David Fishback's Blog: August 2025

Thursday, August 14, 2025

Haaretz report on the Israeli Government's plans to make a two-state solution impossible.

Israel to Okay Plan Splitting West Ba
nk in Two to 'Bury the Idea of a

Palestinian State'
Smotrich vows to 'bury the idea of a Palestinian state' with 3,400 homes in E1. 'They'll talk of a Palestinian dream, we'll build a Jewish reality,' he said, as the plan deepens West Bank divisions and draws global criticism.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-14/ty-article/.premium/smotrich-calls-for-israeli-sovereignty-in-west-bank-as-govt-advances-controversial-plan/00000198-a7eb-dba8-a3dc-b7fba6ac0000

This is yet another step from the Israeli Administration admittedly designed to make a two-state solution impossible. Sealing the fate of Israel by making Jews a minority within its borders, unless unacceptable and unsustainable ethnic cleansing follows. This is the nightmare: If Israel becomes a minority Jewish country, will it cease to be a democracy for all its inhabitants? Smotrich plainly would choose permanent oppression or expulsion of non-Jews. If this becomes the final reality in Israel, a state which does to others what has been done to us over the centuries, then Jews in the Diaspora (and in Israel) will be faced with an awful dilemma. Do we support a state which is, in our names as Jews, totally antithetical to our values as Jews?

We should not be surprised. In 2003, Rabbi Michael Melchior, who was a member of the Knesset and chair of the Birthright Steering Committee, warned the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s Consultation on Conscience that we (and still I say “we”) were heading down this path. Here is my report on his presentation from Temple Emanuel’s May 2003 Kol Kore newsletter:

About David

David S. Fishback serves on the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism and as Maryland Advocacy Co-Chair for the Metro DC chapter of PFLAG.

For 30 years, David worked in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division. As Assistant Director of its Torts Branch, he was a leader in the successful effort to block the manufacturers of asbestos and Agent Orange from shifting their legal liability to taxpayers. Earlier in his career, David worked for the National Labor Relations Board, for the Center for Political Reform, and in a Memphis prison as a VISTA volunteer.

As an education advocate in Montgomery County, Maryland, David served as a PTA co-president of a magnet integration school and later as the chairperson of the county’s Citizens Advisory Committee on sexuality education, bringing intelligent discussion of LGBTQ+ topics into the public school curriculum in the face of significant conservative pushback. Along with his wife Bobbi, he co-founded the LGBTQ-inclusive Kulanu group at Temple Emanuel, where he had also served as a board member.

David holds degrees from Harvard Law School and The George Washington University. He received a Heschel Vision Award from Jews United for Justice in 2015.