{"id":491348,"date":"2026-06-13T20:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T20:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/491348\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T20:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T20:20:09","slug":"not-in-my-name-the-jewish-diaspora-fighting-the-consensus-on-israel-benjamin-netanyahu-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/491348\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Not in my name\u2019: The Jewish diaspora fighting the consensus on Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longstanding tensions between the US\u2019s progressive Jewish diaspora and the Israeli government came into focus this month, when Israel\u2019s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and <\/a>other far-right Israeli legislators attended the annual Israel Day Parade in New York City.<\/p>\n

As Smotrich, who says he is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC)<\/a>, joined the pro-Israel procession marching down Fifth Avenue, he was met by a chorus of \u201cshame\u201d and \u201cwar criminals\u201d<\/a> from protesters.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

Israel Day on Fifth, as the event is known, has been opposed by many in the Jewish diaspora, keen to distance themselves from Israel. With the ongoing genocide in Gaza and some of its architects on parade, the June event has been particularly controversial this year.<\/p>\n

Smotrich remained unfazed by the calls from New York\u2019s progressive Jewish protesters and proceeded to link the community\u2019s destiny to Israel\u2019s, a common mantra of both Israeli and American politicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a massive celebration \u2013 a profound connection uniting the entire global Jewish community, bringing together Jews in Israel and Jews in the United States. This shared destiny has grown significantly stronger over the past three years,\u201d he said. \u201cThe State of Israel is the home of the entire Jewish people. The security of Jews worldwide relies on the strength and security of the State of Israel. There is no better place to live than in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani fulfilled his election pledge by skipping the parade, a move welcomed by some American Jewish organisations critical of the powerful far-right undercurrent in Israeli politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Israel Day Parade, which features Israeli politicians who have not only cheered on the genocide of Palestinians, but are part of the government committing that genocide, is not a celebration of Jewish identity or pride. @NYCMayor knows this. We\u2019re grateful he is not attending,\u201d said Israelis for Peace and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ).<\/p>\n

Activists from within the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the US say they are frustrated by politicians such as Smotrich using them and their religion to justify the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.<\/p>\n

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They included groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States and Na\u2019amod in the UK. They say that the oppression of Palestinians is incompatible with the modern democratic values Israel claims to profess and contest the view that Israel, as a state, should be an established fact.<\/p>\n

Against the consensus<\/p>\n

Emily Hilton, co-founder of Na\u2019amod, says her critical view of Israel was formulated after its 2014 assault on Gaza, specifically the military\u2019s killing of four Palestinian children as they played football on a beach.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI began to question the acceptance of Zionist thought from university onwards,\u201d Hilton told Al Jazeera. \u201cI\u2019d met liberal Zionists who might question the politics of Israel, but it wasn\u2019t until I went to University College London that I first began to meet Jews and Palestinians critical of Israel and what it meant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hilton went on to join Jewish activist groups in the UK holding traditional Jewish mourning prayers for the Palestinians killed by Israel during the Great March of Return on the Gaza border in 2018. Later, she joined a vigil after the Hamas-led attack on October 7.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s subsequent war on Gaza has killed over 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza and altered perceptions among some in Jewish communities across the world about their links to the country.<\/p>\n

\"ProtestersJewish Voice for Peace protesters block traffic outside the New York office of US Senator Chuck Schumer, calling for an end to the US-Israel war with Iran and opposing US weapons support [File: Andres Kudacki\/AP Photo]<\/p>\n

\u201cMore people are coming to realise that we\u2019re right, Israel has lost the moral argument,\u201d Hilton said. \u201cWhatever claim it once had has gone. Now, its only remaining claim is that it acts on behalf of the mainstream Jewish community, and even that is looking less certain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main political threat to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government, including right-wing former premier Naftali Bennett and opposition leader Yair Lapid, only argue over the degree to which apartheid and genocide should be enacted, Hilton said, and does not offer a better future for Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\u201cClaims that they\u2019re acting in my name are, frankly, outrageous. It doesn\u2019t matter whether it is the more polite apartheid advocated by Lapid and Bennett or the violence and destruction advocated by the current government, the problem is the system,\u201d Hilton added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to imagine a life beyond Zionism; one based on justice and equality. The Israeli state is putting Jewish people in danger by claiming that we are somehow its foot soldiers. We\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Changing opinions<\/p>\n

Polls from across the US and Europe show divergent views among the Jewish diaspora towards Israel. While some in the US and UK have reported<\/a> feeling a strong emotional connection to Israel following widespread global condemnations of it for the war on Gaza, many are also turning away from a country they feel is enacting genocide in their name.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor far too long, American Jewish institutions have supported the actions of the Israeli government and parroted its justification that what it did was done for the sake of Jewish people everywhere,\u201d Sonya Meyerson-Knox, Communications Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn doing so, they not only engineered support for the Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide of Palestinians, but they also silenced and excluded Jews who opposed these actions, or tried to hold the Israeli state accountable for its war crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

A majority of American Jewish institutions continue to support Israel, Meyerson-Knox says, despite a \u201csea-change\u201d among the American Jewish community as a whole. <\/p>\n

Support for Israel\u2019s existence had long been an established point of consensus among the vast majority of the global Jewish diaspora, analysts told Al Jazeera. But Israel\u2019s three years of offensives in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Iraq \u2013 killing tens of thousands of civilians \u2013 has forced many to question that view.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, the issue of Israel has been a point of consensus among Jews in the UK and the US. That\u2019s becoming less so,\u201d Keith Kahn-Harris, a sociologist and fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research told Al Jazeera. \u201c[It has] exposed how many of the decades-old points of consensus of what Israel was were really not fit for purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said despite the centre-ground consensus on Israel being in decline, and growing anti-Zionism sentiments among the youth, we are still not at a stage where mainstream Jewish communities question the future of Israel as a state. \u201cThey\u2019re there, but they\u2019ve got a long way to go,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longstanding tensions between the US\u2019s progressive Jewish diaspora and the Israeli government came into focus this month, when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,63,85,46,44,47,43,1299,1032],"class_list":["post-491348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-europe","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-palestine-conflict","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}