The condemnation of Bezalel Smotrich by the pro-Israeli establishment in the US should not lead us to see Netanyahu as the lesser evil: it is he who brought us to this point in the first place.
The Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli military outfit housed at Tel Aviv University, just delivered its strategic assessment report, and the main takeaway is that Israel’s “special relationship” with the US is in danger.
The change is attributed to a generational shift in American politics due to “the influence that the progressive young generation has had in denying the legitimacy of Israel and Zionism, which they see as expressions of white-colonialist supremacy.”
Tom Friedman deplores the Israel lobby for assisting Netanyahu in preventing any U.S. president from taking action on Palestinian disenfranchisement. “AIPAC and American Jewish organizations who have done Bibi’s bidding…at every turn used their power and influence to still the hand of any [U.S.] administration wanting to have a more serious and energetic and vigorous policy. And for that they will have to answer to history,” the New York Times columnist says. He said this effect is now working on the Biden administration.
Israel’s recent election is a perfect opportunity for Jewish communities to end blind support for Israel and embrace Judaism’s social justice tradition. This begins by working for Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation.
J Street gave a shout out to Rep. Betty McCollum from the stage of its gala but didn’t invite her to speak, because she has called out Israeli “apartheid.” The liberal Zionist organization is terrified of the left’s political and discursive power. It throws us crumbs and hopes we don’t notice its messaging. Like when J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami complained to labor leader Randi Weingarten that the left doesn’t notice “what is good and right” in Israel.
Zionism—the ideology Itamar Ben-Gvir and Benjamin Netanyahu embody, one of Jewish supremacy in the Jewish land– is at last becoming problematic for American Jews. They are up to their chins in that discriminatory ideology, and so we begin a war over Zionism that will bring down the Israel lobby in the next ten years. Because Zionism destroys everything in its path.
Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League is calling for a battle inside Jewish religious denominations against anti-Zionist Jews. Greenblatt spoke to the World Zionist Organization conference in August in Basel, Switzerland, and said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, but even some Jews “traffic” in it and that “threat” must be taken on by religious groups and the Democratic Party too.
Yom Kippur begins tonight and I reflect that the most prominent moral voice in the extended American Jewish community is today Rashida Tlaib. Young Jews look to her for the appropriate response to apartheid. She inspires us. At a time when virtually every establishment Jewish organization has abandoned any pretense to universal moral values, Tlaib has led the way.
Polling shows Democrats support BDS by three to one, but Rep. Jerry Nadler said last night that he has stopped BDS from getting a “foothold” among progressives in Congress, and that only a Jew with his seniority can do that. Nadler bragged of supporting Israel since he was 8 years old.
Liz Rose wrestles with the Zionism she found so enthralling as a girl. “I didn’t care about my Russia Ukraine history. From a very early age–and with enormous help from the Zionist lobby’s efforts to create a brilliant branding campaign–I fantasized about and idealized Israel far more than I ever wondered about the true place my family was from. Instead of learning about Russia Ukraine, I dreamt of working in a field picking tomatoes on a kibbutz in Israel, singing songs while tilling the land, and putting down new roots with other young Jews who, like me, had cut the branches from their families in the U.S. (and Europe) and left their old lives behind.”