Like many people, I first heard about what happened at the recent Smol Emuni (SE) US conference through an article in The Forward. That piece sparked something of a firestorm, largely because of the way it described the treatment of Rav Shaul Berman after his comments about the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.

After that, I read a much more comprehensive article in Haaretz. It became clear to me that—with all due respect to The Forward—the issue of Rav Berman had been blown out of proportion. There is something important about how SE leadership responded to Rav Berman, but not for the reasons people are focusing on. I listened to the speech myself and didn’t hear any booing. Even if someone did shout, focusing on that would be missing the main events by a country mile.

I decided to do the hard work and actually watch the YouTube recordings of both the morning and afternoon general sessions. I’ll say this upfront: the SE US participants come across as thoughtful, sincere people—the kind you’d want in your neighborhood. I have no personal issue with any of them.

The morning session revolved around a familiar framework in American discourse: who is powerful and who is powerless. Within that lens—and especially in light of the Gaza war—Israel is cast as the powerful (and therefore morally culpable) party, while the Palestinians are seen as weaker and thus “less culpable.” Israeli actions over the past 30 months (in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran) were framed as a breakdown of international law and order, and so on.

There are many problems with this framework, but I want to focus on one fundamental flaw: it simply does not describe reality. There is no meaningful “powerful vs. powerless”........

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