Sanctions, boycotts and limits of civic protection

The British cabinet announces a trade ban on goods from Israeli settlements. Israel hits back immediately, shutting down the British consulate in Jerusalem and locking out UK officials.

The center contends that outside pressure might weaken Israeli moderates, and Jewish communal leaders warn the new policies could spur a broader boycott. But the left insists the UK finally aligned with international law, regardless of the pushback.

I'm Tamar.

And I'm Eli. This is another episode of Tribe & State, a Daily Lion production, where we follow where Israel and the Jewish world are pulling together, and where they are pulling apart.

Old political firewalls are collapsing as populations renegotiate who actually protects their communities in public spaces. Today's roundup: the diplomatic rupture catching British Jewry in the middle, draft evaders at the airport, municipal patronage and anti-Zionism, legislating against campus boycotts, and Gloria Steinem and Jewish feminism. And then, for our members, we go deep on German Jewry's postwar compact and the AfD breakthrough.

We're starting in London and Jerusalem. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a trade ban on goods coming from Israeli settlements, and Israel's foreign minister retaliated by barring twelve British figures from entering the country. On The Israel Guys, they discussed how Israel is also closing the British consulate and kicking UK staff out of the Civil Military Coordination Center.

As we said last week, the communal rift over settlement sanctions has been building, but what makes this acute for British Jews right now is the timing. Senior communal leaders sat down with the prime minister to warn that these exact measures would give legitimacy to a wider boycott movement that marginalises and stigmatises British Jews. They specifically cautioned about the potentially perverse consequences of doing this during a heated Israeli election campaign. But just two days later, his own Foreign Secretary went on camera and amplified the kind of one-sided narrative they had just asked the government to avoid.

So is anyone in Britain actually defending the ban?

Yes, but you have to look outside the mainstream communal bodies to find it. In Middle East Eye, Chris Doyle maintains that this breaks a thirty-year pattern where British officials would hide behind excuses such as American pressure or a prime minister to avoid taking action. He points out that Andy Burnham's government officially endorsed the international court's finding that Israel's military control in the territories is unlawful. For that camp, the diplomatic pushback from Israel is just the price of finally enforcing international law.

And there's a parallel argument happening inside Britain, from the progressive wing of Anglo-Jewry. Progressive and Masorti rabbis broke with the Board of Deputies to defend the sanctions, even while conceding that they're a clumsy tool and almost certainly not a perfect mechanism. They insist the congregation still has to confront settler violence, contending that measures directed at Israeli settlements are not the same as an attack on Jews.

British Jews are now navigating a hostile standoff between Downing Street and Jerusalem. What remains completely open is whether this diplomatic freeze will escalate into broader boycotts against sovereign Israeli institutions, and how much political capital British Jewish leaders have left to spend.

We're moving from the diplomatic fights in London straight to the departure gates at Ben Gurion Airport, where the theoretical debate over the military draft has suddenly hit a physical bottleneck. Over the past two weeks, authorities have arrested dozens of draft-eligible Breslov Hasidim who ignored conscription notices as they tried to leave the country. The Israel Airports Authority is so worried about severe terminal gridlock that they decided to hand out a special information leaflet in synagogues, giving travelers phone numbers to check their exit status before they even arrive.

The annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to Uman draws tens of thousands of Breslov Hasidim, making it one of the most logistically complex events in Israeli aviation. Now you've got a situation where over twenty thousand Hasidim are supposed to fly to European airports and cross overland into Ukraine. And this year, that massive logistical effort is running straight into the law, because the Supreme Court struck down the freeze on arresting draft evaders back in September.

Right, and the center's reading this airport campaign not as ideological enforcement, but as a desperate logistical move. That's the distinction the Airports Authority is making. But the friction is severe enough that senior Breslov rabbis circulated an audio recording urging draft evaders not to show up at the airport and not to agree to army processing just to lift their exit bans. How's the broader right reading this collision?

The right reads the underlying enforcement as basic demographic math catching up with Haredi society. A column in JNS Opinion points to official projections that Haredi society will make up roughly twenty percent of the population within a generation. The argument from the right is that as that population multiplies, it has to take on proportional responsibility for sustaining the economy and the military defense. For those analysts, scrutinizing these exemptions isn't anti-religious hostility; it's just the reality that the country can no longer afford to subsidize mass exemptions.

But that same friction is creating a severe security consequence. The center warns that the alienation and mistrust between many Haredim and Jerusalem is being sharpened by the ongoing draft crisis. And they point out that Iranian intelligence is exploiting that exact vulnerability on Telegram, targeting a modernizing fringe that's loosening its ties to the mainstream fold without being firmly settled in broader society.

Which brings us to the political fallout. As we established last week, there's a grassroots push for Haredi integration, and this week the authorities forced the issue right at the departure gates. On Ask Haviv Anything, they discussed how this institutional crisis, where the state actually started arresting yeshiva students, is happening just as four new Haredi parties are launching campaigns.

Right, and they're doing that even as a column in The Jewish Press argues a small group of extremists will stop at very little to intimidate anyone who challenges the hardline position against the draft. But despite that intimidation, you have figures like Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer arguing that the mainstream Haredi establishment has completely failed to articulate a constructive national alternative.

The physical reality of the draft is now unavoidable at the border, fueling deep communal alienation and leaving grassroots political movements to navigate between statutory law and rabbinic directives. It leaves open whether the impending Uman travel crush will force a temporary compromise, or result in mass detentions.

Now to New York. As we said last week, the debate over how far Orthodox institutions should defer to Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been brewing, and this week it walked right into a Borough Park Judaica store. He visited Eichler's ahead of the High Holidays, guided by Uri Fraenkel, an Orthodox civil servant in his administration who was seen blowing the shofar and explaining Hasidic clothing. Fraenkel also stepped in to usher away a customer who shouted that the mayor was focusing on Israel and generating hatred against Jews.

To understand why that visit blew up, you have to look at the context of the mayor's record. On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked the executive order adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and he later boycotted the Israel Day parade. So the argument from the right, led by City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, is that giving a photo op to a politician like that is dangerous. She maintains that any Jew who helps stage these visits lets him pose as a friend to local residents while he continues to promote anti-Israel views. For her, it's exactly like the old Soviet tactic where the regime formally condemned antisemitism while pushing an anti-Zionism that fueled violence against Jews.

But the center answers that by looking at Fraenkel's actual job. A column in Jewish Insider points out that he's a longtime civil servant, not a political appointee who can be easily removed. And New York's Hasidic neighborhoods have historically prioritized practical relationships with City Hall to secure funding for schools and social services, often bypassing broader ideological fights. Fraenkel's defenders make the case for the center here, asking if critics really want the administration to lack anybody they're comfortable with to help yeshivas navigate municipal needs.

Which raises the broader dilemma underneath this store visit: as anti-Zionist rhetoric merges completely with local politics, how do Jewish institutions weigh the moral cost of engagement against the practical cost of losing city funding? Because far-left politicians and protesters in New York are now explicitly connecting Israel and Zionism to local housing problems. We're seeing primary winners claim their opponents are funded by AIPAC and corporate landlords, always pairing those two together to explain high rents.

Exactly, and that rhetoric has a physical cost. On Unholy, they discussed how this political demonization directly endangers local Jewry. They noted that Jews are ten percent of New Yorkers but face roughly fifty to sixty percent of reported hate crimes. Their view is that you can't just quietly accommodate that environment to keep the garbage picked up. The High Holy Days actually demand active moral protest, where the protest itself is valuable for changing consciousness even if it doesn't produce an immediate political victory.

The visit to Eichler's exposed a fracture over how to handle hostile politicians who control local resources. It leaves open whether Orthodox institutions will keep granting access and photo ops in exchange for municipal patronage, or if the rising physical threat finally makes that trade impossible.

We're also watching a new front open up in the fight over what American universities can do with their money. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday that would put federal funding at risk for colleges if they participate in commercial boycotts of Israel. The measure passed in a two hundred thirty-seven to one hundred sixty-nine vote, with two hundred three Republicans, thirty-three Democrats, and one Independent supporting it.

The mechanism here is a planned move to amend the Higher Education Act of nineteen sixty-five to require universities to refrain from these boycotts. Specifically, it targets what the bill defines as a nonexpressive commercial boycott.

And this rests on a specific legal foundation. The legislation builds on a twenty twenty-two Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld an Arkansas law by determining that the act of boycotting is unprotected economic conduct rather than expressive speech.

Exactly. And that distinction is the core of the reasoning for those who back this law. They say the measure isn't intended to hinder academic speech or debate, but to prevent the targeting of Israel. Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer, one of the bill's sponsors, points out that if your university takes federal taxpayer dollars, it can’t discriminate against academic partnerships or investments with one specific country.

For sponsors, this is fundamentally about protecting students on campus. The proponents insist the legislation is necessary to protect pro-Israel students from discriminatory boycotts and efforts to deny those undergrads access to academic programs abroad.

But the opposition, which includes most House Democrats, sees that reclassification of boycotts as a massive threat to civil liberties. Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler says that while he personally opposes the BDS movement, those who engage in BDS have a First Amendment right to do so. He ended up calling the bill a gross violation of the First Amendment.

That's the collision of premises here. Nadler maintains that proponents of this bill hide behind an inadequately defined term of non-expressive commercial boycotts, trying to rename a political protest as a commercial act. The critics warn that declaring the act of boycotting is nonexpressive conduct, and therefore not protected, relies on a dangerous legal theory.

Eli, when the bill restricts boycotts against Israel, how exactly does it define where Israel ends?

That's the second major fight happening underneath this vote. The funding prohibition applies to boycotts directed at entities operating under Israeli law, which would include settlements in the West Bank.

Which means the bill is clearly designed to apply not only to Israel but also to Israeli entities in settlements.

Right. And for the critics, that effectively treats the entire West Bank as part of Israel, erasing the Green Line in U.S. federal law. Nadler contends that penalizing universities for avoiding settlement activity undermines efforts to promote a two-state solution.

While this bill has almost no chance of passing the Senate before the congressional term ends, it firmly establishes a new legislative baseline.

We turn now from the legislative fights over campus speech to the end of a monumental life, with the passing this week of feminist icon Gloria Steinem at age ninety-two. She passed away peacefully at her home in New York City.

She was a central figure in the second-wave feminist movement, bringing taboo subjects like abortion and rape into the American mainstream conversation. She pointed back to a reporting assignment on an underground abortion gathering, which she said reminded her of her own hidden procedure, calling it a sudden awakening.

Her father was Jewish, but she grew up in deep poverty with a mother who struggled with mental illness and left her to forage for food as a kid. So how does someone with that secular, fractured upbringing end up with such a clear Jewish identity?

It was entirely tied to how she understood vulnerability. She was honest about feeling alienated from traditional religion, saying once that she felt Jewish with Christians and Christian with Jews. But she had a very clear baseline for her identity. She famously said that while she never considered herself a Christian, she would always identify as a Jew whenever she saw antisemitism.

And later in life, she found ways to anchor that identity in her own family history and in feminist ritual. She was deeply moved to discover that her paternal grandmother was a kosher-observant suffragist who helped rescue relatives from Europe. She also learned this grandmother was the first woman elected to a board of education in Ohio. She brought that legacy into her own practice by joining a circle of seder sisters for over two decades, holding an annual feminist Passover seder that deliberately elevated the role of biblical women.

That seder table is exactly where her personal life meets the massive political idea she was building. She looked at antisemitism, racism, and sexism, and argued that they're interdependent caste systems that have to be fought together. She believed that any time one group of people is habitually dominant simply by birth, that's politics.

What her passing leaves behind is a profound model for secular Jewish life. Her legacy shows a whole generation of activists how to channel their cultural heritage not into traditional religious observance, but into a broader, intersectional fight for civil rights and bodily autonomy.