Over the past few weeks, we’ve witnessed a significant surge in Jewish protest over Israel’s starvation/genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. On July 28, two Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, released a comprehensive report that reached the “unequivocal conclusion” that “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” A week earlier Omer Bartov, a noted Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, wrote a widely distributed op-ed for the New York Times entitled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know it When I See It.” Even Jeremy Ben – Ami, the president of the liberal Israel advocacy organization J Street, waded ever-so-gently into the fray with this delicately worded statement: “(While) I am unlikely to use the term (genocide) myself…I cannot and will not argue against those using the term.”

There has also been an increase in rabbis (many of whom consider themselves to be “liberal Zionists”) publicly stepping up and speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On July 28, eleven mainstream rabbis protested by blocking traffic in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown Manhattan, with eight taking arrest. One Jewish communal figure noted, “The protests we’ve typically seen at the Israeli Consulate in places like that are from the further left of the community.” 

A day later, in Washington DC a group of 27 rabbis affiliated with the advocacy group Jews for Food Aid for People in Gaza entered Senate Majority leader John Thune’s office, displaying banners reading “Rabbis say: Protect Life!” and “Rabbis say: Stop the Blockade.” Then this past Monday, hundreds gathered (and more than 40 protesters took arrest) in front of the Trump International Hotel in New York City at a protest organized by IfNotNow under the banner “Stop Starving Gaza.” Among the speakers were Rabbi Jill Jacobs of T’ruah, Ruth Messinger, former head of American Jewish World Service and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Needless to say, none of them were previously known for taking a stand against Israel in such a dramatic and public manner.

I must admit I have a great deal of cognitive dissonance over these developments. First and foremost, I will say that it is a welcome development that ranks of Jewish leaders in the movement to end the genocide against Palestinians is broadening. In the end, when otherwise mainstream American Jewish leaders are willing to call out this genocidal behavior for what it is, it only further isolates Israel. When lives are literally being taken by Israel in massive numbers on the daily, this is truly an “all hands on deck” moment. Those of us who have been on the front lines of the movement since 2023 can ill afford to cynically dismiss their participation. 

At the same time however, I can’t help but feel cynical over the kudos given to these leaders (many of whom have been silent or equivocal on the genocide until now) for their “bravery” while scores of Palestinians have been organizing, leading protests and crying out in a myriad of different ways for years. Palestinian witness has been insidiously discounted during this genocide just as the Palestinian people have been denied the “permission to narrate” their oppression for over 70 years. I can’t help but grieve the sad irony that any strategic success resulting from this new resurgence will come from the further decentering – and dehumanizing – of Palestinian voices. 

Moreover in this moment, when the images of starving Palestinian children are spurring so many Jewish leaders into action, it’s worth asking whether this protest movement can be sustained and transformed into one that brings true justice and lasting for Palestinians.

I’m not convinced. I couldn’t help but note that in their speeches, many of these liberal Zionist rabbis and Jewish leaders lay the blame for this genocide firmly on the policies of Netanyahu and the current government. A recent op-ed in the Forward by Rabbi Jill Jacobs summed up this attitude perfectly:

 (Our) own fear must not distract us from the reality that the biggest threat to Israel, and indeed to Judaism itself, is coming from Israel’s governing coalition. Israel is increasingly becoming an autocratic and theocratic state. This is the moment for American Jews — including both leaders and ordinary Jewish community members — to raise their voice.

It has become a common trope in the “liberal Zionist” world to personalize this genocide as “Netanyahu’s war.” In fact, the biggest threat to Israel and Judaism is not Israel’s current governing coalition – it comes from a Jewish ethno-national nation state that was established and is maintained through the dispossession of Palestinians for the sole reason that they are not Jewish. Indeed, Israel is not “becoming” an autocratic and theocratic state – it has long been one.

I was also struck by Jacob’s misleading claim that “the vast majority of Israelis want the war to end.” While this is true, it is overwhelmingly due to Jewish Israelis desire for the return of the hostages – not their concern for Palestinian human rights. A more telling poll, which was released this past Tuesday, found that a vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are “not so troubled” or “not troubled at all” by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population. And according to a poll from last May, 82 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the expulsion of Gaza’s residents, while 56 percent favored expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel. 

These polls indicate that this is not a problem of the current government.  It is not Netanyahu. It is not an issue of bad policy. It is, in fact, Zionism itself. The real problem is that the entire enterprise of Zionist Judaism has infected Jewish life, as Jewish Currents editor Arielle Angel recently and powerfully wrote, “with a voracious rot.” 

So yes, it is welcome that increasing numbers of liberal Jewish leaders are finally speaking out against Israel’s carnage in Gaza –  but I feel compelled to ask: what will it take to get them to finally break with the Zionist enterprise? When the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is complete? When Israel annexes the West Bank (which the Knesset approved 71-13 in a recent symbolic vote)? When an even more extremist government is elected into power by an increasingly extremist Israeli populace?

As I wrote in December 2023:

If ever there was a moment for Jewish anti-Zionists to proudly show up and be counted, this is it. There could be no more terrifying demonstration of the end game of Zionism than the genocidal violence Israel has been unleashing on Gaza.

It grieves me to my soul that these words are still relevant in August 2025. May the Jewish people and their leaders find the courage of their convictions to call out a genocidal ideology that has caused – and continues to cause – such untold suffering to the Palestinian people in the name of Jewish supremacy. And may this day come soon.