Joshua Leifer

Recent Articles

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks at the 2019 J Street National Conference, October 28, 2019. (Photo courtesy of J Street)

For J Street, holding Israel accountable is still a step too far

J Street’s 2019 conference heralded a new willingness to tie military aid to Israel to its human rights record. But the organization was quick to reaffirm a status quo of unconditional aid — despite ongoing abuses. What at first looked like a sea change on the horizon has turned out to be much less. One week…

By Joshua Leifer and Cafe Gibraltar November 7, 2019

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump visit a memorial outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh Tuesday, October 30, 2018, following the mass shooting that left 11 worshippers dead. (Andrea Hanks/White House)

Over 100 Jewish scholars condemn Trump admin for exploiting anti-Semitism

More than 100 Jewish academics sign open letter demanding the Trump administration stop exploiting anti-Semitism in order to quash criticism of Israel on college campuses. Jewish academics are fighting back against the Trump administration’s attempts to silence criticism of Israel on college campuses. More than 100 Jewish scholars have signed an open letter to the U.S. Department…

By Joshua Leifer October 6, 2019

A mural depicting President Donald Trump kissing an Israeli army watchtower is seen on the separation barrier in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, August 4, 2017. (Flash90)

Israel’s one-state reality is sowing chaos in American politics

Until U.S. lawmakers and major Jewish organizations adjust to the current one-state reality, the acrimony that has marked the last several years under Netanyahu and Trump will only intensify. For decades, the two-state solution has been the central pillar of the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in Washington. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, every single U.S. administration has been…

By Joshua Leifer August 26, 2019

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

Thousands of Jews protest ICE raids across U.S., 44 arrested in NYC

A growing movement of American Jews is mobilizing against U.S. immigration policy across the country. ‘We’re fighting for the soul of our country, for our very humanity.’ NEW YORK CITY — Hundreds of American Jewish demonstrators staged a sit-in at one of Amazon’s flagship stores in New York on Sunday, to protest the company’s ties…

By Joshua Leifer August 12, 2019

American Jews with Never Again Action demonstrate outside an ICE detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, July 1, 2019. (Gili Getz)

The American Jews invoking the Holocaust to talk about Trump’s migrant camps

In the face of dire conditions at U.S. border patrol facilities, many American Jews are increasingly unafraid to invoke their people’s history to warn against what may come next. Weeks after New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comments comparing immigration detention centers along the U.S.-Mexico border to concentration camps, reports of dire conditions at U.S. border patrol facilities continue to…

By Joshua Leifer July 10, 2019

A view of the Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as The Great Synagogue, in Budapest, Hungary. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

Tapping the ‘hidden spring’ of anti-Semitism in Orban’s Hungary

In today's Hungary, overt anti-Semitism has been supplanted by dog-whistle politics, Holocaust revisionism, and an us-versus-them mentality that has created a rupture between Jewish institutions. And then there is Aurora, the leftist, Jewish activist community defying it all.

By Joshua Leifer October 12, 2018

Israeli settlers and Palestinian demonstrators throw stones at each other, after settlers marched onto the lands of the West Bank villages of Deir Jarir and Silwad where villages were protesting the construction on their land by members of the nearby Jewish settlement of Ofra, May 3, 2013. (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Israel’s different responses to Jewish and Palestinian stone throwers

Jewish settlers who throw stones at Israeli forces hardly face serious consequences. For Palestinian stone throwers, the consequences can mean death. In the West Bank, the consequences for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers differ dramatically, depending on who’s doing the throwing. The same act, when carried out by Jews in the West Bank, is met — often…

By Joshua Leifer June 17, 2018

Salah holds a picture of himself herding sheep. al-Jabal, June 12, 2018. (Oren Ziv / Activestills.org)

‘They destroyed everything’: Israel’s decades-long war against the Jahalin Bedouin

Expelled by Israeli forces from the Negev, then forced to live next to a garbage dump, the Jahalin Bedouin have lost their ancestral homes and their traditional way of life. The impending forced displacement of Khan al-Ahmar is just the latest struggle in the Bedouin tribe’s history of dispossession. Just outside the Palestinian town of…

By Joshua Leifer June 13, 2018

Samir Awad is evacuated for medical treatment after being shot in the back of the neck by Israeli soldiers, January 13, 2013. (Nader Morar/B’Tselem). Awad later died from his wounds.

Charged with killing Palestinian teen, two soldiers to walk free

Israeli soldiers shot 16-year-old Samir Awad eight times in the back, killing him. After a two-year delay, they were finally indicted. Now, five years after the killing, the prosecution is dropping the charges against them. Indictments against two former Israeli soldiers charged with killing an unarmed Palestinian teenager will be dropped, the state prosecutor announced Monday.…

By Joshua Leifer June 4, 2018

The Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, West Bank. (Faiz Abu-Rmeleh/Activestills.org)

The demolition of an entire Palestinian village could be days away

With a green light from the Supreme Court, Israel is set to a demolish an entire Bedouin village in the West Bank. Human rights advocates warn that the demolition would constitute a grave violation of international law. Israel’s Supreme Court approved a government plan to demolish an entire Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank last…

By Joshua Leifer May 27, 2018