How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? (Hadar Susskind - July 7, 2025)
Hadar Susskind is the President and CEO of New Jewish Narrative.
Alligator Alcatraz. Gaza City. Hostage Square. Texas Hill Country, and wherever the next mass shooting happens. Some days it’s overwhelming. Some days I ask myself, “how can I continue to do this work?”
On Friday, I went to my local 4th of July parade. I’m sure many of you did so as well. But I also know plenty of people who felt that, given our circumstances right now in the U.S., they didn’t feel like they could celebrate. But I went, and I watched as a woman marched in the parade with a sign declaring Langston Hughes’s famous words:
“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.”
America was established as a deeply flawed country. But at its heart was a promise to live up to the high ideals articulated in our Declaration of Independence: We could be a democracy that upholds the rights of all, where it is a self-evident truth that every person was created equal, that every person has inalienable rights.
And even on the 4th of July, Israel, the other country where I have spent years of my life, is never far from my mind. That country too was established as a deeply flawed democracy. While America’s original sin was slavery, Israel’s was the dispossession of the Palestinians followed in 1967 by the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
But Israel too, was born with an articulation of high ideals. Its founding document promises that “it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
We all know that the Israel that exists today falls short of these ideals, and that there have always been very significant shortcomings.
The shift away from these ideals has been strongest since Benjamin Netanyahu came into power in 2009. Instead of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, we saw wars and a decision to prop up Hamas with suitcases of cash. Instead of new basic laws that enshrined individual rights like the two that passed in 1992, he passed the Nation State law, which, among its many faults, discriminates against Israel’s non-Jewish citizens.
So what do I do? What can any of us do when the countries we love are shedding the values we cherish?
Here’s what I did with the rest of my July 4th weekend: I organized.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is set to meet with President Trump at the White House on Monday. We at New Jewish Narrative are organizing a rally at the White House to call for an immediate end to the war, a return of ALL of the hostages, and a rush of humanitarian supplies into Gaza.
When I came home from the parade, I opened my laptop and I started sending out emails. I opened my phone and I started making phone calls. I am doing what I can to make this rally a success, to make it clear that we want this war to end now. And hopefully, this rally can be a part of a push to a ceasefire and, eventually, a peace agreement that can bring Israel closer to those aspirational values that I refuse to let go of.
This Independence Day, I recommitted myself to working to close the gap between the ideals that my two countries were born of, and the painful reality of what they are today. It is hard to take in all that is happening, and to take on the many challenges that we face. But I will not pretend that I just don’t see.