On October 7, Hamas murdered over 1,200 people, raped women, and took over 240 hostages back to Gaza. Of the many ripple effects of this attack, the Jewish one is perhaps the most profound and far-reaching.
There has been a naive and futile attempt over recent decades to differentiate between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The domino effect of the horrendous atrocities was a dramatic spike of antisemitism throughout the world, giving a confidence boost to the darkest, age-old prejudices against Jews. Armed by a deplorable, morally corrupt and naive identification with Hamas, antisemitism rages, especially on leading US campuses of higher education.
Members of the US House of Representatives summoned the heads of three paramount American institutions, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, to testify and take a clear stand against calls to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Yet they all failed to uphold the Jewish principle “in a place where there are no men, you must strive to be a man” (Pirkei Avot 2:5). They left their humanity outside of their testimony, leaving Jews on campuses to fend for themselves against rabid genocidal hatred. The message was clear: anti-Zionism is antisemitism. And both are allowed.
Nonetheless, American support for Israel against Hamas is bipartisan and overwhelming. Yet the progressive-Left (and small, but equally dangerous Right) voices echoing anti-Zionism/antisemitism are growing rapidly and have been clearly emboldened by sad episodes such as the lack of moral leadership by these university presidents.
The US Jewish community has been a crucial part of the Israeli-Jewish war against Hamas and the axis of evil. Already on October 7, the community mobilized in support of Israel, best detailed in a Jerusalem Post op-ed this week by William Daroff, CEO of the COP. The war effort in its entirety can be best understood not as just the IDF vs. Hamas, but as compromising the IDF, the Israeli home front, and the umbrella support of world Jewry. Just as the IDF faces bullets, and the home front faces rocket barrages, world Jewry faces antisemitic attacks, with rising frequency and lethality.
Many proposals, one central idea
The policy response to the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and the expansion of the battleground to include world Jewry, must be a mirror image to that threat. If an attack on Israel is an attack on world Jewry, then the very conception of the Jewish State of Israel must be expanded and revolutionized to include world Jewry.
How so? This question has been debated for years in policy circles, laid out in an article by Jerusalem Post deputy editor Zvika Klein. I believe that the time is ripe to revisit it and use the momentum, and the shield that world Jewry is providing Israel, to revamp this issue. Just as the very founding of the State of Israel revolutionized Jewish history and much of modern history, the inclusion of world Jewry in the state apparatus of Israel can be a moral revolution of 21st century statecraft, and a direct response to the war waged on Israel and the Jewish people – from Gaza to Harvard.
A host of initiatives of this sort have been put forth, most recently President Isaac Herzog’s Kol Ha’am – Voice of the People: The President’s Initiative for Worldwide Jewish Dialogue. Then-diaspora minister Omer Yankelevitch and MK Tehila Friedman called for an advisory mechanism whereby Diaspora leaders would be consulted by the Israeli government on bills relevant for world Jewry.
In 2004, then-president Moshe Katsav considered the idea of a global Jewish parliament, as a second house of the Knesset. This idea developed into the World Jewish Forum, yet never fully took root. Former Jewish Agency chief Natan Sharansky also advocated for a Jewish People’s Council. Zvika Klein has proposed a Jewish World Embassy in Jerusalem.
During his tenure as economy and diaspora minister in 2014, Naftali Bennett suggested that Diaspora Jews should be made “semi-citizens” of the State of Israel. They should be fitted into Israeli life and policymaking, practically and conceptually, wherever they can be allowed, certainly in areas that concern world Jewry. In this spirit, former MK Yomtob Kalfon proposed a bill granting “Jewish Visas” to all Jews entitled to the right of return, allowing them to come and go as they please, de-facto semi-citizens of the State of Israel. Tal Keinan, an American-Israeli businessman, proposed that the president of Israel become the president of the Jews, with world Jewry serving as his constituency.
My personal conviction combines the two aforementioned ideas. There should be a number of new Knesset seats allotted to representatives of world Jewry, with voting rights in a few key areas, such as elections for the president of Israel. Such an institution would have a major impact on global Jewish identity and involvement in Israeli-Jewish affairs. Its ceremonial aspects would cultivate Jewish belonging. Elections for the delegates would garner excitement and facilitate concrete Jewish-Israeli political activism in communities throughout the world.
Yet whichever of these initiatives is to find fruition, what’s crucial is that Israel and the Jewish people respond to the dual attack on Jewry inside of Israel and throughout the world by giving the perpetrators a taste of their own medicine. When anti-Zionism is antisemitism, then the very idea of Zionism must concretely envelop within it Jews of all places and all walks of life.
The IDF’s successes are a result of the efforts of Israel’s home front along with world Jewry. As our brothers abroad share our burdens and are part of Israel’s effort, they should be made into semi-citizens of the State that ultimately stands for who they are.
The writer, a current IDF reservist, served as an adviser to then-deputy prime minister and justice minister Gideon Sa’ar in Israel’s 36th government. He works at Meitar, a leading Israeli international law firm.