American Jews and Their
Israel Problem
Kenneth Levin

Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 159

THE BEGIN-SADAT CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIESBAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY
Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 159

American Jews and Their
Israel Problem

Kenneth Levin

American Jews and Their Israel Problem

Kenneth Levin© The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
Bar-Ilan University
Ramat Gan 5290002 Israel
Tel. 972-3-5318959
Fax. 972-3-5359195
office@besacenter.org
www.besacenter.org
ISSN 0793-1042
December 2018
Cover image: Screen capture from UJA video, via Vimeo

The Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies
The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies is an independent, non-partisan thinktank conducting policy-relevant research on Middle Eastern and global strategic
affairs, particularly as they relate to the national security and foreign policy of Israel
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A list of recent BESA Center publications can be found at the end of this booklet.

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Hon. Shlomo Hillel, Mr. Joel Koschitzky, Amb. Yitzhak Levanon, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman,
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International Academic Advisory Board
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Publications Editor (English): Judith Levy

American Jews and Their Israel Problem

Table of Contents
Executive Summary ....................................................................... 5
Jewish Anti-Zionism Before Israel ................................................. 6
And Yet... ....................................................................................... 12
Shifts in Attitudes Towards Israel Among Israelis ....................... 13
American Jews, Israel, and the American Left ............................ 19
Mainstream American Jewish Bodies and Israel ......................... 27
Mainstream Jewish Organizations, Educational Institutions,and Israel ...................................................................................... 34
Notes ............................................................................................ 44

American Jews and Their Israel Problem
Kenneth Levin

Executive Summary
Jewish anti-Zionism emerged in central Europe in the early nineteenth
century as a response to anti-Semitic claims that Jews were unfit for many
civic rights because they constituted a separate nation. Central European
Jewish immigrants to the United States later in the century brought theiranti-Zionism with them and made it a staple of Reform Judaism in America.
The influx of pro-Zionist eastern European Jews, together with the Shoahand the founding of Israel, resulted in a dramatic rise in pro-Zionist
opinion among American Jews, including within the Reform movement.
But the persistent predilection to appease anti-Jewish opinion by seeking
to accommodate anti-Jewish indictments has always had some negative
impact on support for Israel among American Jews. In recent decades, asgroups within the wider society with whom many American Jews identify
have become increasingly critical of and even hostile towards Israel, major
segments of the Jewish community have chosen cultivation of their links
with those groups over the defense of the well-being of the Jewish state.

Kenneth Levin is a psychiatrist and historian. He is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a
People Under Siege.

American Jews and Their Israel Problem
Kenneth Levin

Jewish Anti-Zionism Before Israel
In his groundbreaking Zionist cri de coeur, The Jewish State, Theodor
Herzl noted that his proposal for a Jewish state would inevitably facenumerous objections. He observed, “Perhaps we shall have to fightfirst of all against many an evil-disposed, narrow-hearted, short-sighted
member of our own race.”1
In fact, Jewish anti-Zionism preceded Herzl’s book by many decades.
The issue of extending civic rights to Jews was first broached in central
European polities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
One of the arguments invoked by those opposed to such accommodation
was that the Jews were a separate nation and were therefore disqualified
from citizenship rights in the nations in which they dwelt. As with
virtually all assertions mustered against the Jews, some Jews took
the indictment to heart and sought to reform themselves to counter it.
They sought to win over those purveying or subscribing to the “Jewsas a nation” indictment by demonstrating that they had abandoned theaccoutrements of national identity and had transformed themselves intoa purely religious community.
For example, Jews so disposed established new, reformist congregationsin German states, congregations in which the liturgy was stripped of
all references to longing for Jerusalem and Zion and all aspirations fornational rebirth.

MIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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Moreover, as with Jewish accommodation of other anti-Jewish arguments,
those Jews who took this step often sought to cast their doing so not as an
attempt to appease those arrayed against them but rather as a high-minded,ethical decision. They argued that over the preceding two millennia
Judaism had evolved from its dual, national and universal, identity into
an embrace of a universal moral and ethical belief system and mission.
Any persistence or recrudescence of national identity and aspirations wasconsidered atavistic and to be shunned by modern, enlightened Jews.
Reformist German Jews brought their anti-Zionist predilections withthem to the United States. As the Reform movement organized itself in
America, it repeatedly reiterated these sentiments. For example, the Reform“Pittsburgh Platform” of 1885 declared, “We consider ourselves no longera nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a returnto Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the
restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”2
With Zionism gaining greater traction among many Jews at the beginningof the last century, Jewish anti-Zionism also grew, spurred in large part byfears that Jewish civic advancement, the accommodation of Jews as equalcitizens in parts of Europe and in the United States, would be undercut by
the creation of a Jewish state. For example, much of the domestic opposition
to Britain’s issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 arose from elementsof British Jewry moved by such concerns.
In the United States, Louis Brandeis was very much an exception within
the Jewish establishment when he enthusiastically embraced Zionism anddismissed concerns that the wider community’s doing so would undercut
Jews’ standing in the nation. Speaking in 1915, Brandeis noted thedemands for self-determination by Europe’s minorities that had preceded
the war then raging in Europe and would have to be addressed in the war’s
aftermath. He noted as well America’s sympathy with these minorities andconstrued Zionism as consistent with these peoples’ aspirations and withthe supportive American perspective.3
Elsewhere the same year, Brandeis posed the question, “While every otherpeople is striving for development by asserting its nationality, and a great
war is making clear the value of small nations, shall we [Jews] voluntarily
yield to anti-Semitism [that is, to fears of an anti-Semitic backlash], andinstead of solving our ‘problem’ end it by noble suicide?”4

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IAmerican Jews and Their Israel Problem

But, again, Brandeis was an exception within elite Jewish circles in
America. More representative were those who feared that Zionism would
undermine Jews’ civic gains. New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs
insisted that Jews must eschew ethnic or “national” group identity. He
wrote, “I’m interested in the Jewish religion – I want to see it preserved– but that’s as far as I want to go.” Ochs castigated Brandeis for having
become, with his embrace of Zionism, “a professional Jew.”5Brandeis’s wartime predictions proved prescient, as after the war a numberof new nations were established in eastern Europe out of territories of theformer German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. In addition,
Syrian and Iraqi mandates for the creation of Arab states and the Palestine
mandate for the establishment of a Jewish national home were carved outof lands previously part of the Ottoman Empire.
The World War I allies’ endorsement of the Zionist project, as well as
the subsequent endorsement by the League of Nations, were not without
impact on some Jews within the anti-Zionist camp in the United States.
In addition, in the post-war decades, a number of Reform rabbis with proZionist views, such as Abba Hillel Silver, Stephen S. Wise, and Nelson
Glueck, rose to prominence within both Reform and Zionist circles. The
straitened, continually worsening circumstances of Jewish communities
in central and eastern Europe in the decades between the world wars
likewise had some impact on attitudes towards Zionism. But while Reform
Judaism’s Columbus Platform of 1937 reflects some of these influences
and associated changes, it also conveys what had not changed:“... In all lands where our people live, they assume and seek toshare loyally the full duties and responsibilities of citizenship and tocreate seats of Jewish knowledge and religion. In the rehabilitationof Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold
the promise of renewed life for many of our brethen. We affirm
the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish
homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge forthe oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.”6
The above statement starts by seeking to counter the “dual loyalty” canard,
feared by so many as the inevitable outcome of the Zionist project. It thenacknowledges the potential role of the project as a haven, “the promiseMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIESI

9of a new life,” for Jews increasingly under siege in eastern and central
Europe. It concludes by seeking to accommodate both the need and thefear: Jews are enjoined to help in the upbuilding of the homeland/refuge,
but the homeland/refuge is conceived of not as an independent Jewish
state – an entity that might, again, provide hostile forces with ammunition
for claims of divided loyalty and grounds for curbing Jews’ civic gains –but rather as a “center of Jewish cultural and spiritual life.”
This last distinction, with its anti-state bias, had significant consequences.
Its translation into concrete action by Felix Warburg and Rabbi Judah
Magnes, chronicled by Yoram Hazony in The Jewish State, is illustrative.7
Warburg, a leading figure in the German Jewish elite in America, hadearlier agreed to be a major donor to Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
founded in 1919. While in favor of building a cultural and religious
center in the Mandate such as that alluded to in the Columbus Platform,
he was an opponent of Zionist aspirations to a state. He conditioned his
support of the university on the appointment of American Reform Rabbi
Judah Magnes, who shared Warburg’s views on the proper objective of
the Zionist project, to a dominant position in the University, ultimately
to the post of University chancellor, and to control of the funds. (At thetime of his Hebrew University appointment, Magnes was associate rabbi
at Temple Beth El in Manhattan.)In the ensuing years, both Warburg and Magnes fought aggressively
against the pursuit of a Jewish state. Both, for example, perceived the1929 Arab assault on and massacre of Jews in the Mandate, including themurder of 67 Jews in Hebron, as an opportunity to cast the Jewish quest
for a state as the source of Arab enmity and to undermine that quest. In
October 1929, Magnes met with a confidant of the Grand Mufti, Haj
Amin al-Husseini, who had instigated the massacre, and formulated with
the Mufti’s representative a proposal for the establishment of an Arabcontrolled government in the Mandate and the abandonment of Jewish
aspirations to a state.8 When the leadership of the Yishuv, the Jewish
community in the Mandate, rejected the plan, Warburg threatened that
American Jewish support would be cut off if the Magnes initiative was
not embraced. Nevertheless, both the elected Assembly of the Yishuv
and the Zionist Executive refused to endorse it.

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

Magnes’s meeting with a member of the Mufti’s camp had beenarranged by New York Times correspondent and avowed anti-Zionist
Joseph Levi. In the wake of the rejection of his initiative, Magnes
embarked on a publicity campaign to promote his views and attack
the pro-state Zionists. The New York Times, under the aegis of the noless anti-Zionist Adolph Ochs, gave prominent coverage and editorial
support to Magnes’s views.9
In the spring of 1936, the Grand Mufti again launched attacks against
the Jews of the Yishuv, this time in a sustained onslaught that entailed
attacks as well against British forces. The following year, the British
appointed the Peel Commission to investigate the unrest and formulate
recommendations in response to the violence. The commission proposed
partition of the Mandate into independent Jewish and Arab states.
The Jewish state would consist of about 4% of the original Palestine
Mandate. The League of Nations objected to the proposal, insistingthat it violated Britain’s obligations to the Jews under the Mandate.
However, the Yishuv leadership, led by David Ben-Gurion, agreed to therecommendation, prompted by recognition of the looming catastrophe inEurope and understanding that even this mini-state would offer European
Jews a refuge. Ben-Gurion argued, “Through which [option] can we getin the shortest possible time the most Jews in Palestine?... How muchgreater will be the absorptive capacity without an alien, unconcerned...
hostile administration, but with a Zionist government...holding the key toimmigration in its hand.”10
Warburg, in contrast, vehemently denounced the partition plan, arguingthat acceptance of the Peel proposal reflected a Zionist “lust for power”
and “a concept of Jewish life which is abhorrent.”11 This rhetoric ofhyperbolic vilification, and its cold indifference to the desperate plight ofEurope’s Jews, seem incomprehensible unless recognized as representing,beneath the claims of high-mindedness and moral integrity, a responseto anti-Jewish pressures and, more particularly, fears that creation of a
Jewish state would compromise the fragile status of Jews in America andelsewhere in the West.
The Peel Commission recommendations were rejected by the Arabs andwithdrawn by Britain. The British subsequently issued the infamous

MIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

I

11White Paper dramatically limiting Jewish immigration, proposing
the ultimate establishment of an Arab-dominated government in the
Mandate, and essentially cutting off the one internationally recognizedrefuge for a doomed European Jewry.
Magnes continued his own attacks on those favoring establishmentof a Jewish state even after revelation of the genocide unfolding inEurope. In 1943, he did so in articles in both British and American
publications. Perhaps his most consistent outlet was The New YorkTimes, where publisher Arthur Hay Sulzberger (who had succeeded
Adolph Ochs in 1935) had instructed that editorial policy on the
Mandate “be predicated on the Magnes point of view.” 12 Indeed,that view was promoted in both editorials and news stories. Magnes
pursued his campaign after the war as well, even coming to the Statesat the urging of the State Department to lobby against the United
Nations partition plan.13
But the genocide in Europe, and Britain’s policy throughout the warof blocking Jewish access to the Mandate and obstructing rescue,significantly eroded the ranks of the anti-state camp within the American
Jewish elite. Further defections from that camp followed first from
Israel’s war of independence against surrounding countries that had
publicly declared their objective to be annihilation of the Yishuv and its
population, and then on the actual establishment of the state.
One notable indication of the shift within American Reform Judaism’s
leadership regarding the Zionist project is that the pro-Zionist rabbi andarchaeologist Nelson Glueck became head of Hebrew Union College(HUC), the premier Reform seminary. Under Glueck’s leadership, theHUC ultimately established a campus in Jerusalem where all first-year
HUC students study.
Beyond the shift in the leadership, Reform congregants – by far the largest
body of synagogue-affiliated Jews in America – overwhelmingly became
supporters of Israel. That bond increased even further with the threats to
Israel in the lead-up to the 1967 war and with the playing out of that war.

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And Yet...
What, then, accounts for the seeming falling away from identification with
Israel in recent decades – not to the degree of that seen among unaffiliatedJews, but still of significant scope – within leadership cadres of Reform
Judaism, including the rabbinate, and within a significant proportionof Reform congregants? A common theme is to attribute the shift togenerational differences and the coming of age of people who are far
removed from the Shoah, Israel’s creation, and the Six Day War. But there
are more specific factors at work in this distancing from Israel.
Again, the key factor driving Reform anti-Zionism into the middle of thetwentieth century was the then century-old anti-Jewish indictment that Jewish
nationhood disqualified Jews from being given full civic rights in European
states. This, and subsequent fears that any civic rights achieved would berolled back in response to the Zionist movement, drove many Jews to argue
that they were no longer a nation but exclusively a religious community.
The open identification of most Reform Jews with Israel in the decades
after the state’s establishment was made much easier by the fact that the
Jewish state has been viewed favorably by large swathes of non-Jewish
Americans. But many Jews who, by virtue of profession or other elementsof self-identity, draw their sense of themselves from affiliations with cadreswithin the American scene less sympathetic to Israel, such as academia or
the media or particular political groups, have always been less committed
to Israel. As those cadres have in recent years tended to exhibit broader
and more intense hostility to Israel, Jews who identify with them – whether
Reform, of some other denomination, or unaffiliated – have become evenmore inclined to distance themselves from Israel.
Another anti-Jewish indictment, related to but distinct from the “Jews as anation” indictment, which likewise can be traced, in its political impact, toearly nineteenth-century Europe and which continues to shape Jewish politics
in America, is the accusation that Jews are too parochial in their interests, areconcerned only with their own, and are therefore not fit to be fully accepted
as part of the larger political body. For two hundred years, many Jewish
groups have responded to this indictment by laboring to demonstrate theircommitment to causes beyond the Jewish community, doing so even whenthose causes have run counter to the interests of the Jewish community.

MIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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Perhaps no groups in America more dramatically reflect thisphenomenon than Jewish Community Relations Councils (JCRCs)
and their national umbrella organization, the Jewish Council for
Public Affairs. For people dedicated to displaying to groups beyond
the Jewish community their devotion to the latter’s interests, increased
criticism of Israel from those latter groups often translates into an evenmore intense determination to demonstrate sympathy with them evenat the cost of sympathy with Israel.

Shifts in Attitudes Towards Israel Among Israelis
Yet another factor that has figured in some American Jews’ detachingthemselves from Israel over the past several decades has been intense
criticism of Israel and its policies emanating from Israelis. While there
have always been Israelis voicing such criticism, they tended in the past
to be relatively few in number and generally marginalized. This changed
dramatically in 1977 with the election of the first non-Left government
in Israel under the leadership of Menachem Begin.
Israelis, like Diaspora Jews, have not been immune to the corrosive
psychological impact of being targeted by their neighbors – in their case,not as a minority community subject at times to anti-Jewish indictments,
but as a Jewish state under chronic siege by its neighbors. Some had
always embraced the indictments of Israel’s neighbors and had, forinstance, insisted after the 1967 war – ignoring the statements and actions
emanating from the Palestinian leadership and from Arab states – that if
Israel would only return to its pre-war lines all would be well. But thegreat majority had not. They had supported the government’s position
that peace could only come when Israel’s Arab adversaries were prepared
to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and end rejection of the state (as wasreflected in the Arab League’s post-1967 War Khartoum declaration of
three no’s: no recognition, no negotiation, no peace).
But overwhelming support on the Israeli Left for this position waspredicated not only on its obviously well-founded rationale but on the Left’s
identification with the leftist governments that had led Israel for the first
three decades of its statehood. That changed with the accession of Begin and
Likud. There soon emerged widespread sentiment on the Israeli Left to theeffect that sufficient Israeli concessions would indeed lead to peace and that

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the major obstacle to such a resolution was the new right-wing government,
which was too militant, too narrow-minded, and too distrustful of Israel’s
Arab neighbors to take the necessary steps to translate the potential for peace
into a reality. This view only grew on the Israeli Left over the next twentyfive years, during which Likud either governed on its own or was senior
partner or equal partner in governments of national unity.
Those embracing this stance included much of Israel’s academic, cultural,and media elites. Their broad promotion of this perspective had an impact
on the overwhelmingly left-leaning American Jewish community, someof whose members readily fell in line with the vision of reality being
purveyed by those elites.
That vision, ultimately endorsed by about half of the Israeli electorate,
paved the way for the Oslo Accords. In the 1992 Israeli election, Labor
head Yitzhak Rabin ran on what was the traditional Labor platform: that
Israel needed negotiating partners who eschewed terror and recognized thelegitimacy of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and that Israel
could offer territorial compromises but would need to retain significant
portions of the West Bank for its defense. (Rabin elaborated further on thelatter point, enumerating some of the areas Israel would need to hold, in hislast speech in the Knesset prior to his assassination in 1995.) With Jordan
having bowed out as a negotiating partner on behalf of the Palestinians,
Rabin suggested internationally supervised elections in the territories to
put in place a new Palestinian leadership made up of people living in the
territories who would then enter negotiations with Israel.
But Rabin was soon the target of large-scale demonstrations byIsraelis who insisted that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) were the Palestinians’ legitimate representatives andthat Israel must negotiate with Arafat. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Rabin,
Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres were in fact overseeing negotiations withrepresentatives of Arafat in Oslo.
Rabin, when informed of the Oslo track, acquiesced to its proceeding, andin September 1993, he participated with Arafat in the ceremony on the
White House lawn formally launching the Oslo era. About half of Israelcelebrated what it saw as the dawn of a long-sought era of peace, while
the other half anticipated dire, bloody consequences of a dangerouslyMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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15

misconceived course. Evidence supporting the latter view but essentiallyunreported in Israel and largely ignored in the Jewish world was provided
by Arafat in a speech from Washington on Jordanian television on theevening of the White House ceremony and his famous handshake with
Rabin. Arafat explained to his Palestinian constituency and to the Arabworld more broadly that they should understand Oslo in terms of the
PLO’s 1974 plan.14 This was a reference to a plan that called for the PLO
to acquire whatever territory it could by negotiations and then use that
territory as a base for pursuing Israel’s annihilation. Arafat repeated his
characterization of Oslo as the first stage in the “plan of stages” at least adozen times within weeks of the White House festivities.15
Arafat and those around him consistently engaged in anti-Israel incitement,
including calls for the state’s destruction, in the weeks and months that
followed. They enlisted the Palestinian media, mosques, and schools thatcame under their control to promote the same anti-Israel agenda. But the
Israeli government chose to downplay the incitement and defend Arafat.
Beyond incitement, there was also an increase in anti-Israel terror. Overthe twenty-two months from Arafat’s arrival in the territories, in July 1994
until the fall of the Labor-Meretz government that had choreographed
Oslo in May 1996, some 152 people were murdered in terror attacks. The
murder rate was more than two-and-a-half times that of losses to terror
in the 26-year stretch from the 1967 war to the start of Oslo. Yet the
government responded to the terror largely as it did to the incitement. It
downplayed the terror’s significance, essentially exonerated Arafat, andexclusively blamed the Islamist organizations – despite Arafat’s repeatedpraise of the terrorists and refusal to clamp down on the Islamist groups
in any meaningful way. It also continued to make concessions to Arafat,
as in the signing of the Oslo II agreement in the fall of 1995.
While the incitement and terror, and the government’s response, did
not seem to generate a huge shift in Israeli opinion on Oslo, there wasenough of a shift that opinion polls began to show consistently that the
government would lose to Likud in a new election. This was the situation
when Rabin was assassinated in November 1995. His murder triggereda wave of public sentiment in favor of the government, and the rulingcoalition sought to capitalize on this by moving the elections scheduled

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for late 1996 up to May of that year. However, largely in response toongoing incitement and terror in the intervening months, the election
resulted in defeat of the Labor-Meretz coalition and replacement by a
Likud government under Benjamin Netanyahu.
The growing second thoughts about Oslo reflected in the election also had
some, albeit limited, impact on the elites that had almost unanimously
embraced Oslo. In 1997, Ari Shavit, senior Haaretz columnist and himself
an early, enthusiastic supporter of Oslo, wrote: “In the early 90s... we,the enlightened Israelis, were infected with a messianic craze... All of asudden, we believed that... the end of the old Middle East was near. The
end of history, the end of wars, the end of the conflict. Like the membersof any other messianic movement, we decided to hasten the end, andanointed Yitzhak Rabin as our Messiah...” Shavit then addressed theLeft’s hatred of Netanyahu, who at the time of the article had been in
office for about a year and a half: “Hatred of Netanyahu enables us toconveniently forget that before the bubble burst, we acted like fools. We
fooled ourselves with illusions. We were bedazzled into committing acollective act of messianic drunkenness. Hatred of Netanyahu also gives
us a chance to forget that it was not the rise of Netanyahu that broughton the paralysis of Oslo but the paralysis of Oslo that brought on the riseof Netanyahu. The hatred permits us to keep harboring the notion thateverything is really much more simple, that if we only pull back, if weonly recognize Palestinian statehood... we would be able [once again] tobreathe in that exhilarating, heady aroma of the end of history, the end ofwars, the end of conflict.”16
But Shavit was a rare exception among the “enlightened Israelis” of whom
he was writing, many of whom excoriated him for his new perspectives
on Oslo. Similarly, in the United States, many in the American Jewish
leadership who had embraced Oslo still retained their enthusiasm
despite the anti-Israel incitement and terror promoted by Israel’s “peacepartners.” Their views often differed dramatically from the Jewish rank
and file. Evidence of the difference was offered by a poll conducted by
the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council in 1996, several
months after the election of Netanyahu as prime minister.
At the time of the poll, JCRCs across America, including the one in
Indianapolis, together with the JCRC umbrella group (then called theMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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17

National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council), were alladvancing an agenda emphasizing social action in a “liberal” vein,an agenda congruent with the desire to demonstrate “non-parochial”
Jewish priorities. With regard to Israel, the JCRCs were claiming not
only that Israel was now safe – the subtext of which was that American
Jews were now freer to focus their energies on the JCRCs’ “social
justice” priorities – but that American Jews overwhelmingly concurredwith this view and also overwhelmingly supported Oslo. But the
Indianapolis JCRC poll of community opinion indicated otherwise.
About 80% of those questioned believed a Palestinian state would bea threat to Israel’s security. Less than half felt that Israel should giveup the West Bank, even with a viable peace. More than two-thirds said
Arafat could not be trusted.17
Netanyahu was ultimately abandoned by elements of his coalition andforced into early elections in 1999. Some of his erstwhile supporters weredissatisfied that he had not only failed to end Oslo-related concessions
to Arafat but had acquiesced to further concessions. Others saw clear
indications that Arafat was preparing his people and forces for major new
hostilities and believed it would be better for Israel if those hostilities
occurred not on Likud’s watch, when the Left would likely blame “rightwing intransigence” for the explosion, but on Labor’s watch, in whichcase the Right would rally to the government and there would be a muchgreater likelihood of national unity.
The 1999 election saw Netanyahu lose to the Labor-Meretz coalition
led by Ehud Barak. Barak subsequently called for moving to final
status negotiations with Arafat and convinced President Clinton to hostthose negotiations at Camp David in the summer of 2000. Palestinian
preparations for war became even more evident and more intense in themonths preceding the summit. At Camp David, Barak offered dramatic
territorial concessions, far beyond anything Rabin had envisioned andanything thought prudent by Israel’s defense establishment. But Arafat
rejected the concessions as inadequate, turned down additional Israeli
concessions proposed by President Clinton, offered no counter-proposals,
and left Camp David. He clearly had no intention of signing any “end of
conflict” agreement, no matter what Israel offered. A few months later
Arafat launched his terror war against Israel.

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Over the ensuing several years, more than a thousand Israelis were killedin the terror war and thousands more horribly maimed. The war led to amuch more dramatic shift in Israeli opinion than the terror of the earlier
Oslo years. A solid majority of Israelis were now convinced that there
was no partner for peace. Additional defections from the “peace camp”
occurred with the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and thesubsequent seizure of the area by Hamas, with its charter calling not only
for the annihilation of Israel but the murder of all the world’s Jews. Gaza
became not the anticipated venue for peaceful Palestinian development
but rather the launching pad for thousands of rockets and missiles into
Israel and the trigger for three wars in less than ten years.
The broad shift in Israeli views has had an impact at the ballot box.
Parties more focused on security, and more skeptical of any chancefor progress towards genuine peace given the Palestinian leadership’s
actions, declared objectives, and incitement in media, mosques, andschools, have generally prevailed since 2001.
But the shift in Israeli opinion has not meant that Oslo lost its entire constituency.
There remain Israelis who are convinced that, whatever the Palestinian
leadership – whether the PA or Hamas – says or does, Israel is responsible
for the absence of peace, and Israeli withdrawal from the territories (alongwith other concessions) would end the conflict. Israel’s academic, media, andcultural elites are now even more overrepresented among those who cling tothis stance. The perspectives of those elites are widely disseminated in the
United States, and their views have an impact on American Jewish opinion
that outweighs their actual representation of Israeli thinking. They also provide
ammunition for those American Jewish leaders who, for reasons of their own
domestic political predilections and agendas, are predisposed to identify withwhat had been the Israeli “peace” camp and have little sympathy for what is,
in fact, a wide Israeli political consensus.
This preparedness to downplay or dismiss the Israeli consensus and thepainful lessons that engendered its views in favor of claims that peace could
be had if only Israel were more forthcoming is a revival of old, familiar
themes. It is little different in its roots from the factors that shaped Judah
Magnes’s blindness to the plight of European Jewry before and during
World War II and his insistence that the urgent quest for a Jewish state that

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19

would fulfill the League of Nation’s promise of a national refuge reflected
a “lust for power” and “a concept of Jewish life which is abhorrent.”
To be sure, those in the American Jewish leadership and their likeminded followers, who are so critical of Israel’s leaders, do not quite
share the fears of American Jews in the first half of the last century – atime of widespread anti-Semitism in the United States that touched thelives of virtually all Jews – that support for a Jewish state might lead to arollback of Jewish civic rights. But their attitudes vis-a-vis Israel are lessthe product of considerations of Israel’s predicament than the product ofdomestic considerations and domestic concerns.

American Jews, Israel, and the American Left
One might reasonably ask what such concerns could be, given that pollsof American opinion consistently show very high levels of support for
Israel, support not diminished over the years of its present governmentor the years of Netanyahu’s premiership. One might answer that somein the American Jewish community nevertheless worry that that support
could slip away if Israel does not make what they consider the “right”
moves. But a more valid answer is that many American Jews, and toan even greater extent their leaders, identify with the political Left in
America, and even more so with academic, media, and cultural elites
that are almost monochromatically leftist. They are sensitive to the viewsof those groups much more than to the views of the population more
broadly and are swayed by the anti-Israel predilections rampant among
those elites, predilections that have only grown more intense in recent
years. Those groups, too, generally insist that Israel bears most of the
responsibility for the absence of peace and that if it would only grant
Palestinians their “rights,” peace would follow.
Why give such weight to the Left? Various factors have fed into thispenchant. In Europe, it was typically, although not invariably, liberal
parties that supported the granting of civil equality to Jews and conservative
parties that opposed it, and Jews brought with them to America thepolitical perspectives formed in this context. Those perspectives became
firmly established as support for the Democratic party with the presidency
of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s administration employed Jews at all

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

levels – including in the work programs established by the New Deal – ina manner that contrasted dramatically with the obstacles to employment
Jews routinely encountered in the wider society at the time.
In addition, Jews – for defensive reasons, as in Europe – were eager toimmerse themselves in a larger pool of people whom they construed
as having shared concerns and objectives, and they chose to view
Roosevelt’s seeming grand alliance of the disadvantaged in theseterms. This propensity was reinforced by the fact that American Jews
were concentrated in the large cities of the Northeast, where most of
those around them were now Democrat partisans. Jewish eagerness
to embrace and cling to such alliances led them, and continue to leadthem, to be very slow to respond to changing political winds, or torecognize when those they wish to see as permanent allies move in
directions inimical to Jewish interests and Jewish well-being.
As sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab noted in 1995, pollsof American Jews through the latter part of the last century continued toreveal that a vast majority believed anti-Semitism was more rife among
American conservatives than liberals, even though actual surveys ofAmerican opinion regarding Jews did not support this assumption.18
The embrace of liberalism, and of imagined liberal allies, as a defense
against perceived anti-Jewish forces has become even more marked
as the religious content of being Jewish has further eroded for many
American Jews. The self-definition of what it means to be Jewish
and share in the Jewish vocation has become more narrowly focusedon a universalist humanitarian agenda.
This emphasis on social liberalism can be seen as far back as a 1964
meeting of rabbis from the three major branches of Judaism who had
convened to try and reconcile their differences. The only common groundthey could find was support for the civil rights movement and the War on
Poverty.19 A 1988 survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times found thatwhen Jews were asked which among three facets of Jewish identity they
most valued, many more chose the pursuit of social justice and equality(50% ) than either Israel (20%) or the “religion” (20%).20

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Yet another facet of Jewish social liberalism as a perceived defense against
anti-Jewish forces and, as part of that defense, immersion in a wider poolof the imagined like-minded was noted by Lipset and Raab in their 1995
book: “[This emphasis] within the Jewish community [has] become most
explicit when some of the main streams of American Christianity, usually
the higher status denominations, have established a moralistic rather thana theological cast and espoused the ‘social gospel.’”21
The deleterious consequences of American Jews wishfully thinking
in categorical terms about allies and enemies, wishfully conceiving ofalliances as of transcendent validity, and resisting giving credence toevidence that such convictions are misplaced can be seen as early as thecommunity’s dealings with Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s cold indifference tothe plight of European Jewry during World War II, his refusal to support
rescue of those tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, of Jews
who could have been saved, via steps that were readily available to him
and would have cost him nothing politically, elicited only very weak
responses from the American Jewish leadership. Fear of stirring up evengreater anti-Semitism was no doubt a factor in inhibiting a more forcefulresponse, but there was also disbelief among many that the man who had
had such a positive impact on the American Jewish community could
now be so indifferent to the plight of Europe’s Jews. This factor can beseen in the correspondence and actions of, for example, Rabbi Stephen
Wise, the community’s leading figure, who sought to promote rescue
and was forced to acknowledge Roosevelt’s failure to help – yet refused
to question Roosevelt’s “goodwill.” When the Republican National
Convention, in June 1944, put a strong pro-Zionist plank into its platform
for the upcoming election and criticized Roosevelt for not pressing Britain
to open Mandate Palestine to Jewish refugees, Wise wrote to Roosevelt,“As an American Jew and Zionist, I am deeply ashamed of the reference
to you in the Palestine Resolution adopted by the Republican National
Convention. It is utterly unjust, and you may be sure that American Jews
will come to understand how unjust it is.”22
The eagerness of many in the Jewish community, and in its leadership,
to believe alliances to be of immutable strength, led to numerous otherdistortions of reality in subsequent decades. For instance, the umbrellaorganization of Jewish Community Relations Councils has typically22

I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

convened annual meetings to formulate policies and objectives, and Jewishblack cooperation on social justice issues has perennially been a centerpieceof the ensuing programs. However, citing the organization’s 1953 statementon the issue, noted rabbi and historian Arthur Hertzberg, himself a man of
impeccable liberal credentials, observed that the statement, while touchingon what were indeed shared concerns and aims, suggests an identity of
black and Jewish interests that was not true. Hertzberg also pointed out that,in the 1960s, elements of the black civil rights movement, and other groups
that gained prominence within the American black community, became
radicalized, adopted a rhetoric that was often anti-Semitic, and pursued
militant confrontations with segments of the Jewish community. Yet major
circles within the wider Jewish community and its leadership, including
the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, strove toignore or downplay the changed reality and to construe the Jewish-black
alliance as they had previously done. Hertzberg went on: “In late May 1967,
the Anti-Defamation League published a study in five volumes on blackanti-Semitism, to assert that there was less such prejudice among blacks
than among whites. The Anti-Defamation League would soon change its
estimate of black anti-Semitism, but in May 1967, this was the dominant‘orthodoxy’ of the American Jewish establishment.”23
The ongoing identification by much of the Jewish community, and evenmore so the cadres of its leaders, with institutions, groups, and causes
associated with the Left, and the reluctance to acknowledge developmentson the Left inimical to Jewish interests, is on vivid display in today’s
America. The Anti-Defamation League has typically been much readierto call out right-wing anti-Semitism than that emanating from the Left, assuggested by Rabbi Hertzberg’s observations. The ADL has over the lastyear repeatedly and strongly condemned what can be seen as somethingof a resurgence of neo-Nazi and other extreme Right anti-Semitic groups
in the United States. But such groups, however vile their rhetoric and their
behavior, hardly represent a greater threat in terms of the numbers of theirfollowers and their penetration into mainstream society than the no lessugly Jew-hatred coming from the other end of the political spectrum.
Louis Farrakhan is without doubt the spewer of anti-Semitic invective withthe widest following in America today, and his apologists extend to membersof the Congressional Black Caucus and other prominent mainstream figures.

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Yet the ADL and other Jewish organizations have devoted much lessattention to addressing Farrakhan’s Jew-baiting or to criticizing his enablers
than to issuing statements condemning hate-mongers on the Right.
American campuses, almost without exception left-wing bastions, havebecome collectively the American institution most associated with attacks
on Jews, with those attacks emanating from both faculty and student
groups. Jewish students are repeatedly subjected to marginalization,
intimidation, verbal abuse, and even physical abuse. Yet the ADL anda number of other mainstream Jewish organizations have been largely
AWOL in addressing the crisis in academia.
In December 2017, four imams in the United States called for the massmurder of Jews. Three did so in sermons in their mosques and thefourth in a Facebook posting. While the incidents drew criticism frommainstream Jewish organizations, including the ADL, those criticisms
almost invariably failed to note that such anti-Semitic rhetoric is standard
fare in these imams’ countries of origin and throughout much of the
Muslim world. The statements by Jewish organizations also routinely
included expressions of hope for dialogue and cooperation with theimams’ constituencies – a flourish not generally part of the response toright-wing anti-Semitism.
One might ask why the hateful bigotry of imams would be considered
left-wing rather than right-wing. The answer lies in the fact that much of
the American Left has made defense of Muslims in America, including
Muslim groups with radical, Islamist agendas and affiliations, a politicalissue, seeking to cast those to the right of themselves, and those criticalof elements of the Muslim community, as nativist bigots preying on
American Muslims. Many in the Jewish community, particularly in themainstream leadership, have readily embraced this formula and sought
to fashion relations with Muslims in a manner consistent with thiscomprehension. Similarly, the Left, including President Obama during
his tenure and many of those around him, has repeatedly spoken of thedepredations emanating from Islamophobia in America, and this theme
too has been picked up by many in the Jewish community. Yet, whilesome incidents of Muslims being targeted have occurred and any such
episode is one too many, in fact, according to FBI statistics, it is Jews

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

who are overwhelmingly the primary targets of religiously based hatecrimes in America. In 2016, they were the victims of 54% of such crimes;
Muslims the victims of 24%.24 Those on the Left inveighing against
Islamophobia, again including the former president and the people
around him, have virtually never acknowledged this reality. Nor has themainstream Jewish leadership taken issue with their failure to do so or,
all too often, even noted what the statistics actually showed.
There are other, broader threats to American Jewry emanating fromthe Left that have likewise been largely ignored by much of the Jewish
community and its leaders.
Certain core traditional “liberal” principles, principles long widely embracedby the majority of those at both ends of the political spectrum in the UnitedStates, are now under siege as the popular ideology of the political Left,including of increasing segments of the Democrat party, shifts from liberal
to so-called “progressive” stances. Freedom of speech has for some time
been under attack on American campuses and increasingly outside thebounds of academia, in other areas dominated by the Left. It has been
devalued in the service of “sensitivity,” of protecting people from ideas
they find offensive. The emphasis on the individual and individual rights is
likewise losing ground to leftist, progressivist promotion of the centralityof group identity and group rights. Martin Luther King’s dream of seeing
people judged by the content of their character rather than the color of
their skin, or some other group characteristic, is now inconsistent with theobjectives currently holding sway on the Left. Both freedom of speech andthe right of the individual to be judged on his or her own merits have been
critical to making the Jewish experience in America the success it has been,and so different – despite episodes of popular anti-Semitism – from theJewish experience elsewhere. Yet organized Jewry has failed to respond inany meaningful way to the leftist devaluing of these principles.
When the leadership, and much of the community, have been so weak inaddressing anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions, as well as other threats, comingfrom the Left, when they have persisted in their determination to identify with
the Left and march with the Left no matter what stands inimical to American
Jews the Left embraces, it is hardly surprising that, as the Left targets Israel,
the response is pathetic. The inclination among much of American Jewry,

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25

and particularly among community leaders, is less to challenge the Left
than to wish Israel would shape its policies to accommodate leftist criticism– whether that criticism comes from the professoriat, or elements of the
Democrat party, or the mainstream media, or the so-called “liberal” churchesof whose influence on Jews Hertzberg wrote.
In the same vein, much of American Jewry, especially within
the leadership, has tolerated and even supported American leftist
whitewashing of the Palestinian leadership while casting Israel’s leaders
as the obstacles to peace. Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly asserted thatJews have no historic connection with the Holy Land, that they are merely
alien invaders, and that he will never recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish
state. He has declared that he will never give up the Palestinian “right ofreturn,” the supposed right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants
to settle in Israel. He has incited violence against Israelis in his media
and mosques and has taught in his schools that the highest calling ofPalestinian children is to dedicate themselves to Israel’s destruction. He
has spent hundreds of millions of dollars yearly promoting terrorism
and supporting terrorists and their families. He has complained about
Jews violating the Temple Mount with their filthy feet, insisted the site
is holy only to Muslims, and called upon his people to defend it fromsupposed Jewish depredations. He has walked away from every peaceplan put forward by Israeli or American administrations, failed to makeany counter-proposals, and made clear there is no plan to which – if it
is cast as a final, end-of-conflict, arrangement – he will agree. He has
made clear that he, like Arafat, will regard any arrangement as just a step
towards the ultimate dissolution of Israel and establishment of a Muslim
state on all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
Yet, according to the previous president and those who were around him,
Abbas is the “moderate” and the present Israeli government is the problem in
its failure to make the concessions that would satisfy Abbas and win peace.
Many American Jews, again most particularly community leaders, rather
than challenge this gross and bigoted distortion of reality have gone alongwith it and hoped that Israel would change course and somehow deliver
those magical, peace-assuring concessions. This stance is adopted even by
many who are, in their own way, devoted to Israel and its well-being.

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

It is the stance reflected, for example, in the writings of Gary Rosenblatt,editor and publisher of The Jewish Week, a newspaper produced with thesupport of the UJA-Federation of New York. In an article that appeared
early in 2016 under the title “Frustration with Israel Growing Here at
Home,” Rosenblatt reports grievances against Israel that he says he hasheard from members of the Jewish community, including community
leaders. Seemingly topping the list, and reflecting a view clearly sharedby Rosenblatt, is “The hard fact... that Israel’s leadership is moving in a
direction at odds with the next generation of Americans, including manyJews, who want to see greater efforts to resolve the Palestinian conflict andwho put the onus for the impasse on Jerusalem.”25
In the same vein, Rosenblatt observes, “Whether or not it is fair, the strong
perception today is that the Israeli government is moving further right, andintransigent...” And “One national leader told me he’d like to fly to Israel,with a group of his top colleagues, to try to convince Netanyahu in dramatic
fashion of the need for ‘a plan, any plan’ to break the impasse.” And whilethese statements are couched as representing what Rosenblatt has heard
from others, it is in his own voice that he states near the end of the piece, “...
Netanyahu and his government will continue to make decisions based on
their own narrow and immediate political interests, and we can only hope
they will coincide with national interests as well.”26
The obvious implication is that the author does not see the prime ministeras having been acting in Israel’s national interest, and that – reflecting thethrust of the article – this charge refers specifically to the prime minister’s
not being forthcoming enough in the quest for peace.
But, again, the falling away from Israel among some in the Jewish community,
including in its leadership, is much less a reaction to Israeli policy than afuncton of those American Jewish circles identifying with and wanting topropitiate elements in the wider society who have increasingly adopted antiliberal, “progressive” world views, including a hostility to Israel. This is also
why those same American Jewish circles are so receptive to, indeed enamoredof, Israeli voices that – unlike the clear majority of their fellow citizens –cling to the Oslo fantasies of yore and blame Israel first and always.
Gerald Steinberg, head of NGO Monitor (which follows and calls out
the myriad NGOs dedicated to pushing anti-Israel distortions of reality

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27

and often aiding groups pursuing Israel’s destruction) touches on thisassessment of the American scene in a response to Rosenblatt entitled“Why Israel Is Frustrated with American Jewish Leaders: Fringe Israeli
voices that polarize and demonize our society are given legitimacy andresources in America” (published by Rosenblatt, to his credit, in The
Jewish Week on January 27, 2016). Steinberg notes that, “Like mostIsraelis, I also hope for a peace plan, but not any plan, and certainly not
one that will bring us yet another disaster when it fails...So no, ‘any plan’that helps Israel’s PR among liberal [sic] students, but makes our security
situation even worse, is not better than the status quo.”

Mainstream American Jewish Bodies and Israel
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, is anotherprominent American Jewish leader whose perspectives regarding Israel
are shaped largely by attitudes towards Israel on the American Left andby the American Jewish embrace of those attitudes. Jacobs has been
almost invariably critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his policies.
Over the past year, that criticism has focused largely on the issue of
prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In January 2016, after yearsof negotiations, the Israeli government agreed to establish a so-called“egalitarian” prayer area at the Wall, an area outside the control of
the Orthodox rabbinate and free of its strictures. But in June 2017, thegovernment froze implementation of the plan, triggering angry reactions
from, particularly, American Reform and other non-Orthodox circles,
including from Jacobs. Jacobs’s unhappiness with Netanyahu, however,predates the Western Wall controversy and goes well beyond issues
related to treatment of the Reform movement in Israel.
Reporting for The Jerusalem Post on the Union for Reform Judaism’s
biennial convention in 2015, Elliot Jager noted the prominence of “calls
for more vigorous criticism of Israeli policies...and heightened activism
for social justice.” Of Rabbi Jacobs’s keynote address, Jager observed:“[He] could not identify a single policy of Benjamin Netanyahu’s
government that his movement could heartily embrace. For him, ‘asking
Jews around the world only to wave the flag of Israel and to support
even the most misguided policies of its leaders drives a wedge between
the Jewish soul and the Jewish state. It is beyond counterproductive.’”27

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

And Jacobs has made clear that among those “misguided policies” are,to his perception, the Israeli government’s failure to do more to achievea solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.
The great majority of Israelis may feel – having paid a steep price in bloodfor previous concessions in Israel’s search for peace – that there is nopartner on the other side, whether the PA or Hamas, with whom a genuine
peace can be negotiated at this time. Israelis may now overwhelmingly
believe both Palestinian leaderships when they declare that they are notinterested in peace with Israel and that their goal remains Israel’s demise.
But Jacobs, and many others in the Reform leadership, moved by a frameof reference not Israeli, somehow construe this Israeli perspective as
representing “a wedge between the Jewish soul and the Jewish state.”28
Another indication of the gulf between consensus Israeli views andthose of Jacobs was his response to President Trump’s announcementin December 2017 that he would be moving the American embassyin Israel to Jerusalem. It should be noted that the announcement madeclear the embassy would be in pre-1967 Israeli Jerusalem and its move
therefore would not pre-judge the resolution of borders, which would
have to be decided in bilateral negotiations between the Israelis andPalestinians. Nevertheless, Jacobs quickly issued a statement on behalfof the Union for Reform Judaism that, among other points, declared,“[W]e cannot support his decision to begin preparing that move now,
absent a comprehensive plan for a peace process.”29
Israelis almost universally support the embassy move, and the Palestinian
leadership has repeatedly demonstrated its lack of interest in genuine
peace, but Jacobs somehow construes the Jewish soul as requiring that thePalestinians be given a veto over America’s moving its Israeli embassy
to Israel’s capital. In the same statement, Jacobs further declared that,“Additionally, any relocation of the American Embassy to West Jerusalem
should be conceived and executed in the broader context reflecting
Jerusalem’s status as a city holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.”30
But how could the embassy move reflect negatively on the city’s religious
status, especially given that it has only been under Israeli governancethat the city’s significance to all three monotheistic religions has been
respected? In his response to the proposed embassy move, Jacobs

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demonstrated his indifference to Israeli opinion and his sensitivity to theviews of Israel’s critics on the American Left. In this instance, while hemay have had the backing of others in the Reform leadership, there weremany in the rank and file who opposed his stance.
Indeed, there were significant, or at least vocal, segments of the Reformmovement that opposed the selection of Jacobs as president of the URJ
in 2011 because of his affiliations with groups in many respects hostile toIsrael. Jacobs at the time was a member of the rabbinic cabinet of J Street
and on the board of the New Israel Fund. J Street characterizes itself as proIsrael and pro-peace, but its pro-Israel claims are belied by its stances.
Israelis of almost all political stripes reject a return to the pre-1967 armisticelines, the so-called Green Line, in any Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The
consensus is, as the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 (the key
UN document relating to the territorial issue) asserted, that those lines left
Israel too vulnerable and invited further aggression against the country.
As mentioned, Yitzhak Rabin, in his last Knesset speech prior to his
assassination, listed West Bank areas – an incomplete list, as he indicated– that Israel would need to retain and populate in any final settlement toassure its security and survival. Yet J Street opposes any Israeli presence
beyond the Green Line and advocates the United States supporting, via
unilateral policy initiatives or a UN Security Council resolution or an
initiative in conjunction with other major powers, reversing Resolution 242
and endorsing the Green Line as the basis for defining a future border.31
J Street also advocates the United States instituting punitive measuresagainst Israel for any activity beyond the Green Line. It claims that a
number of American administrations have viewed settlements beyond theGreen Line as “illegal,” when in fact only the Carter administration labeled
them illegal and, as attested to by many experts in the field, there is muchin international law that weighs in favor of their legality.32
Israelis have fought three wars against Hamas in Gaza since Israel’s
withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, with each conflict triggered by Hamas
attacks, particularly rocket fire, against Israel’s civilian population. Yet
J Street has repeatedly drawn a moral equivalence between Israel and its
openly genocidal foe, and has often parroted Hamas claims and statistics
about the course of the conflicts and the resultant casualties.33

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

J Street is consistently silent about the goals of Hamas and of thePalestinian Authority, their mutual rejection of the legitimacy of a Jewish
state within any borders in “Palestine,” and the PA’s rejection of allnegotiation proposals offered by Israel or by the United States.
J Street asserts it opposes the “global BDS movement” that targets allof Israel for boycott, divestment, and sanction, but does not oppose
BDS efforts targeting the territories beyond the Green Line. It sees suchboycotts as consistent with its goal of promoting Israeli withdrawal to theGreen Line. But, again, the vast majority of Israelis, along with notable
Western military and strategic experts, believe such a withdrawal would
render Israel fatally vulnerable.34
In addition, the “global BDS movement” also sometimes promotes, like
J Street, more circumscribed boycotts limited to the “territories,” as inits partially successful efforts to advance such boycotts in Europe. It
does so because it knows that even such limited boycotts, which serve
to weaken Israel’s presence in the territories and to advance the goal of
Israeli retreat to the Green Line, also serve to undermine Israel’s strategic
viability and ultimate survival.
J Street has worked with supporters of the Iranian government and strongly
backed President Obama’s 2015 agreement with Iran that legitimized thatnation’s nuclear program and released to the mullahs over $100 billion
in embargoed funds in exchange for limited curtailment of its pursuit ofoperable nuclear weapons. It did so even as Iran has consistently reasserted
its goal of annihilating Israel and consistently used its resources to arm andfinance terrorist proxies, such as Hezbollah, that target Israel. Of course,
Israelis of virtually all political stripes opposed the Iran agreement.35
Shortly before the consummation of the Obama administration’s Iran deal,
at J Street’s annual conference in March 2015, J Street Board of Advisors
member Marcia Freedman, echoing those in the last century who opposeda Jewish state even as Jews were being subjected to mass slaughter forlack of a sanctuary, declared that Jews should become a minority in an
Arab-dominated binational state.36 Her suggestion was apparently greetedwith much display of assent by fellow panelists and her audience. She
and they seem to have no difficulty depriving Jews of the right of national
self-determination accorded other peoples. Nor were they troubled by theMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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31

horrific treatment widely meted out to religious and ethnic minorities, suchas Christians, Yazidis, and Kurds as well as Jews, in the Arab world, andmeted out even more dramatically in the context of events that have marked
the “Arab Spring” since its beginning in 2011.
Jews becoming a minority in a binational state is not official J Street policy.
But the leadership of J Street is obviously less interested in the concernsof most Israelis, the realities of their predicament, and the well-being of
the Jewish state than in aligning itself with elements of the American Left
indifferent at best towards those concerns and realities and Israel’s fate.
The New Israel Fund, on whose board Jacobs also served, is anumbrella organization that finances a number of Israeli NGOs, manyof which are likewise hostile to the views and concerns of the vast
majority of Israelis and some of which also challenge the right ofJews to national self-determination.37
Others in the leadership of major American Jewish organizations have, likethe Reform movement’s Jacobs, embraced J Street and additional groups
that purvey stances hostile to Israel. Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the AntiDefamation League and formerly a special assistant to President Obama,
spoke at J Street’s 2016 annual convention and echoed some of J Street’s
habitual drawing of moral equivalences between Israel and those openly
dedicated to her annihilation. He also urged extending greater legitimacy to
the Palestinian “narrative,” the Palestinian denial of any Jewish historicalconnection to the land of Israel, and the confabulated rewriting of virtually
the entire history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.38
The ADL, under both Greenblatt and his predecessor, Abe Foxman, has
criticized state and federal efforts to pass anti-BDS legislation, including
legislation to withhold funds from institutions of higher learning that enact
BDS measures. The ADL has argued that its stance is based on the defenseof freedom of speech.39 But it requires considerable logical contortion
to twist into a free speech issue the withholding of taxpayer funds frompublicly supported colleges and universities that pursue policies biased
against Israel and ultimately aimed at undermining that nation’s viability.
The ADL stance seems another instance of conforming to the politicalpredilections of particular echelons in America with which its leaders
identify, and to doing so with little regard for the impact on Israelis.

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Examples abound of mainstream Jewish organizations accommodatingeven the most extreme manifestations of Jewish hostility to Israel.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) militates for Israel’s dissolution.40 It is mostactive on campuses, where it works as, in effect, the Jewish auxiliary of
the Arab-dominated Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in promoting
BDS resolutions and activities and in silencing pro-Israel voices.
In April 2018, the Durham, North Carolina city council voted to ban city
police “military-style” training with any foreign entities and to ban police
exchanges of any sort with Israel. Israel is the only nation named in theban. The city council resolution was spearheaded by JVP activists.41
According to a Jewish News Service story of May 6, one of the activists,
Sandra Korn, “is a board member and head of adult education at Durham’sJudea Reform Congregation” and works as a youth Midrasha teacher at the
Jewish Federation of Durham-Chapel Hill. Another, Lara Haft, “is a Hebrewschool teacher at Beth El Synagogue for the Jewish Federation.”42
Leaders of both the Judea Reform Congregation and Beth El Synagogueemphasized that their congregations/communities include people withdiverse opinions, and Rabbi Daniel Greyber of Beth El stated that his
community “offers every Jew a place to study and pray.”43 But for Jewish
institutions to employ as teachers and community leaders individuals
who aggressively militate for Israel’s destruction, who campaign in
American colleges and universities and lobby in American political fora
to advance that objective, reflects something more than open-mindedness.
It is an indication that those institutions place their support for Israel’s
well-being and survival at a lower priority level than their conforming
to current progressivist dogma about diversity, where diversity means
giving legitimacy to whatever radical elements of the Left are promoting,including attacks on Israel aimed at its dissolution.
Another example: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religionis the largest Jewish seminary in North America and, according to its
self-description, “the academic, spiritual, and professional leadershipdevelopment center of Reform Judaism.” For its Los Angeles campus
graduation ceremony on May 14, 2018, it recruited as its commencement
speaker author Michael Chabon, known for his anti-Israel views.

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33

In 2017, Chabon and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, who is also a writerand also has a long history of vilifying Israel, enlisted essays from otherwriters from around the world on the horrors of the Israeli “occupation”
and published them along with essays of their own in a book entitled
Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. The
various pieces are filled with factual inaccuracies about supposed Israeli
misdeeds, but the bigger problem is the overarching false premise: thatthe current state of affairs, and all its negative impact on the lives ofPalestinians, is perpetuated by Israel’s heartless desire to maintain thestatus quo and prevent Palestinians from assuming fuller control overtheir own lives. There is nothing on the violence that followed upon
Israel’s ceding much of its control in the context of the Oslo agreements.
There is nothing on the Palestinian leadership’s rejection of every
Israeli offer of a final territorial division, its refusal to propose counteroffers, its insistence that it will never accede to any final resolution thatrecognizes Israel’s right to exist within any borders. There is nothing
on the three wars, triggered by Hamas attacks, that have followed upon
Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. All that is apparently deemedinconsequential, not worthy of note, in Kingdom of Olives and Ash.44
Rabbi David Ellenson, in his introduction of Chabon at the HUC-JIR
graduation, reportedly referred to his having written a book on “theoccupation” and suggested the book was particularly relevant now because of
the decision to relocate the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.45
In his speech, Chabon picked up on a theme he addressed in his essay in the2017 collection: He claimed that the security barrier built by Israel during
the terror war in reality had nothing to do with security but was intended to“imprison” Palestinians. Other remarks were in the same vein.46 According
to a graduate at the event, Chabon’s observations were greeted with wide
audience approval and his speech received enthusiastic applause.47
A story by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the subsequent controversy
about the choice of Chabon as commencement speaker noted these
responses from heads of the HUC-JIR: “As both an Israeli and American
institution, belonging to two proud democracies defined by lively civil
discourse, it does not occur to us at HUC-JIR to quash or vilify politicalcriticism of Israel out of a preemptive fear of controversy,” wrote Rabbi

34

I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

David Ellenson, the interim president and chancellor emeritus, and Joshua
Holo, the dean of the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR. “On the contrary,
we know that the confidence to invite challenging ideas both defines andvalidates democracy in the first place.”48
But, of course, the issue is not one of quashing free speech but of honoring
someone who dismisses Israel’s legitimate security concerns and blamesIsrael, rather than those who seek the Jewish state’s destruction, for thedifficulties of the Palestinians. Once again, a major, mainstream Jewish
body placed championing Israel’s well-being second to accommodating
the Israel-vilifying rhetoric currently so popular within leftist circles.

Mainstream Jewish Organizations, Educational
Institutions, and Israel
Among the most consequential examples of leaders of a mainstream Jewish
organization accommodating Jewish groups hostile to Israel is Hillel.
Hillel has long provided a center for Jewish activities and connectedness
on campuses for those students seeking such connectedness and has been
the leading organization in doing so. It reports that it has a presence atmore than 550 colleges and universities. With regard to Israel, Hillel
International guidelines declare that the organization is “steadfastly
committed to the support of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state withsecure and recognized borders as a member of the family of nations.”49
The guidelines also assert that “Hillel will not partner with, house, or hostorganizations, groups, or speakers that as a matter of policy or practice:
Deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secureand recognized borders; delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard
to Israel; support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against theState of Israel; [or] exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus
events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”50
But in recent years, students on some campuses have taken exception tothese guidelines and insisted, for example, that their campus Hillels host
events co-sponsored by the virulently anti-Israel and often openly antiSemitic Students for Justice in Palestine and the hardly less anti-Israel
Jewish Voice for Peace. Under the rubric “Open Hillel,” advocates ofMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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35

this course claim they are simply seeking to broaden the discussion of
Israel beyond the positions articulated in the Hillel guidelines.
The first “Open Hillel” conference was held in the fall of 2014 andreportedly drew more than 350 participants. Jewish Voice for Peace playeda prominent role in the conference program, as did other voices hostile toIsrael and challenging of its very existence. An attendee, writing in The
Tower magazine, noted that “... while there were definitely some views
expressed that were even more extreme than JVP, I never heard a single
opinion expressed that could be called more ardently Zionist than J Street –which itself has a very problematic relationship with Zionism.”51
Thus far only a handful of campus Hillels in America have embraced
the “Open Hillel” agenda. But many more partner with organizations
that support BDS at some level and promote other anti-Israel policies– most notably J Street, but also at times groups such as JVP andeven SJP. A key explanation for this is that many, likely most, Hillel
directors – either because of views held before coming to their Hillel
position or because they have been won over to popular campus biases– are sympathetic to the intellectually insupportable and morally obtuse
blaming of Israeli policy for the absence of peace and for the wide
hostility to Israel in academic circles.
Hillel directors who are fully supportive of Hillel International’s
guidelines regarding Israel, and are unabashed supporters of the Jewish
state and its right to demand a genuine and defensible peace in return forconcessions, are a distinct minority.
Moreover, Hillel International has not aggressively sought to hold Hillel
chapters to the organization’s guidelines on Israel as a condition for
their continuing to use the Hillel name. Nor has the wider community ofleading Jewish organizations openly addressed the highly problematicdevelopments within this key Jewish campus institution, much less takena stance on those developments. No doubt this is, again, in large part
because so many prominent figures in those organizations are likely tobe among the Jewish leaders who are not prepared to challenge Israelbaiting segments of society, such as major elements of academia, withwhich they identify, and prefer instead to blame Israeli policy for thosegroups’ hostility to Israel.

36

I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

Some voices in Jewish leadership are essentially sympathetic to the strong
Hillel International parameters regarding Israel but at the same time argue
that Jewish organizational life ought to provide a “big tent” and be open
to Jews of all opinions who want to identify with the community.
Proponents of this view suggest, regarding Hillel, it ought to be seen as apositive that those Jewish students so critical of Israel nevertheless want
to be part of campus Jewish communal life.
But of course they want to be part of Hillel not to share a common space with
Jewish students different from themselves – that is to say, Jewish students
who see Israel differently from how they do. If that were their interest, theywould create an “Open J Street” and “Open JVP.” Rather, they want to bepart of Hillel so they can 1) undermine support for Israel from within theflagship Jewish campus organization; and 2) use the organization in theirquest to separate identifying with Israel – at least Israel as comprehended byand defended by the great majority of Israelis – from Jewish identity.
Compromising defense of Israel in order to “enlarge the tent” by appeasing
those who traffic in stances advocated by seekers of the Jewish state’s
destruction is at once morally reprehensible and likely doomed to failure, if
the ultimate objective is to moderate the views of Jewish students hostile toIsrael. In November 2017, Rabbi Julie Roth of Princeton’s Hillel canceled
a talk by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely in the wakeof protests against Hotovely’s appearance by J Street and others.52 It ishighly unlikely that Rabbi Roth did so because she thought her disinviting
Hotovely would somehow increase support for Israel from within thecircles of Israel’s Jewish critics on campus. Did those in Hillel International
who tolerated Roth’s blackballing of Hotovely believe it would?
In the so-called Al Aqsa intifada that began in the fall of 2015, the PA
urged Palestinians to defend the Al Aqsa mosque from what it falsely
claimed to be Israeli depredations. Israelis were soon being killed byPalestinian assailants. A Jewish student group at Stanford wanted to hold avigil for the Israeli victims and asked the Hillel rabbi, Serena Eisenberg, tolead the memorial prayer. But she reportedly refused to do so because thePalestinian assailants who were killed in the course of their attacks were notalso being memorialized and because J Street was not co-sponsoring theMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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37

event.53 It is likely that Rabbi Eisenberg was not simply bowing to J Street
students and like-minded others but was acting on her own predilections.
In any case, does the American Jewish community really want to embrace
this new comprehension of Jewish morality? And, if not, how much will
the community nevertheless be silent and hamstrung because this is themorality of the day as pushed by the elites with whom it identifies?
Israel’s primary obligation is not to win a popularity contest, either inthe world at large, or within the ranks of a hostile Left, or within some
Jewish “big tent,” many of whose members have priorities inimical to
the state’s well-being. Rather, its obligation is to protect and defend its
citizens, build the state along the same ethical, Jewish, and democratic
principles that have been its essential guidelines since its founding, andmake its case as best it can to the world, including to the jaundiced within
the Jewish world. It has no obligation to compromise its vital interests forthe sake of advancing its case.
American Jews and their institutions that support Israel in its pursuit ofthat primary obligation should act accordingly. If, for example, campus
Hillels exerted themselves to promote an honest, educational expositionof Israel’s case, rather than compromising their doing so for the sake of
not offending other-minded Jewish students, they may find that they win
over some of those students, particularly among the ambivalent. They willcertainly strengthen the resolve of those students genuinely sympathetic
to Israel. And as to those who are not winnable, Hillel leaders and others
should remember that it has always been thus. Every assault on Jews andindictment of Jews has invariably gained the support of some Jews whowant to distance themselves from the community of the besieged. And
invariably, the Jews who have taken this course have sought to ascribe their
doing so to some higher moral purpose. Whenever Jews, or a portion of
their community, have been under attack, there has always sprung up theequivalent not only of J Street but of more extreme groups, full-throatedsupporters of the Jews’ attackers, such as Jewish Voice for Peace.
The more comprehensive explication of the history of the Zionist
movement, and defense of Israel, that Hillels fail to provide is also all
too often missing from Jewish education at earlier levels, whether Jewish
day schools or after-school programs. It is common for such schools to38

I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

promote support for Israel. But they typically do little to educate theirstudents in the nature of the threats faced by Israel since its inception
and the goals of its enemies over the years, the objective of the state’s
eradication advanced by both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, andthe propaganda war, indoctrination of constituents, and incitement aswell as phyical attacks undertaken by both Palestinian leaderships andthrough which they seek to advance their annihilationist agenda. This
failure to educate more fully – perhaps out of a desire to avoid material
deemed by some to be controversial – leaves students unprepared forbigoted assaults on Israel, and on them as Israel’s supporters, that they
will all too often encounter in their colleges and universities.
One of the organizations of Jews established in recent years to opposeIsraeli policy is the IfNotNow movement, which identifies “ending theoccupation” as its goal and seeks to counter American Jewish entities thatthey perceive as supporting “the occupation.”54 There is nothing in theirliterature that notes the many times, including in recent decades, when
Palestinian leaders walked away from Israeli and American proposals for
dividing the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean into two states.
There is no noting that Gaza has been under full Palestinian control since2005 and that the vast majority of Palestinians on the West Bank live under
Palestinian governance. There is no weighing that the rulers of Gaza havelaunched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians and call not only for themurder of all Israelis but the murder of all Jews. There is no acknowledging
that the leader of the Palestinian Authority has said he will never recognize
the legitimacy of a Jewish state within any borders.
A video of IfNotNow members shows a number of them participating ina ceremony that seems modeled on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,
except that in the latter the speakers take responsibility for their earlier
problematic behavior and humbly seek the strength to forego such behavior
in the present and future. In contrast, the IfNotNow members characterize
themselves as victims of their past – of Jewish educations that lauded Israel
and failed to expose them to Israel’s alleged transgressions against thePalestinians – and declare their break from that past and their righteousquest to set right Israel’s wrongs.
Perhaps these individuals’ Jewish education did provide them a fuller
immersion in the realities confronting Israel in dealing with its PalestinianMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIESI

39neighbors and the challenges entailed in the quest for a more comprehensive
separation of the two populations, but they were not paying attention. Or
perhaps they chose to jettison what they had learned once they were atcollege and faced with a zeitgeist that rewarded the adopting of perspectives
different from those in which they had been educated. But it could also
be that their education in Jewish day or after-school programs or summer
camps entailed promotion of Israel without exposure to the threats posed by
the state’s neighbors and the difficulties addressing those threats. The latter
reality would not, of course, excuse these partisans of IfNotNow from theirfailure to educate themselves, but it would represent a weakness of Jewish
education that needs to be corrected.
The shortcomings of Israel-related education in Jewish day and afterschool programs are only a very small part of the problems surrounding
education about Israel in pre-college public and private schools. The larger
difficulties, while not caused by Jewish communal organizations, have been
allowed to metastasize by the failure of Jewish communal organizations
and their leadership to counter them and even at times by their seeking toblock efforts to counter anti-Israel bias in the schools.
Texts and curricula produced by Arab states and by academic Middle
East Studies departments hostile to Israel have widely been offered to andadopted by public and private schools for use in history, social studies,and related courses.55 Teachers also commonly and uncritically download
material from media websites likewise hostile to Israel, with little or no
vetting for accuracy or objectivity. Again, Jewish organizations havedone little to counter this trend.
An illustrative example is provided by the schools in my own city, theBoston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, whose population is about
one third Jewish. A parent complaint in 2012 about factually false antiIsrael assertions being taught in a high school classroom was dismissedby school officials. This led to some grass-roots rallying around theissue and to calls for a review of curricula and vetting of anti-Israel bias.
School officials responded by stonewalling, rejecting all complaints,
and refusing to provide town residents with copies of the curricula inquestion – despite Massachusetts state law mandating public access topublic school curricula.

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

Rather than support the concerned parents and seek clarification of
the curricula and potential problems, the Boston Combined Jewish
Philanthropies, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Community Relations
Council, and a number of local rabbis – apparently without examining therelevant teaching materials – all came to the defense of school officials.
Some in the community ultimately turned to Judicial Watch, which fileda Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition with the Newton school
system, requesting the teaching materials that the system had until thenrefused to provide. Newton subsequently did hand over relevant course
material – how comprehensively is uncertain – beginning in the spring of
2015. Judicial Watch, at the request of community activists, transferred
the material for analysis to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America (CAMERA). (In the interests of full disclosure, I ama member of CAMERA’s national board.) In 2017, CAMERA publisheda monograph on the material entitled Indoctrinating Our Youth: How a
U.S. Public School Curriculum Skews the Arab-Israeli Conflict andIslam.56 (Parents’ complaints, and the provided material, also touched –in addition to the teaching about Israel – on the teaching of Islam in theschools. Complaints have been raised across the nation about such teaching,challenging both the accuracy of what is taught and the appropriateness ofteaching Islamic doctrine to an extent that no other religion – most notably
Christianity or Judaism – is covered and that would seem to run counter tostandard understandings, vis-a-vis public schools, regarding the separationof church and state.)
The CAMERA monograph documents myriad factual errors in the course
material provided by the Newton school system, as well as omission of
information vital to an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, with boththe factual errors and the omissions reflecting an anti-Israel bias. Publicationof the monograph finally led the school system to acknowledge publicly a
problem with the curricula and to promise reform (although in subsequent
statements some school officials backtracked from this straightforward
acknowledgment). It also led some of the Jewish leadership that had
uncritically supported the school system but had already somewhat shifted
their stances as more information about what was being taught in the schools
was revealed – leadership including that of the local ADL and JCRC – toacknowledge more fully that there were indeed problems at the schools.

MIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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41

But not everyone among the community’s Jewish leaders responded thisway. In November 2017, the local Newton newspaper, the Newton Tab,published an interview with CAMERA’s executive director about themonograph. Included in the interview was a discussion of CAMERA’s
three recommendations to the Newton Public Schools. These were:
1) having teaching materials carefully vetted for accuracy and academic rigor,
2) making the curriculum and teaching materials easily available to parents andother interested citizens, and 3) excluding from the classroom those materials
that had already been proven to be biased and factually unreliable.57
A subsequent letter to the Tab from five local rabbis, including Toba
Spitzer, president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, attacked thearticle and the monograph. The rabbis declared:“...We are troubled that outside groups [in fact, CAMERA isbased in Newton and a number of its board and staff have family
members attending Newton public schools] with a clear political
agenda are trying to advance their own interests by criticizing theschool system unfairly and inaccurately.
“Our ultimate hope is that students in the Newton public schools
will learn the stories from both sides of the conflict, and will growto appreciate that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex, notthat one side is ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong.’“That possibility grows smaller when outside parties, including
so-called ‘media watch groups,’ attempt to dictate what the ‘truth’is, which group’s grievances get aired over the other’s, or what
curriculum materials should be taught in schools, with the goal of
forwarding their own specific agenda.
“Just as a variety of opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflictexist within the Greater Boston Jewish community about Israel,so, too, are there many legitimate angles from which to teach ourstudents about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We support the Newton Schools for approaching the subject
carefully and with respect for the many human narratives of Israelis
and Palestinians, an educational perspective which advances thecause of peace for Israel and her neighbors.”58

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I American Jews and Their Israel Problem

Perhaps not surprisingly, the rabbis did not cite or challenge any of the
CAMERA monograph’s specific claims of inaccuracies and distortions in
the classroom materials handed over by the Newton Schools. There is infact nothing to suggest that any of them actually read the monograph.
That rabbis dismiss calls for factual accuracy, and concerns over the many
examples of falsehoods taught in the curriculum materials, as a promotionof pro-Israel bias; that they argue, in effect, that there are no facts andno “truth” but only “many human narratives”; and that they declare theobjective of the Newton Schools should not be teaching about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict as fully and accurately as possible but rather providing
what to their particular lights is a “perspective which advances the causeof peace” is another clear example of some within the Jewish community
seeking to accommodate popular, primarily leftist, indictments of Israel,
however divorced from historical and present reality, and justifying their
doing so with claims of being motivated by higher moral purpose.
Anti-Israel curricula and programs have infiltrated public and private
schools across America with little if any pushback from Jewish communities
and all too often with Jewish support. The assault on Israel at all levels of
the American education system will almost inevitably have an impact on
American public opinion and ultimately, as its sponsors hope, on American
policy. The supine Jewish response will have consequences.
But many American Jews are clearly willing to subsume to otherconflicting priorities, whatever commitment they may feel to Israel’s
survival and well-being. Many may choose to delude themselves
into believing those other priorities and Israel’s well-being are in factreconciliable, or they may simply choose to give precedence to the viewsof groups with which they identify and which adopt a jaundiced, evenhostile, attitude towards Israel. In any case, such a course of falling inline with Israel’s often clearly bigoted critics is, again, consonant withrecurrent Jewish responses to the circumstance of Jews being undersiege. And, once more consonant with historical precedent, those who
adopt such attitudes cast their stance as the more ethical course.
A cynic may view it as simply the more self-protective course. But then
one can question how self-protective it will ultimately be, as the groups
with which those who adopt this path identify – generally groups associatedMIDEAST SECURITY AND POLICY STUDIES

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43

with the so-called “progressive” wing of the American Left – move further
and further into embracing political positions traditionally inimical to Jews
while also increasingly tolerating within their ranks not only the open
expression of anti-Israel bigotry but of anti-Jewish sentiments as well.
And yet recent events – as well as the modern history of elements of Jewish
communities in Europe and in America seeking to accommodate antiJewish sentiment and anti-Jewish indictments, a history that at its inception
included, for some, embracing anti-Zionism – may point to how segmentsof the Jewish community will manage the burgeoning Jew-baiting of
the “progressive” Left. Michael Chabon, in his speech at the HUC-JIR
commencement, not only reprised his oft-repeated attacks on Israel but
also attacked Judaism and essentially advocated the disappearance of theJewish faith and its followers. He did so in the language of universalism andbreaking down barriers.59 Perhaps the doyens of the “academic, spiritual,and professional leadership development center of Reform Judaism,” whoso vigorously defended their invitation to Chabon, wanted to impart to their
newly minted rabbis and cantors Chabon’s answer to the challenges facing
the Jewish world. Perhaps they wanted their graduates to consider seriously
not only Chabon’s anti-Israel arguments but his anti-Jewish proposals as
well, his calls for the dissolution of the faith and its followers. Such acourse, and not simply a distancing from Israel, is, after all, the logicalultimate step, the reductio ad absurdum, in the Jewish accommodation ofanti-Jewish sentiment.

Notes1

Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Dover, 1988), p.154.

2“Reform Judaism: The Pittsburgh
jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

3

Brandeis on Zionism: A Collection of Addresses and Statements by Louis D.
Brandeis (Washington, D.C.: Zionist Organization of America, 1942), p.11.

4

Ibid., p.23.

5

Gay Talese, The Kingdom and the Power (New York: World, 1966), p.168.

6“Reform Judaism: The Columbus Platform, 1937, jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

7

Yoram Hazony, The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul (New York:
Basic Books, 2000).

8

Ibid, pp.213-214. Magnes’s interlocutor was Harry St. John Philby.

9

Ibid, p.215. See also, Arthur A. Goren, ed., Dissenter in Zion: From the Writingsof Judah L. Magnes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1982), document 66,“An International Enclave,” pp.282-285. The document was published in The
New York Times, Nov. 24, 1929.

Platform,”

November

1885,

10 Cited in Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground (Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin, 1987), pp.611-12.
11 Cited in Hazony, The Jewish State, p.231.
12 Ibid., p.247.
13 See Goren, ed., Dissenter in Zion, pp.461-520.
14 Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Near East and South Asia, “Daily
Report Supplement, Israel-PLO Agreement,” Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1993, pp. 4-5.
15 Efraim Karsh, Arafat’s War (New York: Grove Press, 2003), p. 59.
16 Ari Shavit, “Why We Hate Him: The Real Reason,” Haaretz, Dec. 26, 1997.
17 See Tom Rose, “NJCRAC’s Mistake,” Forward, July 12, 1996.

18 Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1995), p. 152.
19 Jack Wertheimer, A People Divided (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 38.
20 Lipset and Rabb, Jews and the New American Scene, pp.54, 134.
21 Ibid., p. 54.
22 Rafael Medoff, The Deafening Silence (New York: Shapolsky, 1987), p. 178.
23 Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America (New York: Columbia University,1997), p. 354.
24 “2016 Hate Crime Statistics,” https://ucr.fbi.gov.
25 Gary Rosenblatt, “Frustration with Israel Is Growing Here At Home,” The New
York Jewish Week, Jan. 6, 2016.
26 Ibid.
27 Elliot Jaeger, “Have Reform Jews given up on Israel?” The Jerusalem Post,
Jan. 7, 2016.
28 Ibid.
29 “Reform Jewish Movement: Concerned About White House Jerusalem
Announcement,” Union for Reform Judaism, Dec. 5, 2017.
30 Ibid.
31 See, for example, “Our Policy” statement on “Settlements and Creeping
Annexation,” jstreet.org. Also, “J Street Calls for Stronger American Response
to Israeli Settlement Expansion,” press release, June 6, 2014, jstreet.org. Also,“Without Strong Action, Israeli Government Will Continue to Ignore US
Opposition to Settlement Expansion,” press release, Oct. 6, 2016, jstreet.org. Also,“The settlements are illegal. It’s past time to say so.” Petition, jstreet.org.
32 Ibid.
33 See, for example, “Statement by Jeremy Ben-Ami, Executive Director, on Israeli
Airstrikes in Gaza,” press release, December 27, 2008, jstreet.org. Also, Chris Gold,“J Street spars with Reform Judaism Leader over Gaza,” The Hill, Jan. 5, 2009.

34 See, for example, “Our Policy” statement on “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions(BDS),” jstreet.org.
35 “Our Policy” statement on “Iran,” jstreet.org. Also, “J Street received over
$500,000 to push Iran deal,” The Times of Israel, May 22, 2016.
36 Ari Soffer, “J-Street Speaker Calls for End of ‘Jewish State’,” Israelnationalnews.
com, Mar. 29, 2015.
37 See, for example, “New Israel Fund,” NGO Monitor, June 21, 2018.
38 “Remarks by Jonathan A. Greenblatt,” adl.org, Apr. 17, 2016.
39 See, for example, Morton A. Klein and Liz Berney, Esq., “Why Does the ADL
Continue to Hinder Anti-BDS Efforts?” zoa.org, June 20, 2016.
40 See, for example, “What is your position regarding Palestinian refugees?” under“Policies,” jewishvoiceforpeace.org.
41 Miriam Elman, “Demonization: Durham NC City Council bans police exchanges
with Israel,” legalinsurrection.com, Apr. 22, 2018.
42 Eliana Rudee, “Durham BDS Activists Employed by Local Synagogues,
Federation,” JNS News Service, May 7, 2018.
43 Ibid.
44 Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, ed., Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers
Confront the Occupation (New York: Harper Perennial, 2017).
45 “Special Memorandum: Concerning the Recent HUC Graduation,”
coalitionforjewishvalues.org, May 28, 2018.
46 Michael Chabon, “Those People, Over There,” tabletmag.com, May 30, 2018.
(Text of commencement speech.)
47 Morin Zaray, “Why I Walked Out on my Graduation,” Atlanta Jewish Times,
May 30, 2018.
48 Ben Sales, “Michael Chabon attacks Jewish inmarriage and Israel’s occupation in
speech to rabbinical students,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 25, 2018.
49 “Israel Policy,” Hillel Israel Guidelines, hillel.org.
50 “Standards of Partnership,” Hillel Israel Guidelines, hillel.org.

51 Aiden Pink, “‘Open Hillel’ Is a Much Bigger Problem Than You Think,”
thetower.org, Issue 20, Nov. 2014.
52 See, for example, Raphael Ahren, “Princeton Hillel cancels Hotovely speech
after dovish Jewish groups protest,” The Times of Israel, Nov. 6, 2017.
53 See, for example, Paul Miller, “Is Jewish students’ safe space on Israel threatenedby ‘pro-Israel’ lobby?” Jewish News Service, Apr. 2, 2017.
54 See “About Us,” ifnotnowmovement.org.
55 See, for example, Jewish Telegraph Agency staff, “Tainted Teachings, WhatYour Kids are Learning about Israel, America and Islam, Parts 1 through 4,”
Campus Watch, meforum.org, Oct. 27, 2005.
56 Steven Stotsky, Indoctrinating Our Youth: How a U.S. Public School Curriculum
Skews the Arab-Israeli Conflict and Islam (Boston: Committee for Accuracy in
Middle East Reporting in America, 2017).
57 Andy Levin, “CAMERA focuses on Newton schools’ Arab-Israeli conflict
curriculum,” Newton Tab, Nov. 21, 2017.
58 “Letters,” Newton Tab, Dec. 6, 2017.
59 Michael Chabon, “Those People, Over There,” tabletmag.com, May 30, 2018.
(Text of commencement speech.)Recent BESA Center Publications
Mideast Security and Policy Studies
No. 139 Greece, Israel, and China’s «Belt and Road» Initiative, George Tzogopoulos, October 2017
No. 140 Arabs and Turks Welcomed the Balfour Declaration, Efraim Karsh, November 2017
No. 141		Schoolbooks of the Palestinian Authority (PA): The Attitude to the Jews, to Israel and to
Peace, Arnon Groiss and Ronni Shaked, December 2017 (Hebrew)
No. 142 Conflicting Interests: Tehran and the National Aspirations of the Iraqi Kurds, DoronItzchakov, December 2017
No. 143 Russia’s Strategic Advantage in the Baltics: A Challenge to NATO? Jiri Valenta and Leni
Friedman Valenta, January 2018
No. 144 Surviving Donald Trump: Israel’s Strategic Options, Louis René Beres, February 2018
No. 145 Militant Islam’s War Against the West, Max Singer, March 2018
No. 146 Reframing the Middle Eastern and Palestinian Refugee Crises, Alex Joffe and Asaf
Romirowsky, March 2018
No. 147 Water, Trump, and Israel’s National Security, Donald D.A. Schaefer, March 2018
No. 148 Sudan’s Policy in the Era of Arab Upheaval: For Good or for Evil? Haim Koren, April 2018
No. 149 The Privileged Palestinian Refugees, Efraim Karsh, May 2018
No. 150 The Israel Defense Forces, 2017-1948, Kenneth S. Brower, May 2018
No. 151 In Memoriam: Per Ahlmark, Manfred Gerstenfeld, June 2018
No. 152 Iran’s President Rouhani: Part of the Problem, Not Part of the Solution, Udi Evental, July
2018 (English and Hebrew)
No. 153 China’s Military Base in Djibouti, Mordechai Chaziza, August 2018
No. 154 The Oslo Disaster Revisited: How It Happened, Efraim Karsh, September 2018
No. 155 The «Separation» Fence: A Political Border in a Security Guise, Gershon Hacohen,
October 2018 (Hebrew only)
No. 156 The North Korean Air Force: A Declining or Evolving Threat? Noam Hartoch and Alon
Levkowitz, October 2018
No. 157 The 1981 AWACS Deal: AIPAC and Israel Challenge Reagan, Arnon Gutfeld, November 2018
No. 158 Pakistan and Its Militants: Who Is Mainstreaming Whom? James M. Dorsey, November 2018
No. 159 American Jews and Their Israel Problem, Kenneth Levin, December 2018

Policy Memoranda
No. 7
No. 8
No. 9
No. 10

The Gaza War, 2014 – Initial Assessment, Efraim Inbar and Amir Rapaport, December 2014
(Hebrew)
Perfect Storm in the Middle East, Yaakov Amidror, June 2015 (Hebrew), July 2015 (English)
Israel-Greece Relations, Arye Mekel, September 2015 (Hebrew)
Space Wars, Aby Har-Even, May 2016 (Hebrew)

Colloquia on Strategy and Diplomacy
No. 28
No. 29No. 30The IDF Force Structure )Hebrew)			
Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations: Whereto? )Hebrew)		
IDF Challenges (Hebrew)				

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May 2014
August 2014
August 2016