Michael A. Cohen’s Atlantic essay, “How Netanyahu Hurt America’s Jews,” makes a serious charge: that Benjamin Netanyahu has damaged American Jewry by aligning Israel too closely with Republicans, evangelicals, and President Trump, while showing too little concern for how Israel’s wars reverberate in American Jewish life. Cohen argues that Netanyahu’s focus is “on himself and his near-term political needs,” and that the plight of American Jews “is simply not his concern.”
I read that not as an Israeli, but as an American Jew.
The fear is real
I know what it means to feel the ground shift beneath Jewish life in this country. I know what it means to watch people who speak fluently about every form of vulnerability suddenly become evasive, hostile, or morally confused when the vulnerable people are Jews. I know what it means to see synagogues guarded, Jewish students harassed, Jewish restaurants targeted, Jewish grief mocked, and Jewish identity treated as a political liability.
The fear many American Jews feel is real. The antisemitism unleashed since October 7 is real. The rupture inside progressive spaces, universities, nonprofits, and cultural institutions where many Jews once felt at home is real.
But I do not believe Benjamin Netanyahu, or any Israeli prime minister, is primarily responsible for solving that rupture.
Israel’s first duty is survival
The first obligation of Israel’s prime minister is not to protect my comfort as an American Jew. It is to protect the lives of Israel’s citizens and the survival of the Jewish state.
That may sound harsh. To me, it is simply honest.
Israel is not a Diaspora identity project. It is not a symbolic extension of American Jewish belonging. It is a sovereign nation whose people live with consequences most of us in America do not have to face in our daily lives: rockets, tunnels, hostage-taking, regional terror armies, nuclear threats, and enemies who have repeatedly declared their desire to destroy the Jewish state.
When an Israeli prime minister confronts Hamas after October 7, Hezbollah on the northern border, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, ballistic missiles, and the possibility of a multi-front war, the question before him cannot be, “How will this affect my standing in American Jewish liberal circles?”
The question has to be: “What must be done so Israeli families can live?”
Criticism is legitimate. Confusion is dangerous.
That does not mean Netanyahu is beyond criticism. He is not. It does not mean every decision he has made has been wise, humane, democratic, or strategically sound. It does not mean American Jews should silence ourselves about Israel’s government, its coalition, its settlement policies, or the conduct and aftermath of war.
But it does mean we should be honest about the hierarchy of responsibility.
A prime minister who places Diaspora optics above Israeli security would be betraying the office he holds.
American Jews matter — but Israeli security cannot be outsourced
As an American Jew, I want Israel to maintain bipartisan support in the United States. I want Israeli leaders to speak to Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Jews and Christians, religious and secular communities. I want American Jews to matter to Jerusalem not merely as funders, lobbyists, or political messengers, but as part of the Jewish people.
But valuing American Jews is not the same as subcontracting Israeli security decisions to American Jewish anxiety.
Israel must take support where it can find it
Cohen sees Netanyahu’s willingness to work with Republicans, evangelicals, and Trump as evidence of reckless partisanship. I understand why that alarms many American Jews. Most American Jews remain deeply connected to liberal politics and Democratic institutions. Many of us have invested generations of moral energy in civil rights, pluralism, democracy, and social justice. We should not have to choose between our Jewish safety and our civic belonging.
But I also understand why an Israeli leader facing potentially existential threats would seek support wherever he could find it.
That may be uncomfortable. It may create long-term diplomatic risks. It may deepen the partisan divide over Israel. Those are serious concerns. But if one party, one president, one movement, or one bloc of voters is more willing at a particular moment to help Israel confront Iran, arm itself, defend itself, or deter its enemies, an Israeli prime minister cannot ignore that because it complicates American Jewish life.
The tragedy is not that Israel accepts support from imperfect allies.
The tragedy is that support for Jewish survival has become conditional in so many places where Jews once expected moral clarity.
Antisemitism is not Israel’s fault
If progressive activists respond to Hamas’s massacre by harassing Jewish students, vandalizing synagogues, targeting Jewish businesses, excusing terror, or treating every Jew as an agent of the Israeli state, that is not Netanyahu’s doing. That is antisemitism. It may speak in the language of anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, or human rights, but its emotional logic is ancient: Jews must answer collectively for whatever the world decides Jews have done.
Cohen acknowledges that Netanyahu is “not solely or even mostly to blame” for this calamitous turn. But that concession sits uneasily beside the essay’s broader claim. If antisemites target American Jews because of Israel’s military actions, the moral burden belongs first to those targeting Jews.
Not to Israeli families living within missile range.
Not to a country trying to prevent another massacre.
Not to a prime minister whose first responsibility is to ensure that October 7 never happens again.
A dangerous bargain
There is a dangerous emotional bargain being offered to American Jews: If only Israel were more restrained, more diplomatic, more bipartisan, more deferential to American liberal sensibilities, perhaps we would be safer here.
I do not trust that bargain.
Jews have been blamed for capitalism and communism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, power and weakness, separateness and assimilation. Today Israel is the pretext. Tomorrow it will be something else. The problem is not that Israel gives antisemites “ammunition.” The problem is that antisemites manufacture ammunition from Jewish existence itself.
World opinion matters, but Jewish survival matters more
That does not mean Israel should ignore world opinion. A small country cannot afford diplomatic isolation. It does not mean Israeli leaders should dismiss the pain of Diaspora Jews. It does not mean Netanyahu’s critics are wrong to worry about the erosion of bipartisan support or the damage done when Israel is perceived as an appendage of one American political party.
Those concerns are real.
But my safety as an American Jew cannot depend on Israel making itself more acceptable to people who have already decided Jewish sovereignty is illegitimate.
The deeper wound is abandonment
The deeper wound many American Jews feel right now is not really Netanyahu. It is abandonment.
We are watching institutions we helped build turn cold, evasive, or hostile when Jewish vulnerability enters the room. We are watching friends who know how to name every form of trauma suddenly become experts in context when the victims are Israeli. We are watching “belonging” become conditional on whether we are willing to distance ourselves from Israel loudly enough.
That betrayal hurts.
But displacing that pain onto Israel’s prime minister does not heal it.
A more honest sentence might be: I am afraid that Israel’s enemies, and too many of Israel’s critics, now see American Jews as acceptable targets.
That fear deserves compassion. It also deserves clarity.
The answer is moral courage here, not greater risk there
The answer cannot be for Israel to gamble with existential threats so American Jews can feel less exposed in hostile spaces. The answer must be for those spaces to recover their moral bearings.
As an American Jew, I want to be able to be critical of Israeli leaders without feeding the fantasy that Israel is the source of antisemitism. I want to care about Palestinian suffering without pretending Hamas did not force this war onto Israeli families. I want to defend democratic values in Israel without forgetting that no democracy can survive if it cannot defend its people from slaughter.
And I want American Jewish leaders to speak with more emotional honesty about the bind we are in.
We can say: I feel afraid when Israel becomes isolated.
We can say: I feel angry when Jews in America are blamed for decisions made in Jerusalem.
We can say: I want Israeli leaders to remember the Diaspora.
And we can also say: I will not ask Israel to put my comfort ahead of its survival.
The line we must hold
That is the line Cohen’s essay does not hold firmly enough.
Netanyahu may owe American Jews respect. He may owe us dialogue. He may owe us gratitude for generations of advocacy, philanthropy, and love for Israel.
But he owes Israeli citizens protection first.
The central promise of Israel is that Jewish survival will never again depend entirely on the goodwill of others. That promise can be complicated for those of us living safely, though not always securely, in the Diaspora. It can strain our politics, test our alliances, and expose the fragility of relationships we thought were solid.
But it is also why Israel exists.
Survival is the first duty
As an American Jew, I do not need Israel’s prime minister to make my social life easier, my politics cleaner, or my place in progressive America more comfortable.
I need him to remember that the Jewish state was created because comfort was never enough.
And when Israel faces potentially existential threats, survival is not a partisan talking point.
It is the first duty.