Who cares whether they show up to represent Israel at a parade in the US? Smotrich, Eliyahu, Wasserlauf, etc were handed positions of power and influence by a faction of the Israeli public that agrees with their ideology. They make decisions on behalf of the Israeli public, and those decisions have concrete effects on people living in the region. Maybe they're not representatives of an idealized Israel that exists in your brain, but for anyone who derives their understanding of Israel from observation of reality and not from projection of hopes and dreams, these men *are* representatives of Israel. They were representatives of Israel when Mamdani refused to march in the Israel day parade during his campaign. They will continue to be representatives of Israel until the Israeli public decides they've had enough of their ideology and removes them from their positions of power and influence. Stop worrying about how to fix Israel’s image and start worrying about how to fix Israel’s reality. It's a harder task, but the image will take care of itself when the reality improves.
I understand the argument that putting Smotrich, Eliyahu, and Wasserlauf at the front of the parade was politically foolish and handed critics an easy talking point.
What I’m less clear on is the counterfactual.
How many of the people abandoning Israel are actually objecting to those ministers, and how many are objecting to Zionism itself?
Your piece seems to assume that if Israel presented a more centrist, diaspora‑friendly face, much of the reputational damage could be avoided. But Mayor Mamdani didn’t skip the parade because Smotrich showed up. As you note, he had already decided not to attend and has been explicit about refusing to celebrate Israel at all.
So what evidence do we have that the constituency being lost is rejecting specific ministers rather than rejecting the legitimacy of a Jewish state altogether?
If it’s increasingly the latter, then the problem isn’t that Israel keeps sending the wrong messengers. It’s that a growing segment of critics has already decided the message itself—Jewish self‑determination in any borders—is unacceptable.
In that world, swapping out Smotrich for a nicer face might make life marginally easier for “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” but it doesn’t solve the deeper issue: they’re defending the existence of something a lot of their peers now treat as inherently illegitimate, regardless of who marches on Fifth Avenue.
One way to think about this is to look at it from the perspective of democratic party officeholders (the Governor, the AG, the chief of police, the speaker of the city council, etc.) who attended this year's parade (defying the left wing elements of their base in what is for many of them an election year) and then had to distance themself from the parade once it turned out that Smotrich et al had attended and now they're being accused of marching alongside him. Is this going to make it more or less likely that these officeholders will stick their necks out for Israel, or Zionism, or Jews? Are they going to show up to the parade next year? When Mamdani tries to prevent if from going forward because of a security risk will they exert political capital to overrule him? They were already running a risk and now they've been played for suckers.
What’s interesting to me is that I actually agree with the way you’ve framed this. We’re talking about governors, AGs, council speakers showing up at a parade for a formal U.S. ally and reasonably being described as “sticking their necks out.” That alone tells you where the center of gravity has moved. In a healthy alliance, marching in support of a partner state is the safe, default photo‑op. In this coalition, more and more, it’s treated as a dangerous deviation that has to be offset with public distancing and damage control.
Clearly, the center of gravity has moved. The question is whether Israeli actions played any part in that center of gravity moving and whether they can play any part in moving it back.
To a certain extent this is normal politics. America is a formal ally with Saudi Arabia and yet local politicians would have to think long and hard about whether or not to march alongside MBS in a Saudi pride parade down Fifth.
The timing (the 2016–2018 collapse during a conflict lull), the demographics (liberal Democrats and 18–34‑year‑olds), and the institutional mechanisms make this a very different story than “people don’t want to be seen with MBS.” Between 2016 and 2018, with no major Gaza war, liberal Democratic sympathy for Israel drops from roughly one‑third to under one‑fifth, a 14‑point slide. By early 2023, months before October 7, Democrats as a whole are already at roughly 49% sympathizing more with Palestinians and 38% with Israelis, and by 2026 that gap widens further among both Democrats and the under‑35s.
I wrote a longer piece on this that I can’t link here. Happy to go into more detail if you want to pull it up from my archive and comment, but the gist is this: the sharpest movement happens in those quieter 2016–2018 years, when there is no large‑scale war driving daily images, and it shows up first among people whose informational diet runs through universities, prestige media, public radio, and Coates‑style post‑colonial framing. In other words, the opinion shift tracks the spread of a particular moral taxonomy and its ambient signal dominance on a low‑engagement foreign‑policy question, not just “Israel did something in 2023” or “this ally is personally unpopular.”
Shrinking a 1,300‑year civilizational and religious struggle into “Smotrich, Eliyahu, and Wasserlauf are in government, therefore the whole thing is simple” is pretty shortsighted. You’re free to hate this Israeli government; that’s not the point. The point is that when you reduce a conflict with deep theological, historical, regional, and diaspora layers to “these three ministers showed up at a parade,” you’re not analyzing reality, you’re just projecting your current partisan disgust onto a much older argument.
The American Left is running literal Anzi-Nazis for federal office and gaslighting Jews about something something Big Tent.
Democrats are making noise about conditioning support on forcing a two-state solution which would cripple Israel’s ability to defend the big cities and borders in general.
Why is anyone trying to please these people? Antizionism is not the fault of the Jews any more than Nazism was.
Two-state solution was on life support when Hamas invaded and killed it forever. If anyone thinks that hiding Smotrich and committing suicide by giving away Judea & Samaria will bring back Democratic support, think again - two generations of Americans have been indoctrinated by CAIR to be Antizionists - Oct. 7 ACTIVATED them.
What Smotrich says about sovereignty in Judea & Samaria is just what realistic people are thinking - including 70% of Israelis. Why is Smotrich marching in the Israel Day Parade is a problem? Can’t he be part of the big Jewish peoplehood tent?
And why does Jewish peoplehood and Zionism seem so CONDITIONAL on the left?
Author complains that American Jews are being told their Zionism is the wrong kind while his article is about Jews (elected ones at that) with the wrong kind of Zionism being in the parade. Was AsaJew Street allowed to march? Were the "Jews with trembling knees" Schumer brigade there?
Look. Shitty government gonna shitty government. Where was the opposition? Why are they always never ahead of the game? If they'd shown up with a big banner of their own, they could have done a lot to cancel this out.
Thank you for so articulately putting my thoughts into words. Marching with university faculty against antisemitism was so exhilarating. When I found out later that Smotrich was at the head of the parade, I was instantly deflated. What a slap in the face. Exactly as you described.
Thanks for your supportive remarks. Thanks for the perspective. And thanks for being there applauding. I was proud to march, AND I worry about the optics.
Thank you for marching in the parade. I was there and had tears of pride. With all due respect we worry about optics too much. The Jew haters never do.
Appreciate the opinions of Eli because he has "boots on the ground" and "skin in the game," living in Israel. So too do Jews of NYC and elsewhere in the diaspora who suffer the indignities of antisemitism, either over or covert, in their lives. I see the NYC Israel Day Parade as having a big tent, with room for all to celebrate Israel regardless of their views or political inclinations. So I see no problem with Jews from the right, or the left, or differing religious affiliations, marching together in celebration.
The face of Israel: Unprecedented measures to avoid civilian casualties in the Gaza war. The face of Islam: Hamas seeking maximum civilian casualties as “necessary sacrifices.”
There is a context to all of this. Arabs from the West Bank used to come into Israel before 1967. There was no wall back then. They went to Tel Aviv. They enjoyed what Israel had to offer. Musab Hassan Yousef remembers fondly those trips into Israel when he was a child. They also came in with produce which they sold in Israel and had good paying jobs there.
And then they made war against Israel from the West Bank. Later these West Bank people came into Israel and planted bombs in restaurants and in buses. We saw them celebrating and giving out sweets in the evening for the “heroes” who did these deeds.
Israelis made the decision that they had to go into the West Bank and put up checkpoints as a form of self protection. Creating Jewish communities there was part of the plan. There had been a Jewish community there already in Hebron but the Arabs massacred them in 1929.
The local Arab residents attacked these Jewish communities relentlessly. They cannot tolerate Jews living peacefully near them.
Unfortunately, it’s a zero sum game with people of this mentality.
If so-called friends of Israel, whether Jews or not, decide to stop being friends because these ministers appeared at the Israel Day parade they weren’t real friends anyway.
I don’t equate the ministers’ rhetoric with an action plan. Sometimes things are said for effect, like Mr. Trump‘s declaration that he will destroy Iran’s civilization.
If Israel’s neighbors were like Switzerland I might wholeheartedly agree with your premise. But knowing the genocidal ideology Israel faces I take a different view.
I know that we can never solve antisemitism of antizionism, I know there's no good way to fight a war. I know were all tired of hearing about "PR." But its irksome when people tell me that Israel can't possibly do better at it when they consistently don't even try and, in fact, make such bone headed moves all the time.
It seems like they have just given up on communicating with liberals altogether, have given up on being at least somewhat apolitical. It is a horrendous choice given the very liberal demographics of the diaspora.
Who cares whether they show up to represent Israel at a parade in the US? Smotrich, Eliyahu, Wasserlauf, etc were handed positions of power and influence by a faction of the Israeli public that agrees with their ideology. They make decisions on behalf of the Israeli public, and those decisions have concrete effects on people living in the region. Maybe they're not representatives of an idealized Israel that exists in your brain, but for anyone who derives their understanding of Israel from observation of reality and not from projection of hopes and dreams, these men *are* representatives of Israel. They were representatives of Israel when Mamdani refused to march in the Israel day parade during his campaign. They will continue to be representatives of Israel until the Israeli public decides they've had enough of their ideology and removes them from their positions of power and influence. Stop worrying about how to fix Israel’s image and start worrying about how to fix Israel’s reality. It's a harder task, but the image will take care of itself when the reality improves.
Hamas' plan actually seems to be working. Pushing what has been done in the dark for generations, into the broad daylight.
I'm here for it.
I understand the argument that putting Smotrich, Eliyahu, and Wasserlauf at the front of the parade was politically foolish and handed critics an easy talking point.
What I’m less clear on is the counterfactual.
How many of the people abandoning Israel are actually objecting to those ministers, and how many are objecting to Zionism itself?
Your piece seems to assume that if Israel presented a more centrist, diaspora‑friendly face, much of the reputational damage could be avoided. But Mayor Mamdani didn’t skip the parade because Smotrich showed up. As you note, he had already decided not to attend and has been explicit about refusing to celebrate Israel at all.
So what evidence do we have that the constituency being lost is rejecting specific ministers rather than rejecting the legitimacy of a Jewish state altogether?
If it’s increasingly the latter, then the problem isn’t that Israel keeps sending the wrong messengers. It’s that a growing segment of critics has already decided the message itself—Jewish self‑determination in any borders—is unacceptable.
In that world, swapping out Smotrich for a nicer face might make life marginally easier for “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” but it doesn’t solve the deeper issue: they’re defending the existence of something a lot of their peers now treat as inherently illegitimate, regardless of who marches on Fifth Avenue.
One way to think about this is to look at it from the perspective of democratic party officeholders (the Governor, the AG, the chief of police, the speaker of the city council, etc.) who attended this year's parade (defying the left wing elements of their base in what is for many of them an election year) and then had to distance themself from the parade once it turned out that Smotrich et al had attended and now they're being accused of marching alongside him. Is this going to make it more or less likely that these officeholders will stick their necks out for Israel, or Zionism, or Jews? Are they going to show up to the parade next year? When Mamdani tries to prevent if from going forward because of a security risk will they exert political capital to overrule him? They were already running a risk and now they've been played for suckers.
What’s interesting to me is that I actually agree with the way you’ve framed this. We’re talking about governors, AGs, council speakers showing up at a parade for a formal U.S. ally and reasonably being described as “sticking their necks out.” That alone tells you where the center of gravity has moved. In a healthy alliance, marching in support of a partner state is the safe, default photo‑op. In this coalition, more and more, it’s treated as a dangerous deviation that has to be offset with public distancing and damage control.
Clearly, the center of gravity has moved. The question is whether Israeli actions played any part in that center of gravity moving and whether they can play any part in moving it back.
To a certain extent this is normal politics. America is a formal ally with Saudi Arabia and yet local politicians would have to think long and hard about whether or not to march alongside MBS in a Saudi pride parade down Fifth.
The timing (the 2016–2018 collapse during a conflict lull), the demographics (liberal Democrats and 18–34‑year‑olds), and the institutional mechanisms make this a very different story than “people don’t want to be seen with MBS.” Between 2016 and 2018, with no major Gaza war, liberal Democratic sympathy for Israel drops from roughly one‑third to under one‑fifth, a 14‑point slide. By early 2023, months before October 7, Democrats as a whole are already at roughly 49% sympathizing more with Palestinians and 38% with Israelis, and by 2026 that gap widens further among both Democrats and the under‑35s.
I wrote a longer piece on this that I can’t link here. Happy to go into more detail if you want to pull it up from my archive and comment, but the gist is this: the sharpest movement happens in those quieter 2016–2018 years, when there is no large‑scale war driving daily images, and it shows up first among people whose informational diet runs through universities, prestige media, public radio, and Coates‑style post‑colonial framing. In other words, the opinion shift tracks the spread of a particular moral taxonomy and its ambient signal dominance on a low‑engagement foreign‑policy question, not just “Israel did something in 2023” or “this ally is personally unpopular.”
Shrinking a 1,300‑year civilizational and religious struggle into “Smotrich, Eliyahu, and Wasserlauf are in government, therefore the whole thing is simple” is pretty shortsighted. You’re free to hate this Israeli government; that’s not the point. The point is that when you reduce a conflict with deep theological, historical, regional, and diaspora layers to “these three ministers showed up at a parade,” you’re not analyzing reality, you’re just projecting your current partisan disgust onto a much older argument.
Absolutely. It very much disturbs me that Eliyahu's father is a serious religious figure.
The American Left is running literal Anzi-Nazis for federal office and gaslighting Jews about something something Big Tent.
Democrats are making noise about conditioning support on forcing a two-state solution which would cripple Israel’s ability to defend the big cities and borders in general.
Why is anyone trying to please these people? Antizionism is not the fault of the Jews any more than Nazism was.
Two-state solution was on life support when Hamas invaded and killed it forever. If anyone thinks that hiding Smotrich and committing suicide by giving away Judea & Samaria will bring back Democratic support, think again - two generations of Americans have been indoctrinated by CAIR to be Antizionists - Oct. 7 ACTIVATED them.
What Smotrich says about sovereignty in Judea & Samaria is just what realistic people are thinking - including 70% of Israelis. Why is Smotrich marching in the Israel Day Parade is a problem? Can’t he be part of the big Jewish peoplehood tent?
And why does Jewish peoplehood and Zionism seem so CONDITIONAL on the left?
Author complains that American Jews are being told their Zionism is the wrong kind while his article is about Jews (elected ones at that) with the wrong kind of Zionism being in the parade. Was AsaJew Street allowed to march? Were the "Jews with trembling knees" Schumer brigade there?
Look. Shitty government gonna shitty government. Where was the opposition? Why are they always never ahead of the game? If they'd shown up with a big banner of their own, they could have done a lot to cancel this out.
Thank you for so articulately putting my thoughts into words. Marching with university faculty against antisemitism was so exhilarating. When I found out later that Smotrich was at the head of the parade, I was instantly deflated. What a slap in the face. Exactly as you described.
Thanks for your supportive remarks. Thanks for the perspective. And thanks for being there applauding. I was proud to march, AND I worry about the optics.
Thank you for marching in the parade. I was there and had tears of pride. With all due respect we worry about optics too much. The Jew haters never do.
Appreciate the opinions of Eli because he has "boots on the ground" and "skin in the game," living in Israel. So too do Jews of NYC and elsewhere in the diaspora who suffer the indignities of antisemitism, either over or covert, in their lives. I see the NYC Israel Day Parade as having a big tent, with room for all to celebrate Israel regardless of their views or political inclinations. So I see no problem with Jews from the right, or the left, or differing religious affiliations, marching together in celebration.
The true face of Israel was shown by smotrich, I am glad he's shown it to the world
The face of Israel: Unprecedented measures to avoid civilian casualties in the Gaza war. The face of Islam: Hamas seeking maximum civilian casualties as “necessary sacrifices.”
There is a context to all of this. Arabs from the West Bank used to come into Israel before 1967. There was no wall back then. They went to Tel Aviv. They enjoyed what Israel had to offer. Musab Hassan Yousef remembers fondly those trips into Israel when he was a child. They also came in with produce which they sold in Israel and had good paying jobs there.
And then they made war against Israel from the West Bank. Later these West Bank people came into Israel and planted bombs in restaurants and in buses. We saw them celebrating and giving out sweets in the evening for the “heroes” who did these deeds.
Israelis made the decision that they had to go into the West Bank and put up checkpoints as a form of self protection. Creating Jewish communities there was part of the plan. There had been a Jewish community there already in Hebron but the Arabs massacred them in 1929.
The local Arab residents attacked these Jewish communities relentlessly. They cannot tolerate Jews living peacefully near them.
Unfortunately, it’s a zero sum game with people of this mentality.
If so-called friends of Israel, whether Jews or not, decide to stop being friends because these ministers appeared at the Israel Day parade they weren’t real friends anyway.
I don’t equate the ministers’ rhetoric with an action plan. Sometimes things are said for effect, like Mr. Trump‘s declaration that he will destroy Iran’s civilization.
If Israel’s neighbors were like Switzerland I might wholeheartedly agree with your premise. But knowing the genocidal ideology Israel faces I take a different view.
These own-goals are so tiresome.
I know that we can never solve antisemitism of antizionism, I know there's no good way to fight a war. I know were all tired of hearing about "PR." But its irksome when people tell me that Israel can't possibly do better at it when they consistently don't even try and, in fact, make such bone headed moves all the time.
It seems like they have just given up on communicating with liberals altogether, have given up on being at least somewhat apolitical. It is a horrendous choice given the very liberal demographics of the diaspora.
Where is our generation's Abba Eban?