Younger American and Israeli Jews have starkly different attitudes from each other in a new survey by the American Jewish Committee– 45 percent of US Jews say that it’s appropriate for them to influence Israeli policy while 70 percent of Israeli Jews say, Stay out of our business. Nearly half of the Americans don’t feel very connected to Israel and 22.5 percent believe that there should be one “bi-national” state in Israel and Palestine.
The Jewish establishment is cracking. “Our institutions have to wrestle with the reality that increasing numbers of passionate Jews do not support the State of Israel,” even as the “donor bases” are shrinking, writes Rabbi Amy Bardack, a liberal Zionist leader associated with J Street. Bardack calls on Jewish organizations not to shun anti-Zionists. But there’s a reason anti-Zionists were shunned– because the principle of “equality” beats “Jewish nationalism” any day of the week.
Rabbi Wendi Geffen of a Reform congregation outside Chicago gave a sermon after the last Gaza conflict saying anti-Zionist Jews must not be allowed inside the Jewish “tent” because the “vast majority” of Jews support Israel. And she said the assertion by some Jews that Zionism contradicts progressive values is a threat to the Jewish people more dangerous than external threats. Her views are important because they reflect official Jewish statements that conflate Zionism and Judaism.
Today the idea of a hopeful, humane Zionism is obsolete. For more than 100 years Jews wrestled with Zionism’s darkness. Daphna Levit profiles those thinkers, who range from enshrined heavyweights like Buber, Albert Einstein, and Hannah Arendt, through more specialized contemporary scholars, journalists, activists, and lawyers. All of them once believed in a hopeful Zionism; all resisted its darkness; not all of them went all the way to renounce it completely.
Bari Weiss’s exit from The New York Times is good news for Palestinian news and opinion. Weiss has made a career as a Zionist warrior, often smearing anti-Zionists in ways that she is quick to call McCarthyism when others employ the same methods.
Jews who criticize Israel are increasingly being excommunicated from the Jewish community. Barry Trachtenberg reflects on this marginalization, and what legacies anti-Zionist Jews can draw upon.
Lately we’ve seen several institutional efforts to show that American Jews are all for Israel, except the lunatics. That’s because the appearance of wall-to-wall US Jewish support is a necessity for Israel lobby groups in convincing politicians to back Israel unconditionally. IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace are a threat to the Stalinist consensus.
Batya Ungar-Sargon of the Forward is attacking our website on twitter, implying we’re anti-Semitic. But Batya once asked Phil Weiss to write for the Forward. He revisits the meeting she sought with him in 2017.