The year 2026 will be a fateful and challenging time for American Jews and for those of us who support Israel and worry about its future as a secure, Jewish and democratic state, especially with elections on the horizon in Israel and here in the United States, where attitudes and policies toward Israel are playing an outsize role.
These thoughts lead me to reflect on a large gathering I attended in November, when, moments after the crowd sang “Shir L’Shalom” (“A Song for Peace”) alongside Yitzhak Rabin’s granddaughter Noa Rothman, the leadership of our Jewish community, including my mentors and friends, voted informally that the two-state solution is unrealistic.
The debate that followed this moving sing-along, organized by the Sapir Institute during the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, captured a sense of profound despair that has gnawed at me since: a belief that diplomacy is no longer feasible, and that reconciliation with Palestinians is simply a fantasy. The opposition did not propose any alternative vision, but rather the long-touted belief that there is no path to reconciliation. That, regrettably, is the exact “status quo” perspective that led to the Oct. 7 massacre. It is also an idea that alienates the majority of young American Jews who continue to seek reasons to be hopeful about Israel’s future.
Thus, in the same breath that we honored Rabin’s legacy of courage and imagination, many declared the central pillar of his diplomatic vision dead.
This room represented our leadership, but, thankfully, it did not represent the majority of young American Jews. We understand that Israelis and Palestinians are not destined to be trapped in permanent conflict. We see this clearly in the data: Three-quarters of American Jews ages 18-49 support self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians; 81% say they want programs that help advance peace; 67% feel responsible to support Israel, and 69% feel responsible to stand up for the Palestinian people.
Empathy and security - not mutually exclusive
This is not apathy. This is not disengagement. This is a generation insisting that empathy and security are not mutually exclusive and unwilling to abandon the possibility of a political resolution.
I know this not only from the numbers, though they certainly speak for themselves. As the director of IPF Atid, the national young professionals network of Israel Policy Forum, I live it every single day. I meet young, post-college Jews who are desperately seeking spaces that delve into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with empathy, depth and nuance. They’re looking for a community that envisions what Israel’s future can truly be and equips them with the tools to build that future, instead of growing complacent and accepting conflict as a given. We are filling this void every single day.
While younger Jews are not immune to the disillusionment with two states, and with tropes about working towards peace, they are also not willing to accept a state of Israel that remains perpetually in conflict. IPF Atid brings them to Israel and the West Bank to meet with Israelis and Palestinians, amplifying the voices of those who share our vision of a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel, as well as self-determination for both peoples.
Similarly, we host regular programming in our eight chapters across North America with volunteer boards that engage young Jews (and non-Jews) across the political and religious divides in our community who are eager for in-depth, nuanced conversations on Israel and real steps that can keep our vision alive.
The growing disillusionment that the institutional world and the older generation of American Jews have with the two-state outcome is not merely a reaction to the current political climate. It reflects something far more corrosive: a deep cynicism about whether Israel can ever resolve its most daunting existential challenge - the conflict with the Palestinians. That cynicism is not only a disservice to Israelis. It is, inadvertently, an abandonment of Zionism itself.
Zionism demands visionaries. The very notion of a sovereign Jewish state - secure, democratic and thriving - was fantastical until it wasn’t. It required leaders who believed in shaping reality, not merely responding to it. The early Zionist movement did not wait for the world to tell them their aspirations were “realistic.” They acted because they saw a future that did not yet exist.
My grandfather bravely promoted Zionist ideals in Tehran, ultimately landing himself on death row, but continuing on to smuggle Jewish Iraqi children into the British Mandate of Palestine because he knew that the Zionist dream would wait for no one. (A Jewish family bribed the Shah for his release.)
And today, contrary to the fatalism voiced in so much of our communal discourse, steps toward that future do exist. If you want to understand the many policy steps needed to draw the two-state outcome closer to a reality, look no further than Israel Policy Forum’s policy report on Palestinian Authority reform, or the 20-point plan for Gaza that President Donald Trump presented, a plan that the U.N. Security Council has endorsed. Crucially, the UN resolution includes a conditional path to Palestinian self-determination, tied to institutional reform, security guarantees and international oversight.
During the Sapir debate, there was a troubling underlying assumption in the room that the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is out of our hands. But for those of us for whom Zionism is the north star, we cannot allow the fate of Israel’s security, stability and democracy to be an afterthought.
The issue here is not a lack of ideas, it is a lack of vision. The ethos of the state of Israel is “If you will it, it is no dream.” Intelligence-sharing between the IDF and Egypt was a dream. Flights between Tel Aviv and Dubai were a dream. An Israeli embassy in Amman was a dream.
The Jewish people are dreamers, and through those dreams we have willed into existence an Israel that is powerful and wildly successful in its endeavors. These successes didn’t happen because they were “realistic.” They emerged because Israeli and global leadership made deliberate decisions to pursue them, and because the Jewish people have always been willing to imagine futures that others could not.
As my Israel Policy Forum colleague Michael Koplow argued at the Sapir debate, if you had asked the same community leaders 50 years ago whether peace with Egypt was “realistic,” they would have laughed. These milestones came to be because courageous leaders and ordinary Jews alike dared to imagine, and then acted.
Zionism is fundamentally about having an active, intentional vision for the future of the Jewish people. It does not mean we can unilaterally determine what that future will look like; it means we cannot abdicate the responsibility to shape it.
This is why my generation (and younger!) refuses to accept that an Israel permanently in conflict is inevitable. To us, giving up on the possibility of a political resolution is not pragmatism; it is surrender. And surrender is not aligned with Zionist values. Amidst their peers who are chanting “death to Israel”, our young professionals are demonstrating that true investment in a peaceful future requires forward-looking pragmatism that leans in, not away from, Israel.
With 67% of young American Jews indicating that Israel’s actions often conflict with their moral, political and Jewish values, there is a risk of them disengaging entirely if our Jewish institutions don’t grapple with these values and more seriously engage in ways to advance our shared values inside Israel. By abandoning a push towards peace, Jewish institutions risk turning these conflicted young people into more than the small percentage (15%) of young (18-49) American Jews who do not believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.
If the current leadership of our community gives up on pursuing a vision for Israel’s future that is grounded in security, sovereignty, and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike, then it falls to young Jews to do so ourselves. We must reclaim the audacity that built the state in the first place. If we will it, it is no dream.