Six more hostages are dead. It’s time for all American Jews to join the opposition.
Hamas killed them. But Netanyahu is complicit.
Protesters lift flags and placards next to symbolic coffins representing six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered from the Gaza Strip, during an anti-government rally calling for the release of the captives held by Palestinian militants in Gaza since October, in Tel Aviv on Sept. 1, 2024. Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Senior Columnist Rob Eshman September 1, 2024
All of Israel will close down in mourning, shock and rage over the deaths of six hostages at the hands of their Hamas kidnappers.
American Jews need to find a way to support them.
For too long the majority of American Jews have taken their marching orders from the official Israeli government line. Now is the time to join with the Israelis who challenge it.
Of course the Israelis joining the general strike called to mourn the dead hostages and free the remaining ones know that Hamas, which took the six hostages alive on Oct. 7, is responsible for their murders. The early news report that each was shot with bullets at close range leaves no question about that.
But the reason for the mass strike is not Hamas. No one expected Hamas to act any differently than the vicious, nihilistic and self-serving terrorist organization that it is. No one, in other words, expected better of Hamas.
But Israelis expected better of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The man elected on the promise of keeping his country secure has utterly failed to do that. But he talks a good game, especially to American ears, so Jews from New York to L.A. have long been inclined to support his governments.
And to our shame, we have kept our opposition to a minimum.
When Netanyahu led the charge to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, mainstream American Jewish organizations stood by him, or remained silent. President Donald Trump took Netanyahu’s advice and pulled out of the agreement in 2018. Experts point out that Iran, which was then a year from making a bomb, can now do so in a matter of weeks.
When Netanyahu led an effort to undermine Israel’s democracy by weakening its independent judiciary, mainstream Jewish groups couched their opposition in statements of “concern,” refusing to pinpoint the leader behind that malign, naked power grab.
And when Netanyahu put Jewish supremacists, direct descendents of the late Jewish terror supporter Meir Kahane, into his cabinet, crickets.
That’s an abbreviated list of all the ways Netanyahu has weakened Israel. I should include his permitting of unchecked land grabs and settler violence in the West Bank, channeling funds to Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian movement, demonizing Israeli Arabs (which the Anti-Defamation League rightly condemned) and treating one American president after another as a meddlesome junior coalition partner to be smacked down. Netanyahu has undermined Israel’s international support and fed division at home and antisemitism abroad.
But it is Netanyahu’s foot-dragging and delays over hostage negotiation that must break the proverbial camel’s back. According to his own defense chiefs, Netanyahu’s unnecessary insistence on Israeli control over the Philadelphi corridor, a demand he recently inserted into negotiations, delayed the release of the hostages, with tragic results.
This all came out in reports of a cabinet meeting last Thursday in which Netanyahu said he prioritized control over the slip of land between Gaza and Egypt above release of the hostages, as reported in the Times of Israel.
“The significance of this is that Hamas won’t agree to it, so there won’t be an agreement and there won’t be any hostages released,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at the meeting.
The demands over the corridor and the Rafah crossing were not in Israel’s late May proposal to Hamas. Israel’s defense establishment maintained that it was more important to free the hostages — it could always find a way to control those troubled areas later.
Either Netanyahu inserted the new demands because he understands Israel’s security better than his defense chiefs, or to prevent the collapse of his government and his loss of power. Take a guess.
The result either way is the brutal death of the six hostages. His defense and intelligence chiefs warned of that happening, just as they warned Netanyahu of a major attack on Israel if he continued to divide the country over last year’s judicial coup.
Even now, Netanyahu insists that the Philadelphi corridor is worth the lives of the six hostages, and is refusing to budge. All of this has galvanized opposition to Netanyahu in Israel, and it should, it must, serve as a wake-up call to American Jews and their organizations. If it doesn’t, what have we become?
As Israelis take to the streets, American Jewish organizations need to issue clear strong statements in support of them. They need to call on Netanyahu to step down. They need to financially support groups like the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and Standing Together and urge all American Jews to do the same. It is time to join the loyal opposition.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Eden Yerushalmi.
Ori Danino.
Alex Lobanov.
Carmel Gat.
Almog Sarusi.
Hamas leaders must pay for their murders with their lives. Netanyahu must pay with his job.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
