Stand with J Street!

Please find J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami's thoughts on our current state of affairs below. If you’re ready to meet the moment and join us in fighting back – pitch in to support our work. 

Every day brings a new nightmare. Students rounded up on our streets by masked federal agents. Federal agencies and programs we’ve supported shut down. The fundamentals of our democracy that have protected us challenged. 

And, painfully for the Jewish community, some of the most anti-democratic steps here are being justified in the guise of “fighting antisemitism.”

In Israel, Netanyahu and his allies are running a parallel authoritarian playbook - tightening their grip on power and planning on annexing their way to their dream of a ‘Greater Israel.’ 

To paraphrase Thomas Paine, these times are truly testing our souls. And they are testing our willingness to stand up for our principles and our ability to fight for them strategically.

J Street is ready to meet the test. We’re proud to stand with you on the ramparts of democracy, ready to fight the Trump/Netanyahu/MAGA agenda and call out the dangers they pose to the US, to Israel and to the Jewish people.

In Israel, reservists are called again for duty, and rockets are flying from Gaza and Yemen. On the West Bank, lawless settlers continue an unrestrained rampage - this week attacking the Oscar winning co-director of No Other Land – to the horror of young Jewish activists who put their bodies on the line to intervene. 

In Gaza, renewed fighting has lifted the death toll to over 50,000, according to the Hamas-run health authorities. All aid and commercial traffic has been halted for weeks, and civilians are once again trapped between a barbaric ruling terrorist authority and a renewed Israeli offensive.

Rather than working on getting hostages out and hammering out a post-war plan, Netanyahu’s government is drawing up plans for reoccupation of Gaza and mass expulsions. 

After the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency raised concerns about this approach, Netanyahu fired him. Now, he is determined to fire the Attorney General as well, claiming she is also obstructing his agenda. 

At the same time, the government’s top legislative priority last week was passing a key plank of the ‘judicial coup’ to allow far greater political influence over the judiciary.

The parallels between Trump and Bibi’s attacks on judges and due process are painful – as is the exploitation of very real anxieties as a pretext to trample democratic protections.

If there is a silver lining to be found, it is seeing brave activists taking to the streets. 

We see it in Israel where over a hundred thousand protesters have come out to rail against Netanayhu’s anti-democratic, pro-war agenda. We see it In Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have taken to the streets to protest against the nihilism of Hamas and to call for peace. 

And I hope we’ll start to see it this week here at home - with massive protests planned in every state on April 5. I’ll be there - standing up for American democracy. I hope you will too.

J Street is going to play a vital and unique role in the opposition to Trump/Bibi/MAGA. We’ll be representing the majority of Jewish America that opposes both what’s being done here at home to tear down our democracy and what Netanyahu is doing in Israel. I urge you to join us in this fight:

Show up. At rallies, in your representatives’ offices, at town halls. Support the groups that are willing to fight. Be political. Vote. 

Contribute. We don’t have billionaire backers like Elon Musk behind us, so we rely on folks like you to fund our work. 

Across the landscape, we are witnessing capitulation after capitulation to Trump’s weaponization of the powers of the state. Social media and corporate media executives are bending the knee. Major universities and corporate law firms too. 

We cannot fail to stand up and speak out – even and especially for the rights of those we do not see eye to eye with. At J Street, we’re committed to fighting for the rights and freedoms that have allowed our community to find refuge and build a future here in the United States. Other Jewish leaders and institutions must do the same.