Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar: Jewish-American Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy

FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.

As a reminder, this webinar is on the record and the audio, video and transcript will be made available on CFR’s website, CFR.org, as well as in the Apple podcast channel Religion and Foreign Policy. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

We’re delighted to have Elliott Abrams, Elliot Cosgrove, and Asher Lopatin here with us to discuss the evolving role of the Jewish diaspora in shaping U.S. policy towards the Middle East, the broader implications for international relations, and Jewish-American perspectives on U.S. foreign policy.

I am going to introduce our moderator. Asher Lopatin is a rabbi and leader of Kehillat Etz Chayim, a modern Orthodox congregation in Oak Park, Michigan. He is also the director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor and the Orthodox. He was a Rhodes scholar and previously served as president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York. And he received his rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva’s Brisk of Chicago and from Yeshiva University in New York.

Rabbi, I’m going to turn it over to you to introduce our distinguished panelists and to moderate this conversation. And then we will go to all of you for your questions and comments. So thank you.

LOPATIN: Thank you so much, Irina. And thank you for pronouncing all those Hebrew words so well. Very impressive. (Laughs.)

It’s a real honor to be with everyone today, with Elliott Abrams, a giant, and Elliot—Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, a dear friend as well. And I will be introducing them in a second.

And I just want to mention that the talk today also will touch on the evolving—not just the evolving role of the Jewish diaspora in shaping U.S. policy towards the Middle East, but the evolution of the Jewish community in their attitudes towards U.S. policy towards the Middle East. So it should be very exciting.

I will give each of our panelists a chance to speak for five to seven minutes. And they’ve written actually—each of them has written very important books just very recently. And while this is not a book talk, we will certainly reference those books.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow—is senior fellow, sorry—for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Abrams served as deputy assistant to the president, deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush, as well as special representative for Iran and Venezuela under President Donald Trump. He was a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001 and from 2012 to 2014. Mr. Abrams also chaired the commission in 2000. Mr. Abrams is the author of five books, including, most recently, If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century, which was just published in October 2024.

Elliot Cosgrove is senior rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City. He serves on the executive committee of the Rabbinical Assembly and the editorial board of Conservative Judaism. Rabbi Cosgrove is an officer of the New York Board of Rabbis. In 1999 he was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. That’s the Conservative—one of the key Conservative seminaries and the mother ship, and subsequently earned a PhD at the University of Chicago Divinity School. A frequent contributor to Jewish journals and periodicals, Rabbi Cosgrove is the author of fifteen volumes of sermons—of outstanding sermons; I’ve heard some of them—the editor of Jewish Theology in Our Time, and the author of For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today, which was also just released in September 2024.

I just want to mention that if you go to Park Avenue Synagogue, whether you’re Jewish or not or observant or not, it’s an incredible place. It’s really, what Elliot is doing, really transformative work making these services so compelling, along with his cantor and the whole staff. So it’s really a treat.

So we’ll start on this really important time with Elliott Abrams, please.

ABRAMS: Thank you, Rabbi. It’s a pleasure to be here with both of you, though I’m outnumbered by rabbis here. I’ll try to be brief.

I think there is an interesting division today that’s worth mentioning in the American Jewish community that exists religiously and sociologically and politically. And it’s the division between the more or less 10 percent of American Jews who are Orthodox and the more or less 90 percent, maybe a bit lower than that, who are not Orthodox.

Orthodoxy is clearly growing, and the number of, say, five-year-olds who are being raised Orthodox is certainly higher than 10 percent. But it’s an important division. Obviously it relates, by definition, to religious belief and practice. But it has lots of other implications.

For example, Orthodox Jews tend to live in dense Jewish communities because they need to be able to walk to a synagogue on the Sabbath. Orthodox Jews seem to be a bit different politically; that is to say, more conservative politically. More Orthodox Jews tell poll takers that they’re inclined to vote Republican. And I think such data as we have about the election a couple of weeks ago suggests that’s right, that in the precincts that seem to be in the densest Orthodox communities, there was more Republican voting than in the average heavily Jewish suburb.

There’s also an impact on support for Israel and that the Orthodox community seems to be, again, by poll data, closely tied to Israel and more supportive of Israel. The problem, I’d argue, is that there is, among the non-Orthodox, a fraying at the edges in terms of not only, by definition, Jewish practice, but in Jewish identity in the sense of Jewish peoplehood, which can be maintained many, many ways by belonging to a Conservative or Reform synagogue and attending it, by visiting Israel, by going to Jewish summer camps. There are lots of ways.

But it isn’t working that well. I think if one looks at the data over time, there are an awful lot of families of Jewish heritage or background that are actually—don’t consider themselves Jewish anymore or may consider themselves to have a Jewish background but have no real relationship to the American Jewish community.
So I’ll stop with this. Yeah, but what’s the impact of October 7? And I think the bottom line is we don’t know. I’ve heard many rabbis—and I’m curious whether Rabbi Cosgrove has been living this—say that, well, the Hillel branches on many campuses are growing in size. Synagogues are finding more congregants. There are intermarried couples where the non-Jewish partner now says I have decided to convert.

There’s impressionistic evidence about it. I have not seen any actual data. I do know that there was a lot—there were a lot of people saying after the 1967 and 1973 wars—or, for that matter, you can go back after the foundation of Israel in 1948—this has changed the American Jewish community profoundly and permanently. But it hadn’t. It didn’t. In 1967, the war didn’t. The Soviet Jewry movement didn’t profoundly change the American Jewish community. Most of the long-term trends among the non-Orthodox have actually continued now for about seventy-five years, let’s say since World War II, in that fraying at the edges.

Maybe October 7 is different because it isn’t just a war that took place in Israel. It’s also about what looks to be a wave of anti-Semitism in the United States. And one could understand that that would have a differential impact on American Jews. But I think—again, I think there the returns are really not in. And it will be fascinating to follow that—it’s been a year—for two or three or four and see what looked like permanent changes, if any, in the American Jewish community.

LOPATIN: Quite a challenge. And I do want to follow up after we give Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove a chance to speak. Very challenging. I’m Orthodox, so I’m off the hook. But Elliot Cosgrove.

COSGROVE: Thank you so much, Rabbi Lopatin. And Elliott Abrams, it’s an honor to be with you. And though you’re outnumbered by rabbinic muscle here, we certainly feel a little outclassed by your credentials in the foreign-policy world.

The subject of the book, but really the subject of my career, is trying to square the circle and make sense of where Jewish identity and where engagement with Israel overlap and don’t. So the moment is a post-October 7 moment. And as Elliott points out, right, there is this open question of has the playing field fundamentally changed for American Jewry or not, a topic that we can get into.

The fault lines that preceded October 7 were there all along, right. To what degree does American Jewry’s practiced religion coincide with or is differentiated from our engagement with Israel as a sovereign state? I think this question of where American Jewry is or isn’t vis-à-vis supporting the said policies of the Israeli government long preceded October 7, but that fault line has been brought into relief, arguably but well before October 7. We think of the judicial-reform protests and otherwise of 2023. But now, as it goes with debates on how to bring the hostages home and otherwise, a fault line within Israel as well as a fault line in American Jewry.

And then another divide that also long preceded this moment is the generational divide. I think me, you, and Elliott Abrams reflect a certain generational moment where engagement with the state of Israel is a constituent part of our Jewish identities. I don’t know if that same statement could be said for Gen Z and beyond.
I would probably frame it a little differently. Elliott is describing a difference between the Orthodox and the Reform and Conservative worlds. I actually think the alignment is perhaps more generational than it is denominational. So I—my contention would be that, look, our number one through ten priorities is to bring a ceasefire, to bring a release of the hostages, and, please God, an abatement of hostilities for all the reasons that hopefully are self-evident. The trauma on all sides is horrific.

I think that the American Jewry made a wrong turn along the way in that our civic religion of engagement with Israel became a substitute faith to compensate for the inadequacies of our religion religion. And so it’s much easier to debate, you know, the terms by which Israel should or America should or shouldn’t enter into the Iranian, you know, deal than it is to keep your kids home on a Friday night to observe the Sabbath.

And I think, as a late colleague of mine, Arthur Herzberg, once noted, that dissent with the Israeli government is the only thing that you can be excommunicated for as an American Jew. And so the idea that we need to be very intentional about our making this difference between who we are as Jews and who we are as Zionists, all the while—for me, speaking personally, it’s inconceivable for me to imagine a Jewish identity without an embrace of the state of Israel.

I also think that within the United States there’s these debates that Elliott is mentioning which are also—you know, it used to be that Jews debated denominations or Jews debated our observance patterns or what synagogue you belonged to. I have found, in my own rabbinate—I’m a rabbi in New York City, which has all varieties of Jewish expression—people debate where they stand vis-à-vis Israel. Less important is what restaurants you do or don’t eat. More important is how you vote and whether you support or don’t support the Israeli government.

And then the third is—and with this I’ll close—is a generational divide. And here I think, you know, a younger generation was alienated twice over on October 7. The American Jewish community as a whole found themselves traumatized, right. The crimes of October 7 weren’t just perpetrated against Israelis or Jews. They were crimes against humanity. We were all shellshocked by what took place on that day.

A younger generation, who has only ever had a Netanyahu government, who has only ever had an expansionist policy in the settlements, whose paradigm has only been Israel as a Goliath to the Palestinian David, they felt doubly alienated, because they were also alienated from their parents’ generation and they didn’t feel that their voice was present at the Jewish table.

And so I think that that divide existed prior to October 7, but it all the more so is present today. And we see that taking place on college campuses and elsewhere.

So I can do a deep dive into any one of those, but just to frame this post-October 7 moment for American Jewry.

LOPATIN: Thank you. Well, we’ll have time for questions from everyone here. I just want to take a few minutes to ask you each a question. Well, I’m a little—both of you present big challenges for the Jewish community.

And Elliott Abrams, you talked about fraying. I sort of have a double question. One is that do you see attitudes towards Israel as a key factor, or is it something you can overcome with other religious connections and religious loyalties or, you know, Jewish practice? And do you think that’s going to actually have an impact on American foreign policy towards Israel and the Middle East if this fraying continues?

ABRAMS: Well, I do see the—let me start again. There is no fraying that I can see, there is no generational divide that I can see, among the Orthodox, which is interesting. You’re not seeing an eighteen-, twenty-two-year-old Orthodox kids with the same statistics. That’s interesting, because it suggests that the ties of family, of faith, of practice, actually work to avoid what I think Rabbi Cosgrove quite accurately described is a generational problem among the non-Orthodox.

Now, of course, it isn’t everybody. I mean, it isn’t as if, you know, 98 percent of young American Jews have turned against Israel. That’s not true. But the levels of support—I mean, you can graph it. You know, they just go down decade by decade. And that, by the way, is true of Evangelicals too.

Will it affect U.S. foreign policy? Well, the—over time it may. I mean, what have been the pillars of support for Israel? One has been the Jewish community. And if the support is now not, you know, 99 percent, it’s pick a number. 59 percent? 65 percent? Yes. I mean, that’ll matter politically. And there are states—I mean, I’ve noted, for example, that in a state with a very heavily pro-Israel Jewish community, Maryland, they now have a senator, Senator Van Hollen, who is the leader of the most critical voices of Israel. It doesn’t seem to matter. This is true.

The other—or another pillar—Jews, Evangelicals. And those numbers are generational, too. I mean, a sixty-five-year-old Evangelical statistically is going to be very pro-Israel, but a twenty-five-year-old much less so statistically. So if those trends were to continue over time, then, yes, the pro-Israel community would be diminished in strength. I think that’s just a—you know, just a reality of our democracy. 

LOPATIN: OK. Interesting. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, can you talk a little bit—I mean, your synagogue is great, and I—you don’t even have to even go there. You can watch it online. It’s on YouTube. And I urge everyone to do that. My wife and I have done that many times.

But that is a joyous thing. Can you give us a little bit—what is going on to do—what do you do about this, this generational divide, and I would say, Elliott Abrams, anecdotally I think I see in my community, in the Modern Orthodox community, you’re very accurate that there isn’t that kind of generational divide—I just note anecdotally, but that’s very interesting.

So. Rabbi Cosgrove, what are you—what are you able to do, and what are your feelings about—in your community and this fraying issue?

COSGROVE: Well, there’s a question of what am I seeing and what am I doing, and I do want to say, Elliott—and maybe we’ll put it in the chat for those online—there is a survey. Mimi Kravetz has recently released a survey on what’s known as the surge, and that is a post-October 7 awakening. Some people call it October 8 Jews, some people call it the surge, some people—and I’m happy to share the link, and I think there is a new one-year-later version of that study coming out that puts the sociological data into, you know, graphs and numbers. And you can see because anecdotally, Rabbi Lopatin, what I can tell you is—again, I’m one data point; I’m a Manhattan congregation—but in the wake of trauma I have seen, by any metric, right, that a surge in Jewish engagement—that can be folk who are, you know, in the pews on a Sabbath service; that could be in philanthropy; that could be in education, that could be in Israel advocacy or solidarity. Some of it is people engaging with Israel engagement, narrowly defined. Some of it is engagement with Jewish life as a whole. And I don’t know how that tracks with other moments of trauma of Jewish history. Elliott mentioned ’67, ’73, or Soviet Jewry or otherwise. But I have definitely, within the four walls of my institution, seen that moment.

I frame it in the context of the Bible—not surprisingly. I talk about the difference between Exodus Jews and Genesis Jews. So Genesis Jews, God promises to Abraham that you shall be a blessing. This is a very positive assertion; not only what it means to be Jewish, but the Jewish contribution to humanity as a whole. These are broad brush strokes.

Exodus is an Exodus identity in the very first chapter of the book of Exodus. A new pharaoh arises. The Jews are other. The Jews are suspect of being a fifth column. They are despised, and they are therefore to be oppressed. That is a push of the negative of being othered as a Jew.

Jews of America all found themselves, wherever they were, on the continuum of engagement, may or may not have been Genesis Jews prior to October 7. But what happened on October 8 is we all became Exodus Jews. We all felt ourselves, by dint of the horrors of October 7, and the porous and pernicious line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, felt ourselves to be other. 

And the task of American Jewry right now is how to be eyes wide open to the traumas and the challenges of the present moment, and also, never forget that at our core we are Genesis Jews. It was great to be a Jew on October 6; it’s great to be a Jew today, and that we have to, you know, double down. We have to sort of walk and chew gum at the same time as an American-Jewish community.

ABRAMS: Can I just add one—there is another sociological study I should—that I think is worth mentioning. Professor Eitan Hersh of Tufts did a study for the Jim Joseph Foundation of Jewish college students. He had actually started it prior to October 7, and then he did some more research this spring. And the findings, which I think, you know, are not very shocking, are that the students who became campus pro-Israel activists are the students with what he calls high Jewish background. Does your family belong to a synagogue? Do you ever go to synagogue? Have you ever been to Israel? Did you go to Jewish camp—all those affiliation questions.

And the students who are the leaders of the most anti-Israel demonstrations, the most critical, tend to have what Professor Hersh calls low Jewish backgrounds, without those kinds of sociological affiliations or affiliation with Israel. But it’s another one worth a look.

LOPATIN: Yeah, you know, I’ll say just anecdotally an at-risk population are sometimes the middle ground between Orthodox and we’ll say conservative, or observant, where they are charged with a lot of Torah education and somehow it gets pushed into more of a radical—I don’t know, whatever we want to say—an anti-Israel—no judgement there—but an anti-Israel position. So again, I just know anecdotally from friends in Chicago and in Michigan.

But I want to ask one quick question, and then—it’s a tough question, but—about one state versus two states, the two-state solution. Do you each feel it’s viable? I actually caught a little bit of Rabbi Cosgrove’s book, so I have a sense of his answer, and I apologize because I only read bits of your book, Elliott Abrams, because it just came out, but I’m looking forward to reading the whole thing.

ABRAMS: Thanks.

LOPATIN: Maybe we’ll start with Elliott Abrams, our expert in international relations.

ABRAMS: Well, this is obviously a subject of great debate right now. You have, for example, Saudi Arabia doubling down on support for the two-state solution as a precondition for the kind of rapprochement with Israel that the Biden administration wants, that the Trump administration will want, and that Israelis want.

My own view is that it is not practical, but I held that view prior to October 7. Now the question is really one of survival for Israel, particularly as long as Iran is pursuing a policy of attempting to destabilize Jordan, to pour weapons into the West Bank and Israel through Syria and Jordan when it is supporting groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. And the Houthis, in their attacks on Israel, create a new, essentially, defenseless, potentially failed state, given the geography of the West Bank in terms of Israel’s coastal plain, Tel Aviv, the airport, I think it makes no sense to Israelis today. And we’ve heard that—you know, we heard that last year when people began to talk about it. We heard it from President Herzog of Israel.

It's not a right-wing view in Israel. I would say it’s a consensus view in Israel. Maybe someday—maybe, but not in the foreseeable future. And that’s, I would say, my own view as well, that it’s impossible to see how one would do that in 2025 in a way that does not create enormous threats to Israel and to Jordan.

LOPATIN: Thanks. Rabbi Cosgrove? Elliot?

COSGROVE: So I think I agree with everything that Elliott just said, and I would sort of put the emphasis differently, and just as a little backgrounder, his view informs my view, and where I differ from his view, which is I think—practically speaking, is a thousand percent right; that the Israeli left is dead right now. There is no political will in Israel right now. The betrayal and the trauma of October 7 is so great that no one is—you know, the debates right now in Israel are how best to get the hostages home, and how to, you know, bring about a ceasefire. But those conversations about the day after are entirely premature right now, and I think that’s a bitter pill to swallow, most of all for Israelis and Palestinians, and certainly for American Jews like myself for whom, you know, Palestinian self-determination is not just important as a Jew because no one knows better than Jews that everyone deserves a place to hang their hat. 

But Palestinian self-determination is an expression of Zionism in the sense that it’s not just Jews having self-rule over themselves, but not ruling over someone else, and that the way to ensure a secure Jewish and democratic future of Israel is by way of defending Israel’s right to self-determination and nurturing Palestinian self-determination. It’s not a binary—it’s a both, and I think it is both critically important to keep that as our North Star, and I think it’s entirely delusional to think that it can or should happen right now, for all the reasons that Elliott just enumerated.

So for me, you know—here I’ll speak personally, theologically—that’s what being a Jew is all about. For thousands of years, you know, we—well, I’ll start even before then. We marched to the promised land. Whether or not we were going to make it to the promised land—we were in exile with Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Whether or not we were return to the land, for thousands of years we sought Jewish self-determination, whether or not it was experienced in our homeland in our lifetimes or not.

I think the role of American Jewry right now is to serve as that prophetic voice that, even if we in our own lifetime will not enjoy the fruits of that vision, we plant the seeds for that vision. There are countless organizations doing this work on the ground and from here that are deserving of our support.

LOPATIN: Thank you both.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. So with that we’ll go now to questions. To ask a question, please click the raise hand icon on your screen. When you are called upon, please hit the unmute prompt, and state your name and affiliation followed by your question. You can also submit a written question by the Q&A feature and use zoom window at any time. And if you do, please tell us who you are, include your affiliation.

And we’re going to take the first question from Georgette Bennett. Great to see you, Georgette.

Q: Thank you very much, Irina. Thank you, Rabbi Lopatin, and thank you to both Elliotts, including the one who happens to be my rabbi.

Several days after the election, the New York Times reported that 76 percent of Jews voted for Kamala Harris, and since at least part of the subject of this session is how American Jewry can influence foreign policy, I wonder what the implications of that will be for influence because even though 76 percent voted for Kamala Harris, clearly she did not get elected.

The person who did get elected is known to be kind of a vindictive guy, and I’m sure that he has seen that statistic, that 76 percent of Jews voted for his rival. So I wonder if you could expound a bit on what you think the impact of that will be on Jews’ ability to influence foreign policy.

ABRAMS: I’ll try first shot at that. I don’t know if 24 percent is right, you know; on election night we heard 21 percent. I’ve also heard higher figures—more like 30 percent. It obviously varies by state and community. 
But if you are a Republican, that glass may be half full rather than 26 percent full because it’s an increase. And it shows that more than one-fourth of Jews—and it might be trending toward one-third in some places—are swing voters. And there is also the question of down-ticket voting; that is—I don’t know the answer, but for example, in Pennsylvania or in Maryland where there were Senate races, how did Jews vote.

So I think all these things will have an impact. I think if you look at the people to whom President-elect Trump is speaking and some of the people he is appointing, there doesn’t seem to be a question of Jewishness that arises at all. So I’m inclined to think that most Republicans will see this as an opportunity. And I would say generally I think being a swing voter is great. It’s great for Hispanics. It’s great for African Americans. It’s great for American Jews because then both parties take you more seriously and listen more carefully to your views. So I think it’s healthy for American Jews to be seen as potential swing voters rather than a community that always votes Democratic. And I think then no matter who wins, they try to be careful about how they address the community. There is always another election coming.

Q: Well, let’s remember he also supports Christian nationalism.

COSGROVE: I think I’d defer—but I’m a rabbi, so I’ll still speak—to Elliott on voting patterns and trends. But I will say anecdotally that my congregation—which, Georgette, happens to be your congregation—I have been surprised—not surprised—you know, just I didn’t expect that the number—I’m a Manhattan-based congregation. Maybe given a shift in the electorate, of the congregants, maybe given that this is a war-time moment, but there has been—or fears of what is going on on campus, or in Amsterdam, or what have you, there has been a far-more evenly balanced vote; not that my congregants tell me, but this is just, anecdotally, people who believe that this is a moment in time where Trump has—whether it’s the Abraham Accords, the embassy in Jerusalem, there’s a track record in the first administration, this is a war time where we have to be very unambiguous in our support for Israel. And when I, just speaking—it’s a matter of public when I—when prior to the election Trump made some comment to the effect of—that should he lose the election—which he obviously didn’t—that he—that would be the fault of Jews.

And I name that—I said I don’t, as a not-for-profit, endorse a candidate here, there or anywhere but, you know, it’s a preemptively scapegoat any community, all the more so my community, you’ve got to throw a flag on the field. And the pushback I received from that moment was surprising for me because whatever people’s views might be on President Trump writ large, there was a sense that, in this moment of time, Israel needs all the friends it can get. So I’m just sharing my own experience as one congregational rabbi.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question—a written question—from Noel Rubinton, who is a self-employed writer and editor.

President-elect Trump has nominated an Evangelical Christian, Mike Huckabee, to be ambassador to Israel. How might this affect how American Jews think about Israel?

ABRAMS: (Laughs.) I hope it affects the way Evangelicals think about Israel. I mean, what I would like to see Huckabee doing, frankly, is flying back every couple of months to address Evangelical audiences to try to sustain Evangelical support for Israel which I think—again, this is partly generational, but is in some places flagging. I don’t think it will affect the way American Jews see Israel.

FASKIANOS: Rabbi Cosgrove, do you want to—

COSGROVE: I think this is a case study in thinking short and thinking long. I think that his Zionist credentials are extraordinary in the sense of a stalwart supporter of the state of Israel. I also believe that those people, like myself, who believe that the long-term security of Israel will only be had by way of Palestinian self-determination—I think that, long term, I have deep concerns about an administration that does not see that as a desired outcome. And so I don’t—the truth is it’s hard to make sense of this moment because I think we are in a unique and uniquely terrible moment, that it’s a circle-the-wagons moment, and I also—for the reasons I just said—believe we need to look long and ask what the—we have to fight—we, in the sense of the pro-Israel community, need to fight this war as if there is no tomorrow, and we need to fight this war with an eye to creating tomorrow.

FASKIANOS: I will take the next question from Sholom—I think, Lipskar. And if you can identify yourself—

Q: Hey, Sholom Lipskar here from Surfside, Florida. One comment on what Rabbi Cosgrove said, and just one general comment on the concept.

First a question I have is I do believe that people want self-determination, I believe people want freedom, they want all the good things in life. But when two people want the same thing, that’s real difficult. You know, if people would be satisfied taking what could rightfully be theirs like a piece of Jordan, that probably belongs much more to all of them than Israel, and when they’re insistent on Israel, that’s when a real issue comes about. 

And when—so in order to inject some semblance, knowledge of what they really want—because you don’t know what the Palestinian Arabs really want because they are under the jurisdiction of people who control their food, they control their lives, they control every aspect of them, to the Hamas, Hezbollah, and other forces. And until those savages are eradicated completely, you will continue to have imbalance in humanity, and you will not have the truth coming out, and you’ll have to support it. So I think this is—as Mr. Abrams said, that this is a moot—a moot—this is a moot concept at present.

And the other thing, I think, that needs to be addressed is that when we are talking about I think people who need to circle the wagons, we need to take care of ourselves, recognize that we’re being threatened, we’re a minority. We’re very vulnerable.

The fact of the matter is that we just realized October 7 that this was not a battle against Israel; it’s a battle against Jews. Period. End of story.

You know, the Holocaust nobody complained about Israel because there was no Israel.

FASKIANOS: If we—if we can get to your question, that would be great.

Q: The question is that the causes of all of this, if they overlook, and I wonder why—my question is that it should be a greater call for Jewish identity as Jews to recognize who we are and what we are, and stop being afraid.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

LOPATIN: I don’t know if either of you want to comment on that. I mean, I think I’m detecting a little bit of a not—a little bit of this determining the will—I think the questioner, how do we determine the will of the Palestinian people. Is it to live side by side with the Jewish state or not? And touching on Jordan which has a majority Palestinian population but is a loyal ally of the United States. Take that or not. Irina is in charge.

COSGROVE: Look, I’ll take the second part. Elliott, I’ll give you the first part about—I can’t speak to the will of my own congregants, never mind the Palestinian people. But I will say that, to the last comment or question that Sholom Lipskar asked, I agree wholehearted in the sense that now is the time to have an assertive Jewish identity. I think that this is obviously what I’ve committed my career and so many of my colleagues have, that I refuse to let my Jewish identity or American-Jewish identity writ whole be defined in the negative by the hatred of others. It’s positive, and I’m sticking with that.

ABRAMS: On the first part of the question, I do think there has been a problem for decades that the heart of Palestinian nationalism, certainly under Hajj Amin al-Husayni, Yasser Arafat has been negative. It hasn’t really been about building a Palestinian state; it has been about destroying the Jewish state. And when some state builders came along, such as Salam Fayyad, I mean, he got 2 or 3 percent in the 2006 election.

And I think until that changes, until the goal of Palestinians is not to destroy Israel; it is to build their own state or whatever that entity turns out to be—a positive goal rather than a negative one—this struggle that has gone on for a century will continue.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go to the next question, a written question from Jim Gilchrist, who is a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University.

Given the importance of defending the state of Israel, is it legitimate to criticize some aspects of the war’s conduct regarding casualties, especially among children?

LOPATIN: Elliott Abrams, do you want to start with that?

ABRAMS: It’s always legitimate to criticize the conduct of a war because there are rules. I mean, there are laws of war. It is legitimate to criticize the way the United States conducted, you know, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War. It’s legitimate to criticize the way Israel is conducting itself in Gaza. But it’s only legitimate if you do it fairly. It’s only legitimate if you do by comparing, if you will, apples to apples. 
For example, by comparing the way Israel is conducting itself in Gaza to the way the United States conducted ourselves in Iraq, I think what has offended many Jews, and offends me, is that Israel is held to some kind of imaginary standard, particularly in the UN, that no other country has ever been held to or is ever held to. And that’s not, in fact, holding them to a standard. That’s just seeking to use lawfare against Israel during its war of survival.

LOPATIN: Rabbi Cosgrove, has this come up also theologically, or in your teachings, or—

COSGROVE: Yeah, well, look, the way I put this is, is it possible to hold both vigilance and empathy at the same time, right? And I think this is one of the false binaries that has been presented, not just to the Jewish community, but to the world community; that somehow we can’t mourn the loss of innocent Palestinians and defend Israel’s right to wage a war of self-defense all at the same time.

And I think, you know, for me the proof text—you know, I’ll go to the text I know—is a Passover story which, if there is a headline to it, on the one hand it’s you were once strangers in a strange land; you shall identify with the heart of a stranger, right? We remove a drop of wine from our glass because we know that, important as our liberation was, it was a liberation that came with the loss of Egyptian—biblically speaking—lives. So empathy is through and through the Jewish theological DNA.

What’s also true is vigilance is part and parcel of who we are as Jews. That same Passover story, there is a very prominent line in it that says in every generation a pharaoh arises to destroy us, and therefore we need to be on guard. And Jewish history plays that out. And there are countless other verses to that effect. And so these are both intertwined—sort of the double helix of the Jewish DNA—and I think that we—and I say we, whatever side one might be on this conflict—need to acknowledge that empathy and vigilance are not at odds with each other, but they should be part of the same conversation.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next written question from Ali Khan, who is the national director of the American Muslim Council.

How much support does Netanyahu have with American Jews?

LOPATIN: We’ll start with—

COSGROVE: Elliott, I have to give you this one. You could probably speak better than I can.

ABRAMS: Most American Jews are Democrats in the U.S., as we’ve been saying, and most, you know, traditionally supported, I would say, center-center-left, Labor Party in Israel. And, you know, if they could vote, they probably would not have voted for Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Now, particularly last year prior to October 7, during the struggles in Israel over the so-called judicial reform fight—I don’t have data at hand, but I think it’s probably right—that a significant majority of American Jews opposed what Prime Minister Netanyahu was trying to do. Now I think that has changed both in Israel and here. The polls in Israel now show that if they had an election he might well be reelected. And I think his popularity in war time has no doubt risen among American Jews. But it has never been the level of support that, say, once upon a time Prime Minister Rabin had, or when—during the getting out of Gaza, Prime Minister Sharon had. So it—you know, it rises and falls, but it hasn’t been a kind of honeymoon relationship.

COSGROVE: Yeah. I know this is on the record, so I should probably be somewhat circumspect about saying something I’ll regret later, but I think of the final scene of A Few Good Men, where there’s a scene there that says, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. I think American Jews—and I think this is actually not just about American Jews—there is no—as Elliott mentions—there is no alternative leadership in Israel right now. In this moment, terrible as the decisions that Israelis and the IDF are making right now not— difficult and consequential, I think there is a recognition within Israel and in American Jewry that someone needs to be making these choices.

I think there is no love lost between—for all the reasons Elliott says, whether it’s the allegations made against him; whether it’s how he—you know, his inability to bring the hostages home; whether it’s the judicial reform; or, for that matter, the fifteen years that led up to this moment of marginalizing moderate Palestinian voices, of amplifying extremist voices in Israel. There is a lot to differ with with a Netanyahu administration, and I think that until Israel provides a viable alternative in war time to a Netanyahu government, I think this is the hand that American Jewry has been dealt.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go to the next question, a raised hand from Peter Pettit, who I believe is with the St. Paul Lutheran Church.

Q: Thank you. Peter Pettit, and yes, St. Paul Lutheran Church.

This is a wonderful conversation and much appreciated. Given the deep existential fear of Palestinians about their future, which has been focused for them on Israel by the Arab world, but is also legitimated by some Israeli political leaders and movements, what can Israel and the U.S. do to help Palestinians move to that state building that Rabbi Cosgrove suggests would change the picture? They, too, are fighting like there is no tomorrow. How do we show them that there is a viable and realistic tomorrow for both Israel and the Palestinians?

ABRAMS: Well, do you want to start, Rabbi?

COSGROVE: No, no, please, please.

ABRAMS: First thing, it’s not Palestinians who are fighting. It’s Hamas that’s fighting. And I think it’s very striking that people have been afraid of massive amounts of violence in the West Bank. That has not happened. You can say, well, that’s because of the Israeli or Palestinian police. But I think it’s more than that. I’m not sure that—we should not accept that Palestinians feel represented by Hamas.

Now what can we do? I think there are limits on what we can do, but one thing is we should not—remember George Bush’s phrase, “the soft bigotry of low expectations”? Palestinians hate the Palestinian Authority. They think it’s corrupt, which it is. They want change. They want an election, which they haven’t had since 2006. They want free speech, which they do not have, and they want a government that’s competent and honest. And we’ve not been very sympathetic most of the time—we, the United States. You know, we, for a long time, supported Arafat, viewed him as a peace partner. The Palestinians have been saying for a decade now that they wish that President Abbas were gone. And we don’t seem to care very much. So I think one of the things we should be doing is giving more support to the most positive elements of Palestinian society, the ones who want change, who want to build a state, rather than saying, well, you know, what can we do; I mean, that’s just the way it is among Palestinians.

I worked for George W. Bush, and I think one of his proudest achievements was to say, that’s not good enough, and we should be pushing, we should be pressing diplomatically for those—the most positive and progressive forces in Palestinian society and showing that we do support them.

COSGROVE: I just want to add or offer another dimension of the fact that this is happening in a CFR religion conversation, and to Peter, I’m assuming your association with St. Paul would presume a Christian affiliation there. I think this is a moment for the religious community to step up and to create opportunities for dialogue between folk who would otherwise not—there is something very dangerous and scary going on, beyond world events, of a movement against normalizing dialogue with the other, and an inability to get folk of different views to find a way to disagree without being disagreeable.

And it’s no great shakes if I, as a rabbi, sort of, you know, want to be in dialogue, but if someone from the Christian community were to bring Jews and Muslims together for dialogue, you know, some opportunity by which we can model that sort of, you know, epistemic humility and respect for the divine spark in each other that I think is at the core of all of our faith traditions, and that we—you know, our rabbi, Arthur Hertzberg, who I mentioned earlier, once said you can’t affirm your own certainties without engaging with the counter-certainties of another, right? And I think that if the religious community can step up to the urgency of the hour and plant those seeds of dialogue, it’s well worth the effort.

LOPATIN: That was a high point. Thank you.

FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, we are unfortunately at the end of our hour, and I apologize that we couldn’t get to all of the questions, but this has been a good dialogue, so we thank you for giving us your time and your expertise.

And to you, Rabbi Lopatin, for moderating—I got it right—and I commend to you Elliott Abrams’ book, If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century, and Rabbi Cosgrove, again, the name of his book is For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today.

We encourage you to follow our speakers. I don’t know if you still post on X or not. Do you?

ABRAMS: I don’t.

FASKIANOS: You don’t. OK.

ABRAMS: But I have a blog at the Council on Foreign Relations website.

FASKIANOS: You do have a blog, and again, I think that we heard about Rabbi Cosgrove’s sermons, and you can indeed watch them live streamed and after the fact, which I have—amazing sermons. So thank you all. 
We encourage you to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy program @CFR_Religion, and you can send us suggestion for future programs, topics, and any other way we can serve as a resource to you all. 
So thank you again for being with us today and for your insights.

COSGROVE: Thank you.

LOPATIN: Thank you very much.

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