Hassan Nasrallah and the tone-deaf American Jewish left

It’s revealing that groups have been putting pressure on only one side: Israel.

Moshe Phillips | Oct 1, 2024

Photographs of Hassan Nasrallah (left) and Yahya Sinwar posted near Begin boulevard in Jerusalem. April 2, 2024. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90,

At almost the exact moment that Israeli forces were eliminating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon—one of the world’s most notorious mass murderers of Israelis and Americans—left-of-center American Jewish groups were delivering a letter to Israel’s ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel make more concessions to Hamas. The juxtaposition of the two developments shines a light on the extreme tone-deafness that has overtaken many on the U.S. Jewish left.

The letter that the liberal groups delivered to the Israeli embassy pressed Israel to “do everything it can” to “sign a deal” with Hamas. In practical terms, that means that Israel should release even more imprisoned terrorists, cease firing at Hamas for an even longer period than previously offered and withdraw from vital territory such as the Philadelphi corridor.

It’s revealing that these left-wing groups have been putting pressure on only one side: Israel. There was no corresponding letter from them to put pressure on Hamas to make concessions, to make a deal or to release the hostages.

They could have, for example, delivered a letter to the Egyptian ambassador. The Egyptian embassy in Washington is only a three-minute drive from the Israeli embassy. Since Egypt controls Gaza’s western border, it has significant leverage over Hamas. The Jewish liberal groups could have asked the Egyptians to put pressure on Hamas. But they didn’t.

Or they could have brought a petition to the embassy of Qatar. After all, Qatar is a major financier of Hamas. The left-wing Jewish groups could have urged Qatar to end all aid to Hamas until the hostages in Gaza were released. But they didn’t.

Or they could have brought a protest letter to the Palestinian Authority. Many of the groups that signed the letter to the Israeli ambassador have met with P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas or other senior P.A. officials over the years. They know that the P.A. security forces are able to arrest and disarm Hamas cells in P.A.-governed territory. So they could have urged the P.A. to threaten a crackdown unless Hamas releases the hostages. But they didn’t.

This extreme one-sidedness is indicative of how tone-deaf many groups on the American Jewish left have become. Still, it gets worse.

While liberal Jewish leaders who live comfortably in places like Potomac, Md., and Scarsdale, N.Y., were pressuring the Israeli ambassador, patriotic young Israeli pilots were risking their lives to eliminate Nasrallah. It’s worth recalling that Nasrallah’s victims have included many Diaspora Jews—as, for example, in the bombing of the Jewish community center in Argentina in July 1994, killing 85 people and wounding more than 300 others.

So in a very real sense, the elimination of the Hezbollah leader helped protect the lives of the very Jews who spent that day pressuring Israel.

How did the American Jewish left react to Israel bombing Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut? Not with messages of support. Instead, with silence—or worse.

Americans for Peace Now and the U.S. Labor Zionists were silent.

J Street’s president complained that the strike would “put millions more people in the region in danger” and is “exactly the opposite of what President [Joe] Biden had been working toward.” The group seems to enjoy pitting America against Israel. And so, J Streeters must have been disappointed when Biden praised the Beirut bombing as “a measure of justice.”

The response of the American Jewish left to other recent Israeli counter-terror actions was similarly tone-deaf. When Israel eliminated the mass murder Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, J Street announced that it was “extremely alarmed by the steep rise in tensions in the Middle East” and called on Washington to put pressure on Israel “at lightning speed.”

Partners for Progressive Israel—the American supporters of the Meretz Party in Israel—responded to the elimination of Haniyeh by retweeting an article accusing Israel’s leaders of endangering the hostages in Gaza.

Think about that. Israel knocks out one of the leaders of the group that slaughtered, tortured and raped 1,200 Israelis, including dozens of Americans, and all that these “progressive” American Jews can do is look for a way to point an accusing finger at Israel.

It used to be that despite the various political differences among American Jewish organizations, they would at least unite when Israel was fighting for its life. And the vast majority of Jews in America are indeed united in support of Israel. But a small, noisy faction on the left has broken ranks. They seem to be incapable of sharing the satisfaction of the Jewish people at the defeat of our enemies. All they can do is criticize, complain and pressure Israel.

In doing so, they have relegated themselves to the margins of Jewish life and increasingly made themselves irrelevant to the Jewish future.

Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.