A congregational rabbi said there were no innocents in Gaza. The blowback was fierce.
Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham’s Facebook post upset some congregants. But others shared his sentiment.
Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham said his Facebook post reflected his personal opinion, not that of Congregation B’nai Amoona (above). by Courtesy
By Louis Keene February 27, 2025
A St. Louis pulpit rabbi’s Facebook post calling for the “re-education of an entire generation of Palestinians” has divided his congregation — and drawn rebuke from local Jewish and Muslim organizations that decried it as racist.
Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Amoona, a Conservative synagogue, wrote on his personal Facebook account Jan. 31 that “there do not appear to be any ‘innocent civilians’ in Gaza.”
“All of the people living in Gaza are Hamas, regardless of how we want to spin it in the Western world,” he added. “What is worse is the lack of outrage around the world.”
Local progressive Jewish organizations called the statements “dangerous” and “alarming.” The Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis said they were “not only harmful but racist.”
Abraham’s comments — and the ensuing maelstrom — reflect growing tensions as the dominant pro-Israel discourse has shifted to the right in recent weeks. As emotions peaked around the botched return of the slain Bibas family hostages, online Jewish spaces filled with both anti-Palestinian rhetoric and pushback against it.
But the incident also reveals the extent to which remarks like Abraham’s have become accepted in the range of Jewish discourse. B’nai Amoona’s president backed the rabbi publicly and in a message to congregants, and while Abraham took down the post at the president’s behest, he did not disavow its contents in subsequent statements to the congregation and to the Forward.
“The groups attacking me are extremist groups who took a screenshot of only part of my original post (which I’ve since taken down) and attempted to portray me in a light that doesn’t exist,” Abraham wrote Feb. 25 in a Facebook message to the Forward. He said he had received dozens of threats.
Pro-Israel bona fides
Abraham, 43, joined B’nai Amoona in 2020 as an associate rabbi during a turbulent moment for the congregation. His predecessor, Rabbi Carnie Rose, had cultivated debate, sometimes to the dismay of his congregants; a 2019 J Street event at the synagogue with Breaking The Silence — an organization of ex-IDF soldiers who are critical of the Occupation — was widely protested.
Abraham, a regular AIPAC attendee, became senior rabbi in 2022 after Rose retired, and following Oct. 7, he emerged as one of the faces of the St. Louis Jewish community. In appearances on local news media, he opined on antisemitism, the war and national politics. And when St. Louis Jewish community members published an open letter in December 2023 imploring local Jewish organizations to call for a ceasefire, Abraham dismissed them in a trenchant public reply, saying, “Can you imagine asking the Nazis for a ceasefire during the Holocaust?”
His Facebook post came a day after the release of Israeli hostage Arbel Yehoud. The image of Hamas marching a terrified-looking Yehoud through a mob of Palestinians prior to the prisoner exchange incited a deep wrath in the Jewish world. Some, like Abraham, saw it as evidence that all Gazans were implicated in the hostages’ captivity and treatment.
Comments on the post, which came from the B’nai Amoona community and beyond, fiercely debated its merit.
“To read this complete painting of a whole people with one brush is off-putting at best and not what we want our child to learn from any leader in his life,” one comment read. “This walks a toe towards something like vengeance towards an entire people, which we are very much against.”
But many of the comments conveyed agreement. “Wholeheartedly agree with you,” one person wrote. “Thank you for your leadership and proud you are my rabbi!”
Other criticism poured in from outside the synagogue community. Progressive Jews of St. Louis, an anti-Zionist organization, and St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace issued statements condemning the post, as did local Muslim groups.
“Assigning collective blame to over 2 million people and suggesting the ‘re-education’ of Palestinians is not only harmful but racist,” the Islamic Society of Greater St. Louis wrote. “It dehumanizes an entire population and invalidates the unimaginable casualties, injuries, and destruction they have endured.”
A stern rebuke – or lack thereof
As uproar swirled around B’nai Amoona, the synagogue’s president, Gail Feldstein, asked Abraham to remove the post, she said in a message to the congregation. Feldstein wrote that “many Facebook readers expressed their feelings and perspectives by disrupting the important work of our B’nai Amoona staff.”
Neither the synagogue nor its senior rabbi addressed the criticism itself.
Feldstein told the Forward that the synagogue had received “a number of calls and emails over the past few weeks in response to the social media post, many of which reflected support for Rabbi Abraham.” And in a message to the community, Abraham expressed regret only for the controversy his post had caused.
Pressed Feb. 25 to clarify his remarks about civilians in Gaza, Abraham said he would call later, then emailed a statement similar to what he had sent congregants.
“Everyone’s emotions have been running high in the past few weeks, and in the past year and a half,” Abraham said in the statement. “I understand that my feelings are not shared by everyone reading my post. My goal was not to be divisive, but rather to open a conversation.
“Strong opinions and views can be the basis of meaningful dialogue and discussion on controversial topics. In the future, I will consider my words in a different context in the hope of opening doors and listening, as well as being heard.”
One congregant who had criticized the initial post said she read Abraham’s later comment as an apology for overreacting in a heated moment. Another B’nai Amoona community member said they remained hurt.
“It’s not appropriate for the head rabbi of a major synagogue to use their platform to write hate speech on the internet,” said a B’nai Amoona employee who requested anonymity to protect their job. “You can have a relationship with Israel and not write terrible, awful, racist things. It just seems like they just kind of swept that under the rug.”
The broader trend
Though Abraham’s comments struck some people as extreme when he said them, a similar sentiment spread in Jewish spaces a few weeks later, with the revelation that Kfir and Yarden Bibas, the two youngest hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7, were killed along with their mother during their captivity.
After their deaths were confirmed, the Jewish publication Tablet posted an article headlined, “‘They are all Hamas’” that received more than 18,000 likes on Instagram. Days later, prominent pro-Israel influencer Lizzy Savetsky promoted a speech in which ultranationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane said that “force and fear” was the only language Palestinians understood.
Amid dismayed reactions to the pitched pro-Israel rhetoric — including one viral tweet that called it “genocidal” — Savetsky eventually qualified her remarks, though she left up the post. It has been liked on Instagram some 9,000 times.
In St. Louis, two Jewish leaders said that the synagogue’s tacit acceptance of Abraham’s comments and the Federation’s silence showed that the Facebook post broadly resonated with pro-Israel community leaders and donors, even if only the rabbi was willing to voice the sentiments publicly.
“There’s a lot of people who are either overtly or quietly applauding this,” said a senior leader at a St. Louis Jewish institution, who requested anonymity to protect relationships in the community. “It is almost impossible in a mainstream Jewish organization to lose your job for being too right wing on Israel.”
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