I lived in Israel for two years. I learned that there are few days more sacred in Israel’s calendar than Yom HaZikaron.
It is the day when, across every line of division—political, ethnic, religious—we bow our heads together and remember the fallen. For many Israelis, it is not abstract. It is family. It is friends. It is fate narrowly escaped. It is sacred and holy.
Yom HaZikaron flows directly into Yom Ha’atzmaut – Israeli Independence Day – reminding us that the joy of independence is built on the sacrifice of those we’ve lost—and that our freedom must always be tethered to memory, responsibility, and hope.
But this year, that sanctity was shattered.
In Ra’anana, at a Reform synagogue founded by a grieving father who lost his son in Lebanon, a mob gathered. They weren’t mourners. They came with hate—spitting, cursing, throwing rocks, blocking doors, and chanting, “Death to Arabs.” Their rage wasn’t spontaneous. It was coordinated. Incited. It was Kahanists.
Kahanists believe in a Jewish supremacist ideology that advocates for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian territories, rejects democracy and religious pluralism, and seeks to impose a theocratic, ethnonationalist state rooted in fear, domination, and exclusion.
They came not to grieve but to silence. Not to remember but to threaten.
In Netanya, on Yom HaShoah, another Reform synagogue was vandalized for the fifth time. Graffiti smeared across the walls: “F*** Reform.” Stickers for hostages torn down. Israeli flags ripped. A broken fence. A broken promise of safety for Jews, by Jews, inside the sovereign State of Israel.
These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader campaign to marginalize and silence voices of conscience in Israel.
A campaign stoked by a government that empowers ministers who glorify Kahane, who treat liberal Jews as foreign agents, and who normalize Jewish supremacism while dismantling democratic norms.
We are being told that there is only one way to be Jewish in Israel.
We are being told that compassion towards Palestinians is betrayal.
That remembering all the dead is treason.
That peace is a weakness.
That Reform Jews are not real Jews.
We must reject these lies.
I stand with those who gathered in Ra’anana and Netanya. We must stand with those who remember every fallen soul. We stand with those who believe that Zionism must be rooted in justice, democracy, and human dignity.
And we act.
We are in the final days of the World Zionist Congress elections.
This is where we have power. To direct billions of dollars toward the future we believe in.
To support synagogues like the one in Ra’anana and Netanya.
To fund pluralistic education.
To protect our values from the forces that would silence them.
Vote for the Reform Movement—Slate #3.
Vote at www.zionistelection.org.
Vote not just with your mind, but with your heart.
Vote not out of anger, but out of love.
Vote because you believe that hope is not radical, that compassion is not cowardice.
We remember.
We refuse.
We rise.
