Posted on August 15, 2025
“As someone who deeply loves Israel, I worry that we are still stuck in a mindset as if today is October 8, 2023—and it isn’t.”
I’m Adam Magnus. I was a Bronfman Fellow in 1996. I’m originally from New Orleans, Louisiana and after college lived in Washington DC for many years where I met my wife Laura and our three daughters were born. A few years ago we moved back to New Orleans to escape some of the craziness of Washington and to slow down life a little for family.
My family has deep connections to Israel and for both me and my wife it has always been central to our lives. We’ve passed down that connection to our kids and my oldest daughter just returned from a semester at Alexander Muss High School in Israel, where she had a really amazing experience even with everything that’s been going on. In fact, the current situation likely made it more powerful.
For me there’s no question that Israel being on the front pages, and front of mind for so many, has changed what it means to be a Jew in the U.S.
Living in the South during this period has allowed us to face less regular exposure to questions surrounding Israel. Generally speaking we have found the local culture being more rooted in faith and less instinctually political results in people tending to be respectful, even curious, about Judaism. So while it’s certainly been a stressful time to be a Jew and someone who cares about Israel, and we are constantly talking about it with family, friends and throughout my work, to an extent we have avoided the level of pressures we might have faced had we still been in DC, or in places with more cosmopolitan populations.
I make television ads for Democratic campaigns, working with candidates across the country—from mayors to governors to senators to presidential races.
I’m proud to be a Democrat and wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m also proud to be a Jew and to support Israel and that’s never going to change. I deeply believe the values of my religion are what drive me to do this work; they always have. But the last two years have certainly brought more questions to the table and resulted in Israel being more front and center to my professional life.
The truth is people across the political spectrum have used Israel, the Jewish people and the atrocities of the conflict to advance their own agendas. That’s not unique to the U.S.; I believe the same is true in Israeli politics and many other places around the world.
In the days after October 7th, like many, I was alarmed by how many people instinctively expressed how they saw Israel, and to some degree Jews. Within the familiar framework of oppressed vs. oppressor, it was apparent that many viewed us as oppressors. There was debate about whether anti-Zionism or anti-Israel rhetoric was inherently antisemitic. At the time, I leaned toward believing it often was antisemitic—and I still do feel this way regarding those who expressed such views shortly after the attack. This was especially true when people, even after Hamas’s actions, still aligned with or excused the violent actions of terrorists, which, at the very least, felt facially antisemitic. But nearly two years later, after everything that has happened, I think it’s become more understandable to see people who distinguish between anti-Zionist or anti-Israel beliefs based on policy disagreements versus sentiment that’s actually antisemitic.
In a post-October 7th world, conversations like this and infinite other permutations aren’t just occurring during sermons and meetups at our synagogues; they are what’s taking place in candidate forums and debates, on questionnaires for Jewish, pro-Israel and all sorts of interested parties. They come up at fundraisers across the country for incumbents and challengers, and they are discussed in mind-numbing detail on conference call after conference call after conference call.
As someone known by colleagues to have a personal connection to Israel and knowledge of what is going on, I have sometimes been called upon to help guide these conversations. Sometimes this has been a privilege; others, it has frankly been difficult.
From where we sit today, I believe Jews and the state of Israel are paying a price for what we far too frequently turn into a simple binary conversation. The reflexiveness of some to assume that any questioning of Israeli government decisions is anti-Israel or antisemitic is counterproductive in the complex world we live in, especially as so many seek to manipulate how information is consumed and interpreted. We can’t just see people as either our best “friends” who understand the truth or “enemies” who are fundamentally flawed. To view everyone through this black-and-white lens is to literally give up individual reason, and to decide that it is the obligation of Jews to 100% of the time be behind the government of Israel no matter what they do is, to a large extent, illogical.
I’d never argue that Netanyahu or the Israeli government should make decisions based on how they believe they will affect Jews outside Israel; that’s not their job. By the same token, I believe as American Jews we have the ability, and maybe even the responsibility, to participate in a more deliberate and thoughtful discussion and evaluation of all that is taking place. One where we listen better and ask for the same in return from those with different perspectives; where we can objectively evaluate the decisions of the Israeli government, and have the ability to distinguish between our love and connection to the country and always agreeing with its leader, just as we can here in America.
That does not mean that there shouldn’t be certain standards we can hold to be true. For instance, as Jews I don’t think it’s too much to expect that anyone running for office—or anyone period—should be able to acknowledge that Israel is a Jewish state that has a right to exist, and should be able to clearly condemn hateful rhetoric or calls for violence against us or any group. At the same time, though, I think it’s fair to hope that everyone, no matter their perspective, should be able to speak out against children starving and question anyone who in any way is causing starvation to take place.
But the current black-versus-white framework often doesn’t even allow for simple beliefs like these to coexist. And while the large majority of Americans likely agree on all of this, you’d never know it from the American press coverage, from the hateful discourse on both sides online or how American politicians and interested parties frame the conversation.
While we cannot control how other people act, we can call for more thoughtfulness in how we approach this discussion.
Under the paradigm we’re currently living in, too often in pursuit of trying to identify our friends we have an expectation that they must ignore the reality of what they are plainly seeing with their own eyes, yet when we seek to label our enemies we understandably are incensed that they don’t see what we obviously do with ours. That’s wrong.
As someone who deeply loves Israel, I worry that we are still stuck in a mindset as if today is October 8, 2023—and it isn’t. That doesn’t mean we can ever forget what happened, or who caused it to happen, or stop demanding the release of the hostages, but to move forward and rebuild a sense of shared trust and support for Israel, we need a more measured and complex discussion than what is currently taking place. If that’s not a conversation we’re willing to have, we’re going to be the ones who suffer, and the longer we delay, the harder it will become.
