A new documentary film, “Israelism,” nearing completion and scheduled for release over the next year, chronicles the changing attitudes among young American Jews toward Israel, in which they at last engage their liberal values with an intolerant country.
Organized Jewish groups have offered mealymouthed statements on the slaughter of more than 100 Gazans at the border; but the horrific events have shaken loose a segment of the Jewish community in outright criticism of Israel. Debra Shusahn of Peace Now, the non-Zionist group IfNotNow, and the foreign policy writer David Rothkopf are among those who call the killings immoral.
On May 18, Rabbi Jill Jacobs published an essay in the Washington Post suggesting that Steven Salaita is anti-Semitic. Here is the essay that he wrote in response that the Post refused to run. “Sloppy accusations of anti-Semitism betray visceral attachment to a country performing violence rather than empathy for those on its receiving end,” Salaita writes. “But it won’t deter us. Indeed, it serves as fuel to work even harder so that we might one day enjoy the same freedom as those who appoint themselves chaperones of our anger.”
Phil Weiss reports from Jerusalem that the Republicans love Israel and Israel loves Trump. Two toxic brands are having a merger. But the Israel lobby’s oath, that Israel must remain a bipartisan issue is broken. The Republicans own Israel but it’s going to be a hot potato among Democrats. The massacre has done that.
When Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa published a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer urging the Philadelphia Orchestra to cancel a trip to Israel because the country is slaughtering unarmed protesters in Gaza, Jewish leaders in the city flew into action, demanding that the paper publish a rebuttal and that editors take a training against BDS. The Israel lobby in action.
The Council on International Relations, a Gaza-based NGO, issued an invitation yesterday to Senator Chuck Schumer to come to Gaza so that he can see that he and the Palestinian community share many attributes, from humble origins to a high value for education. Schumer has had nothing to say about Israel’s killings in Gaza, despite pressure from young Jewish progressives.
Peter Beinart is a leader in the Jewish discourse of Israel. He says that when young American progressives call for a one-state solution, this will become a “very, very powerful” force in U.S. politics, and that these young people will not mourn “the end of the Zionist dream.” And offering the Palestinians a state without Jerusalem is like “creating a country in Westchester that can’t get into Manhattan.”
Roger Cohen argues in the New York Times that the right of return is code for pushing Jews into the sea. Joseph Levine issues a challenge to Cohen and other liberal Zionists: “It’s time to stop the scare tactics, stop using loaded language about “destruction” and “throwing into the sea” and face the consequences: either defend liberal democracy consistently or admit that one is willing to sacrifice it for ethnic nationalism.”
Natalie Portman’s refusal to attend the Israeli Genesis Prize ceremony is a blow to Israeli pride. But her statements of support for Israel reflect liberal Zionist convictions. Will she go further with her critique?
Leanne Gale, a Yale law student, came out of the heart of the Jewish community to all-but support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) at the J Street conference. She said BDS is the most important nonviolent Palestinian movement in the world, that anti-Zionism is a living tradition in the Jewish community as a response to anti-Semitism, and that Jews should not seek to marginalize or suppress or seek an alternative to BDS, but should engage it in an effort to make Israel a liberal democracy.