Naomi Chazan is an Israeli Jew of considerable standing. A former member of Knesset and leader of the leftish Meretz party, she has also endorsed J Street in the U.S. In this important piece, she offers the shocking news that Israel has abandoned democracy. It’s in the Jerusalem Post. Is Chazan right? Are American Jews likely to abandon a racist Israel? Well, they certainly won’t so long as this news appears in Israel and not in the United States. And when that news does come here, say with Max Blumenthal’s video, everyone denies it. Below, Chazan says that Blumenthal was spot-on. But the American press is in denial. Chazan:
From the vantage point of the Netanyahu government, the bulk of American Jewry is at odds with its basic precepts. Their identification with Israel no longer extends to unequivocal support for its actions.
The growing rift between these two major Jewish communities is not indicative merely of a disagreement over policy directions. It mirrors far more profound processes taking place in both settings.
In the US, Jews have, time and again, evinced steadfast support for the liberal principles of equality and social justice, which they equate with their Jewish heritage as well as with universal values. These binding norms have helped to fuse their collective identity and continually guide their outlooks and their behavior. Concern for the downtrodden, the disempowered and the other has become central to the Jewish ethic in the US. As Darren Pinsker so skillfully demonstrated in these pages just last weekend ("Obama and the Jewish vote"), most Jews in the US consistently adhere to social-democratic precepts domestically and to dovish positions internationally. These views are an inextricable part of their makeup as Jewish citizens of the US.
Trends in Israel point in quite different directions. As more Jews outside Israel – in Europe and Latin America as well as in North America – have internalized the democratic ethos, those in Israel appear to be disengaging from its roots. Six decades of independent achievement are increasingly being clouded by the acceleration of socioeconomic inequalities, the prevalence of discrimination among Jews of different backgrounds (shamelessly brought to the fore by the effort to exclude pupils of Ethiopian origin from some religious schools in Petah Tikva), the systemically unequal treatment of Arab citizens as well as continuing rule over another people, with all that this entails.
THE ISRAEL Democracy Institute’s annual Democracy Index released barely a month ago uncovers an alarming rise in intolerance, bigotry and outright racism which flies in the face of basic democratic principles. A dangerous combination of religious formalism and unfettered patriotism, coupled with an almost inexplicable attachment to neoconservative doctrines, has narrowed Jewish horizons in Israel and threatens to erode its egalitarian foundations.
