WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The Jerusalem Post published a shocking survey this week: Almost half of young Jewish voters think Biden is too [!] pro-Israel. It’s our fault, and maybe, given some warning signs before this, we shouldn’t have been shocked. I offer some remedies.
The Fault, Dear Bibi, Is In Ourselves, We Grassroots American Jews: “Nearly Half of Young Jewish Voters Feel Biden OVERLY Supports Israel”
What must PM Netanyahu and his Jewish homeland fellow countrymen – engaged right now in an existential struggle begun by invaders perpetrating the worst pogrom against Jewish men, women and kids since the Holocaust – be thinking of us, America’s Jews? At the least, that we haven’t done a bang-up job educating our kids on the link between security of Diaspora Jews – i.e., Never Again – and the sovereign rebirth in our time of our people’s homeland of Israel.
The Jerusalem Post published a new survey on Tuesday (1/9/24, Nearly Half of Young Jewish Voters Feel Biden Overly Supports Israel – Poll) that found [emphasis added, a little] that
“approximately 47% of younger Jewish voters, aged between 18-35, feel that President Joe Biden is overly supportive of Israel ….”
Sharing as I do the ZOA’s this week apoplexy – ZOA Strongly Opposes Dangerous Biden Plan for Palestinian Authority (Pay to Slay) Terror Regime To Rule Gaza & Create a State, 1/10/24 – that it would be “pure insanity” for “Gaza to be ruled by the PA regime that incites and pays and educates Arabs to murder Jews,” and that “a Palestinian state in the ‘West Bank,’ Gaza and eastern [i.e., historic] Jerusalem would render the tiny remaining area of Israel virtually indefensible” and, by me, being located on the lowland coastal plain and not our biblical heritage hill country heartland, be just slightly more Jewishly meaningful than Uganda, I find our utter failure to inculcate Israel’s importance in our kids beyond disheartening. And add to this the Biden administration’s gratuitous inaccurate carping about “settler violence” and Israeli “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza.
It’s not that we haven’t been warned. Two years ago this month, I wrote in these weekly newsletters’ #1097, 1/30/22, that what we’re facing “is not just hostility to Israel of extreme anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, but unjust criticism of it by the American Jewish mainstream, not least among young American Jewish adults.”
BEGIN QUOTE FROM BSMW #1097, 1/30/22:
*** A May 15, 2021, Jerusalem Post article, Rabbinical Students Sign Letter Calling US To Hold Israel Accountable, led:
“Dozens of 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’….
“…. The letter is unusual for its stark criticism of Israel and the Jewish community — a community that the signatories will represent upon ordination. It is also a landmark collaboration across American seminaries: Nearly 90 rabbinical students had signed by Friday morning, representing a significant portion of students who are enrolled now in the country’s non-Orthodox rabbinical schools. No students in Orthodox seminaries have signed.”
*** As for young American Jews who aren’t non-Orthodox rabbinical students, a 5/11/21 Jerusalem Post article on a survey of American Jews, Young US Jews Increasingly Detached From Jewish People – Pew Report, stated while “in 2013 69% of US Jews said they felt very or somewhat of an emotional attachment to Israel,” today that number is 58%,
“The level of connection to Israel in 2020 is significantly lower for the younger generation, with only 48% of those aged 18-29 saying they have an emotional attachment to Israel, and 51% [a majority!] saying they have little or no such connection.”
END QUOTE
So What Do We Do About It?
First, identify the spewers of anti-Israel distortion poisoning the minds of our youth.
Twenty years ago, in 2004, I had the honor to be what had once really been “national president” of the then ninety-nine year-old Philly-based men’s and women’s fraternal order Brith Sholom. In that January, twenty years ago this month, we held our annual brunch, to which I invited as our guest speaker Jonathan Tobin, then editor of Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent, who – because I’d spent much of my time harassing him “to be at the Philadelphia Inquirer’s throat like a werewolf” – surprised me by showing up. The first thing he told our hundred-fifty attendees (we’d have had over 200 but it snowed) was “Jerry doesn’t think I’m tough enough.” But he delivered this message: “The biggest victims of anti-Israel media bias are American Jews.” QED, and not least those not old enough to have been among us that day, three years after the Holocaust, when Ben-Gurion called on the world’s Jews to stand by Israel in the great struggle for fulfillment of generations’ dream for our homeland’s sovereign rebirth. (A bit of subsequent history: I asked Jonathan would he please do an article on Brith Sholom’s upcoming one hundredth anniversary? Sure, he said, if I’d just promise to leave him alone for 99 years. I did, and he did, rather handsomely.)
Every time the AP or Reuters et ilk mention Judea-Samaria, they don’t say “Judea-Samaria,” Hebrew-origin names in use for three thousand years (including by the UN in 1947), but “the occupied West Bank.” And that’s just one of the media’s anti-Israel loaded lexicon’s poisoned pejoratives. (See, e.g., our related www.factsonisrael.com, “Toxic Terms” and “Dirty Words” pages, and “Ten Misleading Media Expressions” video.) Reject this, including the papers that purvey it to the American public.
But that’s just a “Don’t.” Here’s a “Do”: Try to get across to our young people what world-shaking events meant to us in 1948, 1967, 1973. Badger them to read a gripping book about Israel. E.g. Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate on the Six Day War, Kaniuk’s Commander of the Exodus, Thomas’ Operation Exodus or Degani’s Exodus Calling on the Aliyah Bet, and if that works then Chaim Herzog’s tougher but moving The War of Atonement on the Yom Kippur War.
Another “Do”: Observe as a multi-generation family the holidays of Passover, commemorating our peoplehood, and Hanukkah, commemorating our people’s claim to our homeland.
Visit Israel. My guide said “Relax, you’re on vacation.” I said “I’m not on vacation. I’m on a Haj.” But vacation will do.
Well, Bibi, we know that rectifying the disassociation of our young people from our people’s homeland of Israel rests with us. Wish us luck.