Avidan Freedman

Rabbi Avidan Freedman is an educator at the Shalom Hartman Institute's high school and post-high school program, and an activist who founded Yanshoof, an organization dedicated to establishing moral limits for Israeli weapons exports. Learn more at www.yanshoof.org

Israeli settlers next to a fire amid clashes with Palestinians during olive harvest in Abu Falah near Ramallah in the West Bank, October 16, 2026.

Support Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank? First stop settler violence - opinion

The army has the responsibility, as the current sovereign in the territory, to protect Palestinians and enable them to live their lives.

NOVEMBER 10, 2026

Israelis block road 531 while attending a protest calling for the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, August 26, 2025.

‘Bring Them Home’: Why Israel is responsible to bring the hostages back - opinion

The hostage movement calls on Israel to bring the hostages home because the government is responsible for making decisions that prolonged the war instead of prioritizing the hostages.

AUGUST 27, 2025

FROM HIS first day on the job, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid sought to make a clean break with past policy.

A different take on the NSO Group affair - opinion

The recent NSO affair is an opportunity for the Foreign Affairs Ministry to prove its strategic value and to chart a new course by introducing ethical dimensions into Israeli foreign policy.

JANUARY 22, 2022

Our friendship with dictators reflects weakness, not strength

When the lonely, embattled, socially isolated kid in the playground realizes that if he curries favor with the playground bullies he will be safe, he does so out of weakness, not out of strength.

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Chad President Idriss Déby

Extending my hand to Africans in Israel

Horror stories from the visa office were peppered with the darkest gallows humor. As far as jokes go, I told them, you’re officially Jewish now.

JANUARY 23, 2018

An African refugee in south Tel Aviv wears a T-shirt with a Hebrew phrase referring to the Holocaust: “I promise to remember... and never forget!”

Jonathan Pollard and the sin of the metzora

Pollard is no saint.

APRIL 25, 2013