and enabling Benjamin Netanyahu to prosecute it indefinitely and without regard for Palestinian life. It’s this supremacist distortion of Torah that fuels the violations of human rights we witness daily.
Palestinians are being shot dead in the West Bank, their land stolen routinely, and the Jewish religious perpetrators are not punished. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has officially called for the annexation of 82% of the West Bank, explicitly to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Meanwhile in Gaza, two million Palestinians are in human-imposed famine.
One thousand people have been shot and killed at aid stations as they desperately tried to get food. And now, the Israeli army is attacking Gaza City, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis fill the streets every week in protest, reservists are refusing to fight, schoolchildren organized a nationwide strike, and in April of this year, more than 550 former Israeli military leaders wrote to Donald Trump asking him to call for the end of the war, saying: “It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.”
Let’s be clear: At any point since their brutal massacre on Oct. 7, Hamas could return the hostages and surrender its weapons. Hamas is holding its own people hostage along with Israelis, with a long-term strategy of making Israel a pariah state and undermining American support.
And let’s also be clear: Israel is playing right into that strategy with its refusal to make a hostage deal and its dehumanization of Palestinians.
Last week, Trump made statements calling on Israel to end the war and calling on Hamas to release all of the remaining living hostages. And yet, as columnist Amir Tibon wrote in Haaretz, the reason Netanyahu can continue the war is… Donald Trump. “Since Netanyahu’s visit to Washington in February, two weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the Israeli premier has been acting as if there are no consequences whatsoever for his decisions.” According to former U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, Netanyahu told former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that he intends to fight this war “for decades.”
There must be consequences.
I say this as someone who loves Israel. I say this as someone who has devoted her life to serving the Jewish people. It’s not easy to say, and saying it may not yet be popular among Jewish American leaders. But Torah demands that we care about all human beings, all human life, created as it is in the image of G-d.
And even if we only cared about Israelis, we should provide consequences to Netanyahu, because his government is not caring for its own people. It is dismantling their democracy, keeping them in a forever war, and refusing to make deals to bring home the hostages who have now been in captivity for more than 700 days.
Precisely because we care deeply about Israel’s existence, precisely because we want Israel to have a future, precisely because we care about the safety and well-being of Israelis, American Jewish leaders must change our position. There must be consequences for the Netanyahu government.
Within the $3.8 billion of aid that the United States sends to Israel is funding for Iron Dome and defensive weapons which protect Israel from Iran and its many proxies. This, we must protect. But a significant portion is for offensive weapons. There are laws in the United States, called the Leahy Laws, barring the sale of offensive weapons to countries that use them to violate human rights. These laws restrict military aid to foreign armies if there is credible information that they have committed “Gross Violations of Human Rights.”
We have all witnessed those violations with our own eyes.
It appears that the war will not stop until there are consequences. We are the only ones in the world who can provide those consequences. We do not need any new laws to accomplish this. All we need to do is call for the equal enforcement of the Leahy Law.
The extreme actions of Netanyahu’s government are severely harming both Palestinians and Jews. It is time for the American Jewish community to lead.
Please, for the remaining living hostages, for the love of Israel and Israelis, and in defense of our tradition, our values, and our humanity, we can do this. We must. The time is now.
Timoner is the senior rabbi of Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim.
