At the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “National Tribute Dinner” in Los Angeles in May, dozens of guests jeered the lead honoree, entertainment mogul Ari Emanuel. Some stormed out as his remarks segued from denunciation of the double standard by which Israel is often judged to condemnation of Israel’s prime minister for “doing incredible and lasting damage” to the Jewish people.
Yet, many more cheered and applauded. For most US Jews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing partners have become subjects of loathing and shame.
Netanyahu’s coalition is on the fast track toward losing American Jews. That its leaders have countenanced large-scale starvation in Gaza, urged mass relocation of Palestinians, and insisted on unattainable war aims at the price of appalling civilian casualties has shocked and shaken us. So have looming war-crimes charges and the ongoing erosion of Israeli democracy.
I’ve been among those who’ve called out celebrations of Hamas barbarism on American campuses and the casual antisemitism that’s become common on the American Left. But antisemitism isn’t driving American Jews’ anguished reactions to mass civilian death, law-defying bluster, settler terrorism, and rejection of a horizon of hope for Palestinians in the form of a future state.
Much as we abhor the double standard that Emanuel denounced, we share the moral commitments that have led many in the West to condemn Israel’s post-October 7 excesses.
Much has been made of the inter-generational decline in American Jewish support for Israel, a drop-off said to ensue from receding historical memory of the Holocaust and Jewish vulnerability. But the progressive politics of young, university-educated Americans’ plays no small role, colliding with the Israeli ultra-Right’s bigotry, bluster, and efforts to seize land by force.
I’M RECENTLY back from a visit to Israel, where I spoke with many who share Emanuel’s views. On the Tel Aviv plaza now known as Hostages Square, throngs wander through a surreal display of the faces of those held captive, sculpture that aspires to convey their suffering, and even a mock Hamas tunnel.
In a dozen or so conversations with people at the site, I could find no one who saw the Gaza campaign as other than a disastrous misadventure. This view isn’t yet shared by most Israelis, but it’s an emerging storyline, sure to gain purchase as Israelis tire of Bibi’s “total victory” delusion.
Yet Netanyahu and the fanatics who govern with him are Israel’s face to the world, and to America’s Jews. It’s a face that’s deepening our shame and angst over what Israel threatens to become.
Teen and 20-something American Jews are turning away from this ugly countenance, toward rejection of Zionism. Their embarrassed parents and grandparents avoid conversation about Israel, averting the subject at social gatherings.
Meanwhile, America’s legacy Jewish-advocacy groups follow Bibi toward the hard Right, refusing to criticize him or his coalition. Leaders of these groups say publicly that they’re thereby supporting Israelis’ democratic choices; privately, they warn that criticism would weaken Israel by sending a message of division to her foes.
Different view from Israel
The view from Israel is different. Hostage families are calling out the failure of US Jewish groups to insist that Netanyahu agree to President Joe Biden’s ceasefire/hostage-release deal. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak stirred the pot last month by urging a nationwide strike and shutdown of Knesset proceedings until Netanyahu’s government falls.
And in these stirrings lie hope for the future of American Jewish commitment to Israel. A February Pew Research Center poll found that only 45% of US Jews aged 18 to 34 had a favorable view of the Israeli government but that 81% had a favorable view of Israel’s people. (Among Jewish adults of all ages, the numbers were 54% and 89%.) So there’s a deep reservoir of goodwill, ready to be tapped by Israeli leaders committed to human rights and democracy.
But if the country’s leaders keep spurning this goodwill, Israel will lose most American Jews. Since 1968, we’ve voted overwhelmingly Democratic, by an average margin of 71% compared to 26% for Republicans in presidential elections, because we insist on regard for human rights and pursuit of social fairness.
AN ISRAEL that takes leave from these values is unlikely to sustain most American Jews’ commitment. Even Israelis who don’t care what American Jews think should consider the consequences – a Democratic Party that retreats from Israel as rising numbers of Jews join constituencies that perceive Zionism as a bad thing.
True, Republicans remain staunch supporters of Israel, motivated in large measure by Evangelical theology, which promises the Battle of Armageddon and Jesus’s rule over all believers (everyone else dies) upon the return of Jews to their ancestral home.
However, aligning with a narrative in which we nonbelievers die at the end (some who press this story even say God sent Hitler to steer Jews to Israel) would seem risky. So would abandoning nine decades of bipartisan backing for Israel and recasting Israel as a Republican wedge issue, making US support contingent on keeping Democrats out of the White House.
Netanyahu and the Israeli ultra-Right dismiss these risks. Politically, they’ve written off American Jews, preferring to align with Evangelicals.
The fundamentalist polity the ultra-Right envisions would be unrecognizable to those who signed the nation’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”
Reinvention of the Zionist project along fanatic lines would prompt most American Jews (and other progressive supporters of Israel) to abandon it. Netanyahu promises that without American backing, Israelis “will fight with our fingernails.” That’s hardly an answer for Iranian missiles, Hezbollah bombardment, or Israel’s cultural and economic isolation.
So it’s a matter of survival that Israelis excise the malignancy in their midst, by ending the governing alliance between one man’s narcissism and a mad fringe. Israel’s situation is too precarious to permit departure from hard-nosed pragmatism. American Jewry can be counted on to support such pragmatism – and to back tough-minded Israeli leaders who respect human rights and basic decency.
The writer is the Carmack Waterhouse professor of health law, policy & ethics at Georgetown University. A lawyer and psychiatrist by training, he is a former Guggenheim fellow, as well as a past and present board member of multiple academic journals and human-rights organizations.