Can Israel remain a true democracy without a constitution, or is it already ruled by unelected judges?

In this episode of “Straight Up,” Danny Seaman, former senior official at the Prime Minister’s Office, is joined by two special guests: Yisca Bina, director of the Movement for Governability and Democracy; and Ziv Maor, news director of Galei Israel Radio and a Channel 14 panelist.

Together, they deliver an important update on Israel’s legal crisis, the overreach of its Supreme Court and the real battle for Israel’s national identity.

This episode breaks down:

• How former Chief Justice Aharon Barak quietly redefined judicial power in 1995
  
• Why Israel’s lack of a constitution makes judicial reform essential
  
• The political nature of Israel’s legal system and how it undermines elected leadership
  
• The unprecedented power of Israel’s Supreme Court to override government decisions, including wartime policy
  
• Why the Shin Bet chief’s refusal to step down poses a threat to democratic governance
  
• How international law is selectively applied by Israel’s courts—and the resulting consequences

This episode also draws parallels to American legal culture, including comparisons to J. Edgar Hoover and U.S. constitutional mechanisms, highlighting the dangers of unchecked judicial supremacy.

See more at: @JNS_TV. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!

JNS will host its inaugural International Policy Summit on Monday, April 28, 2025. This daylong event will convene government officials, policymakers, diplomats, security experts, leaders of pro-Israel organizations, and influencers for vital discussions aimed at addressing Israel's critical challenges and opportunities in a post-Oct. 7 world.
To learn more about the event, click here. Follow JNS on social media for updates, including live streams from the event.

A meeting between the federal task force to combat antisemitism and Boston city officials initially proposed for Wednesday is no longer happening, city officials told The Boston Globe.

In March, the task force told the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston that it planned to visit the cities as part of its probe of antisemitism, stating it wanted to “discuss their responses to incidents of antisemitism at schools and on college campuses in their cities over the last two years.”

On April 9, ahead of a meeting with City Hall, representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice met with Boston officials and the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston for a site visit, The Globe reported. The city then “asked the task force to provide more specific information on the antisemitic incidents that prompted the federal government’s involvement.”

“We continue to seek information prior to accepting a meeting with the task force,” a city spokesperson wrote in a statement on April 9 after the site visit, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Separately, Kevin Jenkins, public engagement and outreach advisor for the civil rights division of the DOJ, suggested a meeting for April 23 in multiple emails.

However, Boston officials never heard back from the task force, and the April 23 meeting was never scheduled or confirmed. (JNS sought information from the Justice Department.)

“We have not been contacted by the task force regarding a follow-up meeting,” said James Borghesani, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.

Dozens of U.N. ambassadors from around the world visited the Poland Museum in Warsaw on Tuesday as part of a March of the Living delegation marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The visit is part of what Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, described in a statement on Tuesday as the largest-ever delegation of ambassadors to join the March of the Living.

“Our journey begins here, in the very place where the fate of so many of our people was sealed,” he stated. “The presence of ambassadors from around the world today is a powerful reminder that the victims’ memories live on, that the world has not forgotten, and that the Jewish people stand strong and move forward with pride.”

The delegation included ambassadors from Latin America, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, including Argentina, Panama, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

I trust that Jews worldwide enjoyed a meaningful and memorable Passover with family and friends. Of course, no one could stop thinking of our brothers and sisters who have been held hostage in Gaza now for 18 months. We continue to pray for them to speedily enjoy their own anxiously awaited “season of freedom” and liberation.

After all the excitement of Passover, we now return to the weekly Torah readings; the portion this week is Shmini (Leviticus, Chapters 9-11). We read about Aaron, the brother of Moses, who was consecrated into his position as the nation’s very first high priest, the Kohen Gadol.

After Moses concluded the initiation service, it was time for Aaron to begin officiating over the sacrificial offerings in the sanctuary.

“And Moses said to Aaron, ‘Come near to the Altar and perform the services …’ ”

Why did Moses have to tell his brother to come near? The Torah scholar Rashi, quoting the Midrash, says that because Aaron inadvertently had a hand in the tragic Golden Calf episode, he felt unworthy and ashamed to approach the Altar. Moses, therefore, encouraged him by saying: “Why are you ashamed? For this, have you been chosen.”

The simple meaning is that Aaron was chosen by God to be the high priest and Moses was telling him that he must do his job regardless of feeling unfit for the position. But how did that set Aaron’s mind at ease?

There is a Chassidic interpretation that turns this verse on its head. When Moses said, “Why are you ashamed? For this have you been chosen,” he was telling his brother that the very reason he was chosen for the exalted position of Kohen Gadol was precisely because he felt ashamed. If he took it for granted that he was the right man for the job, then he would clearly be the wrong man. God desires humility and despises arrogance. By feeling ashamed and overwhelmed by such a high position, Aaron demonstrated that he was the perfect person for such a prominent position.

The Talmud writes that three characteristics have traditionally personified the Jewish people—compassion, bashfulness and benevolence (Yevamot, 79a). While you may know lots of Jews who appear rather forward and far from reticent, according to our sages, the hallmarks of the Jewish people are to be shy, humble and modest. Hubris and haughtiness should be foreign to us. We are not meant to take ourselves so seriously.

Rabbi Sholom Nelson was one of the first students to enrol in the Chabad-Lubavitch Yeshivah in New York when it was founded in 1940. In the early 1950s, the Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—encouraged him to study shechita, kosher slaughter, and to become a qualified ritual slaughterer. But he resisted the idea, feeling that he was unworthy of such a position, as it demands a high degree of knowledge and piety. The Rebbe’s response was: “The very fact that you feel unworthy proves that you are most worthy of being a shochet.”

We live in a mad world where social media rules, where those who shout the loudest are all too often the most powerful, and the quiet voice of truth often goes unheard. “The lies are always loud, and the truth is always quiet,” goes the old folk saying.

In the book of 1 Kings, the Prophet Elijah experiences a Divine revelation. There is wind, an earthquake and a fire. But he is told, “God is not in the wind … not in the earthquake … and not in the fire.” Only afterward does Elijah hear “the still, soft voice” (Kings 1, 19:12). This is the true word of God. Indeed, this phrase, “the still, soft voice,” has made its way into the famous Unetaneh Tokef prayer, which is a highlight of the Mussaf service on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. God is Almighty, even if His voice is still and soft.

I remember hearing someone coaching a debater and telling him, “When your point is weak, shout like hell!” The quiet voice of truth is authentic. The shouters must shout because their arguments have no basis in fact or logic.

Aaron was the most suited man for the role of high priest precisely because he was soft and humble. May we never need to shout.

Let it be our character, humility and honorable conduct that make us truly worthy.

Oświęcim, Poland—Scores of aging Holocaust survivors, some clutching walking canes or walkers in hand, made their way through the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz on Wednesday ahead of the annual March of the Living, some retracing the steps of their darkened childhood anew in their golden years. They did so in the backdrop of a worldwide uptick in antisemitism that followed the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The events of that day have been likened to the Holocaust—atrocities that included murdering human beings, many by fire. It created a new generation of traumatized Jews in Israel and hit home for elderly survivors who had hoped those days were behind them.

This year marked eight decades since the liberation of Auschwitz by Russian forces on Jan. 27, 1945—a number not lost on those present.

“Eighty years since this place took millions of lives, we realize that the words of Elie Weisel—that antisemitism did not die in Auschwitz, our people died in Auschwitz—are more poignant than ever in the wake of Oct. 7,” Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, president of the International March of the Living, told JNS.

It was especially relevant to Merrill Eisenhower, the great-grandson of U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who toured the Ohrdruf concentration camp, near the town of Gotha, Germany, in April 1945 and worked to draw awareness to its horrors and document its inhuman realities.

“I cannot tell you how important it is to be here and for the world to understand what happened here,” he told the tearful survivors. “We must bear witness so that the same thing does not happen again.”

Pledging to carry on his family legacy, Eisenhower stated that “change does not happen in one sweeping motion, but in one kindness, one act at a time.”

His great-grandfather went on to become the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961.

‘Such evil people in the world’

For the last generation of Holocaust survivors alive who came to the event—all of them in their 80s and 90s—Oct. 7 returned them to the horrors of their youth.

Naftali Furst, 92, a Czechoslovakian who survived four Nazi camps, including Auschwitz, in a period of three years as a young boy recounted how his own granddaughter survived the Oct. 7 massacre, although her in-laws were murdered.

“You cannot get into your head that there are such evil people in the world,” said Swedish-born Arne Rabuchin, 81, just a baby when World War II began in 1939. He was saved with the Jews of Sweden by Denmark. “Even as a Holocaust survivor, it is hard to believe what happened here.”

The younger generations stood between time, as witnesses to what happened in Israel 18 months ago and, gathered there at Auschwitz, observers of those reliving a past nearly a century ago.

Natalie Sanandaji, 29, of New York, who survived the massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, said that “being here and seeing the scale of the murder reminds me once again the difference between my hours of fear and what the Jews experienced during the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, we knew that we could never again leave it in other people’s hands to protect us because no one was going to.”

‘I am glad I am here’

For the elderly, surviving was their penultimate victory—that and going on to have Jewish families of their own.

“It’s so very moving and emotional, but I am glad to be here,” said Romanian-born Suzana Leibowitz, 85, of the Israeli city of Haifa.

Her father survived Auschwitz since he was a boot maker, she recounted, scouring the Book of Names for relatives killed in the Holocaust. That tome, compiled by Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, was displayed in Block 27 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, one of the camp’s most well-known buildings, where Jewish inmates lived.

“I wanted to say farewell to my aunt,” said Azriel Ziperberg, 95, at another corner of the room as he perused the listing of some 4.8 million names.

Berlin-born George Shefi, 93, of Givat Ze’ev just outside of Jerusalem, was sent on a children’s transport to England five weeks before the war. He found the names of his mother and her sister on the listing.

Shefi noted that he took part in a film, “Journey of Hope: Retracing the Kindertransport After 85 Years,” recreating his escape from the clutches of Nazi Germany the very day after the Oct. 7 massacre, underlining how the tragedies had become intertwined.

Standing with his daughters and grandchildren, he said: “I am glad I am here, because the alternative would be much worse.”

“We have our own Holocaust, Oct. 7—that’s what people have to realize,” said Susanne Reyto, 81, of Los Angeles, who was saved as an infant in Budapest, Hungary, because her uncle worked in the Swiss consulate, and her mother obtained both Swiss and Swedish papers. “To see what people endured here is very hard, but very inspiring.”

JNS senior contributing editor Ruthie Blum and former Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom Mark Regev—both former advisers at the Prime Minister’s Office—unpack the haunting relevance of Yom HaShoah (Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day) in a post–Oct. 7 world.

They explore the global surge in antisemitism since the Hamas-led massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, including the shocking rise of Jew-hatred in immigrant-rich democracies like Australia and America.

Regev shares a deeply personal story of his father's Holocaust survival and the American soldiers who liberated him, prompting a critical discussion: Did the United States and its Allies do enough to save Europe's Jews? And is the West making the same mistakes now in confronting Iran?

The hosts debate Israel’s internal divisions over the war, the ongoing hostage dilemma and the nation’s resolve to defeat Hamas. Most urgently, they sound the alarm: 2025 must be the year Israel dismantles Iran’s nuclear program—diplomatically or militarily.

See more at: @JNS_TV. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!

JNS will host its inaugural International Policy Summit on Monday, April 28, 2025. This daylong event will convene government officials, policymakers, diplomats, security experts, leaders of pro-Israel organizations, and influencers for vital discussions aimed at addressing Israel's critical challenges and opportunities in a post-Oct. 7 world.

To learn more about the event, click here. Follow JNS on social media for updates, including live streams from the event. 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Tuesday, with the two leaders discussing “the important strategic partnership between the United States and Qatar,” according to a U.S. readout.

Rubio and Al Thani spoke about “close security and economic cooperation and shared efforts to address regional challenges in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria” and “reiterated both countries’ support for greater security and stability in the Middle East.”

Rubio also “expressed gratitude for Qatar’s efforts in securing the release of American citizens from Afghanistan.” 

Christopher Landau, U.S. deputy secretary of state, also met with Qatari Minister of State Mohammed Al Khulaifi on Tuesday. The two discussed U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming trip to Qatar and “the importance of building our strong economic and commercial relationship,” the State Department said.

The White House announced this week that Trump will travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 to 16. 

The State Department added that Landau and Al Khulaifi talked about “Qatar’s continued engagement with the Syrian interim authorities to provide stability and assistance to the Syrian people.”

The Qatari government is “working with” the United States to lift sanctions on the Syrian government to facilitate efforts to rebuild the country, Al Thani told Al Jazeera after meeting with Rubio.

Some U.S. sanctions on the regime of the since-deposed President Bashar Assad remain in place, while others apply to Syria’s ruling faction, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which Washington still designates a terror organization.

Landau also thanked Al Khulaifi for Qatar’s “role in attempting to mediate conflicts in Africa and other parts of the world.” Per the U.S. readout, there was no mention of Gaza, where Qatar’s role as a mediator has been controversial due to its patronage of the Hamas terror group.

I’m walking in a grassy field, surrounded by forest. I pass stones to my left, to my right; 17,000 stones in total. Other than the sounds of nature, the world here lies quiet and still, the trees stand tall—silent witnesses to horror. Some 800,000 Jews were killed on these grounds. Each stone represents a village lost. Each village sheltered thousands of Jews for generations. Now, not one remains. Everywhere I look, I see countless stones. How could this happen? How could God let this happen?

These were some of the questions I could not escape during a recent trip to Poland led by Jeff Seidel, who runs University Student Centers in Israel, for gap-year and Masa students in Israel. Our task was to bear witness to the Shoah and remind humanity of its lowest moments.

Our first stop was Majdanek, a notoriously cruel concentration camp where some 100,000 Jews were murdered through starvation, forced labor or in the gas chambers. As we stood looking into one of those gas chambers, our guide shouted out: Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem echad, “Listen Israel, God, our God, is one!” We stood in silence, listening as the declaration echoed across the chamber walls, honored to belong to the same nation. As our people met their end, these were perhaps the last words on their lips.

The next day, we solemnly read the infamous Arbeit macht frei, “Work makes you free” sign as we enter Auschwitz-Birkenau. Here lie memories of European Jewry: 100,000 shoes, 470 torn-off prosthetics. One particularly heart-wrenching sight was the seven tons of hair ripped from the heads of Jews. We watched videos of Jewish life before the war, images of observant Jews and children singing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s anthem of hope. We then looked through “The Book of Names.”

A project by Yad Vashem, Israel’s National Holocaust Museum, “The Book of Names,” documents the names of 4.8 million of the 6 million Jews slaughtered in the Shoah. I was aware of two relatives of mine, twins, who had been experimented on by Josef Mengele—the infamous figure who used Jews as guinea pigs. I didn’t know their first names, so I searched for their last name, “Weinstein.” I found seven pages of listings for about 1,700 people with the last name Weinstein. There were too many for me to search through in our time there, and they represent just a sliver of European Jewry that had been almost completely erased.

We stayed in Kraków, Poland, for Shabbat. According to Yad Vashem, 60,000 Jews lived in the city out of a total population of 250,000 before World War II. Today, it has only a tiny Jewish population.

After annihilating the Jewish people, it was said that Adolf Hitler had plans to build a museum to showcase all the art he had stolen from Europe and the Jews. Touring a museum in the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz—seeing displays of kippot, tzitzit and menorahs, all symbols of a lost world—I felt for a second that Hitler had partly succeeded.

Standing beside our group in this museum were Polish citizens and tourists from other countries. Amid feelings of sadness, I looked down and noticed my tzitzit. I touched the kippah on my head. Hitler had not succeeded; our nation was not lost forever. That Shabbat night, as many of the visiting Jewish groups joined for prayer and songs, we proved that we were stronger than ever. We sang for all the Jews who no longer could—raising our voices until they were hoarse and we could sing no more.

After Shabbat, we boarded our tour bus for our next destination, but stopped seemingly in the middle of nowhere. After a short walk through pitch-black woods, we arrived at a gravesite. Here, our guides explained that 800 Jewish babies and children were shot by German Nazis and tossed into a pit. Surrounding the pit is a fence decorated with balloons, teddy bears and letters for the kids. Recently, people have also placed photos of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip and Israel Defense Forces soldiers who have been killed as a result of war in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

We visited Treblinka and Warsaw on our final day and witnessed not just loss but courage. Treblinka was an extermination camp where more than 800,000 Jews were murdered. Now, nothing remains. On Aug. 2, 1943, the Jewish workers of Treblinka rebelled, attacking their guards and setting the camp ablaze. That act of bravery may have led to the camp’s closure.

“Where was God?” People ask about the Shoah, but I think it’s often to avoid the harder question: Where was humankind? As this tragedy was unfolding, the world stayed silent. After the Shoah, Jews remembered a long-forgotten truth: The only ones who can reliably safeguard us are ourselves. At Treblinka, the prisoners finally realized their only chance was to fight. In the Warsaw Ghetto, reminiscent of the famous last stand of the Jewish fighters of Masada against the Romans in 73 C.E., the Jewish rebels fought the Nazis until the very end. Their heroic last stand helped pave the way home after 2,000 years of persecution in exile.

Today, we are still threatened by those who wish us gone, as evidenced by Oct. 7. This time, though, we can protect ourselves. The Nazis didn’t care if we were left-wing, right-wing, religious or secular. Neither does Hamas. When visiting Poland’s lost communities, it felt at times as if their story ended there. But those communities and their inhabitants live on through us. And now, we must unite as Jews to carry our story forward. We fight. We celebrate. The trees remain silent, but this time, we speak out, and the proud flame of Jewish history burns on.

Is the Palestinian Authority on the verge of collapse?

In this hard-hitting episode of “Our Middle East,” Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, and Khaled Abu Toameh, senior fellow at JCFA and the Gatestone Institute, address the inner workings of the Palestinian Authority and its growing instability—an issue with direct implications for Israel, the Arab world and global security.

As P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas, at age 89, attempts to appoint a vice president for the first time, Western diplomats hope for reform. Rather than signaling democratic progress, Abbas’s move appears to be another deceptive tactic meant to pacify international donors while entrenching corrupt, authoritarian control.

Abu Toameh draws on decades of reporting to expose how the PLO, Fatah party and P.A. leadership have become indistinguishable from Hamas in rhetoric and ideology, leaving little hope for peace or reform.

Topics explored:

• Abbas’s power games and false promises of reform
  
• The Palestinian Authority’s use of “double talk” to mislead the West
  
• Growing disillusionment and suppression within Palestinian society
  
• Economic mafia-style control in the West Bank
  
• Why Palestinians envy Israel’s democracy
  
• The urgent need for deradicalization and new leadership
  
• Why the PA should face “maximum pressure”

See more at: @JNS_TV. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!

JNS will host its inaugural International Policy Summit on Monday, April 28, 2025. This daylong event will convene government officials, policymakers, diplomats, security experts, leaders of pro-Israel organizations, and influencers for vital discussions aimed at addressing Israel's critical challenges and opportunities in a post-Oct. 7 world.
To learn more about the event, click here. Follow JNS on social media for updates, including live streams from the event.