On September, 24th, 2026, while Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN, we gathered in protest with our partners in the Progressive Israel Network to demand that Netanyahu be held accountable for his war crimes and the immeasurable harm that he has caused to Israelis and Palestinians. Echoing the cries of years of protests on the ground in Israel-Palestine and human rights organizations in the Land, we gathered with over one hundred people at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to raise the alarm: that Israel’s current government ignored critical warnings before October 7th, abandoned the hostages in order to prolong the war, and has overseen widespread destruction in Gaza, announced its intention to annex massive sections of the West Bank, and is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
We called for an end to “forever war” and the Occupation. We know that this government does not represent our values, and demanded real accountability for the perpetrators of war crimes and a better future of peace and justice for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Read on for a transcription of the powerful speech delivered at this rally by NYJA Board Member and Co-Founder, Rabbi Rachel Timoner:
NYJA Board Member Rabbi Rachel Timoner (center) speaks out alongside NYJA ED Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson (left) at our 9/24/26 rally outside the United Nations.
Photo by Gili Getz.
I rewatched the Bibi Files last night. If you don’t know, the Bibi Files are the leaked videos of the police investigation leading to Netanyanhu’s corruption trial in Israel, for which he will most certainly go to jail if there is still a judiciary. The film reminds one what so much of our suffering is about. This one man’s quest for power, bottomless need for power; his and his wife’s craving for cigars, champagne, and diamond crusted jewelry; and his fear of going to jail for outrageous corruption.
As I watched, I thought about kapparah, the goal of Yom Kippur, that our sins would be covered over by G-d. Certainly that is Netanyahu’s wish – that his sins would be covered up. He’s been trying to cover up his sins by creating more and more chaos and war. But as any Jewish child can tell you, Yom Kippur only works if you have said I’m sorry to the people you’ve hurt. It only works if you confess, if you repair the harm, if you genuinely seek forgiveness. And I thought what it would be like if Bibi Netanyahu actually sought kapparah.
Granted, he is not the only bad actor – there is Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran; Donald Trump; successive American administrations, American Jewish leaders, and Israelis who have aided and abetted Bibi; and antisemites on the left and right who gleefully whip up Jew-hatred for their own ends. And…. If we were to gather all of Netanyahu’s victims, they would include people who do not otherwise think they have anything in common. They would include the mothers and fathers of Gaza who have held their children’s lifeless bodies, whose children have been shot in the head or starved to death or buried under collapsed buildings or who are missing limbs or who are missing siblings. They would include the parents of IDF soldiers who died in Gaza or who came back a shell of themselves, suicidal and traumatized from what they saw and what they did. They would include the parents of the hostages, those dead, and those living who will never be the same. They would include the parents of the more than 1,000 West Bank Palestinian children who have fled their homes from settler terrorism this year alone. They would include the American Jewish parents of West Bloomfield, Michigan, who have nightmares about what could have happened to their children – to be crystal clear, it is a heinous crime to drive a truck into a preschool and utterly unacceptable to take out one’s anger at Netanyahu on American Jews in any way – but Bibi Netanyahu’s victims include Jewish parents across America who are afraid of what might happen to our children because of antisemitic violence in response to his actions.
If he wanted to actually make atonement, Benjamin Netanyahu would have to go to every Israeli who is dramatically less safe now than when he took office, whose existential sense of safety has been ruptured irreparably. He would have to go to anyone who believes that there should be a safe haven for the Jewish people that represents Jewish values in our ancestral homeland, a vision that is now a tattered shred, a mockery, a wisp of a dream we’re still reaching for. He would have to go to anyone who cares about Judaism itself, who has watched our beautiful, sacred tradition twisted into a festival of hate and dehumanization. He would have to go to every American who is trying to take back our democracy and cannot get beyond fighting about his actions – because of antisemitism and because of the true scale and horror of his war crimes. All because he took bribes and doesn’t want to give up power and doesn’t want to go to jail.
This Shabbat, on the first morning of Sukkot, we will read about the sacrifices the people brought to observe the holy days on our calendar. The idea was that you gave from what you had in order to bring harmony to the world. Netanyahu’s story is such a sick inversion of that idea. Instead, he is sacrificing all of us – the people of Gaza and the West Bank, the people of Israel, the Jews of the world – for his own personal immunity, to cover over his own sins, to avoid actual kapparah. Even the angels are trembling.
