The new president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, lamented to a leading pro-Israel organization yesterday that many young American Jews are indifferent to “the Jewish collective,” and some are hostile to Israel.
“Some of them, a very small minority, are too willing to accept distorted labels and libels against the Jewish state,” Herzog said in an apparent reference to the growing acceptance of the idea that Israel practices apartheid.
Herzog called on American Jews to defend Israel against anti-Zionists and build “love of Israel.” But he never acknowledged the issues that are alienating American Jews. Herzog never mentioned the word Palestine or Palestinians in his speech. A lot like Israeli PM Naftali Bennett speaking to the U.N. General Assembly last week.
Herzog spoke yesterday to the largest Jewish philanthropic organization in the United States, the Jewish Federations of North America, and bewailed the alienation of young American Jews from Israel:
No matter how we break down the numbers, there is no doubt that being Jewish and love of Israel is becoming a challenging, complex issue for some in the young generation of North American Jews. It is almost too painful to express aloud, but an increasing number of young Jews no longer feel a bond with the Jewish collective. Too many American Jewish youth are disinterested in what being Jewish means and in a complex understanding of the realities and challenges facing Israel. Some of them– a very small minority– are too willing to accept distorted labels and libels against the Jewish state.
By libels and distorted labels, and numbers too painful to discuss, Herzog is obviously referring to the recent poll showing that 38 percent of U.S. Jewish voters under 40 see Israel as an apartheid state, 33 percent see it as committing genocide against Palestinians, and 20 percent say it has no right to exist. (Poll by the Jewish Electoral Institute).
The charge that Israel practices apartheid is endorsed by Human Rights Watch, Rashida Tlaib, and lately Howard Dean. Americans for Peace Now has credited the charge without fully accepting it.
Herzog wants the American Jewish community to push back against these Jews. His “urgent” mission is to end the “solitude and disconnect” between Israel and North American Jews and “strengthen our shared sense of peoplehood.”
I cannot imagine a world in which Israel and North American Jewry are not intimately tied to each other… I cannot imagine a Jewish people who are not responsible for each other, a people whose prayers do not include each other, for whom the axiom of “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh” is hollow [Wikipedia translates this phrase as, “All Israelites are sureties for one another”].
“I cannot imagine a Jewish world vacant of community and solidarity. I cannot imagine a world in which Jews in North America are fearful of living publicly as Jews, and experience attacks and intimidation at times in their colleges and in their synagogue and elsewhere and the Jewish collective as well as Israelis do not feel compelled to act immediately on their behalf. Just as I cannot imagine a world where the existence of Israel is questioned and American Jews do not defend the state of Israel.
The meaning is clear: American Jews must defend Israel from anti-Zionists.
Herzog mentioned “differences of opinion, style and substance” between Israeli and American Jews, but in expressing confidence that these differences could be overcome, he never referred to Israeli rule of Palestinians, and the 54-year-old occupation.
His idea of the Jewish state is that American Jews should see that “Israel is your home away from home.” The “key” to the “Jewish future” is to preserve “the bond of our peoplehood,” Herzog said, and that means more trips to Israel.
“What we call Israel experiences, whether long or short… provide Diaspora Jewry with the real Israel experience of all facets. Teen travel is an important tool that needs to be encouraged. .. [There are] many avenues of promoting connectivity, love for Israel and fact-based understanding.”
Again, Herzog never mentioned the absence of rights for Palestinians under occupation and the second- and third-class status of Palestinians inside Israel. These are the issues that have caused American Jewish alienation.
Herzog is a liberal Zionist hero. He has appeared at J Street on a couple of occasions. Though he has also has said that American Jews are “clueless” about Israel, and said that intermarriage of Jews and non-Jews is a “plague.”
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“Herzog called on American Jews to defend Israel against anti-Zionists and build ‘love of Israel.’
Herzog lives in a fantasy world. Zionism is indefenceable!!
One example of Zionism in action:
Water Justice for Occupied Palestinians is demanded by UN, as Israeli Squatters Use 87% of Aquifers (juancole.com)
“Water Justice for Occupied Palestinians is demanded by UN, as Israeli Squatters Use 87% of Aquifers” by Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Oct. 3/21EXCERPT:
“The United Nations High Commission on Human Rights formally reported on Friday on the unjust water situation in the Palestinian West Bank, which is under Israeli military occupation and subject to an illegal colonization effort by Israel to displace the indigenous population with Israeli squatters.”A draft of the report was released a week ago unedited and is available here.
“The Palestinian West Bank and Gaza were not sites of Jewish immigration into British Mandate Palestine in the twentieth century and were not awarded to Israel even in the flawed, pro-Zionist 1947 UN General Assembly partition plan. Israel had coveted these territories for a decade and seized them by military force during the confusion of the 1967 war.
“Now, the 5 million Palestinians under Israeli military control in the West Bank and under Israeli blockade in Gaza are stateless and without basic human rights. One of those basics is the right to water.
“…. Water in the West Bank is unavailable in a sufficient and continuous manner. It is estimated that nearly 660,000 Palestinians have limited access to water, with 420,000 persons consuming less than 50 litres on average daily per capita, which is well below the 100 litres recommended by WHO. Water shortage is a feature of life for all Palestinians, in both urban and rural areas and is directly linked to a lack of appropriate water infrastructure. Roughly 14,000 Palestinians in approximately 180 communities in Area C have no connection to a water network, are without water infrastructure, and are considered at high risk for water scarcity.’”
“So the World Health Organization says that every person should have access to a minimum of 26 gallons (100 liters) of water every day, for drinking, cooking with and personal hygiene.
“26 gallons. Just to put things in perspective, the average American family uses 300 gallons of water every day, about a third of it just to water the grass and gardens.” (cont’d)
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“Unfortunately, some 660,000 of the Palestinians laboring under Israeli occupation don’t even get the 26 gallons per person per day that is recommended. And, 420,000 of them, 8 percent of the Occupied Palestinian population, get less than 13 gallons per day per person.
“This shortage comes from a lack of piped water infrastructure, and thereby hangs a tale. Palestinians would need an Israeli permit to improve water infrastructure, which is mostly not forthcoming. Amnesty International observes, ‘In November 1967 the Israeli authorities issued Military Order 158, which stated that Palestinians could not construct any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. Since then, the extraction of water from any new source or the development of any new water infrastructure would require permits from Israel, which are near impossible to obtain.'”
I can’t think of a more appropriate book for this piece than Sylvain Cypel’s “The State of Israel vs. The Jews” – it’s not a history book, ‘nakba’ isn’t even in the index, it’s an examination of what Israel is like right now, and right now the only Jewish state in the world is a global power in the production of crackpot ideas about race and racial purity. Every white supremacist in the U.S. looks to Israel as a model society. Page 93, 94, italics mine:
The first such refugees [from east Africa] began to arrive in the second half of the 2000s…The first actions against the immigrants presence soon began. Settlers in Hebron vented their hostility on the ones in their neighborhoods. Racial attacks multiplied….Eliat’s city hall rejected Black children in its schools. In Tel Aviv, separate kindergartens were created for them. Writing in the Washington Post, journalist Gershom Gorenberg described meeting Emanuel Yamani, an Eritrean refugee to whom an Israeli policeman had once said: “Soon we’ll deport all of you. You can go sit under a tree, open your mouth, and wait for a banana to fall into it, like monkeys.” When Yasmani answered that he was a human being, the amused policeman said, “Haven’t you looked at yourself? Don’t you see you look like a monkey?”
Page 74, 75: “Justice Minister [Ayelet] Shaked [said] “There is a place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights” of non-Jewish citizens, she said. To make sure no one mistook what she meant, she added: “Zionism should not – and I’m saying here that it will not-continue to bow its head to a system of individual rights interpreted in a universalist manner”
Is he insulting the intelligence of those American Jews? Or is he trying to play victim here as usual?
Are they supposed to see the pictures of Gaza being pounded by deadly bombs, dead children being pulled out of the rubble, and read the world condemnations, and many articles, which will explain WHY there are American Jews who “dislike” Israel, but still show unwavering support for Israel?
It would be interesting to know what their thinking is when they make statements like that.
So, Israel’s new prez moans the lack of ‘love’ among American Jews for poor apartheid Israel, whose existence is entirely at the expense of the Palestinians. What would be the basis for this love? Would it be the systematic theft of Palestinian land as the Israeli Jews push for what they see as ‘Greater Israel’, which has been their goal since the first day of the invasion and expulsion of Palestinians from their homes? Would it be the ongoing evictions of Palestinians from their homes to make room for more illegal settlements? Would it be the opinion of Israeli Jews that the Palestinians are on the same level as “dogs”, or the they’re merely like “grass to be mowed”? Perhaps, this love of Israel would be based on its imprisonment of Palestinian children? Or the Nazi-like late night raids of Palestinian neighborhoods? Or Jewish-only roads maybe? Seriously, what isn’t there to love about good old Israel? Maybe its the Israeli PM’s arrogance in declaring that he speaks for ALL of the world’s Jews, making American Jews little more than sock puppets.