Alienation of American Jews from Israel Will Dramatically Affect U.S. Policy

Israel claims to be the “homeland” of all Jews and has frequently declared that Jews in other countries were in the process of disappearing through assimilation and intermarriage. Zionism’s mythical understanding of Jews and Judaism, we can now see, bears no relationship to reality.

In the past seven years, the American Jewish population has grown 10 per cent. “The cynicism about American Judaism, and this belief that we are a shrinking population, we are a vanishing population, is incorrect,” said Leonard Saxe, director of the Steinhardt Center at Brandeis University. “The prophecy of the vanishing Jew has not come to fruition.”

The study found that as of 2018, there are approximately 7.5 million Jews in the contiguous United States, home to the largest Jewish community in the world. According to recent government statistics, Israel has 6.7 million Jews. The “homeland” of American Jews, it is clear, is the United States. They are American by nationality and Jews by religion, just as other Americans are Protestant, Catholic or Muslim.

Israel’s 51-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its retreat from democratic values has alienated many American Jews, including groups which once embraced it. In October, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association (RRA) endorsed legislation designed to protect the rights of Palestinian children imprisoned by the Israeli military sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN). H.R. 2407 would prohibit U.S. funding to “the military detention, interrogation, abuse or ill-treatment of children in violation of international humanitarian law.”

Rep. McCullom thanked the RRA : “This is a tremendous boost of support...I thank these respected rabbis for helping to lead the fight for human rights. Their endorsement sends a strong signal to people of all faiths that every child deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Now it is time for the U.S. to send a clear signal that no U.S. tax dollars should enable the detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children by the Israel Defense Forces.”

Since 2000, an estimated 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained, prosecuted, and incarcerated by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank. Rabbi Alissa Wise, acting co-director of Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP), points out that, “A few years ago, the idea of legislation for Palestinian rights introduced in the U.S. Congress was inconceivable, let alone that a leading association of rabbis would endorse it. The RRA’s decision to endorse HR 2407 is the clearest proof yet of the American Jewish community’s growing support for Palestinian rights.”

In Rabbi Wise’s view, “The RRA’s endorsement powerfully contradicts previously held orthodoxies about American Jewish communities and advocating for Palestinians, and is a bellwether of a seismic shift in what is possible. In this volatile and uncertain political moment it is a welcome and needed reminder of the dynamism in D.C. and the American Jewish community more broadly. I am deeply proud to be a Reconstructionist rabbi.”

JVP Government Affairs manager Beth Miller said: “This bold and historic stance from the RRA clearly shows that the ground is shifting. Progressive movements across the U.S., including progressive American Jews, demand concrete steps toward justice and equality for Palestinians...We are thrilled and grateful to the RRA for sending a clear message to Capitol Hill that blind support for Israel is no longer the status quo and Congress needs to catch up.”

The concern American Jews are showing about Israeli policies are already having an important impact on the debate over U.S. policy. Reporting on the J Street conference held in Washington in October, The New York Times (Oct. 28, 2019) reports: “Pete Buttigieg compared Israel’s relationship with the U.S. to that of a close friend —-one who needed and should accept more guidance. Bernie Sanders put it in starker terms, saying the U.S. should demand more from Israel. But whatever the language, one thing was clear: Democratic attitudes toward Israel are shifting in the highest echelons of the party.”

Among the speakers at the J Street conference, which attracted thousands of Jewish activists, was Rabbi Ayelet Cohen of the New Israel Fund. She said that American Jews are losing interest in Israel, are tired of fighting over Israel and that rabbis are quietly dropping Israel from Hebrew school curricula and no one is noticing.

She said: “When I think about the language of a rift, I think about active conflict, I think about moments that have stood out as crisis points between American and Israeli Jews—-I’m sure Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, the whole issue around the Iran deal, the Jerusalem Embassy. But I think on a daily basis...what we are experiencing is a very troubling cooling of interest, of curiosity, of engagement between American Jews and Israelis and vice versa. I think for many of us it’s about despair, it’s about averting our eyes, it’s about misalignment of values...People who were deeply connected to Israel are tired, they are constantly feeling a need to justify why they feel connected to this place, they’re constantly disappointed, experiencing a lot of shame about this place—-always hoping that it will rise to the occasion, be something it’s not.”

Rabbi Cohen urges American Jews to listen to the voices of Israeli Jews and Arabs who challenge their government’s violation of human rights: “The best thing we can do is connect with and hear from Israeli activists (like those appearing at J Street) who are deeply concerned with what’s going on. The best thing we can do is tell their stories, lift up their voices, remind ourselves that as American Jews that there are Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, who are working every day. They do not have the luxury of averting their eyes, it is not an option. So for us to be truly in relationship, we have to look too and have to listen...”

In the post-World War II years, many believed that Israel and American Jews shared common values. Slowly, it has become clear that this was not really the case. American Jews, for example, believe in religious freedom and separation of church and state. In Israel, there is a theocracy, with state-employed Chief ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Reform and Conservative rabbis cannot perform weddings, funerals or conversions. Jews and non-Jews who wish to marry must leave the country to do so. At the same time, millions of Palestinians are without political rights, a challenge to the American Jewish commitment to equal rights for men and women of every race, faith and background.

As a result of these many contradictions there is a major transformation in the thinking of American Jews now under way. In the book, “Reclaiming Judaism From Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation,” edited by Carolyn L. Karcher, a professor emeritus at Temple University, are gathered a powerful collection of personal narratives from forty Jews. They represent diverse backgrounds and tell a wide range of stories about the roads they have traveled from a Zionist worldview to activism and solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis striving to build an inclusive society founded on justice and equality.

Of particular interest is Dr. Karcher’s Introduction, “History of Zionism and Anti -Zionism, 1880-1948.” She writes, “What is the relationship between Zionism and Judaism? Zionism is a political ideology of Jewish nationalism and Judaism is a religion...”

Zionism, she points out, immediately brought opposition from Orthodox Jews as well as those Jews who rejected the idea of a separate Jewish nationalism. In America, Reform Jews rejected the Zionist idea. In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution disapproving any attempt to establish a Jewish state. The resolution declared, “Zion was a precious possession of the past...as such it is a holy memory, but it is not our hope of the future. America is our Zion.”

This tradition has been kept alive, Karcher notes, by the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), which remains committed to the classical Reform belief in a religion of universal values free of nationalism. “The ACJ and its chief spokesmen of the 1940s—-the Reform rabbis Elmer Berger and Morris Lazaron and the philanthropist Lessing Rosenwald, son of the better-known philanthropist and Sears Roebuck heir Julius Rosenwald—-continued not only to warn against the dangers of creating a Jewish state in Palestine but to promulgate alternative solutions to the plight of the Holocaust survivors languishing in post-war displaced persons (DP) camps. Although they went down to defeat and subsequently were written out of history by Zionist scholars, their ideas deserve renewed attention.”

Contributors to this volume include rabbis, academics, students, writers and men and women from a wide variety of Jewish backgrounds.

Rabbi Linda Holtzman, one of the first women rabbis to preside over a synagogue, describes her movement away from Zionism: “Golda Meir was my hero and when she said there was no Palestinian people, how could I not believe her? Israel really was, as I learned over and over again ‘a land without people for a people without a land.’ I did not know the truth for a long time. I did not try to learn the truth...When signs proclaiming ‘Zionism is racism’ appeared at rallies that I went to or at protests that I marched in, I worried about the other causes I was supporting...I tackled the question of Zionism and racism myself...I can no longer call myself a Zionist because the memories of Palestine will never let me. I am deeply saddened by the loss of something I treasured...Now, as I serve on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace, or work for Palestinian rights in any way that I can, I feel a connection to the values that underline my Judaism.”

In an essay, “Moving Away From Zionism,” Gael Horowitz, a recent graduate of Wesleyan University, writes that, “ During my gap year in Israel there was very little explicit education on the occupation...In this narrative, the occupation was only a post-1967 issue and not a larger issue of settler colonialism....Two friends and I decided to take it upon ourselves to complete the part of our experience that seemed to be lacking, We went on a trip to Hebron, Susya, and the South Hebron Hills with a group that included ...a tour guide from the Israeli veterans organization Breaking the Silence, dedicated to informing the public about the violence that maintaining the occupation requires...we saw Shuhada Street and the settlement on top of the hills. The intentionally crafted and manipulated geography of settler colonialism became clear and I began to wonder why this was the first time I had been able to see it....we learned about the morally reprehensible occupation, but the movement’s belief system did not, and perhaps could not, entertain the idea that nationalism was inherently toxic.”

Horowitz concludes: “I deeply understand that my Judaism is political and as Jews we have a responsibility to be in solidarity with Palestine—-not because it proves expectations wrong but because Israel is a country that says it speaks for all of us. If we remain silent, then we are tacitly agreeing. We must be able to speak up powerfully, Jewishly and consistently to be able to say ‘Not in my name.’”

In a thoughtful afterward, Carolyn Karcher writes: “In the wake of World War II, irresistible forces propelled the world toward the creation of Israel: the overwhelming ghastliness of the Holocaust, the guilt felt by both American Jews and Western nations for not having done enough to prevent the tragedy, the urgency of resettling the Holocaust’s surviving victims; the unwillingness of the United States and other Western nations to admit these victims in sufficient numbers coupled with the insistence of Zionist leaders that Palestine be the refuge offered them, and the colonialist mentality that led Europeans, Americans and Zionists alike to ignore the indigenous Palestinian population.”

In Karcher’s view, the Zionist leaders, from the very beginning sought to remove as many of the indigenous Palestinian population as possible by a calculated campaign of “ethnic cleansing.” In this connection, she reports that in March 1948, two months before the end of the British mandate, the Haganah adopted a “blueprint for ethnic cleansing: plan Dalet.” This plan, she notes, “involved terrorizing the population through massacres that provoked mass flight, driving Palestinians out of villages and urban centers, and reducing nearly all the structures in the depopulated areas to rubble...The number would rise to between 700,000 and 800,000 when the organized ethnic cleansing finally ended in the summer of 1949.”

This book shows that a new generation of American Jews is rejecting nationalism and seeking to restore the humane Jewish moral and ethical tradition. This has already had an impact upon how candidates for political office view U.S. Middle East policy. With dissenting views increasingly being heard, Israeli policies are undergoing increasing scrutiny. There is no doubt that the growing alienation of American Jews from Israel and its occupation will alter how American policy makers view Middle East policy in the future. A new era lies ahead, one which provides hope for a U.S., policy which embraces both American and Jewish values of respect for the human and political rights of men and women regardless of background.*