Not in My Name: A Message Israel’s Diaspora Supporters Need to Send

Against the background of increasing settler violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank and the outcome of Israel’s October 27 elections, I have recently found myself thinking back a quarter of a century, to December 2001, the height of the Second Intifada.

I was Israel’s ambassador to South Africa when some 220 Jewish South Africans signed what they called the Jewish Declaration of Conscience, under the banner “Not in My Name.” Several years after South Africa’s democratic transformation, they were announcing that they opposed Israel’s conduct in the occupied territories.

The declaration was spearheaded by Ronnie Kasrils, the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, who told me that in his childhood, he was a member of Beitar, a right-wing Jewish youth movement. As a young man, he joined the South African Communist Party and received military and intelligence training in the Soviet Union and East Germany. He became a leader in the armed wing of the African National Congress, and, after the end of apartheid, served as a minister in the ANC-led government.

He and his fellow signatories did not need to state the obvious: Israel was not acting in their name, nor they in Israel’s.

That is not the case with Jewish organizations in the Diaspora. I am not referring to explicitly right-wing organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), to left-leaning organizations like J Street, which is Zionist but critical of current Israeli government policies, or to anti-Zionist Jewish groups. I mean representative bodies of Jewish communities around the world, and mainstream organizations with a specific agenda, such as B’nai B’rith.

Over the years, an expectation has taken root that such organizations do not publicly criticize Israel, a country that occupies a central place in the identity of Diaspora Jews. Even when some privately criticize one Israeli government or another, there is an implicit assumption that Israeli citizens choose the government they consider right for them. Broadly speaking, Jews abroad feel that since they do not bear the immediate consequences of Israel’s decisions, their role is to stand behind it even when they have reservations.

Thus, since the current government took office almost four years ago, Israel has undergone a sustained assault on the values of liberal democracy with which many Jews identify. Nevertheless, mainstream Jewish organizations did not declare that the transformation of Israel’s character was not being carried out in their name.

Then came October 7 and its aftermath, which brought profound awareness of a shared fate. This may help explain the silence in the face of what many saw as the prolongation of the war for political purposes, at huge cost to Gazans and Israelis. Those who see Israel as the realization of an ancient dream continued to support Israel, perhaps uneasily, perhaps with unspoken reservations, but without voicing criticism.

That silence is particularly striking in light of increasing violence in the West Bank. The perpetrators, whom the prime minister insists on calling a “handful,” have been seen to use equipment supplied by the Israeli government; meaningful action to stop the violence is lacking; uniformed personnel often fail to intervene, and there have even been reports of armed forces collaborating with the perpetrators. It has all been widely reported, and cannot be ignored.

A question must therefore be asked: Do these actions reflect the Jewish values of which you, the Jews of the Diaspora, are so proud, the Jewish moral tradition you invoke?

If not, it is time to stop being silent. You should demand that any Israeli government – the current one, or its successor – put an immediate end to these actions. And even if you have no qualms of conscience about what is happening, you surely understand what these images of cruelty and dispossession are doing to Israel’s reputation and to its rapidly diminishing support, and what all this means for Israel’s very future.

Many Israelis oppose the actions of this so-called “handful.” They need your support, not only in words but in clear expression of solidarity with those who reject violence and dispossession. If you continue to remain silent, your silence can be interpreted as consent, even complicity.

Unlike those South African Jews who signed the declaration in 2001, you have devoted considerable effort and resources to supporting Israel. That makes your silence all the more consequential. If you do not declare publicly, for all the world to hear, that this is not what you expect of Israel, that it is betraying Jewish values, that you demand action, that your criticism is compatible with your commitment to Israel’s security and its future, then you cannot complain when others assume that you condone that violence.

“Not in My Name” need not be a declaration of distance and of rejection. On the contrary. Especially after the elections, when parties of the outgoing government lost their parliamentary majority, there is even less reason to view silence as neutrality. Rather, a forceful condemnation and a demand for action can be an expression of solidarity with Israelis who reject violence and dispossession, and an expression of concern for Israel’s moral and physical future.