October 7, 2025

Others in the series:

#1: Remember Why You’re Going to College

#2: Give Yourself the College Orientation You Deserve

#3: Great Debates About Great Books Yield Deep Knowledge, Sharp Minds and Constructive Citizens

#4 Make for Yourself a Teacher – Acquire a Friend

#5 Turn It Off! Managing Social Media, Middle East Minefields, and Political Difference

#6 Fighting Educational Malpractice Personally: What Do I Do with a Politicized Prof – or Teacher

#7 Fighting Educational Malpractice Institutionally: A Consumer Rights Issue

---

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre supposedly said: “The antisemites will accuse a Jew not because they think the Jew is guilty but because they want to force the Jew to turn out his pocket.” He actually wrote: “Never believe that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it’s their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.” Satre’s 80-year-old insights decipher today’s college discourse about Jews, Zionism and Israel.

 That’s why we must transcend the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hysteria. Anti-Zionism has become this generation’s Uber-fetish. The “enlightened” of Generation Uber prove their political correctness by wearing keffiyehs and masks while “privileging” hating Israel over other commitments to feminism, liberalism, non-violence, decency.

 This onslaught makes most Zionists too defensive, especially on campus. We insist: “No, we’re not settler-colonialist or racists or committing genocide or imposing mass starvation…” Now, the latest, negating his efforts to fight campus antisemitism and broker a Middle East peace, is: “We’re not pro-Trump or even grateful for anything he’s done for Jews, Israel, the world – and America – that Kamala Harris never would have done.”

 We’re so busy denying, turning out our pockets, we’ve forgotten to wave the flag to show who we are and how proud we are of Israel’s successes under impossible circumstances. And, reflecting our deep Diaspora-honed need to be liked – we buy the claims of many hypocritical, obsessive, Bash-Israel-Firsters: “I’m not antisemitic, I’m just criticizing Israel.”

 Pause! Cue up the virtue signal to say, “There’s much room for legitimate criticism of Israel.”

 But why be so apologetic? Israel is a democracy and a Jewish state. Patriotic Israelis and proud Jews constantly debate what Israel does – without rejecting that Israel is.  Patriotism doesn’t mean blind allegiance. It means loving your country because of its politicians sometimes – but despite its politics always.

We’re just not that stupid. Reasonable people can distinguish reasonable criticism from unreasonable contempt. Signs of anti-Zionist anti-Semitism include:

•  Saying “Happy Oct. 7,” as was said last year;

•  Justifying Hamas’ anti-Zionist antisemitic rampage;

•  Championing Palestinian nationalism and accepting every other national identity, except Jewish nationalism, meaning Zionism;

•  Negating the deep Jewish ties to their homeland;

•  Generalizing about “the Jews” and “the Zionists”;

•  Shrieking, bullying canceling others, in an anti-Israel frenzy.

Follow two guidelines: First, my Black, feminist, and LGBTQ+ friends put the burden of proof on the bigot, not the victim. True, I advise Jewish students not to be hyper-sensitive – give others the benefit of the doubt. Still, I don’t know of many conversations in other targeted communities, anguishing about just when their detractors become haters.

 Many campus communities even reject micro-aggressions – the “everyday slights, indignities, insults, put-downs and invalidations,” Dr. Derald Wing Sue writes —coming from “well-intentioned individuals who are unaware that they are engaging” in “offensive or demeaning” behavior. Yet precisely on these hair-trigger campuses, Jews have to justify feeling victimized by intentional macro-aggressions.

 Second, hatred, and especially Jew-hatred, is three-dimensional. Most focus on words, images, deeds – and there are so many explicit attacks these days. But the hysteria reflects an anti-Jewish mania.  Israel-bashers’ hysteria, exaggeration, intensity, and obsessiveness fail the smell-test. Equally revealing are the “dog-whistles,” the coded words, the not-well-hidden slights and accusations making Jews feel unwelcome – especially on campus.

 In my new “Essential Guide to Zionism, anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-Hatred,” I echo my friend Professor Judea Pearl that Zionophobia, obsessively hating Israel and Zionism, is bad enough. Hating any national grouping is unacceptable.  Zionophobia’s dip into reservoirs of Jew-hating stereotypes only makes it even more repugnant.

The “Essential Guide” proposes the T E S T test to expose Zionophobes, perpetually escalating from standard criticism to bigotry.  Ask:

• Do they Totalize?: Indulging in essentialism, finding everything related to Israel, Jews, Zionists, evil. A University of Kentucky law professor crossed into hate-filled incitement by “calling for the end of the Israeli state today,” adding: “I ask for an international coalition of forces to go to Gaza and eliminate every last one of them.”  

• Do they Exaggerate?: The more extreme the criticism, the more it smacks of bigotry. A Cornell class on “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” uses “the case of settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel” and the Gaza “genocide” to prove that “Indigenous people are involved historically in a global resistance against an ongoing colonialism.” The anti-intellectual heavy-handed rhetoric demonizes rather than illuminates.

• Is it Sweeping?: Turning any Israeli misstep into justification for outright denial, not just attacking what Israel does, but that Israel is. In fall 2023, University of California at Berkeley students hung a banner with a Palestinian flag from a 307-foot bell tower proclaiming: “Cease fire now. Free Gaza.” A year later, their banner featured the inverted red triangle Hamas uses to identify Israeli targets and declared: “Glory to the Resistance.” The first banner criticized Israel’s war and policies – the second repudiated Israel – and liberalism itself.

• What’s their Tone?: The more intense the criticism, the more it smells like bigotry. A Jewish professor spread Jew-hatred by tweeting shortly after Oct. 7: “Free Gaza, free Palestine, stop the ongoing genocide by the Israeli and American war machines.” She added a post to her Instagram forwarding the message from a Palestinian American: “Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable. Why should those genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist?”

 Whether to punish students and professors for expressing reprehensible views is for another article.

 These examples acknowledge a vast universe for robust debate about Israel’s actions. The trendy, categorical assaults on Israel, which inspire Jew-hating violence, reflect a mania that’s as fresh as today’s headlines, but as old as pagan and medieval Jew-hatred. That such demonizing, pigeon-holing, and fanaticism not only exists on campus but thrives, betrays every student, reflecting a deep rot undermining higher education – in America and beyond.

---

Gil Troy, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. Last year he published, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath.” His latest, “The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred” was just published and can be downloaded on the JPPI Website. 

 

Two years. It’s been two surreal years since that Saturday of watching impossible scenes unfold in Israel. The kind of gruesome savagery that seemed safely confined to the past — that of the Jews’ biblical enemies, say, or medieval pogromists, or the Nazis before they learned to industrialize genocide — had been captured on the killers’ own GoPro cameras and splashed across Twitter for the world to see. And we, far away, could do nothing but watch. 

Who can forget the sight of Shiri Bibas surrounded by those armed men, her face a canvas of pure terror as she tried in vain to keep her two tiny red-headed boys safe? Or Naama Levy in her bloody sweatpants, dragged by the hair to the jubilant cry “Allahu Akbar!”? Or Shani Louk’s broken body being driven through a mob of exuberant Gazans in the back of that pickup truck? Or all those unidentifiable bloody bodies at bus stops, front yards, children’s bedrooms? It was unfathomable, but it was happening, virtually in real time across our phones.

And after that horror came the one that followed, which seemed almost more crazymaking because it toppled any belief we had in the goodness of those around us — our colleagues, neighbors and friends. Almost immediately, people around the world took to the streets — not to express their sorrow and revulsion, but their delight in the carnage. Oh, there were expressions of sympathy too, for about five minutes. The Empire State Building, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and other global landmarks were lit up in blue and white in solidarity with Israel. Soon though, those sights had gone dark and the only light seemed to emanate from the flares protesters threw as they howled, “Globalize the intifada!” 

And apart from those screams, there was the eerie silence. Schools and workplaces that always rushed out expressions of support and love to anyone suffering any kind of distress had nothing to say to their Jewish students and employees. The media lost its tepid interest in Israeli victims, and highlighted only the plight of the Palestinians as they awaited Israel’s military response. American Jews — people who might have a personal connection to the murdered and kidnapped of Oct. 7 and likely felt shattered even if they didn’t — felt utterly alone and friendless. 

For some of us who considered ourselves, if sometimes uneasily, on the political left, these days brought another sense of violent estrangement, because we knew the participants of the antisemitic carnivals now taking place. I crashed out an essay with a headline I didn’t expect to survive editorial scrutiny, “I Was You, ‘Defender of the Palestinians,’ and Now I Want to Puke.” I’d been one of those Israel-hating fools most of my adult life, and although I repudiated my former views years earlier, nothing could prepare me to see what they meant in action — their actually eliminationist implications as they played out in cities around the world. I wrote about my rage and disgust and, despite myself, my shock at seeing people I’d once respected and loved engaging in unimaginable levels of depravity. And the worst of it was knowing that if not for a few chance things that happened to me midlife, I might have still been among them. 

Evil takes hold so easily. These past two years we’ve seen it apparently slip free of whatever bonds normally hold it in check and run wild. Elderly Jews in Colorado set on fire as they peacefully demonstrated for the hostages. Synagogues around the world firebombed. The Pennsylvania governor’s mansion set alight as he and his family slept during Passover. The open display of “No Jews” signs in shops and other establishments. A pogrom in Amsterdam. A young couple shot dead as they emerged from a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. Last week in Manchester, the car-ramming and stabbing of Jews entering a synagogue for Yom Kippur services, killing two. On and on the list of atrocities goes, and even if the current Gaza war ends — as I hope and which now looks possible — I’m not optimistic that the Jew-haters will do more than slightly curtail their spree. They’ve grown addicted to it.  

Evil takes hold so easily. These past two years we’ve seen it apparently slip free of whatever bonds normally hold it in check and run wild.

I’ll forever have to grapple with how this darkness found such a place in my heart. My parents had taught me the difference between right and wrong, but without belief in God it couldn’t withstand the question, “Says who?” When morality is secularized, wrested completely from religion, it can only be subjective — which is to say, it’s all too easy to punch giant holes in it. Some people manage to lead upright, purposeful lives without believing in God, and seem mostly fine with it. But there will also always be people like me — folks who can’t manage life without a sense of the transcendent, and aim to dismantle everything trying to achieve that. In today’s West, where people enjoy unprecedented levels of wealth, health, security and comfort, there seems to be only an ever-accelerating drive to extinguish ourselves.

When morality is secularized, wrested completely from religion, it can only be subjective—which is to say, it’s all too easy to punch giant holes in it.

Unlike in my younger days, I don’t claim to know the fix for this. But although I haven’t managed to find faith in God, I see the wisdom of beginning to behave as if I do. I’ve spent these past High Holy Days reflecting and atoning, and the place to do this has been among Jews, the people of my mother’s family’, who seem to have forgiven and accepted me despite everything. This was the year I fell in love with Avinu Malkeinu, heard the shofar blasts in synagogue for the first time, fasted and attended the Yom Kippur service from Kol Nidre to Neilah. I can’t claim I had a spiritual epiphany, but sometimes I felt a certain clarity and peace, and that was more than enough.

Two days later I received an invitation from Judea Pearl, an ebullient, wonderful man I’m blessed to consider a friend. He asked me to join him and three others around a table for Havdalah, the ceremony ushering out Shabbat. At first we talked, inevitably, of antisemitism and Zionism, and sang, as one always sings with Judea. Then it was time for the ceremony. Judea blessed a glass of wine, symbolizing joy and abundance, and passed around jars of fragrant spices to refresh the soul, which is saddened by the departure of Shabbat. 

Finally one of us lit the candle. Judea showed us how to hold our hands in front of it, weaving our fingers through each other so the flame showed between the cracks. Jews do this, he explained, in order to differentiate between the darkness and the light — that we may always know the difference between the two. 

I think that is, in essence, what Judaism gave the world — that distinction which is everything — and is probably why so many people throughout the centuries have hated it. Still we keep lighting candles, mindful to leave room at the table for the fallen to find their way to the light.

---

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”

Recently, the University of San Francisco’s Jewish Studies & Social Justice program, under the leadership of Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, announced that it had brought in Hadar Cohen to teach a course titled “Arab Jews: Histories, Politics, and Identity.” At first glance, it might sound like a welcome step — a Mizrahi Jew given a platform in academia — but Cohen is not a historian or a scholar of Middle Eastern Jewry and she holds no advanced academic training in Jewish or Middle East Studies. Her background is in engineering, “alternative divinity programs” and “spiritual activism.” She openly states that “each aspect of her work is done through a political lens.” What qualifies her to teach is not academic rigor, but that she fits the ideological script academia demands. And that is the point.

Universities once upheld rigorous standards: advanced degrees, peer-reviewed scholarship, years of study. Increasingly, those have been replaced by the ability to embody activist frameworks that align with a particular brand of “social justice.” This is not education; it is indoctrination, and it compromises the very integrity of academia by prioritizing ideology over scholarship.

Even the course title reveals bias. “Arab Jews” is not a neutral term, it is a politicized label largely rejected by Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. It collapses Jewish identity into Arab nationalism and erases the truth that Jews were indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa long before Arab conquest. For centuries, Jews in Arab lands were not considered Arabs but second-class dhimmis, tolerated but legally subordinate. Tunisian-Jewish writer Albert Memmi put it bluntly: “The term ‘Arab Jews’ is obviously not a good one … We would have liked to be Arab Jews, [but] centuries of contempt and cruelty prevented it.” To frame our narrative through a term we overwhelmingly reject is distortion, not representation.

Cohen herself has written: “Zionism has no space for an Arab Jew like me.” But Zionism was, and still is, fundamentally a decolonization project. Jews are not colonizers in the Middle East, we are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, whose presence long predated both European imperialism and Arab conquest. If we are speaking honestly about colonization, it was the Arab-Muslim empires of the seventh century onward that spread across the region, supplanting local languages and cultures. To accept the label “Arab Jew” would be to adopt the identity of our colonizers — the very people who treated us as inferiors for centuries and expelled us en masse in the 20th century.

The story of Jews from these countries cannot be told without naming Islamic antisemitism. Under the dhimma system, Jews were taxed, humiliated and often attacked. Pogroms like the Farhud in Iraq or expulsions from Egypt, Libya and Yemen were not anomalies but the culmination of a long history of subjugation. This is precisely why so many Mizrahi Jews are staunchly pro-Zionist. Our Zionism is not abstract but born of lived experience: centuries of Islamic antisemitism, followed by dispossession and exile. To erase this reality in the name of “Arab Jewish” identity politics is not only offensive, it is profoundly unacademic.

Yes, Mizrahim faced hardship in Israel’s early decades, but the country also did remarkable work to unify Jews of all backgrounds. Shared schools, neighborhoods, military service and culture fused Mizrahim and Ashkenazim together. Intermarriage is widespread, and today Israeli identity is inseparable from Mizrahi music, food and politics. While gaps remain, Israel is not a place where Mizrahi identity is erased by Zionism. On the contrary, it flourishes.

Meanwhile, highly qualified Jewish faculty with advanced degrees, peer-reviewed work and years of teaching experience are often run out of academia or made to suffer the moment they teach honestly about Zionism or antisemitism. Professor Andrew Pessin at Connecticut College was hounded into isolation after a pro-Israel post was misquoted as racist, while Columbia’s Shai Davidai was investigated, banned from campus and ultimately driven out despite being cleared.

I also spoke with a Mizrahi Jewish professor who lived this reality. She had published two books and taught a course on modern Israel that Jewish students requested after being inundated with revisionist narratives in their Middle Eastern Studies program. In her class she presented both Jewish and Arab perspectives, even inviting the Palestinian history professor to speak. That invitation was never reciprocated. Her students — Jews, Christian Arabs and others — appreciated her balanced approach, and not one filed a complaint. Yet the Palestinian history professor ensured she was not offered additional courses. Without tenure, she was quietly pushed out. At another prominent university, she refused to sign anti-Zionist faculty statements. Knowing tenure would be denied, she left academia altogether — driven out by the same ideology that once drove her family from the Middle East.

The pattern is clear: universities only want Jewish Studies professors who conform to what is deemed an “acceptable Jew.” This was evident in the appointment of Shaul Magid at Harvard Divinity School, brought in amid rising antisemitism on campus. Rabbi David Wolpe, who once served on Harvard’s antisemitism advisory board, described Magid as “a gracious human being & an estimable scholar of Jewish texts, notably Hasidism,” but added, “I profoundly disagree with his stance on Israel and wish HDS would appoint someone whose views reflect the mainstream of the Jewish community.”

Even when Jewish scholars are respected, their political reliability, not their expertise, determines whether they are elevated or erased. Others are denied tenure, disinvited or pressured into silence. And in their place, universities elevate voices like Hadar Cohen — individuals with little scholarly training whose rhetoric fits the ideological mold academia wants. This is not education, it is politics. It’s a collapse of integrity.

The uncomfortable reality is this: Cohen has been elevated not because she represents Mizrahi Jews, but because she doesn’t. Her narrative aligns with the propaganda academia prefers, framing Jews from Muslim-majority countries as “Arab Jews,” downplaying Zionism and providing ammunition for anti-Zionist rhetoric. In doing so, she allows herself to be tokenized — the rare Mizrahi voice weaponized to legitimize a broader project hostile to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahi Jews and our lived experience. And here is the danger: students, already primed to obsess over this issue, will run to her class, tokenize her as an “as-a-Jew” voice, and then regurgitate her rhetoric as proof that their own antisemitism, cloaked as anti-Zionism, is justified.

This is what makes the situation so infuriating. The organization I work for, JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, is dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of Jews from the region and elevating the work of scholars who teach our Sephardic and Mizrahi identities with rigor and integrity. Our Distinctions journal, a quarterly online publication amplifying scholars, artists and activists, is one vehicle for this work. Our efforts are supported by leading contributors, by our advisory board, and by 63 members of our Sephardic Leaders Fellowship advisory committees. JIMENA is also supported by synagogues, schools, summer camps, and legacy institutions nationwide — evidence of broad communal backing.

The appointment of Hadar Cohen is not progress, it’s tokenization. It is propaganda dressed up as education. And for Mizrahi Jews, it is a painful reminder: our story is still being told for us, by those who do not speak for us, in institutions that care more about the narrative than the truth.

At the end of the day, Cohen herself is not to blame. She is seizing opportunities as anyone would. The fault lies with a system of academia that elevates unqualified voices because they serve an ideological agenda, while sidelining those best equipped to teach our history with honesty and rigor. The crisis is not about one course or one individual. It is about a university culture that has abandoned truth for tokenization, and scholarship for propaganda. That is the stain on academia… and it will be remembered.

---

Matthew Nouriel is an Iranian Jewish LGBTQ activist and writer based in Los Angeles. He serves as Director of Community Engagement for JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) and is active in public discourse on Middle Eastern human rights, antisemitism, and identity. @matthewnouriel (Instagram, Substack)

Last week, the Department of Justice filed a civil rights lawsuit against a group of protesters who surrounded a New Jersey synagogue during an anti-Israel demonstration, accusing them of using force and obstruction to prevent Jewish worshippers from entering. The complaint — the first of its kind filed by the Department of Justice — describes protesters pushing past police barricades, entering synagogue property, and creating a scene so chaotic that congregants fled indoors for safety. It’s not the only such case. A separate lawsuit against CodePink is still unfolding after a 2024 protest outside Los Angeles’ Adas Torah Synagogue allegedly turned violent, leaving worshippers unable to leave or enter freely because of the chaos outside.

Given the highly charged environment surrounding anti-Israel protests, the DOJ’s action has sparked controversy. Critics worry that using a federal statute to target anti-Israel demonstrations could chill protected political protest. But the statute the government is relying on — the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act — has long been used to draw a constitutional line between protected advocacy and coercive obstruction.

Enacted in 1994 in response to a wave of violence outside abortion clinics, the FACE Act makes it illegal to use “force, threat of force or physical obstruction” to “intentionally injure, intimidate or interfere with” anyone seeking to enter a reproductive-health facility. Late in the legislative process, Congress added “places of religious worship,” extending the same protections to those seeking to enter synagogues, churches and mosques. For 30 years, federal appellate courts reviewing the statute have upheld it as consistent with the First Amendment, recognizing that protecting access to clinics or synagogues is not the same as punishing speech.

The FACE Act targets a specific kind of confrontation — when protest crosses the line from persuasion to coercion. “Force” and “threat of force” capture assaults and true threats, while “physical obstruction” refers to conduct that makes entry or exit impassable or unreasonably difficult. The law doesn’t prohibit protest or persuasion; it targets acts that block doors, surround entrances, or use threats of violence to make access impossible. Its focus is access, ensuring that people can reach a clinic or a synagogue without being physically prevented or placed in reasonable fear of harm.

When Congress added “places of religious worship” alongside clinics, it did so through an amendment offered by the then Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who described it as a matter of “fairness,” making sure that people of faith, whatever their beliefs, were equally protected from obstruction or intimidation. Courts and scholars, drawing on that legislative history, have since interpreted the addition as reinforcing the statute’s neutrality. It protects access to both abortion clinics and churches, to both moral conviction and religious exercise. And that neutrality has played out in practice. The statute has been invoked not only to protect abortion providers but also those on the other side of that debate — such as protesters outside clinics and pro-life pregnancy centers — when they were the targets of obstruction or threats. It is that neutrality that courts have leaned on in upholding the statute’s constitutionality. Because the FACE Act regulates conduct rather than content, it is considered a content-neutral law that serves an important government interest in preserving public safety and access to constitutionally protected spaces, while burdening as little speech as possible. As a result, courts have concluded that it satisfies the demands of the First Amendment.

Courts have also been careful not to let the statute sweep too broadly. Because the FACE Act operates near the line between expression and coercion, its terms — especially “intimidate” and “interfere” — require careful interpretation and application. Communications that blur the line between advocacy and threat can raise legitimate First Amendment concerns, and an overly broad reading of “intimidation” could risk criminalizing protest rather than coercion. Congress anticipated that risk, instructing that the Act “shall be construed and applied” in a manner consistent with the First Amendment. Federal courts have honored that limit, applying the statute narrowly to coercive conduct and “true threats” that create reasonable fear of harm. In one case, for example, an activist mailed a doctor a letter warning that “thousands of people” knew her name and that “someone” might place an explosive under her car. The letter never promised violence outright, but the court found that a jury could view it as a threat intended to deter the doctor from performing abortions. That case captured both the strength and restraint of the statute, reaching conduct that coerces but not speech that merely offends.

That balance between protest and obstruction is exactly what the Justice Department is now invoking in New Jersey. The government’s complaint describes conduct that, if proved, falls squarely within the statute’s core. Demonstrators allegedly forced their way past police barricades, entered synagogue property, physically assaulted attendees and created a threatening environment that impeded access to religious services. Those allegations involve “force, threat of force and physical obstruction” intended to “injure, intimidate, or interfere” with worshippers’ ability to enter and leave their synagogue — precisely the conduct the FACE Act was designed to reach. The complaint also points to a letter that protest organizers delivered to the home of a synagogue leader, accompanied by photographs of his residence and later posts publicizing his address. Standing alone, that letter may sit closer to the constitutional edge; its language reads more like a demand than a threat, and courts have been careful not to treat mere advocacy or unwelcome persuasion as “intimidation.” But in the context of the surrounding violence, the government argues that the letter forms part of a larger campaign of coercive conduct. In that sense, the case tests not new constitutional ground but familiar ones — the same line courts have drawn for decades between protest and obstruction.

A similar framework underlies the Adas Torah litigation in Los Angeles, where a federal district court applied the FACE Act in a house-of-worship context. The case arose from a June 23, 2024 anti-Israel protest outside the Adas Torah Synagogue, where demonstrators allegedly blocked driveways, pounded on vehicles, and clashed with police as congregants attempted to attend a religious event. The court drew the same constitutional line that earlier rulings had traced. Political advocacy and even incendiary rhetoric remain protected, but acts or symbols that reasonably convey threats of force do not. It dismissed claims against one group whose social-media posts merely called for protest but allowed the claim against CodePink to go forward, finding that its post showing the synagogue’s name and address within an inverted red triangle — a symbol allegedly used by Hamas to mark targets — could plausibly constitute a “threat of force” intended to intimidate Jewish worshippers or incite others to obstruct access. In short, the court applied the FACE Act as Congress intended, narrowly reaching coercive conduct but not protest itself.

For all the novelty of seeing the FACE Act invoked to protect synagogues from anti-Israel protests, its application here reflects continuity rather than reinvention. A statute born out of the abortion-clinic blockades of the 1990s is now being used to protect Jewish worshippers from threats and intimidation outside their synagogues. That continuity is a reminder of how the law, at its best, can safeguard access to conscience across profoundly different settings. In a moment when the war in Israel has become a flashpoint for American politics, it is striking that a statute first designed to protect abortion clinics can still draw a constitutional line that both protects protest and preserves the freedom to enter a sacred space without obstruction.

---

Michael A. Helfand is the Brenden-Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion and Co-Director, Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion & Ethics at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law as well as Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

This is an excerpt from a Yom Kippur sermon delivered by Rabbi Michael Gotlieb at Kehillat Ma’arav Congregation in Santa Monica.

I was in New York last February when four-year-old Ariel Bibas was confirmed murdered by Hamas. In solidarity with Israel, the Empire State Building was lit up orange in memory of red-haired Ariel.

Nearly two years since Oct. 7, with Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, that solidarity has eroded to the point that I’m deeply worried that Israel is becoming a pariah state among some of her most valued longtime allies. 

Let alone the rise of Jew-hatred in America and abroad — tethered to a shifting downward opinion of Israel. It breaks my heart to say that, because I love and respect Israel and my love and respect for Israel remains clear and undiminished. 

Though it’s become an almost dirty word — “the Z word” — I am a Zionist and I continue to be a supporter of Zionism.  Zionism is Jewish national self-expression and free-will; Zionism stretches across the entirety of Jewish history. 

The hope to return to the land of Israel and reestablish an independent Jewish state has remained with us Jews ever since the destruction of the Second Temple in the first century of the Common Era.

The physical land of Israel is definitional to Judaism. One who denies Israel’s legitimacy to exist as a free and independent Jewish nation is an antisemite. Professor Emerita Ruth Wisse summarizes: “Anti-Zionism is a more malevolent form of antisemitism, because it denies Jewish national distinctiveness.” A nation needs a land. The land of Israel is our indigenous homeland — that’s where we Jews begin, that’s where we’re formed — and that’s Zionism.

But being a Zionist doesn’t mean one agrees with everything the Israeli leadership does or advocates. Zionism has never been one size fits all. We are a people of lively discussion, debate and disagreement — there never was one Jewish paradigm, be it religious, or political or cultural, that fits all.

So, how can we hold divergent opinions when it comes to Israel, the fulfillment of modern Zionism? To paraphrase Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition: “Your criticism of Israel should not be louder than your support for Israel.”

Israel’s political and military decisions are filled with paradox, complication and tension. Think of the Bible’s story of the burning bush. Moses, while wandering in the desert, approaches a shrub engulfed in flames. It’s not disturbed by the fire, and remarkably remains intact. It’s an instructive allegory. How can something be in flames, but not be consumed by the intense heat and fire? It defies natural law. 

Israel must stare into the burning bush every day. Prior to Oct. 7, Israel faced difficulties from within, including the battle over judicial reform; government coalition members, some of whom are bona fide bigots, who oppose any notion of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians; and West Bank settlers who torment Palestinians and attack Israeli military police. There are also growing tensions between the general population and ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to serve in the army.

Post-Oct. 7, Israel has been plagued with difficulties from without. As we know all too well, two years ago, Hamas slaughtered, raped and butchered 1,200 Israeli souls. Relative to Israel’s population, that’s equivalent to more than 60,000 Americans murdered in one day. Many were viciously tortured to death.

Hamas also captured 251 innocent Israelis. Of the 48 remaining hostages in Gaza, Israel thinks 28 are dead, and 20 are still alive. 

Today marks the hostages’ 725th day in their Hamas hellholes.

In 2005 Israel ceded the entire Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. Beginning the following year, Gazan rockets started raining down on Israel. Over the course of 17 years, more than 20,000 missiles have been launched against Israel.

This past Jewish calendar year, Israel had to successfully confront Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis. That said, the images coming out of Gaza are heartbreaking: Gazans living in tents. Food insecurity. Social media is filled with pictures of destruction and death. What is Israel to do? What are we to think?

Israel can’t allow the Gaza Strip to return to the way it was prior to Oct. 7. It can’t leave a void in place of Hamas’ eventual retreat, and it can no longer live with missile attacks and the constant threat of murder, destruction and war. As one of Israel’s leading intellectuals, Micah Goodman, points out: The challenge Israel faces is not a binary between good choices and bad ones, but rather between bad choices and worse choices. Israelis are continually forced to stare into the flame of the burning bush — paradox, complication and tension.

Let’s unpack some of the allegations leveled against Israel. The first being the most pernicious: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Let me state unequivocally: Israelis are doing no such thing. 

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, there have been more than 60,000 deaths since the beginning of the war. I ask: Even if the numbers are accurate, if Israel’s committing genocide, why aren’t the numbers in the hundreds of thousands, or more than a million? Why does Israel give prior notice alerting Gazans to evacuate areas it intends to destroy? Why are there nearly five times more Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank than there were at Israel’s founding in 1948?

Further, between a third to one half of those killed represent Hamas militants. Need it be said, the loss of any truly innocent soul is a tragedy. But this is a low proportion of civilian deaths compared with other modern wars, especially in very crowded urban areas.

Most Israelis feel the war with Hamas has gone on much too long. We should hope and pray that last Monday’s 20-point peace plan launched by the Trump administration will prevail. 

Another accusation is that Israel is intentionally withholding food from Gaza. I emphatically believe Israel should provide copious amounts of food, water and medicine, not merely because of the Geneva Convention’s rules of conduct, but because Jewish values dictate it’s the right thing to do. 

Although there have been Israeli missteps in the distribution of food in Gaza, the blame sits squarely with Hamas. It is Hamas that doesn’t care if its own people starve.

If you are genuinely concerned about innocent Palestinians (as I am); if you hold out for the long-term possibility of a two-state solution (as I do); if you value Israel’s legitimate right to live as an independent Jewish nation (as I continually pray for); then Hamas must be marginalized to the point of virtual nonexistence. It’s that simple.

It is Hamas that has wanted this war to continue. They know they’ve lost the ground war; they probably knew they would. But it’s highly likely they thought they could win the war of public opinion — and they are proving themselves right.

Older Jews remember Israel as a young idealistic nation fighting for its survival against Palestinian terrorism, and how Palestinian leaders repeatedly refused offers of a state of their own in the West Bank and Gaza. The younger generation doesn’t have that perspective. Too many of them see Israel as the aggressor, a brutal occupier of Palestinian territories. 

Each of us can strive to counteract this false narrative. Israel remains a free, open, compassionate, creative country. It bridges the cultures of east and west, respecting and upholding ancient traditions. It is a pioneer in women’s rights and LGBTQ lifestyles. Israel has provided safe haven for refugees representing more than 70 countries. 

Each of us can support religious and secular organizations that work for liberal democracy in Israel. Each of us can broaden our understanding of what Israel faces on a daily basis: the paradox, complication and tension; a lowly desert bush that’s an unconsumed blazing inferno.

In addition to mainstream media sources, consider reading or listening to podcasts and articles on Israel by Bari Weiss, Yossi Klein Halevi, Haviv Rettig Gur, Daniel Gordis, Tal Becker, Dan Senor, Micah Goodman, Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, Douglas Murray, Bill Maher and others.

Israel with all her shortcomings and faults, remains an extraordinary nation. Now’s not the time to walk away from Israel in frustration and anger. When a friend or a loved one is in trouble, you do all you can to help. Now’s the time to stand up for Israel. Now’s the time to, ensure that “your criticism of Israel should not be louder than your support for Israel.” 

---

Michael Gotlieb is rabbi of Kehillat Ma’arav in Santa Monica.