Plano City Council Recognizes Holocaust Remembrance Day

Thank you to Mayor John Mums and Plano City Council for recognizing Holocaust Remembrance Day and inviting Rabbi Weinberg to pray at the city council meeting. We are thankful for a mayor and city council that is willing to stand agianst hatred in our community and around the world. Rabbi Weinberg said this weekend,

Interview with Matti Friedman

Q: Do you think the American media is fair in its coverage of Israel?

A: I think media coverage of Israel is fair. I think a lot of media covering Israel are actually not really interested in the complexities of a very small and complicated country in the Middle East, but are actually projecting American ideas onto another place. Often, this results in an oversimplification of a very complex set of issues in Israel.

Israel is in the Middle East; it doesn't reflect American ideas of race or American ideas of the power imbalance that Americans experience in their day-to-day lives. It’s a story about very complicated currents in the Middle East, and Israel is a very small country in one corner of a region that is, unfortunately, awash in conflict.

Some media outlets engage in political activism and try to swing people toward a certain political viewpoint. That’s true on the left and, to some extent, on the right as well. But mainly, American reporters tend to project their own American ideas onto foreign countries, including Israel, and it results in coverage that does not help anyone truly understand what’s happening in the state of Israel.

Q: Can you give an example of how American issues, such as race, are projected onto Israel?

A: One example is the idea that Israelis are somehow white people and Palestinians are somehow linked to African Americans, as if there is an analogy between Israeli Jews in the Middle East and Palestinian Muslims in the Middle East that aligns with civil rights struggles in America.

I understand why race is such a huge issue for Americans. I have spent a lot of time in America and understand why that’s almost the defining issue for many. But if you use that lens to understand a foreign country like Israel, you won’t get anywhere.

The number of Jews in Israel is about 7 million. In the region around Israel, there are about 300 million Arab Muslims. If you zoom out further, you’ll see that in the Islamic world, there are about 2 billion people. Israelis don’t feel like an empowered majority; rather, they feel like an embattled minority in a region where they are outnumbered.

I’m not saying that everything Israel does is just or smart, but it cannot be understood through the racial framework Americans use for their own issues.

Q: One of the big narratives in America is that Israel is an occupying force. How do you respond to that?

A: A lot of terminology used, such as "occupation," carries meanings for Americans that are rooted in their own historical context, like the occupation of Iraq or even Vietnam. This leads to misunderstandings about Israel’s position.

For Jews, Israel is the homeland; it’s where the Jewish people were created. It’s not a colonialist adventure—it’s an attempt to return home and find a place where Jewish people can be safe and express their own culture. So it doesn’t match narratives like the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

There is a military occupation in the West Bank, and that’s a significant issue for Israelis. We debate it all the time—whether it is necessary, what happens if we end it, and what would take its place. These are thorny issues.

However, Americans often don’t grasp the size of Israel. We’re sitting here in Texas, where you can drive for 14 hours and still be in the state. Israel is about seven hours from top to bottom. If we pull out of the West Bank, the border would be about a five-minute walk from my house. There’s no vast desert buffer like Nevada between Israel and its neighbors. The margins for error are very small, and that’s a reality that is hard for Americans to grasp.

Q: What are the biggest myths Americans have about Israel?

A: Americans often imagine Israel to be a kind of mini-America, a superpower with nothing existential to worry about. This makes it hard to understand Israel’s military decisions and fears.

In the Middle East, if you’re a tiny minority—7 million Jews surrounded by 300 million Arab Muslims—it doesn’t feel like America. The experience of an Israeli is not the experience of an American who generally does not have to worry about existential threats.

Israelis feel deeply vulnerable. That feeling is sometimes exaggerated, but sometimes it is very real. The amount of military strength Israel maintains is directly related to this vulnerability. If you’re the smallest kid on the playground, you’d better be the toughest kid on the playground, or you won’t be there for long. That’s how Israelis think, but it doesn’t always translate into American news coverage.

Q: What would help Americans better understand the current situation in Israel?

A: To understand the current state of affairs, Americans need to look at the broader region. There are conflicts in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. These are not isolated events—they are interconnected.

The collapse of stability in the Islamic Middle East over the past few decades has led to the rise of groups like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. If you understand that history, you can see why events like 9/11, terror attacks in Europe, and the Syrian Civil War are all connected.

This context helps in understanding Israel’s decisions. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with all of them, but at least you’ll understand why they happen. If you view Israel in a vacuum without considering the broader regional dynamics, you won’t fully grasp what’s happening.

Q: What are the key factors for peace moving forward?

A: Israelis deeply desire peace. In the past, we believed territorial concessions would lead to peace—giving up land in exchange for stability. That was a very 1990s idea, based on the assumption that democracy and stability were the global norm.

But over the past few decades, we’ve had to confront a different reality. The world is heading toward more chaos, and institutions we thought were stable are cracking. In the Middle East, when you create a power vacuum, it’s not filled with peace or democracy; it’s filled by chaos, by groups like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS.

This has happened repeatedly—in Gaza after Israel withdrew in 2005, in Iraq after the American invasion, and in Libya and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in the Middle East, peace is not something you can expect. At best, you hope for a few years of quiet before the next conflict.

Q: What’s something rarely discussed in media coverage of Israel?

A: One major missing piece is the composition of Israel’s Jewish population. More than half of Jews in Israel came from the Islamic world. While American Jews are mostly of Eastern European descent, Israeli Jews have roots in Morocco, Tunisia, Iran, Kurdistan, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.

This shapes Israel’s culture in profound ways. The food, the humor, and even the outlook on life are different from American Judaism. Many assume Israel is a European implant in the Middle East, but in reality, Israel is deeply connected to the history of the Islamic Middle East. Understanding that makes Israel's story more complex—but also more accurate.