Landing in Israel this week, it was no longer a novelty to be greeted by the hostage posters adorning the arrival corridor as now the yellow ribbons and giant signs with the all too familiar faces of those abducted by Hamas and still rotting in a Gazan dungeon somewhere fade into the background of Israeli reality. On day 6 of the war, few imagined that 400 days later, we would still be chanting “Bring Them Home” and that this war would become a thing to which one would need to become accustomed. We must acknowledge what has changed as we mark day 406 of this war. One might think that PM Netanyahu’s lack of strategy or endgame vision for this war would somehow disqualify him or prove that he is unfit to serve in this challenging moment. However, his power seems to be solidifying as he no longer has a Defense Minister who will publicly stand up to him. As journalist Barak Ravid said this week to an audience at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, Netanyahu seems more resigned to allowing Jewish settlement of Gaza than prioritizing the return of the remaining 101 hostages. What has changed in the last week and a half since the U.S. elections is the solidifying of an unholy alliance among powerful players and dangerous ideologies of those in Israel and the newly appointed members of President-elect Trump’s future administration. While many of us continue to be shocked by one ridiculous Trump appointment after the other, allow me to focus on those who will directly affect the U.S.-Israel relationship. Allow the suspense to go no further as we learn of the appointment of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical Christian and pastor and longtime ally of the settler movement and a supporter of West Bank annexation, as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This could not be better news for the messianic  Kahanist leaders Itamar Ben Givr and Betzlalel Smotrich, who openly push their agenda of West Bank annexation, Jewish resettlement of Gaza, and transfer of Palestinians. Israel already has its most pro-settler government in history, and some on the Israeli right now hope Trump’s second administration will be the most pro-settler ever. In 2019, Huckabee said that he personally believed Israel had the right to annex parts of the West Bank, which is why we should be concerned. If that isn’t enough, we learned exactly one week ago that Netanyahu announced the appointment of American-born (from Scranton, Pennsylvania) Prof. Yechiel Leiter as Israel’s next Ambassador to the United States. Leiter, who will assume office the same day as Trump, is a longtime activist for settlement expansion, a Kohelet policy forum insider, and a longtime critic of the Oslo Accords and Two State Solution. Leiter sadly lost his son Moshe in a battle in the Northern Gaza Strip in November of 2023 (PM Netanyahu told the story of the fallen soldier during his speech to the US Congress in July, noting the presence of Leiter in the audience). Never have two diplomats in charge of the U.S.-Israel relationship had such openly pro-annexationist world views. Moreover, Trump also announced the appointment of businessman and close friend Steve Witkoff as the U.S. Envoy to the Middle East. While Witkoff is a real estate magnate known for his pro-Israel positions, he has no diplomatic experience, nor does he bring any particular experience in Middle East politics. I will leave the rest of Trump’s list of deplorable appointments for others to comment. Still, I will mention the highly problematic appointment of former Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General because of, among a long list of offenses, being blatantly antisemitic. Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt denounced Gaetz’s “long history of trafficking in antisemitism — from explaining his vote against the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act by invoking the centuries-old trope that Jews killed Jesus, to defending the Great Replacement Theory, and inviting a Holocaust denier as his 2018 State of the Union guest.” These are indeed scary times. Those who voted for Donald Trump under the guise that he would be “good for Israel” must take into consideration the geopolitical dangers of annexationist policies that will no doubt be advanced by this unholy alliance of diplomats and power brokers. (For a more thorough guide and analysis of de jure annexation, see Israel Policy Forum’s explainer here.) This all comes during a week in which we read about Avraham’s great moral example of speaking truth to power: חָלִלָה לְּךָ מֵעֲשֹׂת  כַּדָּבָר הַזֶּה לְהָמִית צַדִּיק עִם־רָשָׁע וְהָיָה כַצַּדִּיק כָּרָשָׁע חָלִלָה לָּךְ הֲשֹׁפֵט כׇּל־הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט׃ (בראשית יח:כה) “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”(Genesis 18:25) More and more Israelis are internalizing the reality of Gaza, in which about 80% of Hamas has been eliminated, and along with that, many thousands of Palestinians, including women and children and non-combatants, have been killed. Israel will have to deal with the failure to return its people from captivity but will also need to reckon with the death of many thousands of Palestinians. As MK Rabbi Gilad Kariv shared with us this week, “Netanyahu’s government needs to have both a military strategy for ending the war and a moral strategy in examining the damage taking place in Gaza.” While it is not easy to be optimistic these days, let us take solace and celebrate that today, seven new Israeli rabbis were ordained on the campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. They will now join their Israeli Reform colleagues in serving more than 50 Reform congregations, synagogues, institutions, and communities throughout Israel.  Their ordination and work in Israeli society as liberal religious leaders serve as a reminder of the evolution of the Zionist dream of creating ‘new Jews’ and a new Judaism building on the prior success of the Zionist enterprise working to forge an Israeli society that thoughtful, open, liberal, pluralistic, and egalitarian. They and all our partners throughout Israeli civil society will continue to serve as a staunch contrast to the unholy alliance of those in power.  May we raise their voices and their stories and wish them much success.   Shabbat Shalom from Tel Aviv!