TEL AVIV — Under the haze of neon lights and techno beats, Roni Tessler waited for legendary DJ Offra to begin his set in a Tel Aviv club. Minutes later, the music cut and the party was shut down. Israel had launched a wave of airstrikes on Iran, pummeling nuclear sites and triggering a 12-day war that would trap Tessler and nearly a hundred other North American LGBTQ Jews in the country.

Organized by the Jewish Federations of North America, the trip included 15 first-time visitors to Israel and came amid a broader sense of alienation many had been feeling in their LGBTQ communities back home. Tessler, originally from Potomac, Maryland but living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for the past 15 years, compared being in Israel to Fire Island “as a place where gay people can breathe.”

Israel, he said, offered the same attraction, but doubly.

“Israel also feels like a place where I can breathe, but as a Jew,” he said. “Seeing Israeli flags everywhere and Jewish stars and knowing the people around me don’t hate me.”

After the initial strikes, flights were suspended. In the ensuing days, most of the delegation fled the country by other means — including by boat or through Jordan — where they were told to hide their Jewish symbols. For those who had come seeking the safety of being visibly Jewish, the reversal was hard to ignore.

The trip was intended to be bookended by the Jerusalem Pride parade at the beginning and Tel Aviv’s storied counterpart on June 13, but with the war breaking out the night before, that parade was called off.

Still, the group pressed on with their itinerary. Ultimately, several members took advantage of flight interruptions to extend their stay, while others returned this month on a second major delegation of LGBTQ Jews, drawn by the massive reorientation in their identities induced by the fallout from Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“A lot of our folks identified as gay first, and then as American or Jewish, but now the Jewish part of our identity has kind of moved to the top, because we’ve been forced to,” said Jayson Littman, who helms Hebro, a group for gay Jews in New York that worked with Birthright Israel on the second trip. He said interviews with trip applicants revealed that many described themselves as “closeted again” as Jews in their gay communities.

Nate Looney, JFNA’s director of community safety and belonging who organized the June mission in just nine weeks, said interest had surged after a year marked by antisemitic hostility at Pride events across the United States. Looney, who lives in Washington, D.C., and identifies as trans, recalled a glass bottle being thrown at his group during last year’s Pride parade and described growing efforts by organizers in multiple cities to exclude Jewish or pro-Israel contingents entirely.

“I never thought there would be violence coming from within, directed at me only for being a Jew. You could show up and be fully queer, but just don’t show up and be fully Jewish,” he said, adding, “Jews were being forced back into the closet.”

In the months since, Pride events around the world have been marred by clashes over Israel, including when organizers have sought to exclude Jewish LGBTQ groups. In Ottawa, Canada, the parade was canceled after pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the route. Montreal’s parade banned two Jewish groups from participating before reinstating them under pressure. Jewish groups pulled out of the events in San Diego, citing safety concerns and an anti-Israel headlining act.

In Rome, the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet Europe hired private security in anticipation of possible disruptions, after skipping the parade last year entirely out of safety concerns. The parade was a distressing experience for those who participated, Ruben Piperno, one of the organizers, told JTA at the time.

“We were subjected to insults, jeers, and serious accusations, with some individuals following us throughout the entire parade, challenging our queer identity, and accusing us of ‘pinkwashing’ on behalf of the Israeli government,” said Piperno, who is 31 and lives in Turin.

On the JFNA trip, many of the delegates said the rupture with their communities had been sudden and isolating. Eshel, an Orthodox LGBTQ nonprofit, and A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel LGBTQ group, surveyed hundreds of LGBTQ Jews. Among those who “strongly present as Jewish” — with visible Jewish clothing or symbols, 67% reported experiencing antisemitism since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. A majority of respondents also said they were withdrawing from queer spaces or concealing their Jewish identity in order to remain in them.

Ashley Kravetsky, a nurse and drag performer from Edmonton, Canada, said the backlash she encountered pushed her out of a community she had long seen as a refuge.

“I was very surprised that people were not able to recognize that what they were saying was harmful to me as a Jewish person,” she said. “I was seeing people post about inclusion and equity and how we have to love and hold space for marginalized communities and in the same breath saying ‘free Palestine’ and ‘Jews are colonizers’ and ‘no Zionists allowed,’ without even conversations allowed to take place. I can count on one hand how many people were willing to have a conversation with me.”

“It was no longer safe for me to be in the queer community — and that included threats of physical violence,” she added.

For Orthodox LGBTQ Jews, there were even fewer options. Eshel co-founder and director Miryam Kabakov, who joined the delegation, said her community was being forced out of one space without being able to enter another.

“A very large percentage are leaving LGBT spaces to be in Jewish spaces. But in our case, they’re also Orthodox, and that’s not an alternative — they can’t really go to Orthodox spaces. So where do they go?” Her organization has since received funding from UJA to begin building what she called a “third space.”

For Bobby Apperson, who relocated from San Francisco to New York in search of a larger LGBTQ Jewish community, the trip to Israel was his first. Before leaving, he had watched a social space he had frequented in San Francisco come under repeated attack. Manny’s, a Mission District café owned by civic advocate and queer Zionist Manny Yekutiel, had its windows smashed and graffiti scrawled across the walls. Messages read: “Fuck Manny,” “Zionist Fucks Gentrifyers,” [sic] and “The only good settler is a dead 1.”

“It was all very Kristallnacht,” Apperson said. “It’s not just queers but the progressive movement overall. They think they’re fighting for Palestinians, when actually they’re doing the complete opposite — embracing intifada and global jihad and undermining safety, including for themselves.”

In Israel, he said, the tone was different. “Not one person we met was calling for violence of any kind against Palestinians. Here the queer community is fighting for peace — for the entire queer community, including Palestinians. It’s not splintered.”

Looney said the mission intentionally foregrounded complexity rather than presenting Israel as a sanitized success story, and some of the group’s encounters challenged assumptions. A panel of LGBTQ IDF reservists included two trans soldiers and offered what one participant described as “more ideological diversity than I ever heard in the States.” One trans reservist, Ma’ayan Gross — who is currently serving with her original all-male combat unit in Gaza — told the group she supported continued military operations there, even at the risk of killing Israeli hostages — a position held by only a small minority of Israelis. Others still expressed unease or disapproval of the war.

“I’ve heard queer people here saying things that sound like what the far-left anti-Zionist movement says in the U.S., like wondering if the military has gone too far,” Apperson said.

In Jerusalem, the group attended the Pride parade, which commemorated 10 years since the murder of 16-year-old marcher Shira Banki. Apperson described the heavy security presence — ostensibly to prevent anti-LGBTQ violence — as jarring.

“It was to protect Jews from other Jews. Even in Jerusalem, you have to choose between your queerness and your Judaism,” he said.

“But it’s an inversion. In America, queer people are looking at all Jews as suspicious — it’s classic antisemitism,” he added. “And here, queer people are being looked at with suspicion by, you could say, the most Zionist people.”

For Chaim Levin, a New Yorker and anti–conversion therapy advocate who once studied in a Jerusalem yeshiva, the sight of communist flags at the march — likely from supporters of the far-left Israeli Communist Maki Party — was a reminder of how disorienting Israel can be. His grandparents fled Soviet Russia to Israel in 1948, he said, and seeing that symbol in the streets of Jerusalem was hard to stomach.

“It was really shocking,” he said. “But also, I take solace in the fact that there’s free speech and they can do that here.”

Over six days, participants visited kibbutzim devastated in the Oct. 7 attacks, met with survivors of the Nova festival massacre and representatives from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, spoke with LGBT representatives from communities as diverse as Haredi and Arab, and sat down with President Isaac Herzog.

Yoanna Chaya Kollin, a trans delegate from Los Angeles, said, “Herzog turned to me and said, ‘All transgender people will be welcome here always.’ I know it’s not the same, but Donald Trump would never do that for me in a million years. It made me feel seen.”

A visit to the Western Wall’s egalitarian section proved especially meaningful for several in the group, particularly those who were still observant or had once been. A handful posed with a rainbow flag bearing a Star of David — a moment that marked a turning point for Jeremy Nagel, from Los Angeles, who had studied in yeshiva two decades earlier.

“In the past, I had always gone to the Kotel to pray the gay away,” he said. “This is the first time I didn’t do that. I never thought then that I’d be back in this capacity, as a proud gay Jew.”

Dillon Perez, from New York, said he had arrived expecting to focus on personal healing, but standing at the Western Wall, his thoughts turned outward. “I came to reconnect to Israel for myself, and maybe to meet a cute guy. But the prayers that mattered the most had nothing to do with me. At the Kotel I kept saying, ‘Hashem, keep Israel safe.’”

The trip was also meant to be a two-way exchange, Looney said, offering solidarity to LGBTQ Israelis navigating war and exposing them to the intensity of diaspora antisemitism. Several Israeli speakers said they had never experienced antisemitism at that scale and were struck by its impact on their North American peers.

“We’re all faced with the decision about whether we’re a minority of Jews within the LGBT community or a minority of LGBT in the Jewish community,” said Hen Mazzig, an Israeli activist who divides his time between Tel Aviv and London, where he lives with his non-Jewish partner. “Each of those comes with different challenges. So it’s great to be in a space where we can be both.”

Omer Ohana, the first gay man formally recognized as an IDF widower after losing his fiancé Sagi Golan on Oct 7, led a session that left many in tears. Meeting Diaspora Jews, he said, gave him the energy to keep going. But it wasn’t just emotional support; every dollar behind advancing the same-sex widower legislation came from U.S. donors, he said.

Even after Iran began targeting Israel with devastating missile barrages, the online backlash didn’t stop. After posting on Instagram about the surreal shift from dancing at a Lady Gaga event one minute and running for a bomb shelter the next, Levin said an acquaintance unfollowed and blocked him.

“That was just another confirmation for me,” he said, of someone else who had “bought into this dynamic that Israel — bad, everyone else — good.

“Obviously, that’s not true. I hope one day they’ll see that but I don’t have a lot of hope.”

Tessler, along with a few others including Nagel, stayed in Israel for the duration of the war before going on to Europe and the United States. Two weeks after the canceled Offra set, he was back at the rescheduled event, posing again with Nagel in the same spot where they had stood just before everything changed.

“This is how Israel has functioned since its inception,” he said. “You get the feeling that there’s no sense of victimhood here — we’ll protect ourselves, but we’re still going to live, and we’re going to live life to the fullest. It was very special to be a part of that.”

Tessler returned to Israel this month to lead the Hebro-Birthright volunteering mission for 160 LGBTQ Jews from 15 countries. Like the JFNA delegation, it was organized at the last minute in part to create a safe space for queer Jews.

Like the many other volunteering trips that Birthright has organized for adults, the Hebro trip itinerary includes stints at food pantries, army bases and communities damaged by war. But the Israelis joining the group all come from the local LBGTQ community, and Littman said the group found its own resonance in visiting the site of the Nova music festival massacre.

“Seeing that that sort of safe space was broken, we definitely kind of connect to that,” said Littman, who is on the board of a New York City synagogue where about 40% of members died in the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. “And we know what it means to insist on something that’s joyful even after pain.”

Simone Somekh contributed reporting.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that he is “denying and revoking” the visas of Palestinian officials ahead of the United Nations General Assembly next month.

The unprecedented move will prevent members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority from attending the General Debate where several countries, including Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, have announced plans to recognize Palestinian statehood.

“The Trump Administration has been clear: it is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” Rubio said in a statement.

The move represents a major break with precedent. The United States typically allows foreign leaders to attend U.N. meetings even if they are on the outs with the U.S. government. Iranian officials and Russian officials have regularly attended meetings at the U.N., for example.

But the Trump administration has shown unusual willingness to use its visa-granting authority to advance an ideological agenda, including by revoking the visas of students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at their universities.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas said the revocation “stands in clear contradiction to international law” in a statement urging the United States to reconsider the move. Abbas was recommended to be included in the ban, according to an internal State Department memo obtained by the New York Post.

Abbas was also expected to attend a high-level meeting on Sept. 22 co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia about brokering a two-state solution.

Abbas, 89, is widely seen as essential to developing any plan for postwar governance in Gaza. He has shown willingness to have PA security forces cooperate with the Israeli security forces and, in June, condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel for the first time.

In his statement, Rubio called on the PA to “end its attempts to bypass negotiations through international lawfare campaigns, including appeals to the ICC and ICJ, and efforts to secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state.”

The Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., Riyad Mansour, told reporters that he was assessing how the move would apply to his delegation, adding that they would “respond accordingly.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Saar, applauded the move. Israel opposes any efforts to create a Palestinian state.

“Thank you @SecRubio for holding the ‘PLO’ and PA accountable for rewarding terrorism, incitement and efforts to use legal warfare against Israel,” he tweeted. “We thank @POTUS and the Administration for this bold step and for standing by Israel once again.”

Rubio’s move, announced on the Friday of Labor Day weekend, did not immediately ignite widespread reactions from Jewish groups. But it drew strong condemnation from Hadar Susskind, the president and CEO of New Jewish Narrative, a progressive Zionist organization.

“The Trump administration is doing more than just shooting itself in the foot. It is playing into the hands of Hamas,” said Susskind in a statement. “A better future for Israelis and Palestinians depends on the establishment of a Palestinian state. We want that state to be led by political factions that recognize Israel. That’s who governs the Palestinian Authority. That’s who the Trump administration is denying entry to.”

An Ontario man has been charged with what police say appears to be a hate-motivated attack after he stabbed a Jewish woman in an Ottawa grocery store known for its large selection of kosher food.

The victim, a woman in her 70s, was taken to the hospital with “serious injuries,” according to police, and was treated and released later the same day. The Jewish Federation of Ottawa called the victim “a cherished member of our community,” and said she is “recovering.”

The suspect, who was charged with aggravated assault and possessing a dangerous weapon, has been identified by police as Joseph Rooke, a 71-year-old man who lives in nearby Cornwall, Ontario.

A Facebook profile with matching details has posted numerous antisemitic and anti-Israel messages.

One post asked whether the loyalties of Prime Minister Mark Carney and other Members of Parliament are “grounded in the ludicrousness of judaism and all the absurdities in the lies that formed the foundation of jewish belief and ethos?” 

Another called Judaism “the world’s oldest cult.”

The posts regularly condemn Israel for committing “genocide,” with one post calling Israel “a very evil state” whose “true self and jewish ethos lays hidden under a manufactured veneer of victimhood…”

“His comments online are those of a hateful man and a rabid antisemite,” B’nai Brith Canada posted on X. “For months, B’nai Brith Canada has warned Canadian leaders of the dangers of allowing hate to foment unchecked on our streets and online platforms. Sadly, our warnings have gone unheeded.”

The stabbing occurred inside the Loblaws — a major Canadian supermarket chain — located next to the Centrepointe/Craig Henry neighborhood, which is the city’s “highest concentration of Jewish community,” according to Choose Ottawa. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said the store “has been the repeated target of anti-Israel protests.”

The stabbing is the latest in a string of antisemitic incidents across Canada since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, including a Montreal synagogue being firebombed on two occasions, a Toronto Jewish girls’ school being targeted by gunfire three times the same year, and a series of bomb threats sent to dozens of Jewish institutions across the country. Ottawa’s National Holocaust Monument was vandalized in June with red graffiti reading “FEED ME,” an apparent reference to the hunger crisis in Gaza.

“The senseless attack on a Jewish woman in an Ottawa grocery store this week is deeply disturbing,” Carney wrote on social media. “My thoughts are with her, her family, and Ottawa’s Jewish community, and my support is with law enforcement as they work to swiftly bring the perpetrator to justice.”

Carney added, “To Canada’s Jewish community: you are not alone. We stand with you against hate and threats to your safety, and we will act to confront antisemitism wherever it appears.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford posted on X that he was “deeply disturbed by the violent attack.” “Hate, violence and antisemitism have no place in our province.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs wrote online that Canada is “at a tipping point” with antisemitism. “We call on all levels of government to act urgently and decisively to ensure the safety and security of Jewish Canadians,” the post read. “Condemnations are not enough—Canada must take concrete steps to protect its citizens and put an end to the spread of violent antisemitism in our communities.”

The body of Ilan Weiss, who was killed while defending Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023, has been recovered by the IDF and Shin Bet security service.

“The body of Ilan Weiss, who was held hostage for 693 days in Gaza, has been recovered in a joint IDF and ISA military operation,” the IDF said in a post on X Friday. “Ilan was from Kibbutz Be’eri and left his home on the morning of October 7 to join the kibbutz emergency response team.”

Weiss, 56, was murdered and kidnapped by Hamas during the massacre. His wife, Shiri, 54, and daughter Noga, 19, were also taken hostage by Hamas during the attacks and were released during a ceasfire in November 2023.

The IDF also recovered the remains of another hostage who could not yet be identified.

There are now 48 remaining hostages held in Gaza, of which 20 are presumed to be alive. Last week, President Donald Trump cast doubt on that figure, telling reporters that some Israeli hostages had died inside Gaza since the last ceasefire.

Israel has not responded to a Hamas offer for a ceasefire deal that would include the release of some of the living hostages. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said they are no longer considering partial deals, even as the vast majority of Israelis support an end to the war in order to release the hostages and have staged multiple mass protests this month to press their case.

The recovery of the hostages’ remains comes as Israel instead widens fighting in Gaza City, which it says is one of Hamas’ last major redoubts. It also comes on the one-year anniversary of the murder of six hostages who were killed as Israeli troops neared the location in Rafah where they were being held, and as army leaders and advocates for the hostages warn that the Gaza City operation could risk the remaining hostages’ lives.

“Ilan, 56, was a family man and a devoted father to his daughters.” The Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote in a post on X. “There are no words to express the depth of this pain. The hostages have no time. We must bring them all home, now!”

The Boulder, Colorado chapter of Run For Their Lives, the Israeli hostage awareness event that was firebombed in June, will no longer publicize its demonstrations after weeks of continued threats, including from a local political candidate.

“​​Participants are facing a level of harassment that makes it impossible to continue safely in public view,” Brandon Rattiner, senior director of the local Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a statement.

The Boulder march, one of more than 230 chapters around the world held weekly to draw attention to the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, was attacked on June 1 by a man who threw Molotov cocktails at participants. Thirteen people were injured and one 82-year-old woman later died.

The man accused of the attack, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was arrested at the scene and indicted on 12 hate crime counts.

Since then, anti-Israel counter-demonstrators have targeted the group, according to local Jewish leaders. Protesters have called Run For Their Lives participants “genocidal c–t,” “racist,” and “Nazi,” and mentioned the lead organizer’s children, according to videos reviewed by JCRC.

Video posted to social media by a pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrator show clashes. One from Aug. 17 documents the counter-demonstrator, Eric Gross, shouting, “More than 1,000 children under the age of 1 murdered by the IDF” and someone in the Run For Their Lives group appearing to respond, “Not enough.” Gross then trails the group along Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, where the marches have taken place, singling out the woman he said made the comment, who ultimately left under police protection, according to the video.

The march disavowed the comment in a statement this week, saying, “We are aware of a social media post of our August 17 walk where an inappropriate and offensive comment was made by one of our walkers. This individual’s comment in no way reflects the views of Run For Their Lives.” The group also said the woman accused of having made the comment did not in fact make it and that she had faced threats as a result of the video.

Aaron Stone, who is running for Boulder City Council, has been one of the more vocal counterprotesters, and allegedly called Rachel Amaru, the founder of the Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives, a “Nazi,” according to CBS Colorado.

Amaru told 9News that “100% I’m being attacked because I’m Jewish,” adding that, “calling a Jew in Boulder right now a ‘Nazi’ is so over the top.”

When asked if he regretted calling Amaru a “Nazi,” Stone told CBS Colorado that he agreed “it is a very strong word to use.” But he defended protesting against the group.

“I’m not seeing a Jewish person,” Stone said. “I’m seeing someone who is walking down the street talking about 20 hostages and ignoring the 2 million Palestinian hostages that are being kept in Gaza.”

Starting at this weekend’s event, the group will not publicly advertise the locations of their marches, and will add heavy security to undisclosed locations, according to the JCRC. It is a move that other Jewish and Israeli events have made to evade pro-Palestinian protests during the war in Gaza.

“It is deeply unfortunate that after enduring the horrific June 1 firebomb attack that resulted in the death of a community member, participants now face such persistent harassment that they must keep their gatherings secret to simply stay safe,” tweeted the Anti-Defamation League of the Mountain States.

Boulder City Council member Tara Winer, who is Jewish, told 9News that she had been marching with the group several weeks ago but decided to leave after experiencing the antisemitic chants.

“I have to deal with the agitators every two weeks, if not more, and my weekend is my weekend, so I did not want to have to stand there and listen to that again,” Winer told 9News, referencing the open comment at City Council meetings. “I think that I have been targeted. Yes, absolutely.”

A new poll found that half of U.S. voters — including 77% of Democrats — believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide, in a finding that adds to mounting signals of deep public disapproval of Israel’s operations there.

The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac between Aug. 21 and 25, also found that 60% of Americans said the United States should not send more weapons for Israel to use against Hamas in Gaza.

The rate was higher — 75% — among Democrats, reflecting a position being adopted at a rapid clip by Democrats in Congress, including, this week, a leading moderate on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith.

A month into the Gaza war in November 2023, Quinnipiac found that 39% of Americans opposed sending more aid to Israel for use against Hamas. The following month, 46% opposed sending more aid. Since then, the number has only risen.

The poll also asked a question the firm has surveyed on for more than two decades: “From what you know about the situation in the Middle East, do your sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” The latest results found a statistical dead heat, the strongest showing for the Palestinians in the poll’s history.

“Support for the Palestinians grows while the appetite for funding Israel militarily dips sharply. And a harsh assessment of the way Israel is prosecuting the Gaza campaign invokes a word of infamy,” Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac analyst, said in a statement summarizing the new poll’s results.

The poll found that 35% of respondents, largely Republicans, said they believed Israel was definitely not committing a genocide in Gaza, and 15% said they could not answer.

Israel rejects the genocide charge, with multiple officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arguing that if they wanted to conduct a campaign of mass extermination in Gaza, they could have.

An increasing number of public figures, including Holocaust and genocide scholars, have said they believe the term is appropriate to use to describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza, citing widespread destruction, limitations on humanitarian aid and harsh statements by Israeli government officials. (At least one major Holocaust historian has also said he believes the term does not apply.)

A poll conducted earlier in the month by the Economist found that 40% of Americans believed Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide, while the rest were evenly split between saying it did not and not having an answer.

The latest Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,220 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

A Jewish comedian confronted Rep. Ritchie Torres over his staunch support for Israel in a tense and emotionally charged interview published on Thursday.

“Do you feel in your heart that what you’re saying is right?” Adam Friedland asked Torres after the New York Democratic congressman rejected the idea that Israel is intentionally killing civilians in Gaza.

Friedland, 38, first rose to prominence as a co-host on the “Cum Town” podcast, a cult-favorite known for its subversive comedy. In 2022, he launched the “The Adam Friedland Show,” which has drawn both criticism and praise for its incendiary interviews with a range of guests including streamer Hasan Piker, California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy.

Friedland often confronts his guests with an offbeat, at times disorienting interview style that has become a hallmark of the show, which models itself as a deconstructed, ironic version of traditional late-night talk shows. His show has over 300,000 subscribers on Youtube and is increasingly a de rigueur stop for personalities seeking exposure to a left-wing “manosphere” audience.

The New Yorker recently profiled Friedland, and GQ magazine recently said he “could be the millennial Jon Stewart.” Like Stewart, who recently discussed Israel and Gaza on air with the left-wing Jewish writer Peter Beinart, Friedland was openly emotional during his conversation with Torres.

“The fact that I still f—king care about being Jewish is embarrassing,” he said at one point. “I should just be, like, a guy. This feels like a stain on our history, and it feels like it’s changed what being Jewish is.”

In the interview, Friedland often interrupted the lawmaker as the pair sparred over Torres’ staunch support for Israel amid rampant antisemitism in the United States. He also expressed deep pain over his own feelings about Israel, which he said were alienating him from Judaism.

“Me saying this to you right now will hurt people in my own family, OK?” Friedland told Torres as he lamented Israel’s actions in Gaza; questioned the seriousness of alleged antisemitism on college campuses; and said he believed that Israel was fueling an explosion of antisemitism in the United States.

“I think hatred of Jewish people has exploded in this country. And … I think it’s because of our support of what looks to be an absolute brutality,” said Friedland, 38, who grew up in Southern California and spent a year living in Israel after high school and has openly criticized Israel in recent years.

“You think Israeli government policies are justification for antisemitism?” Torres asked. “My view is that there is no justification for antisemitism.”

Accusing Torres of “deflecting again,” Friedland dug in.

“I’m telling you as a Jew right now that we are receiving a lot more hate because of what the people with the flag that has a Jewish star on are doing to other people right now,” he said. “I’m telling you as a Jewish person how painful it is for us to say — and it hurts my stomach to say this, and you’re going to say, I disagree, I disagree — that this is a genocide.”

Friedland noted several times that he has rarely had the opportunity to interview members of Congress as he hosted Torres for a conversation that began with Torres’ personal trajectory from public housing in the Bronx to Congress but soon centered squarely on the war in Gaza.

In June, Friedland hosted Khanna, who has spearheaded an effort in the House to urge the Trump administration to recognize Palestinian statehood and pushed to block U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict. In that interview, Friedland did not question Khanna on his opinions on Israel.

Torres’ interview began and ended with the duo noting that Torres had been uncertain about whether it was a good idea to come on the show.

Torres declined to comment on the experience. A source close to him said that conversations ahead of the appearance included discussion that the conversation would not focus on Israel.

Friedland did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But even as he initiated the Israel portion of the conversation and extended at several points, he signaled during his conversation with Torres that he had not planned to dwell on Israel, saying at one point, “I don’t want to be disrespectful like this.”

Torres has the endorsement of the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby and is cherished by many Jews in his district for his defense of Israel at a time when many Democrats are increasingly critical of Israel and its war in Gaza. He did not yield much to Friedland’s pressing, though he did tell Friedland he had made a “fair point” when he asked why Netanyahu had supported Hamas in the past.

“It seems to me the United States and Israel could have shut off the spigot and did not do so,” Torres said. “I don’t know why, but, but that was a failure. There’s no question.”

The conversation also gave air to Friedland’s ideas for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After Torres asked him for his own solution, Friedland — whose parents are from South Africa — rattled off a vision immediately.

“I’m proposing a democracy,” he said. “I’m proposing an extensive demographic study of what was taken and what was lost, extensive reparations for what that was taken, and a truth and reconciliation process where we could end this s–t.”

Both men appeared frustrated at times, with Friedland telling Torres at one point to “shut up.” And each man appeared at least once not to know what the other was talking about — Friedland when Torres mentioned “the Gaza envelope,” a term for the region of Israel attacked by Hamas that Friedland said he had never heard, and Torres when Friedland shared that the Proud Boys, a white supremacist group, had entered campus fights on the side of Israel.

At the end of the conversation, the pair stood and began to move off camera before sparring a little longer. The last thing that can be heard on the YouTube reporting: Torres telling Friedland, “I just don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

Reception to the interview was mixed on social media, with many praising Friedland for openly challenging Torres on his support for Israel while others criticized him for appearing to side at times with Hamas.

“Adam wants @RitchieTorres to be ‘human’ where human means shutting off critical thinking and accepting the propaganda of a terrorist group as fact,” wrote Rabbi Samuel Stern, the Reform rabbi of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kansas, in a post on X.

Friedland suggested that the immediate reaction was mostly positive. On X, he wrote, “Thanks for the nice feedback from everyone except for my dad.”

As with Stewart, Friedland drew praise from other liberal Jews who said he had given voice to their wrenching angst over Israel.

“Watching the clips of this, and getting a little teary-eyed too. Leaving aside Torres’ robotic responses, Friedland’s publicly working through emotions a lot of us have felt,” tweeted the journalist Jordan Weissmann.

Aaron Rugenberg, a former member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, wrote that Friedland’s comments “really hit me hard.”

He tweeted, “Adam Friedland honestly and directly sharing the anguish of seeing atrocities being done under a Star of David in his name straight to Ritchie Torres is honestly the best embodiment of what Judaism should and can mean.”

In recent weeks, a growing number of traditionally pro-Israel states have decided to recognize a Palestinian state. These decisions have invited criticism and opposition from the government of Israel and many of its Zionist supporters. This criticism is rooted in a narrative that views a Palestinian state as a “reward” to the Oct. 7 attackers, and which characterizes Palestinian statehood as a punitive measure against Israel for continuing to pursue the war.

It is reasonable for supporters of Israel to be concerned about unilateral actions to define a Palestinian state on Israel’s borders. Palestinian governance is characterized by intense polarization among warring factions which include eliminationist terror groups, and it is undermined by grotesque levels of corruption. Movement toward independent statehood brings the risk of regional terror actors infiltrating such a state and gaining the ability to strike Israel with impunity from next door.

It is also reasonable to argue that we should notice how history changes, and to not continue to wheel out the shibboleths of the past if they are outdated. For many, the very phrase “two-state solution” describes the wishful thinking of the pre-second intifada, pre-Oct. 7 past.

But it is a worse failure of moral imagination and political opportunity to reflexively oppose Palestinian statehood, especially since movement towards positive change for Israelis and Palestinians is the dream for Zionism — not its nightmare.

The aspiration for two states for two people has been a mainstream Zionist idea for decades, stemming from the same commitment that Jews hold to self-determination for the Jewish people that should be extended to the Palestinian people as well. Advocating for two states inherently affirms the legitimacy of Israeli statehood, and in fact many of the countries now advancing the idea of Palestinian statehood do so following decades of support for the State of Israel and a commitment to continue that support.

Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups thrive on opposition to two states and the normalization of the State of Israel within the community of nations, and especially as peacemaking efforts fail. When Israel expands its war against the Palestinian people, and not just Hamas, it undercuts the fundamental legitimacy of its war claims and plays into Hamas’s strategy. It also undercuts and further weakens the already weak Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is currently the only viable alternative to Hamas.

Moreover, the claim that Palestinian statehood inherently endangers Israel ignores the fact that the status quo endangers Israelis and the Palestinians. Right now, the absence of a realistic Zionist ambition for a peaceful future empowers the extremists of Hamas and the empowered extremists in the Israeli government, who unfairly claim the brand of Zionism of their own and do damage to its credibility as a noble movement every day.

A better way forward is for supporters of Israel to embrace — with caveats, and in partnership with the many Israelis and Palestinians who are working to change the status quo — the process of building towards Palestinian statehood by encouraging it to take root under a set of conditions that are in Israel’s long-term interest. These conditions include that it should remain demilitarized and there should be security coordination with the State of Israel. The state should be led by those who have renounced terrorism and have recognized the State of Israel. The state should be committed to disarming Hamas and other terror groups, a stance supported this summer by the Arab League.

Such a Palestinian state, living alongside Israel in peace and security, does not “reward’ Hamas for Oct. 7. Instead, it definitively repudiates everything that Hamas stands for.

The current government of Israel views any version of a Palestinian state as a threat to Israel but has failed to create a viable alternative vision. Its pre-war policies, which included containing (while sustaining) Hamas leadership in Gaza and dividing Palestinian leadership against itself, also failed to protect the Israeli people. As such, it is well within the purview of Zionist ideals for supporters of Israel to think past the limitations of the present – including its government – and to advocate for a better future for all the Jews and Palestinians permanently intertwined between the river and the sea. We cannot build towards a better future unless we dream about it, talk about, and coax it into the world.

The State of Israel should advance this process now, rather than continue to push off peacemaking for some utopian future that will never arrive. Those of us in the Diaspora need to seed this conversation in our communities, to support efforts by those in Israel working patriotically towards peacemaking, and to spend time building the kinds of relationships that will help the State of Israel pursue a process that could be less laden with risk with the benefit of our support.

Most of all, we must not become fatalists. Fatalism about the perpetuation of this conflict is the best guarantee that the conflict will continue and worsen. Zionism always dreamed of unanticipated possibilities for the Jewish future and the Zionists who succeeded at building the State of Israel always took practical steps to realize their dreams. That version of Zionism is now on the defensive against those in power who believe in a hopeless status quo. Just as the attacks on Oct. 7 justified the necessity of war, there is a moral mandate now for visionary peacemaking.

This is a moment once again for Zionism to become a movement of moral imagination with practical commitments to Israel’s safety and security, the dignity and freedom deserved by Jews and Palestinians alike, and the dream of peace between the Jewish State and all its neighbors.

Top administration officials under former President Joe Biden are speaking out against Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he sabotaged ceasefire negotiations last year.

The comments in high-profile interviews in Israeli and U.S. media come as Netanyahu has not responded to the latest ceasefire offer from Hamas — and as approval for Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza among Democrats has plummeted to 8%.

The situation in Gaza has transformed since Biden left the presidency, with reports of starvation and nearly 200 journalists killed, many Democratic lawmakers have newly supported legislation to block U.S. arms sales to Israel.

As support for Israel significantly wanes across the Democratic party and beyond, the former Biden administration officials appear to be distancing themselves from the war’s current state and casting their efforts as more critical of Israel than was publicly visible at the time.

Matthew Miller: Biden administration didn’t publicly accuse Netanyahu of sabotaging ceasefire despite strong sentiment

Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson under Biden, told an Israeli news channel last week that the Biden administration repeatedly considered publicly announcing that Netanyahu was hindering a ceasefire deal, but decided against it for fear of emboldening Hamas.

“There were times that we very much wanted to go public and make clear that we thought the prime minister was being completely intransigent and making it tougher to get a deal,” Miller told journalists with “The Source,” on Israel’s Channel 13.

“But we discussed it amongst ourselves, and we made the decision that it wouldn’t accomplish anything, [because] we had seen it in a number of cases: [Hamas’ Yahya] Sinwar pulled back from negotiations when he thought there was division between the United States and Israel,” Miller continued. “We wanted to speak very toughly to the government of Israel behind closed doors, but ultimately not do anything that we thought would make it harder to get to a deal.”

It was the first on-camera admission of what other reports have indicated, that Netanyahu was the ultimate obstacle to ceasefires during the war.

In one example cited by Miller, he told Channel 13 that the secretary of state had told Netanyahu that he was “making it impossible to realize the dream that the State of Israel has had since its founding,” adding that Israel would be “bogged down here fighting this war for years and decades to come.”

Netanyahu allegedly replied: “You’re right. We are going to be fighting this war for decades to come. That’s the way it’s been. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says arms embargo now represents ‘totally credible’ position

In an interview Wednesday with The Bulwark host Tim Miller, former U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that he had told members of Congress that blocking arms to Israel had become a “totally credible position.”

As a top advisor to Biden, Sullivan frequently met with Israeli officials to discuss the prosecution of the war in Gaza and humanitarian efforts in the region. Just weeks into the war in Gaza, Sullivan defended Israel’s “right to defend itself against terrorist attacks,” and also said that the United States would work with Israel to ensure “Palestinians get access to those basic necessities.”

In January, before leaving office following President Donald Trump’s reelection, Sullivan said the Biden administration was “close to a deal” and touted the administration’s policy in the Middle East over the previous four years, telling reporters, “We’ve stood in defense of our friends, and we’ve stood up to our enemies.”

“I have, in fact, told a number of members who were thinking about the votes on these resolutions that the situation as it stands today, following the breakdown of the ceasefire in March, means that a vote to withhold weapons from Israel is a totally credible position,” Sullivan told Miller.

Sullivan’s comments come one day after the Democratic National Committee blocked a resolution that would have called for halting arms sales to Israel.

“The case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago,” Sullivan said. “One, they don’t face the same regional threats. Two, there was a ceasefire hostage deal in place and the ability to have negotiations, and it was Israel who just walked away from it without negotiating seriously. Three, there is a full-blown famine in Gaza. And four, there are no more serious military objectives to achieve. It’s just bombing the rubble into rubble.”

Jacob Lew: Biden administration prevented humanitarian crisis and demanded answers from Israel

Another top Biden administration official, Jacob Lew, who was the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2023 to 2025, has been pressing the case that U.S. intervention was preventing the humanitarian crisis now underway in Gaza.

Earlier this month, Lew co-authored a piece in Foreign Affairs with David Satterfield, Biden’s special envoy for humanitarian issues in the region, in which that pair argued that their efforts in the former administration in Gaza had “prevented famine.”

While pro-Palestinian voices have warned of food scarcity and starvation in the enclave throughout the war, under the Trump administration, reports of starvation in the enclave have escalated, with a global hunger monitor declaring a famine in parts of Gaza last week.

In an interview Tuesday with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, Lew expanded on the Foreign Affairs piece, telling Chotiner that Biden’s “commitment to supporting Israel in a legitimate, just fight was clear, and that had to coexist with pressing them on these humanitarian issues.”

Later in the interview, Chotiner said, “There is a certain point at which the U.S. could choose to stop helping Israel,” to which Lew replied that the administration had “engaged with Israel on military tactics in a very direct way.”

“I’m not saying that everything went the way we would’ve advised, and I’m not saying we didn’t call them in the middle of the night many times saying, What on earth happened just now?” Lew said

When asked to explain what Israel’s answer would be during late-night calls about military advances, Lew said that the administration could “almost never get answers that explained what happened before the story was fully framed in international media.”

“When the facts were fully developed, it turned out that the casualties were much lower, the number of civilians was much lower, and, in many cases, the children were children of Hamas fighters, not children taking cover in places,” continued Lew.

That comment has drawn criticism from those who said Lew was excusing the killing of children in Gaza. When Chotiner pressed him on the point, Lew said, “If you’re in a command-and-control center, that’s different than if it’s a school that’s emptied out and innocent civilians are taking shelter there. If you’re the commander of a Hamas unit and you bring your family to a military site, that’s different.”

Lew also pushed back on the characterization that Netanyahu had not wanted to end the war in Gaza and bring the remaining Israeli hostages back.

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Lew. “I’m not going to question that there was a political dimension to all of this. The reality at the time of all the negotiations was there were always two parties to a negotiation. Hamas was not willing to make the moves that it had to make in order to free hostages, and in order to end the war. It wasn’t just one side.”

The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia announced Thursday that it will return an Israeli flag to its facade after two consecutive weeks of vandalism.

The flag, which hangs on an exterior wall of the Jewish museum with the words “The Weitzman stands with Israel,” was vandalized with red spray paint early Monday morning. It has already been cleaned following a similar incident on Aug. 18.

After the second incident, the museum announced that it was “expediting” plans to swap the flag for a “hostage-focused sign” that had been planned to go up closer to the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The move swiftly drew criticism, especially after The Forward ran a story with the headline “Philadelphia Jewish museum won’t rehang Israeli flag now after it was vandalized twice in a week.”

In the comments of an Instagram post by the Weitzman museum announcing the signage swap, one user wrote, “They will see removing the Israeli flag as a victory, even for a message about the hostages.” Another commenter wrote, “Removing the Israeli flag will not save the museum from more attacks.”

On Thursday, the museum reversed course, saying its planned change had been mischaracterized.

“What we certainly did not intend with this plan was to create a perception that we were capitulating to vandals or had somehow walked back our position of unequivocal support for Israel and its people,” the museum’s president and CEO, Dan Tadmor, said in a statement.

“Yet that’s how it was perceived by some. And perception — as we all know, especially in today’s day and age — is reality,” Tadmor continued. “And perception does matter. As the nation’s Jewish museum, there can never be any misunderstanding as to our identity and positions: we are a proudly Jewish and proudly Zionist institution.”

Both the hostage sign and the Israeli flag will be installed some time over the next week, according to Tadmor.

In June, the federal government arrested a Maryland man accused of sending threatening letters to the Weitzman that referenced the museum’s “many big open windows,” “Kristallnacht,” “anger and rage” and a future need to “rebuild” the institution following its destruction.

The incidents come amid a string of vandalism at Jewish museums across the country. Last month, several swastikas were painted on the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, and in June at a Jewish art museum in Manhattan, a man wrote the word “Gaza.”

Last summer, a sculpture outside of the Brooklyn Museum in New York was tagged with a host of pro-Palestinian phrases including “Ur museum kills kids in Palestine!” and “F–-k Israel.”

Israeli flags have also drawn vandalism. This week, when the school board in Beverly Hills, California, voted to install Israeli flags in the district’s schools, one board member warned that the move could turn the schools into targets.