WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Bibi being back doesn’t seem to distress American Jews as much as Ben-Gvir and his party having responsible roles. But hurling epithets at him obscures the deepening estrangement of Israeli and American Jews – sharply differing views of our Jewish national home. There’s a fix.
Ben-Gvir …. Oy, Gevalt!? …. No, But Focusing Hysteria on Him Hides the Huge Gap Between Israeli and American Jews
Lenny Ben-David, who’d spent a quarter-century working in Washington for basically down-to-earth AIPAC, had a JNS (also Israpundit) article Thursday, 11/3/22, suggesting we cool it regarding Israeli election results, American Jewish Liberals Should Stop Saying the Sky is Falling. Most disturbing to these folks seems to be not that Bibi is back, but that the Religious Zionist Party’s Bezalel Smotrich and especially Itamar Ben-Gvir, key players in the victorious right-wing bloc, will likely have major cabinet roles.
Jonathan Tobin, JNS, 11/4/22, The Panic in the US Surrounding Israel’s Next Government is About Politics, Not Values, put American Jews’ regard for these two RZP leaders this way:
“The pair are the embodiment of everything that most American Jews don’t like about the Jewish state. Their unapologetic nationalism and perceived hostility to Arabs, gays and non-Orthodox Judaism are an anathema to liberal Americans.”
The Ben-David article quoted an Israel Policy Forum statement endorsed by J Street:
“For the overwhelming majority of American Jews, Ben-Gvir is indefensible, as are the trends that he personifies. His increasing influence and the prospect of his attaining a measure of formal governmental power will make it easier for many American Jews not only to disavow him in disgust but to apathetically turn away from Israel altogether.”
But it’s not the epithets hurled at Ben-Gvir personally, or even his and his party’s opposition to Reform Judaism (see Zvika Klein, Jerusalem Post, Wednesday, 11/2/22, 3 Things Ben-Gvir Will Attempt To Promote as Israeli Minister), which ought to concern those seeking closer ties between Israeli and American Jews. It’s the latter’s growing alienation from the raison d’etre of the Jewish state. Tobin understands this:
“The root cause of American-Jewish alienation from Israel has little to do with politics. It is a function of the decline in a sense of Jewish peoplehood among a rapidly assimilating population, with the largest growing sector labeled by demographers as ‘Jews of no religion.’
“And if Jews don’t care about being Jewish, they aren’t going to be inclined to support Israel, no matter who is in its government.”
By me, this is an understatement. Liberal American Jews aren’t just “disinclined to support Israel,” connoting an indifference to it. They seem to me inclined to support campaigns to hurt it.
I refer specifically to the public letter to President Trump – signed by ADL, Ameinu, ARZA, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Jewish Women International, Israel Policy Forum, MERCAZ USA, National Council of Jewish Women, Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform sssJudaism and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, pillars of organized American Jewry – that “strongly urged” him to support a “two-state solution” with borders that “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders” save for agreed “territorial adjustments” thereto, and to oppose “annexation” by Israel in “the West Bank.”
And you can add to that (see lede of a May 15, 2021, Jerusalem Post article, Rabbinical Students Sign Letter Calling US To Hold Israel Accountable):
“Dozens of [non-Orthodox] American rabbinical students have issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the ‘violent suppression of human rights’…. [emphasis added, but not by much]
What bothers me most about that letter to President Trump is not all these august American Jewish institutions calling for carving up Israel in a western Palestine “two-state solution,” completely opposed to that as I am. What bothers me most is the, yes, deceptive terminology in which that catastrophic concession is couched. What these American Jewish communal leaders called Israel’s “1967 borders” were in fact 1949 ceasefire lines expressly declared in their defining document not to constitute international borders. Borders that would “hew precisely” to them would sever from Israel historic Jerusalem, Old City, Temple Mount, Western Wall and all, along with Judea-Samaria. Referencing “territorial adjustments” thereto rubs in those later war-obliterated ceasefire lines’ supposed survival. Nor would applying Israeli law to liberated Judea-Samaria (rechristened by invader Jordan as “West Bank” to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews) constitute “annexation,” the taking of a different entity’s land as one’s own. It’s hard to reconcile such self-denigrating terminology with self-respect.
American Jews with a scintilla of support for Jewish peoplehood on both international treaty and historical presence grounds have to claim the land of Israel – historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria as its very heart – as our Jewish people’s home, whether, if they were Israeli, they’d personally part with that heart in a land-for-peace western Palestine “two-state solution” or not. I italicized that “if” because it’s not for Diaspora Jews to tell Israeli Jews, who fought and died for that homeland’s heart in the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, that wars that Jewish states win don’t count. With one exception, Israelis can deal with Judea-Samaria as they themselves decide. They just can’t call it “West Bank.” Historic Jerusalem is non-negotiable, period.
On the election’s eve, Israeli President Herzog called on American Jews to respect that election’s results, whatever they’d be. We have to do that, but more, respect which decisions are those of a nation-state’s citizens, who are its soldiers who put their lives on the line, to make. That done, the desperately needed strengthening of homeland-diaspora Jewish people ties will grow from a firm base, alevai.