Does anyone in Jerusalem care what happens to us?

An Israeli think tank has put on paper what most American Jews know in their kishkas: Israel’s actions over there affect our safety here.

So here’s my question: Does anybody over there care?

The report, published by The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), drew on the input of 20 Jewish leaders from five countries. It  concluded that Israel’s actions since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 have normalized hostility toward Israel, divided Jewish communities, sapped the political influence of pro-Israel organizations and fueled antisemitism.

Those actions include damaging statements by government officials, limits on humanitarian aid to Gaza at the height of the war, widespread damage to civilian infrastructure in Gaza and unchecked settler violence in the West Bank. The authors also cited as inflammatory “the proliferation of images of civilian death and suffering in Gaza” — though the actual civilian death and suffering has also alienated and enraged many outside Israel, including Jews.

“The conflict is not only over there in the Middle East, it is local all over the Jewish world now, and Diaspora Jewry has skin in the game,” said Theodore Sasson, one of the report’s authors, in an interview with JTA’s Andrew Silow-Carroll, who first wrote about the study.

To be clear, the report doesn’t excuse, exonerate or rationalize people who commit antisemitic acts. “Jews and Israelis are not to blame for antisemitism,” the report states.

“What we’re saying is that Israel is not the cause” of antisemitism, Sasson said, “but enlightened Israeli policy can seek to maintain robust Diaspora support for the state of Israel and can deny the antisemites the material that fuels their mostly spurious claims.”

This is not a novel connection. Three previous academic studies, in Belgium, Australia and the U.S. found statistically significant links between Israeli military operations that result in high Palestinian casualties and spikes in reported antisemitic incidents abroad. Not surprisingly, a Mellman group poll found that 56% of U.S. Jewish voters believe Israel’s policies have fueled antisemitism.

None of this means Israel shouldn’t act in its own interest and put the security needs of its own population first. Antisemites would continue to exist even if Israelis did nothing but play backgammon and sip  arak. The report is not about eradicating antisemitism, but about Israeli actions that provoke and endanger Jews abroad — and what Israel can do about those.

I get the principled resistance to a report that seems to shift some of the burden of antisemitism onto the Jews. David Bernstein of the North American Values Institute told Silow-Carroll that American Jews aren’t agents of Israel, and that nobody would say an African country’s actions endanger African Americans. That’s not entirely true — the 9/11 attacks increased hate crimes against American Muslims and bigots targeted random Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pretending actions have no consequence even if the reaction is illegitimate is principled, but naive. If Israel can lower the temperature, it should.

But here’s the sad fact about the current Israeli government: it doesn’t even lower the temperature for its own citizens.

Exhibit A is Oct. 7. This is the government on whose watch that horror happened, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never engaged in a full, independent accounting of what went wrong. How do you prevent future Oct. 7s when you don’t know the weaknesses that enabled it in the first place?

Exhibit B is the flydubai near-disaster, which we in the Diaspora have already mythologized as yet another example of Israeli courage and pluck. It was that, but also a result of a complete breakdown of government responsibility. Israel’s rules should have kept the Omani pilot out of that cockpit, but, as Channel 12 reported, Minister of Transportation Minister Miri Regev took no action despite multiple warnings. Regev, a close ally of Netanyahu, remains in her job.

Finally, Exhibit C: Police under National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have failed to curb violent crime in Israel’s Arab communities which recorded 252 murders in 2025 — and 2026 is on track to surpass that record.

Israel’s supporters often comfort themselves with the mantra that Israelis love life while their enemies love death. But this government has been pretty cavalier about life.

If that’s how Israel’s leaders treat their own citizens, is it so surprising they fail to be overly concerned about Jews abroad? Last year saw the highest death toll from antisemitic attacks in 30 years, while the agency Israel created specifically to deal with such calamities has been AWOL. The Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, a Tel Aviv University report found,  has “not contributed in any meaningful way to the cause, and in some cases has been an embarrassment.”

All this is happening as the screws are tightening on Jewish communities in Australia, France, Italy, Canada and elsewhere. But Israel, established in part to keep Jews safe, has, under this government, too often increased or ignored the dangers. Zionism is supposed to be the Diaspora’s Iron Dome, but this government, by inexorably, deliberately foreclosing on the possibility of a democratic Jewish state, is functionally anti-Zionist.

The report listed several measures Israel could take to reduce the threat to Diaspora communities, among them controlling the incendiary rhetoric of government ministers and opening a diplomatic path with the Palestinians that stops the slide toward a single, non-democratic state.

One of the report’s recommendations is that Israel set up procedures to assess how its policies affect Jews abroad. In other words, the think tank is asking the government to start caring, formally.

It’s hard to imagine any of that happening unless, on Oct. 27, Israelis vote the current government out.

“Netanyahu cannot be part of the healing process. It is Netanyahu from whom we must be healed,” David Horovitz, the far-from-radical founding editor of The Times of Israel, wrote this week in an editorial titled, “For Israel’s Sake, Netanyahu Has to Go.”

As it turns out, it’s for all our sakes.

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