In the late 1950s, the case of Oswald Rufeisen made headlines in Israel. Also known as Brother Daniel, Rufeisen was born and raised as a Polish Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a Carmelite friar.

He was active in the anti-Nazi resistance, saving hundreds of Jews and leading the resistance in the Mir Ghetto. In 1959, Rufeisen arrived in Israel and applied for citizenship under the Law of Return. Due to his conversion to and practice of Catholicism, the case went to the Israeli Supreme Court. Rufeisen always considered himself a Jew.

In his words, “My ethnic origin is and always will be Jewish. I have no other nationality. If I am not a Jew, what am I? I did not accept Christianity to leave my people. I added it to my Judaism. I feel as a Jew.”

The Supreme Court disagreed. According to the court, Rufeisen was not a Jew. Justice Moshe Landau, writing for the majority and, in his words, expressing “the instinct of the overwhelming majority of Jews today,” argued that “an apostate cuts himself off from his national past,” “no longer shares a common fate with the Jewish people,” and “erects a barrier against any future identification with the Jewish people…”

I thought about this famous case last week when I saw a full-page ad in The New York Times signed by 350 rabbis and a smattering of Jewish celebrities. The ad opposed President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Gazan civilians with the screaming banner “Jewish People Say NO to Ethnic Cleansing.”

While questioning Trump’s plan is legitimate, the motivation behind this ad goes far deeper than the immediate issue of either the feasibility or legality of the idea. The ad was organized by a group called In Our Name.

According to their website, the group is “committed to using our financial resources and connections to mobilize material solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian self-determination.” The site also proudly displays pictures of demonstrators calling to “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” and “No to Apartheid.”

Never mind the criminal denial to Gazan civilians of the basic human right to seek asylum from a war zone. Or that there has never been a Palestinian nation and therefore they have no right to “self-determination” in the Land of Israel. The fact is that the majority of Israelis support Trump’s plan to encourage the emigration and relocation of Gazans.

As the father of a number of IDF combat soldiers who have been on the front lines in this war, the claim of genocide coming from Jewish leaders is particularly jarring. Do these Jewish “leaders” really believe that our sons and daughters are committing war crimes?

For most Israelis, the primary lesson of October 7 is that there will not be peace so long as we live side by side with a population governed and educated by leaders who advocate for the destruction of Israel.

We realize that the simple goal of living in peace and security in our homeland is incompatible with an independent Palestinian Arab state. That is why not a single Jewish member of Knesset opposed a resolution in July rejecting calls for a two-state solution.

Yet, this past December, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, and the ADL doubled down on support for a Palestinian state. In the words of Jason Isaacson, AJC’s chief policy and political affairs officer, “The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, indigenous to both Jews and Arabs, cannot be the exclusive domain of one people but must be shared.” Indigenous to both Jews and Arabs?

Is Mr. Isaacson unaware that Arabs did not migrate to the Land of Israel and the rest of the Levant until centuries after the Jews arrived here? But of course, this has nothing to do with history. Isaacson and the In Our Name crowd are not concerned with facts.

What matters to them is the “indigenous rights” of Palestinians, at the expense of the well-being of the Jewish people in our homeland. Which brings us back to Brother Daniel.

Despite saving Jews from the Nazis and fighting in the underground, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that his Christian faith meant he “no longer shares a common fate” with the Jewish people.

Justice Landau captured the “instinct of the overwhelming majority of Jews” in declaring that an apostate cuts himself off from his national past.

Today, post-October 7, that same instinct burns with searing clarity. These American Jewish leaders – who slander our soldiers as genocidal while Hamas celebrates its butchery, who champion Palestinian ‘indigenous rights’ while spitting on 3,000 years of Jewish history, who demand a Palestinian state while our children fight to prevent another massacre – have committed an apostasy far graver than Brother Daniel’s.

He at least risked his life to save Jews. They, in their cushioned Manhattan offices and progressive synagogues, brandish their Jewishness as a weapon against their own people. They have not just, to use Justice Landau’s words, “cut themselves off from their national past” – they have made themselves willing accomplices in the delegitimization of Jewish self-defense.

Their betrayal goes beyond misguided politics or a naive desire for peace. While Jewish blood still stains the earth of southern Israel, they have chosen to stand with those who spilled it.

They have forfeited not only their right to speak in our name but their place among our people. Let them take their “solidarity” elsewhere – the Jewish people will survive without them, as we have survived all those who betrayed us before.

** This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post