So long as Jews and Palestinians don’t have equal rights, Israel risks “dictatorship,” say 750 academics in letter urging U.S. Jews to denounce “apartheid.”
“In some places we are judged wrongly by what we do and how strategic we are.” Israel’s president Isaac Herzog tells American Jews to fight those “judgmental attitudes” and preserve “our only Jewish state in the world.”
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.”
The news from Israel is the job of explaining Israel to America — hasbara, Hebrew for propaganda– just got a lot harder. The government’s nakedly fascistic politics are a wakeup call to American Jews. We are enabling apartheid. We are the political lifeline for racist zealots who are going to hurt a lot more Palestinians this year. Supporting them goes against Jewish traditions. And American Jews will finally say Enough.
The Israeli government minister Nachman Shai says that a “crisis” is coming between the U.S. government and Israel over the Iran deal, and Israel will need American Jews to come to its side. “During many crises… many issues between Israel and the United States, American Jewry has always been there supporting Israel,” he told the Park Avenue Synagogue.
At a time when some American Jewish congregations are avoiding the Israel subject as divisive, the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York has doubled down on its support for the “Jewish state,” and that support was rewarded during its Rosh Hashanah service with a video speech from Israel’s Foreign Minister, Yair Lapid, who told the congregation that Israel loves American Jews and is waiting for them to come to Israel.
“U.S. Jews, you broke it, you bought it — Move to Israel!”
Sam Bahour says American Jews need to see Israel with their own eyes and “only then will your love affair with The Idea of Israel meet the reality of Israel.”
Saying that the dehumanization of Palestinians is a cancer in the Jewish community, Peter Beinart is no longer showing deference to the Jewish guardians of the communal victimhood discourse. This is his cultural importance,” claiming Jewish authority for himself and discrediting Bari Weiss’s discourse of victimhood.
22 percent of Jews under 40 support boycott of Israel, according to exit polling. That’s shocking news for liberal Zionists who would constitute the mainstream Israel lobby under a Joe Biden presidency.
Former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren says Joe Biden “deeply supports Israel,”
but he warns US Jews of “major policy differences” between Biden and Israel, on Palestine and Iran, and Iran threatens Israel’s children’s future. If Biden gets in, Israel is prepared to deal with him as it did with Obama.