Weekly Briefing: Jewish extremism, from Israel to New Jersey

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Jewish extremism

Last week I wrote about how the Israeli far-right is not an aberration within Israeli society, it is now the center of it. What we would identify as extremism here in the U.S. has become the mainstream there. The so-called opposition parties in Israel present themselves as more moderate, but they echo the same goals: the erasure of Palestinian political life, the permanence of occupation, the expansion of “Greater Israel.” The “moderate” Israeli politician, such as Yair Lapid, is someone who would carry out the genocide more quietly.

I’m thinking about Jewish extremism when I read the story this week about Israeli soldiers who reportedly tortured an 18-month-old toddler. Jawad Abu Nassar was returned to his family with burn marks and puncture wounds on his legs. Doctors confirmed the injuries were the result of torture. His father had been detained; the child was apparently used as an instrument of coercion. This is not an isolated incident. Ahmad Ibsais writes this week about the systematic, documented use of torture and sexual violence by Israel against Palestinian detainees, including children, as a deliberate tool of genocide. Five soldiers who gang-raped a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman in 2024 had all charges dropped this month. Netanyahu welcomed the decision. A Knesset member declared the act completely legitimate.

In New Jersey, a 26-year-old man named Alexander Heifler was arrested for an alleged plot to firebomb the home of Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani. He was a member of the JDL 613 Brotherhood, a group founded in 2024 and explicitly modeled on Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, an organization the FBI has designated a terrorist group. He had assembled eight Molotov cocktails and planned to flee to Israel after the attack.

The connection between these two stories is Jewish extremism that is now foundational to the Israeli state and spreading into diaspora communities. It is important to be clear that despite Israel’s claim to speak in the name of Judaism, that claim has no more validity than the claim of any other government to represent the faith of its citizens. The conflation is a deliberate political strategy. When Zionist organizations accuse critics of Israeli policy of antisemitism, they are exploiting that conflation to shield the government from accountability by linking it to a religion.

That is also why there is no serious reckoning with Jewish extremism from within organized American Jewish institutions committed to Zionism. Their function, on the question of Israel, is to run interference against accountability. They cannot oppose what they are committed to protecting.

The Iran war debacle continues

A month into the war on Iran, the picture is grim. Trump launched this war in violation of international law and without congressional authorization. The legal case against it is not in serious dispute, it is simply being ignored. Congress, under Republican leadership sycophantic to Donald Trump, has abdicated its war powers responsibility. The administration is operating outside any recognizable legal framework, and the institutional checks that are supposed to constrain a rogue executive have failed.

Iran has not collapsed. Its government has not fallen. It has absorbed massive military losses and civilian casualties while maintaining strategic coherence, setting conditions for continuing the war, and demonstrating that it, not the United States or Israel, will determine how this proceeds. Mitchell Plitnick lays this out, saying Israel is actively working to torpedo any off-ramp, while Iran has stated plainly what it requires to stop fighting. Trump, who has been boasting about secret negotiations, appears to be looking for an exit but has no clear path to one. The region is headed toward more escalation, not less.

The “No Kings” protests sweeping the country this weekend are the largest anti-Trump mobilization in years. They will not properly address the Iran war. The failure of the mainstream opposition to make the war a central demand is itself a political story and Michael Arria covers it this week.

This is what a failed war launched by a weak and reckless regime looks like. It will get worse before it gets better.

🇮🇷 Iran

Iran holds the reins of this war while Israel is working to prevent any negotiated off-ramp and Donald Trump desperately flails for a face-saving end.

READ MORE → The U.S. and Israel’s diverging interests will prolong the war, but Iran will determine its outcome — Mitchell Plitnick

READ MORE → The U.S. media is ignoring Israel’s efforts to torpedo Trump’s talks with Iran — James North

READ MORE → ‘No Kings’ protest refusal to address the war on Iran reflects the failure of the U.S. antiwar movement — Michael Arria

🇵🇸 Gaza & the West Bank

The genocide in Gaza continues, just slower and with less global attention on it. Israel’s colonization the West Bank likewise continues while everyone is focused on the war in Iran.

READ MORE → Israeli army tortures a Palestinian toddler in Gaza in front of his father, family says — Tareq S. Hajjaj

READ MORE → Israel’s widespread use of torture is a core element of its genocide against the Palestinian people — Ahmad Ibsais

READ MORE → Love, friendship, and watching over the dead in Palestine — Rafaela Cortez and Ricardo Esteves Ribeiro

READ MORE → What it’s like to be a family caught in the crosshairs of Israel’s ‘de-Palestinization’ of Jerusalem — Qassam Muaddi

READ MORE → How Israel’s strangulation of the West Bank is collapsing the Palestinian educational system — Jessica Buxbaum

🚨 Repression and resistance

From New Jersey to Gaza, Jewish extremist violence is targeting Palestinians and their allies, while the U.S. government criminalizes the movements that oppose it.

READ MORE → Jewish extremist arrested over alleged plot to firebomb Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani’s home — Michael Arria and Adam Horowitz

READ MORE → Power & Pushback: Anti-ICE protesters convicted on terrorism charges in a possible sign of things to come — Michael Arria

READ MORE → Why I resigned from the UN to join the Gaza Freedom Flotilla — Ramsey Hanhan