The Settler Pipeline on the Upper East Side

Plus, a new headline about my mom: "Watch a Jewish grandmother SHAME Kirsten Gillibrand."

Hi all — if you’re looking for a meaningful holiday gift, I’d be grateful if you considered gifting a subscription to Infinite Jaz. In my humble opinion, it’s perfect for the people in your life who already follow and care about this issue the way you do—as well as for those who don’t, but could use a clear, honest window into what’s happening. While I don’t shy away from sharing my perspective, I take great pride in grounding my work in objective facts and on-the-ground reporting that make it hard to dismiss from any angle.

I’m planning major reporting trips and investigations in the coming months and years, continuing to document the reality on the ground in the West Bank and the direct link between settler violence and the state behind it. With mainstream outlets still failing to cover the West Bank with any real depth, independent journalism needs all the support it can get.

For a limited time, all annual subscriptions are 20% off.

---

Last week, I wrote about the Good Settler / Bad Settler fiction, in which the supposedly “fringe” settlers do the dirty work—attacking Palestinians, driving families off their land—before the “good” settlers show up to build a respectable façade and the state steps in to bless it, pausing only to condemn the violence once it becomes a PR liability.

In the days after I published, Prime Minister Netanyahu broke his silence on the surge in settler attacks, condemning the “handful of extremists” who “attempt to take the law into their own hands”—a useful reminder that the state considers brutalizing Palestinians and seizing their land to be its own job. Then, on Monday, the IDF’s Central Command—led by Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who last week waved the attackers off as “fringe anarchist youth” and is supposedly overseeing the crackdown—approved Smotrich’s plan for 10 new settlement-jurisdiction zones in the northern West Bank, part of a wider campaign to convert illegal outposts into formal settlements. In practice, it elevates the very violence he claims to be policing into state-sanctioned progress, rewarding the perpetrators with new boundaries, new authority, and a government stamp of legitimacy.

All of this came to mind when the latest Mamdani scandal broke last week, after rowdy protesters gathered outside Park East Synagogue in New York to oppose an event hosted by Nefesh B’Nefesh—an organization that helps North American Jews make Aliyah by moving to Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Here is the New York Times—hardly an outlet inclined to bolster Mamdani or anti-Zionists—on the organization:

In a statement on its website, Nefesh B’Nefesh said it was “dedicated to supporting, educating, and advising individuals and families throughout their Aliyah (immigration to Israel) journey.” The group condemned “the violent rhetoric and aggressive behavior that took place outside of the Park East Synagogue.”

Ms. Katsman said Nefesh B’Nefesh “does not endorse, recommend, or promote any specific community, location or neighborhood to move to in Israel.”

But that appeared to be at odds with the organization’s website, which contains pages of detailed recommendations about life in Israeli towns as well as in some of the largest settlement blocs in the West Bank. Those include the 22 settlements in Gush Etzion, an area south of Jerusalem, and Ma’ale Adumim, a large settlement located between the northern and southern West Bank that many Palestinians see as a threat to the territorial integrity of any future Palestinian state.

Nefesh B’Nefesh encourages Americans to move to smaller settlements, too, which it portrays as integral parts of Israel. It describes the settlement of Elkana, in the occupied West Bank, for example, as “a beautiful, comfortable and well-situated community in the center of Israel. Location! Location! Location!”

In response to the protests, Mamdani’s team put out this statement: “The Mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so. He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”

The outrage among the “good liberals” of New York and beyond has centered almost entirely on the second part of Mamdani’s statement, and on the protest itself. To be fair, the protesters played all the hits—“globalize the intifada,” “Death to the IOF,” etc.—which, in my mind, are in no way antisemitic but certainly signal a type of militant anti-Zionism that frightens people in the pro-Israel crowd. But my question for this crowd is this: Where is the outrage over the event itself?

To put my cards on the table, I believe that “liberal Zionism” is an oxymoron. Nobody has been able to explain to me how a state that must forcefully maintain a Jewish majority in an Arab region can also uphold basic liberal values. But for the purposes of this argument, I am accepting its premise that “liberal Zionism” is fundamentally different from the messianic vision of Greater Israel promoted by the Smotriches and Ben Gvirs of the world. So my next question is: Why are you so bad at maintaining this distinction?

It’s revealing that so many who claim to oppose settlements see no issue with fraternizing with an organization that literally helps people move into them. In a parallel universe, these same voices would be outraged to learn that an organization helping Jews immigrate to Israel is also helping them immigrate to the occupied West Bank—which its own website presents as part of Israel, the framing of the far-right—and that a Manhattan synagogue invited them in. Alas, in this universe, they circle the wagons.

This is the Good Settler / Bad Settler fiction playing out in real time on the Upper East Side. The violence happens over there, in the hills of the West Bank, carried out by those “fringe” elements the good liberal Zionists claim to condemn. Meanwhile, over here, in Manhattan, the infrastructure of violent occupation is maintained through organizations with glossy websites and synagogues with respectable boards.

One of Israel’s great achievements has been whitewashing its own brutality so thoroughly that it can claim the moral high ground while casting anyone who objects as the real aggressors. We hear constantly about the need for pro-Palestine crowds to root out the antisemitic elements among them. Fair enough; every protest movement has its rot. But the so-called liberal Zionist camp is long overdue for its own reckoning—not with a fringe, but with its foundation. It might be time to consider exactly who they are welcoming into their own homes, and whether, if they looked too closely, they’d find the entire project far more hollow than they’d like to admit.

---

While I have you, I thought I’d share this Drop Site interview with my mom and me—words I never thought I’d write—which I think offers some insight into where my work comes from.

If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, just watch these two clips for now:

Here’s a response on X from a real, working rabbi, who also writes for prominent Jewish publications and serves as a commissioner on Kentucky’s Commission for Human Rights:

In almost any other context, is there any question that this would be read as a straightforward use of an antisemitic trope? Hard to say, when the people appointed to answer that question are the ones trafficking in it.

When I pointed out the hypocrisy, the good rabbi deleted his post and accused me of being both Hamas and a Nazi—something he’s made a habit of doing.

Here’s another response:

So I answered:

And—would you believe it—Jonka Molly immediately deleted their question. A true hallmark of “genuine curiosity.” Not before firing off this parting shot, though:

I’ll let you do the math on whether that timeline makes sense. But putting that aside, I do appreciate Jonka for expressing, in one neat sentence, what much of the contemporary Jewish establishment now believes Judaism means.

More coming very soon.

Jasper