IKAR on Israel’s Right Wing Government

We are outraged and dismayed by Israel’s right wing government’s action today to advance the judicial coup, another dangerous step toward transforming Israel into a fundamentalist, theocratic nation.

We stand with the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been protesting night and day for the past seven months. This regime is signaling that it will not heed the warnings of its intelligence and military leadership, nor the will of its people, let alone the voices of the US President, former Israeli ambassadors, or diaspora Jews.

Nevertheless, in these days leading up to Tisha b’Av—when we grieve the devastation that came when Jews lost sovereignty over the land twice before—we voice our deepest concern. For too long, diaspora Jews have accepted the false premise that loving Israel means silencing our own conscience and undermining our core commitments, bowing to Israel’s increasingly intolerant, extremist and ultra-nationalist policies and aspirations.

May this week’s Knesset action reset our collective moral compass: American Jews must use our voices, our platforms and our resources to fight there, as we do here, for a true democracy, including an end to the occupation and justice for all inhabitants of the land.