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.

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........

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