For Jews who have supported Israel, famine in Gaza may be a breaking point
The ‘troubled committed’ are facing a crisis — which means that Israel is, too
Palestinians struggle to receive a hot meal at a charity kitchen in Khan Younis in Gaza on July 22. Photo by AFP/Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Dany Bahar July 29, 2025
Infants are starving in Gaza. Some children are so malnourished that they can no longer cry. Whatever your position on the Israel-Hamas War, it should be unbearable to imagine what parents in Gaza must be going through now: Watching their babies waste away from hunger, knowing that even if food now reaches them, it may already be too late.
For many of us who support Israel, this moment is excruciating. We’ve spent months defending Israel’s right to protect itself after Hamas’ devastating attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and insisting that complex realities don’t fit into simplistic narratives. But the scenes of deprivation we are now witnessing have shattered something.
For those who, like me, have proudly defended Israel in the last 21 months — on college campuses, in the media and online, often at great personal cost — with demanding the return of the hostages at the core of our advocacy this undeniable crisis might be a breaking point. It certainly feels like one for me.
I, like so many others who fall into the category that Rabbi Donniel Hartman describes as that of the “troubled committed Zionist,” believe deeply in Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. I have stood by the country even in moments of doubt — not with uncritical loyalty, but with emotional and moral investment.
When confronted by those who question those principles, I have tried to hold the line: To explain, to contextualize, to respond to hate without losing my own moral grounding.
Many of those of us who meet this description have felt, and so far resisted, unrelenting pressure to choose a side. We do not want to join either the loud crowds who criticize Israel without any room for nuance, or those who defend its every action as justified and moral — also without any room for nuance.
But the images we’ve been seeing nonstop in recent days — of real, undeniable starvation and babies dying from hunger — may make continuing that resistance impossible.
Yes, responsibility for this catastrophe is shared by many actors. Hamas, which has faced far too little accountability, is certainly among them. It could end much of this suffering by releasing the remaining hostages and relinquishing control over Gaza, but chooses not to.
But it’s also undeniable that a significant part of this failure lies with the arrogance and short-sightedness of the Israeli government, which chose to sideline the United Nations in handling aid distribution in Gaza, and replaced a problematic but fairly functional humanitarian infrastructure with a patchwork of IDF soldiers and private contractors from the ill-prepared Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Israel’s frustrations with the previous humanitarian system were understandable. The U.N. has been far from a perfect partner in Gaza, given its long history of hostility toward Israel. And its delivery system was never infallible, meaning some aid inevitably fell into the hands of Hamas, offering the terror group a lifeline it never should have had.
But Israel’s inability to establish an effective alternative system for delivering aid in Gaza — alongside the Israeli government’s arrogant insistence that there’s nothing to see there — has helped turn a broken situation into a full-blown humanitarian disaster.
For many of us, the arguments that we’ve long used to explain, defend, and empathize with Israel can no longer carry weight in the face of what credible reporting suggests is now unfolding on the ground.
Israel should be alarmed when the silent majority of diaspora Jews — many of them “troubled committed Zionists”— who have stood by it with love and struggle, begin to break. And there are growing signs that they are.
The American Jewish Committee, a consistently pro-Israel institution, recently issued a public statement expressing deep concerns about the worsening food insecurity in Gaza, and urging Israel to do more to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, long considered a thoughtful defender of Israel, has warned that the Israeli government is jeopardizing its moral standing.
And even former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spoken out in terms no other Israeli leader of his stature has used, openly questioning the legality and morality of the government’s actions.
These are not marginal voices. They are the conscience and connective tissue between Israel and world Jewry, and their growing unease cannot be ignored.
Unless Israel acts quickly to rectify the situation, this could be the start of a dangerous rupture in the moral and emotional infrastructure that has long sustained Israel’s connection to the Jewish people.
Israel can and should set aside the voices of extremists — Jewish or not — who have sought to label this war as a genocide since its earliest weeks in 2023, and who continue to promote a narrative driven more by ideology than by facts.
But Israel cannot afford to lose those who have long served as part of its unofficial diplomatic corps: its conscience, its moral compass, and its defenders around the world.
Members of this sizable group often serve as Israel’s most effective ambassadors, certainly when compared to those who refuse to acknowledge any of Israel’s flaws, precisely because they can empathize with the other side and admit imperfection. Doing so while still making the case for compromise and coexistence gives them unique credibility. If this constituency begins to lose faith, the damage is not just reputational — it is existential in a deeper sense.
An Israel that no longer inspires trust or connection among the majority of diaspora Jews may not be facing an immediate military threat. But it risks losing its raison d’être: a state rooted not only in sovereignty, but in shared destiny.
