How OZJF thinks about issues
OZJF organizes its advocacy around five issues we believe anchor the current moment: Jewish self-determination, antisemitism, terrorism and extremism, war and civilian protection, and Palestinian governance. These are not five takes; they are five linked questions that a serious U.S.-Israel advocacy organization has to answer with evidence, not slogans. Our editorial posture is level-headed, pro-Israel, pro-civilian, pro-accountability, and allergic to the maximalism that dominates so much commentary on all sides.
We think the quality of advocacy depends on the quality of sourcing. Every claim we make traces to a document: a UN resolution, a congressional report, an IDF investigation, an ADL audit, a peer-reviewed polling series, a primary legal text. That discipline is what distinguishes an issue page from a social feed.
Jewish Self-Determination
Jewish self-determination is the foundational issue. It begins with the recognition that the Jewish people are a people — a nation in the ordinary political sense — and that after two thousand years of statelessness and the Holocaust, the reestablishment of a Jewish state in the historic Jewish homeland is both morally and legally grounded. The 1947 UN Partition Plan (A/RES/181(II)) and Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence provide the diplomatic and legal scaffolding; the Holocaust, as documented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, explains the practical necessity. Criticism of any particular Israeli government does not touch the underlying right.
Antisemitism
Antisemitism is not a metaphor; it is a measurable, lethal, and resurgent form of bigotry. OZJF uses the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as our baseline because it has been adopted by dozens of governments and is sufficiently precise to guide institutional response without suppressing legitimate debate. We track contemporary forms — campus harassment, synagogue violence, conspiracism, anti-Israel rhetoric that slides into anti-Jewish targeting — using the ADL’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents and the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics.
Terrorism and Extremism
Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians to achieve political aims. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the IRGC are all U.S.-designated terrorist organizations on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. OZJF treats terrorism and the ideologies that support it — from jihadist movements to far-right accelerationism — as a coherent threat matrix, not a political talking point. Extremism inside democracies, including in Israel itself, deserves the same scrutiny.
War and Civilian Protection
Israel’s war against Hamas after October 7, 2023 was lawful in origin. The conduct of that war, however, is a separate question, and OZJF insists on taking it seriously. The Congressional Research Service (R47828) tracks humanitarian access, civilian harm, and U.S. policy conditionality. We reject sweeping genocide allegations because they do not meet the specific-intent threshold of the Genocide Convention, while we name documented failures like the April 2024 World Central Kitchen strike, which the IDF itself investigated and disciplined. Civilian protection is not a concession to critics; it is the law of armed conflict and the core of Jewish ethical tradition.
Palestinian Governance
No honest conversation about peace or statehood can skip governance. Gaza and the West Bank are ruled by different factions — Hamas and the Palestinian Authority — with different ideologies and different records. Polling from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that Hamas retains substantial support even after triggering a catastrophic war. The PA has not held national elections since 2006, and under the Taylor Force Act (Pub.L. 115-141) the U.S. has suspended aid tied to the PA’s “martyrs fund,” which pays the families of terrorists. These are not talking points; they are the preconditions for any credible statehood conversation.
How to use these pages
Each issue page distinguishes facts, analysis, and recommendations. Each cites primary sources. None pretends that moral clarity can substitute for documentation. If you are new here, we recommend starting with Jewish Self-Determination, which lays the historical groundwork for the rest, and then reading the issue closest to your own work — policy, campus, media, or community security. The aim is not to hand you talking points but to give you the underlying record.