War was on the horizon for Little Tel Aviv and the quaint Arizona pseudo-nation-state of New Israel. It began, as modern wars often do, with an email.
“Years ago, I gave twenty bucks to some Jewish political group asking for donations,” said Naomi Yazzie-Goldstein, Rabbi Yaz’s wife. “It was for a congressional candidate who wanted to legalize medical marijuana. I was in the middle of chemo at the time, so I said sure.”
“I also gave them my email and number.” Naomi grimaced. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”
Naomi was stunned when she first read the subject line, written in all caps: !!!URGENT!!! NEW ISRAEL IS A CRITICAL THREAT TO JEWISH SELF-DETERMINATION
The email came from AIPAC, the influential pro-Israel lobbying organization, and included a twelve-page briefing, also titled in all caps: NEW ISRAEL IS JUST OLD BLOOD LIBEL
Three of those twelve pages specifically targeted Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein as the ideological head of a supposed New Israel hate group.
The message was distributed to countless congressional offices, cable-news producers, university trustees, and celebrities with unusually forceful opinions on where Americans should buy their hummus. Public figures who failed to open it received polite follow-up calls from advocates offering gentle reminders.
Members of Congress received Senator John Fetterman.
“No, I mean he literally kicked down my door,” claimed Senator Cory Booker. “Ripped it straight off the hinges and started screaming that Israel was under attack. I thought Iran had launched another missile strike.”
The PDF functioned as both a talking-points memo and an informal marching order for pro-Israel politicians and commentators. It accused New Israel of practicing “an insidious new form of hatred in which New Israeli Jews launder violent antisemitism through their Jewish identities, peaceful conduct, and ordinary participation in Jewish life.”
“Simply by existing as a Jew, I am spreading hatred,” Yazzie-Goldstein said, shaking his head. “Intersectionality, I understand. White fragility? I read the book. Internalized racism and misogyny? Those are things. But this?”
He smacked the printed briefing against his palm. “This is meshugganah on an epistemological level. ‘I think, therefore I am antisemitic.’”
He took a long, frustrated breath. “And people bought it.”
Within days, New Israel became a fixture of cable news. Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a recipient of more than $1.5 million in AIPAC-affiliated campaign contributions, called it “an antisemitic Jewish enclave.” A former Clinton adviser described Rabbi Yaz’s synagogue as “a cult preaching radical Judaism, which is essentially radical Islam on bath salts.”
Fox News reduced the controversy to a chyron: WOKE DESERT JEWS BETRAY GOOD DESERT JEWS
Genuine American Voices, an Israeli-owned social-media consulting firm, quietly began offering influencers such as Tim Pool and Laura Loomer five thousand dollars for each anti-New Israel post. Although the influencers denied receiving payments, much of their content appeared to have been copied directly from the AIPAC briefing. More than a few seemed to have walked away with the wrong message.
“The new antisemite celebrates Passover, y’all,” warned one former Fox News blonde turned trad-wife influencer. “They use kosher salt. Really, we need to start keeping an eye on all the Jews, okay? You never know which one might secretly be an antisemite.”
Ben Shapiro grew so worked up predicting that New Israel would lead to “an AOC-DNC-DEI Kristallnacht” that he had to pause his livestream and check his blood pressure.
Rabbi Yazzie-Goldstein took to the airwaves to defend his town, but he proved ill-equipped to navigate the rhetorical minefield now surrounding him.
When accused of antisemitism, he stubbornly replied, “No, I’m Jewish,” or, “You do know I’m a rabbi, right? Can somebody make sure the thing at the bottom of the screen says I’m a rabbi?” He then appeared genuinely bewildered when none of those statements proved satisfactory.
His comment, “I wouldn’t even joke that I’m a self-hating Jew,” was immediately seized upon by AIPAC chief executive Elliot Brandt on CNN.
“Why wouldn’t you joke about it?” Brandt demanded during a split-screen interview. “Because you believe Jews should hate themselves for supporting Israel, right? Because you hate Israel. You’re a Jew-hating Jew Jew from a Jew-hating Jewish town!”
Yazzie-Goldstein looked off-camera toward a producer. “Did he just call me a ‘Jew-hating Jew Jew’?”
He fared no better when asked about his broader politics, failing to understand that every offhand remark would be converted into an official mission statement for the entire community. An MSNBC clip in which he casually said, “New Israel was proudly built on socialist ideals,” fueled a week of right-wing coverage connecting the supposedly antisemitic rabbi to the network’s usual catalog of socialist terrors.
His worst appearance came during an interview with Wolf Blitzer.
“Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” Blitzer asked.
“I believe New Israel has a right to exist and, more importantly, that we have the right to be left alone,” Yazzie-Goldstein replied, playing for a laugh he did not receive.
Blitzer remained stony-faced. “So you don’t believe Israel has a right to exist.”
“What? No,” Yazzie-Goldstein blustered. “I never said that.”
“Then answer the question. Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?”
What followed was four painful seconds of silence as Yazzie-Goldstein went perfectly still. He blinked three times, then said with sudden conviction, “I believe Patrick Mahomes may have lost a step after that knee surgery. Let’s talk about that.”
Sociologist and media critic Paul Danno, no relation, argued that the attack on New Israel had less to do with politics than wounded national mythology.
“Israel’s perceived value comes from being singular,” Danno explained. “In its own creation myth, it is the Jewish state, built by the chosen people in their chosen land. You cannot simply have some of the chosen people choose some other land over there. Cognitively, the whole structure begins to collapse.”
Danno described the resulting panic as a kind of national ego death.
“You cannot build a national identity around being a miracle, then casually downgrade yourself to merely another state. If Israel is merely another state, it can be judged, discredited, abandoned, or replaced. And within the Zionist imagination, if Israel is abandoned, nobody will be left to protect the Jews.”
Danno sighed. “So when hardcore Zionists look at New Israel, they do not see a small Jewish community celebrating Pride Month. They see the opening scene of the next Holocaust.”
He bobbed his head and admitted, “I know that makes no rational sense. But if you’re thinking rationally, you’re not thinking like a hardcore Zionist.”
Two weeks after the New Israel talking points circulated, President Trump joined the controversy and appeared to reveal the private reasoning behind them.
“Bibi is very concerned,” Trump said. “Very concerned. He tells me, ‘Mr. Trump, Old Israel has Palestinians, New Israel has Indians, basically the same situation.’ But the hippies are getting along. They’ve shot nobody. Zero bombs. Not one. They’re just singing ‘Kumbaya, My Lord,’ and Bibi says it makes them look very bad.”
Netanyahu later clarified that he had merely warned of “a dangerous precedent in which Jews appear capable of living securely alongside another displaced population without reducing them to a permanent security problem.”
“Israel has a right to exist,” Netanyahu added, “regardless of how many people must cease existing to preserve that right.”
In a meager attempt to put out the fire, the town council issued a statement explaining that New Israel was not a foreign nation or political movement. It had no radical ideology or competing theological claim on the Holy Land. The town was simply a municipality in Arizona with award-winning heirloom tomatoes and a semi-regular arts-and-crafts fair.
This only deepened suspicion.
“Why are they so defensive?” asked Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, and recipient of $1,495,709 AIPAC dollars, on the floor of Congress. “If New Israel has nothing to hide, why does it keep insisting it’s just a town? I move that a special committee be formed to uncover the truth.”
The proposal was seconded and passed within the week.
AIPAC-backed politicians began issuing subpoenas and launching investigations into New Israel’s finances, school curriculum, land agreement, agricultural permits, water usage, and suspicious importation of frozen shellfish.
“I said we were a majority-Jewish town. I never said we were all good Jews,” Rabbi Yaz joked during a televised congressional committee hearing. “Even I get a little tempted looking at a shrimp cocktail.”
“Is it true you operate a camp for Jewish children?” Senator Slotkin asked during her allotted five minutes.
The rabbi nodded. “Yes. Our youth summer camp.”
Slotkin leaned into her microphone. “Let the record show that Mr. Yazzie-Goldstein has confirmed they are taking children away from their parents and concentrating them inside a camp.”
The rabbi wagged his finger. “No, no, no, no. I see what you did there. It’s a very nice camp. It has excellent Yelp reviews.”
Slotkin continued. “The Anti-Defamation League has identified New Israel as one of the fastest-growing centers of antisemitic activity in the United States. Do you deny that?”
“Yes,” Yazzie-Goldstein replied.
Slotkin then bent down and retrieved what was intended to be her coup de grâce.
“That’s interesting, because my aides recently visited your town and found several gift shops brazenly selling Nazi paraphernalia.”
A murmur passed through the hearing room as the senator dramatically unfurled a traditional Navajo blanket.
“I count no fewer than thirty-two swastikas on this blanket alone. How do you explain that?”
Yazzie-Goldstein stared at her. “Do you people ever Google anything? No, really. Can somebody use the Google?”
When they refused to “use the Google,” he stubbornly explained that the sacred whirling-log symbol had been part of Navajo culture for thousands of years before the rise of Nazi Germany.
“It’s a Navajo symbol. It has been used by cultures all over the world since practically forever. Frankly, if we’re banning symbols because people put them on their flags and did something monstrous, I’d be more worried about the Star of David.”
A murmur rose from the gallery. Rabbi Yaz’s attorney nudged him sharply.
“That is not a suggestion,” Yazzie-Goldstein added. “Please, God, don’t make this a thing.”
Fox News made it a thing for the next two weeks, repeating the allegation until much of its audience believed the Star of David had been banned inside Little Tel Aviv and every wall in town was covered in swastikas.
Trump inevitably dubbed the community “Nazi Israel” in a long, freewheeling Truth Social post. He also claimed New Israel was where “Nasty” Pelosi and Adam “Shifty” Schiff had buried “probably millions and millions” of Arizona ballots during the 2020 election, a state Trump lost by just under eleven thousand votes.
The chaotic days that followed saw every imaginable species of political lunatic descend upon the town.
“We had guys in red MAGA hats digging holes with tractors, breaking water mains and fiber-optic lines, looking for missing ballots,” said Sheriff Pam ‘with the Bum Knee’ Andrews-Edelstein. “They were bad, but the Bible-thumpers were worse because they brought the cows.”
The first convoy of evangelical Christians pulled into Little Tel Aviv on a Thursday afternoon with a livestock trailer containing two large orange cows. They had driven from Texas after learning that New Israel’s Torah-themed miniature-golf course offered a replica Mount Sinai, a miniature Temple of Jerusalem, and a Holiday Inn Express within walking distance.
“For years, Christians have had to fly halfway around the world to fulfill the prophecy foretold in Revelation,” explained Pastor Dwayne Mercer of the Holy Fire of Danger Christ Church in Lubbock. “Now we can kick off the Rapture and be home by Monday.”
Ari Yazzie-Goldstein, the rabbi’s eldest son and partial owner of Tiny Holy Land, said he found the group attempting to construct a sacrificial altar beside the miniature Temple.
“I told them, ‘Stop or I’m calling the cops,’ and I guess they heard, ‘Start the apocalypse before he calls the cops.’ They opened the back of the trailer, and, well…”
Ari shuddered. “That’s when I discovered they had brought two fully grown bulls because nobody in the church knew what a heifer was.”
Five church members were hospitalized with broken bones and internal injuries.
“I guess that was God’s way of saying you can’t half-ass the apocalypse,” Pastor Mercer later explained.
Then came the Israeli activists.
Rabbi Yaz gestured towards the makeshift barricade on the hill, surrounding the yurt lodgings. For the past day and a half, the protest group had taken to blasting Chumbawamba on repeat in an act of psychological warfare.
“Those kids… Those… fakakta…” The rabbi struggled to find the words.
“Goddamn shithead kids,” Sheriff Pam supplied.
“I still can’t believe my eyes!” Rabbi Yazzie shouted. “That’s a settlement! They built an illegal Israeli settlement right in the middle of town!”
TO BE CONTINUED.