JRV1328

Bibi’s Challenge to Us Jews of America: “Stand Up For Israel, For the Jewish People, For the Jewish Future”

#1328 June 28, 2026

Bibi this week called on us U.S. Jews to stand up for Israel and ourselves.  Let’s start by stopping publicly saying terms that damage fellow Americans’ perception of Israel and us. Instead, affirmatively make our case that the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria at its core, is our Jewish people’s national home.

Bibi’s Challenge to Us Jews of America: “Stand Up For Israel, For the Jewish People, For the Jewish Future”

Bibi’s Challenge to Us

At last weekend’s JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded his remarks with summarizing “how antisemitism works down the ages,” how for millennia canards like Jews poisoning wells pursued us as we were “pushed to another country, and another country, and the same thing happened over and over again,” culminating again and again in exile or massacre.  Antisemitism “afflicts every country in the world right now, and it afflicts the United States of America.”

But, he continued, the rise of the State of Israel in our own time has changed our response to this.

“We may not be able to stop the vilifications. They come and go in a predictable cycle, as my historian father told me. But the change is that when they come to slaughter us, we fight back.”

Pledging to fight “the battle against delegitimization, the battle against the calumny directed against the Jewish people,” Israel’s PM ended by challenging you and me:

“But I ask you, the Jews of America and the Jews of the Diaspora, to do one thing:

“Stand up. Don’t cower. Don’t be afraid. Fight back. Because people will only respect us if we respect ourselves. When they level lies at us, throw back the truth —and do it standing up.

“Stand up for the truth. Stand up for Israel. Stand up for the Jewish people. Stand up for the Jewish future.”

Standing Up for Israel, the Jewish Future and Us

What NOT To Say to Fellow Americans

Yes, stand up, but how?  Let’s start with recognizing that grassroots Americans’ perception of our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel is dangerously less favorable than it was.  Partly, this is a result of the endless calumnies heaped upon Israel and us by the media, the UN, EU, political candidates, celebrities et ilk.  As Bibi, quoted above, put it, “we may not be able to stop the vilifications,” but we can “fight back, stand up.”

Let’s start by recognizing that when we ourselves brand Netanyahu a terrible leader, an impediment to peace, publicly say that Israel has perpetrated excessive civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza, that historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria biblical hill country heartland are “Palestinian” not Jewish homeland, we ourselves are contributing to Americans’ declining regard for Israel and us.

Example: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, when being considered in 2024 for Vice Presidential candidate by the Democrats, was quoted by Townhall.com, 8/1/24, Sure Enough, There’s Pushback on a Potential Shapiro VP Pick:

“Shapiro is a proponent of a two-state solution in the region and has long branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an impediment to peace, calling him a ‘terrible leader’ who ‘has driven Israel to an extreme’ in his November NBC News interview.  In expressing concern about deaths in Gaza, Shapiro said in March that leaders ‘can’t ignore the death and destruction’ there.”   [emphasis added]

I agree of course with ZOA’s Morton Klein’s “two-state solution” position:

While I understand that someone who wants a Palestinian state may be well-intentioned or believe that he is pro-Israel, in fact promoting a Palestinian Arab state is not a pro-Israel position.  (ZOA Website: What Does It Mean To Be Pro-Israel in 2025, emphasis added)

But if you must support “two-states” (for which everyone who does not mean us well is gung ho), don’t do so yourself in pejorative terms that exacerbate the delegitimization.

Example: Consider the language in which the Union of Reform Judaism couches its support of “the two-state solution.”  In a 2024 statement (bitterly criticized by ZOA, 2/5/24, ZOA Condemns URJ Head Rick Jacobs & Other Reform Jewish Leaders’ Statement Demanding a Palestinian State/etc…), URJ stated its “two-state solution” case using our adversaries’ loaded lexicon of Jewish homeland delegitimizing pejoratives.  

In its 1/30/24 statement URJ condemned Israel’s “ongoing West Bank occupation” and called for “halting the construction of West Bank settlements.”  It accused Israel of “denying the Palestinians’ right to self-determination” and contemplating “unilateral annexation by Israel of areas of the West Bank.” 

In an October 2019 statement opposing Jewish National Fund land acquisitions beyond the 1949 ceasefire lines, URJ referenced “the sovereign borders of the State of Israel, known as the Green Line.” 

In an April 2019 statement by URJ and other Jewish orgs, it called for two states with borders that would “hew precisely to the 1967 borders” save for any agreed “territorial adjustments.” 

Every one of these terms is a Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejorative.  It is a Shanda for Jews to parrot them.  We’re not “occupiers” of the Judea-Samaria heart of our homeland. Jewish communities there are not “settlements.”  Applying Israeli sovereignty there is not “annexation,” the taking over of another country’s land. The 1949 ceasefire lines were expressly declared not to be international borders.  Palestinian Arabs have a Palestine home, where they’re the majority people, Jew-free Jordan, sitting on three-quarters of  Mandated Palestine, plus another Jew-free piece of Palestine, Gaza.

Affirmatively Make the Case the Land of Israel Is Ours

Our Jewish people’s homeland connection to the Land of Israel extends back without break for over 3,000 years. Biblical sites revered by Christians as well as Jews dot the land.  Much of the Temple Mount, not just the Western Wall, still stands.  The Romans did not exile us from the Land, evidenced by Roman recognition of the Patriarch as head of the homeland Jews until the fifth century, the writing in the Land of the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud, Roman-Byzantine era synagogue and other Jewish remains, and 20,000+ homeland Jews fighting alongside the 614 Persian invaders. And Jews there fought the Crusaders, especially in Jerusalem and Haifa. Every ruler between Judaea’s final 135 CE fall and Israel’s 1948 independence as the Land’s next native state was a foreign empire invader (mostly non-Arab at that), and “the Palestinians” have ruled Palestine Never.  Israel’s population today is majority Mizrahi and other non-European.  Judaism is as Middle-eastern-based as Islam, only a millennium and a half longer.