It is interesting that when push comes to shove, liberal Zionists will side with rightwingers (Jeremy Ben-Ami will fall into the arms of Jeffrey Goldberg) rather than break bread with non-Zionists and anti-Zionists and Palestinian solidarity types and realists. In the end, their concern for the Israeli state and its continuance trumps their concern for justice. The dynamic is illustrated here in a piece by Israeli Assaf Sagiv where he places leftwingers, anarchists, anti-Zionists outside of Israeli society, the other side of a "chasm." It is a form of excommunication. And thus, there is no chasm between Sagiv’s imagined left and Avigdor Lieberman. In the end the concern for the Jewish collective trumps the universalist impulse that drives, say, Emily Henochowicz, the young idealistic Jews, who do not see the Jewish state as a necessary response to anti-Semitism.
This is an unfortunate dynamic. I hope it breaks down. And I think it will, but when? J Street will inevitably endorse Divestment from the occupied territories and have an art exhibit by Emily Henochowicz and try and work with Steve Walt and other realists, even Palestinian solidarity types. But it seems like a long ways off.
