‘Not in my name’: The Jewish communities fighting the consensus on Israel
Members of the US’s Jewish community say they reject Israel’s authority over their name amid Bezalel [Ben = son + of Azazel = demon?] Smotrich’s Israel Day parade appearance.
NEW YORK CITY, U.S. - MAY 5th: Anti-Israeli Jews gather at a "Stop the Sale of Stolen Palestinian Land" protest against "Great Israel Real Estate" event for Palestinian land sale at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, in NYC.
The NYPD tightened security on E. 67th and E. 68th Streets and set up a perimeter that extended for blocks around the Park East Synagogue (Selçuk Acar - Anadolu Agency).
Anti-Israeli Jews at a 'Stop the Sale of Stolen Palestinian Land' protest against 'Great Israel Real Estate' [Selçuk Acar/Anadolu Agency]
Longstanding tensions between the US’s progressive Jewish community and the ethnic cleansing Zionist Israeli government came into focus this month, when Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and other far-right Israeli legislators attended the annual Israel Day Parade in New York City.
As Smotrich, who says he is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), joined the pro-Israel procession marching down Fifth Avenue, he was met by a chorus of “shame” and “war criminals” from protesters.
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Smotrich remained unfazed by the calls from New York’s progressive Jewish protesters and proceeded to link the community’s destiny to Israel’s, a common mantra of both Israeli and US politicians.
“This is a massive celebration – 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,” he said.
- [Why is it so important for criminal Zionists to drive Jews? Zionists engage in terrorism against Ashkenazi Jews worldwide to make them the ultimate victims (even promoting distortions of WW II history concerning the sacrosanct Holocaust) and drive them to become dual-citizen Israelis, being drafted into the IDF and taxed and press to give and give more to biased organizations...why? All is in the name of building up the Zionist ethnostate, no matter how dangerous or illegal, what hasbara/propaganda they have to spread, what crimes against humanity or rape atrocities Zionists routinely commit. Ask Jews Ilan Pappe, Norm Finkelstein, Medea Benjamin, Aaron Mate, Katie Halper, Amy Goodman, Russell Dobular, Keaton Weiss...]
“The 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.” [Such messaging is manipulative, Zionist, and a boon to politicians and arms dealers profiting from genocide.]
New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani fulfilled his election pledge by skipping the parade, a move welcomed by some American Jewish organizations critical of the powerful far-right undercurrent in Israeli politics.
“The 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’re grateful he is not attending,” said Israelis for Peace and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ).
Jewish activists 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.
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They included groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the US and Na’amod 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[n ethno-] state [without a constitution], should be an established fact.
Against the consensus
Emily Hilton, co-founder of Na’amod, says her critical view of Israel was formulated after its 2014 assault on Gaza, specifically the military’s killing of four Palestinian children as they played football on a beach.
“I began to question the acceptance of Zionist thought from university onwards,” Hilton told Al Jazeera.
“I’d met liberal Zionists who might question the politics of Israel, but it wasn’t until I went to University College London that I first began to meet Jews and Palestinians critical of Israel and what it meant.”
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 [retaliation by an occupied, oppressed, civilian population with a legal right to defend itself against its criminal oppressor] on October 7th.
Israel’s subsequent War on [the starving, open-air prison, the largest in the world] Gaza has [genocided far] more than 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza and altered perceptions among some in Jewish communities across the world about their links to the country.
Protesters [and peaceful demonstrators] with Jewish Voice for Peace block traffic during a peaceful demonstration outside the New York office of Jewish U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, calling for an end to the U.S.-Israel War on Iran and opposing U.S. weapons support, Monday, April 13, 2026, in New York (Andres Kudacki/AP Photo).
“More people are coming to realize that we’re right, Israel has lost the moral argument,” Hilton said. “Whatever claim it once had has gone. Now, it's only remaining claim is that it acts on behalf of the mainstream Jewish community, and even that is looking less certain.”
The main political threat to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu’s 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.
“Claims that they’re acting in my name are, frankly, outrageous. It doesn’t 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,” Hilton added.
“We 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’re not.”
- Simon Speakman Cordall, June 13, 2026. Listen to article (6 mins); Shauna Schwartz, Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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