Stop Reading Jewish Insider as Straight News

A plea to fellow Jewish professionals to treat Jewish Insider with the level of trust that you would Fox News

During the 2024 presidential campaign, when I ran national Jewish outreach, there was a time of day I came to dread.

Somewhere around 7:30 or 8:00 every morning, the Jewish Insider daily newsletter would hit inboxes across the Jewish community. Two or three times a week, there would be some story attacking Kamala Harris, the Biden Administration, or Democrats more broadly as anti-Israel or insufficiently committed to fighting antisemitism.

The stories themselves weren’t what bothered me most. Politics is politics. What was frustrating was what would inevitably happen next.

My phone would light up with texts from liberal Jewish Democrats – people who supported Kamala Harris, worked at Jewish organizations or spent their careers in Jewish communal life – asking whether the story was true or how to respond to it. These weren’t casual readers. These were sophisticated, politically engaged people treating Jewish Insider as a straight news publication rather than what it increasingly has been: a political publication pushing a particular ideological perspective.

Imagine if liberal and moderate Democrats religiously consumed Fox News every morning and then spent the rest of the day reacting to its framing of political events. We’d immediately recognize that as problematic. Yet something similar happens every day in the Jewish political ecosystem.

Jewish Insider is enormously influential in professional Jewish circles. Its newsletter is part of the morning media diet for countless Jewish leaders. Yet it’s often consumed in the same way one might consume an objective news outlet rather than as a publication advancing a particular worldview – one that generally aligns with the demand for unconditional support for Israeli government policies, and the casting of legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with ideological publications. The problem is reading and understanding them as though they aren’t ideological.

The most infuriating example I encountered during the campaign involved a Jewish Insider story about a letter from a Member of Congress accusing a Palestinian-American administration official – and a friend of mine – of anti-Israel bias. I’m not going to link to it here since I don’t want to spread this misinformation further.

The letter was signed by exactly one member of Congress. There are 435 members of Congress. A letter signed by one member is not newsworthy in any meaningful sense. The letter was largely based on the fact that this individual had volunteered for Students for Justice in Palestine and done some work with UNRWA 20 years earlier as a college student.

Entirely missing from JI’s newsletter, and buried over a dozen paragraphs into the full story, was the next 20 years of this person’s career: quietly serving this country in sensitive national security positions, working on many issues including some years on Israel-Palestine as well as many others largely unrelated to Israel and building a reputation as a consummate professional who also worked for the House Intelligence Committee.

This official wasn’t working on the Harris campaign. They weren’t under consideration for any major appointment in a future Harris Administration any more so than any other senior official serving in the Biden White House. None of that mattered. The story served its political purpose. By 8:30 that morning, liberal Jewish Democrats were lighting up my texts and panicking that a Palestinian-American might someday have a senior role in a Democratic administration’s national security apparatus. The story played on the worst instincts of the Jewish community.

Jewish Insider’s response when I talked to someone over there? “All we do is report the news.” Yes, but what “news” do you choose to report? And how do you tell people what it means?

I’ve watched the same playbook applied repeatedly to J Street.

Most recently, Jewish Insider reported that J Street sponsored an event at the College Democrats Convention where Hasan Piker was speaking. J Street did not invite Hasan Piker, did not endorse his views, would never invite him to speak at one of our events, and didn’t find out he was speaking at the conference until Friday as the convention was kicking off, shortly before Jewish Insider reached out to ask us about it. J Street’s “sponsorship” entailed paying for a table where our J Street U team could meet with and engage young Democrats at the convention.

We faced a difficult strategic question: should we engage the next generation of Democratic leaders attending their annual convention despite strongly disagreeing with one of the speakers and finding some of his previous statements repugnant and offensive, or should we walk out and miss the opportunity to engage? We chose to participate.

We sent Jewish Insider the following quote explaining the challenging position we were in. “J Street U is proud to sponsor and participate in the College Democrats Convention. We had no role in the selection of speakers and we’re sure there will be speakers – including Hasan Piker – with whom we disagree. Being in venues like this is even more important when there are participants with whom we disagree. Failing to show up would be an abdication of our responsibility to make the case for our pro-Israel views.”

The initial JI tweet on Sunday left the impression that Hasan Piker was speaking at a J Street conference. The newsletter on Monday amplified that framing to a wider audience but finally included our entire quote. By the time readers got to the full article and could read the full quote, the damage was done. Most people never read that far. They reacted to the framing they saw first.

Reasonable people can disagree about the decision we made. In fact, I’d welcome that debate.

But a serious journalistic treatment of the story would have wrestled with the competing considerations. It would have quoted critics who thought we should withdraw and advocates who believed engagement with young Democrats was the right choice. It would have explored the broader challenge facing Jewish organizations attempting to engage younger progressives in an increasingly polarized environment. You can read my colleague Adam Deakin’s much more nuanced account of what he experienced at the convention last weekend.

Oh and by the way, JI later reported that the Jewish caucus of the College Democrats put out a statement sharply criticizing Piker’s inclusion. Would it blow your mind to know that the leadership of that Jewish caucus includes a J Street U student?!? You’ll never read that in JI.

Instead, most people saw a tweet suggesting Hasan Piker was speaking at a J Street conference.

The outrage machine did the rest.

This is far from the only example. A few months ago, Jewish Insider put out a tweet suggesting that J Street supported ending all military aid to Israel. That wasn’t our position, and they wrote that article based on a one-sentence response to a single question they posed to a spokesperson about a candidate’s position on the matter instead of doing any serious or comprehensive reporting. Our actual position paper talked about maintaining the security relationship while ending the financial subsidies of $3.8 billion per year to Israel that were no longer necessary and ensuring that US law was followed in how US weapons were used by Israel. The paper explicitly supported ensuring Israel can continue to buy what it needs for Iron Dome and reflected views on financial subsidies that are remarkably similar to arguments being made by figures as ideologically diverse as Rahm Emanuel, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Lindsey Graham, and even, to some extent Bibi Netanyahu.

None of that was conveyed to readers who saw the headlines that implied we were for ending all weapons of any kind going to Israel. Essentially an arms embargo. Not J Street’s position.

We’ve also, at times, pushed for policies and positions that complicate the caricature. We’ve strongly advocated for continued Iron Dome funding with members of Congress. We were opposed to the Massie Amendment last week, and when Democratic leaders like Hakeem Jeffries wrote to the caucus about his opposition, he cited J Street in the first paragraph.

Of course very little of that makes it into Jewish Insider because it doesn’t fit their agenda to shape a misleading narrative about J Street.

When Israel’s former Ambassador to the US says J Street is not “pro-Israel” or when its current Ambassador calls J Street a “cancer,” it’s featured in the newsletter with high readership. Buried in the article that few will click on and never to appear on social media is the letter from more than 600 American Jewish leaders calling on Leiter to apologize, signed by the likes of former US Ambassadors to Israel Dan Kurtzer and Tom Nides; Rabbis Rick Jacobs and David Saperstein, leaders of the Reform Movement; and Congressman Jerry Nadler.

But the issue isn’t really Jewish Insider. Jewish Insider is doing exactly what ideological publications do. The issue is that so many sophisticated Jewish readers continue to treat it as straight, reliable, fact-based news.

The consequences are real.

We are living through one of the most difficult moments American Jews have faced in decades. Most American Jews want to support Israel and are simultaneously deeply uncomfortable with the policies of Netanyahu’s government and its actions in Gaza. Antisemitism is growing in disturbing ways on both the left and the right. Anti-Israel advocacy is growing, some of which crosses into antisemitism and some of which does not. There are genuine debates within the Jewish community about military assistance, Gaza, settlements, free speech, coalition-building and how to engage younger Americans.

These are hard questions. They deserve serious journalism and serious debate.

What we don’t need is a media ecosystem that reduces every disagreement to a litmus test of whether someone fits their definition of what is pro-Israel or anti-Israel, pro-Jewish or antisemitic.

Take the recent debate over the Massie Amendment opposing military assistance to Israel. One of the most interesting stories in Washington is not that some Democrats are changing their positions – it’s why. Members who have long supported Israel are wrestling with what they view as unacceptable conduct by the Israeli government. They are trying to reconcile competing moral, strategic and political considerations.

Consider Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. Smith has been a consistent supporter of Israel’s security for decades. He has voted for military assistance repeatedly and has deep relationships with Israeli defense officials. He put out a nuanced thoughtful statement that said three things: (1) he wants to support Israel’s security and has for a long time; (2) he has been harassed and attacked by left wing activists about the issue of Gaza in ways that are unacceptable; (3) he is voting to strip aid to Israel because he has such strong opposition to how the Israeli government has acted in Gaza and elsewhere and needs to send a message.

There’s an important story there about the challenging trends in our politics right now.

But reducing it to “Smith says he was pressured to vote against Israel aid by violent, far-left activists,” as JI did, isn’t journalism. It’s political messaging. And that’s certainly not what Smith said or how he’d view it. In fact, in my conversations with members of Congress, the harassment many have felt from protesters has not made them more likely to vote against aid to Israel. It has infuriated them and caused them to get their backs up. But at the same time, they cannot keep looking at what the Netanyahu government is doing and in good conscience support it with a blank check.

The tragedy is that American Jewish leaders and professionals desperately need media institutions capable of facilitating these conversations. We need publications willing to explore nuance, acknowledge competing truths and present disagreements honestly.

Instead, too often we consume media that feeds our fears and reinforces the idea that anyone who fails a particular ideological litmus test is an enemy.

That approach is shrinking rather than expanding the Jewish communal conversation. It encourages us to retreat into smaller and smaller circles of ideological comfort while convincing ourselves that engagement with difficult questions is itself dangerous.

The Jewish tradition is one of argument and debate. Our greatest intellectual achievements came from wrestling with uncomfortable questions, not avoiding them.

Fortunately, there are alternatives that aren’t seeking to flatten the discourse but to enrich it. The Forward consistently produces thoughtful reporting that takes these debates seriously. Major news organizations like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal remain indispensable. The Times of Israel and Haaretz offer valuable perspectives primarily about Israel, but also on how it connects to American Jews. At J Street, we’ve begun producing our own daily news roundup for readers interested in these issues. That obviously comes with our perspective.

And yes, read Jewish Insider too. It’s important to understand how conservative pro-Israel politics are evolving and what arguments are gaining traction.

Just don’t mistake it for straight news.

Our communal discourse is too important for that.