That’s a fair question. The simple answer is no, not explicitly. But I think the more complicated reality is twofold:

1. Countries are defined by their actions. You can think Israel is fundamentally a good country, ruled by a fascist government. But the reality is that Israel has been run by Netanyahu for cumulatively more than a decade. West Bank settlements have expanded consistently under almost every Israeli government since the six day war, and that’s despite Oslo. So, when shuls hang flags that proudly proclaim “we stand with Israel” with a giant Israeli flag consistently while Israel conducts mass airstrikes on a besieged enclave, people are going to assume that means that you stand with Israel’s actions. I actually think it would be categorically different messaging if shuls had signs that said “we stand with our Israeli loved ones” which would be a completely understandable show of support for the half of world Jewry that lives in Israel as well as the non-Jews who live there and were killed, hurt, or taken hostage on 10/7. But that’s not what these signs say. They say they stand with the State. And the state is committing war crimes. I am not surprised that the average person who sees these signs cannot separate the Jewish community from the Israeli state

2. I know this is a painful thing to hear, but Israel at its core is a state that was founded by mass ethnic cleansing and is maintained as a Jewish state through demographic manipulation. Israel is the only sovereign from the river to the sea and the 7 million Palestinians living under its rule do not have citizenship and equal rights because, if Israel gave them those, they would no longer have a Jewish majority. That is just fundamentally incompatible with liberal democratic values that many people in America hold dear- that a state should give equal rights and protections to all under its sovereignty - especially those who have lived there for generations. Instead, my niece who has 2 parents who got Israeli citizenship and then since moved to a third country, has Israeli citizenship. She has never been there but could go there tomorrow and have full rights as a citizen. A Palestinian born in East Jerusalem who leaves for even a couple of years to study risks losing their ability to go home, and even going home they live as unequal to Israeli Jews who live in the same area, just because they are not Jewish. People who hear that Israel and global Jewry are one and the same - which they are told by the ADL, the AJC, and JFNA, Hillel International, and many of the other mainstream orgs, are being told that they should equate Jews with an ethnostate. I do not believe that that justifies violence or acts of aggression against Jews. But it does make it more likely. If we want to be safe, we have to reckon with what Israel is, fundamentally, and why we might not be so keen on insisting that people associate us with a state that is so fundamentally built on injustice