5 Reasons Why Liberal Jews Will Never Support Israel
Israel, in other words, will have to keep living by the gun. And for American Jewish progressives — who see guns themselves as an evil that should be banned — that can hardly be an attractive picture. Since 2000, when Israel has fought Palestinian terror in the West Bank (Operation Defensive Shield) and Gaza (Operation Cast Lead) and Hizballah terror in the Second Lebanon War, American Jewish leftists have — in Brog’s earlier-quoted words — “waved the white flag at best and joined in the attacks [on Israel] at worst.”
There is no basis to think this will change. American Jewish (and other) progressives do not think Israel (or the West) has real enemies and see engaging in armed conflict as a sign of moral failure.
2. Religion. A poll earlier this year made waves by finding that 84 percent of Israelis believe in God. That does not mean, of course, most Israelis are formally observant. The Jewish religion, however, plays a complex but essential role when it comes to Israel’s identity and ethos. Emotions about Jerusalem, the capital, run high. Religious parties are part of every governing coalition. Politicians talk of a biblical attachment to the Land of Israel.
This, too, is not American Jewish progressives’ cup of tea. It was different in Israel’s first decades when — at least — its public image was that of a predominantly secular country at the cutting edge of socialism. But when the 1967 conquest of holy sites in Jerusalem brought religious undercurrents to the surface, progressive enthusiasm for Israel waned rapidly. Again, this is a “structural” difference between Israel and the American Jewish left that does not stand to go away.
3. The power of the Palestinian narrative. Overall, the Palestinians’ star may be declining lately. As a wave of mayhem and violence — referred to by some as “spring” or “democracy” — sweeps the region, no one can even pretend anymore that the upheavals afflicting Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and so on stem from the Palestinian issue, or that still further Israeli land withdrawals are the key to calming the storms.
The Palestinian issue, though, retains its hold over progressives. People of that description have been interdicted by the Israeli navy in another show of support for Hamas-ruled Gaza. Getting Israel out of the remaining territories it holds, to be replaced by what would be a less-than-friendly “Palestine,” remains the central preoccupation of groups like J Street and Americans for Peace Now.
For American Jewish and other progressives, the idea of Third World Palestinians oppressed by gun-toting Israelis remains irresistible. The notion of being friends of the underdogs — however faux, however hypocritical — is fundamental to their political identity.
4. A right-of-center Israel. Since 1977 Israel has mostly been run by right-of-center governments, and the trend is only gaining steam. Netanyahu is completing four years at the helm of Israel’s most stable coalition ever, and polls project an even stronger right-of-center coalition emerging from the January 22 elections.
True, Netanyahu’s own right-wing credentials are questionable as he publicly endorses a demilitarized Palestinian state. His coalitions, though, continue to include sizable contingents who favor settling and claiming Judea and Samaria, some on religious grounds. Obviously, this is not to American Jewish progressives’ liking, and supporting such an Israel is difficult if not impossible for them.
Note that, when the left-of-center Olmert government went to war in Lebanon and in Gaza, pro-Israel conservatives had no difficulty sticking up for it. But progressives are made of different stuff. For them, nothing is more elemental than enmity toward “the right.” American Jewish progressives cannot identify with an Israel that repels them.
5. A right-of-center pro-Israel community. Likewise, as Brog notes, conservatives increasingly constitute the lion’s share of America’s pro-Israel camp. They even include religious Christian types who quote the Bible and oppose abortion and gay marriage. Brog, nevertheless, earnestly entreats American Jewish progressives to put differences aside and join the “pro-Israel coalition.”
But to think American Jewish liberals will stand shoulder to shoulder with Evangelicals, Jewish Republicans, and other unsavory creatures, in support of an Israel that is itself distasteful to them, is not realistic.
To sum up, then, Israel’s ongoing need to defend itself, its religious coloration, the enduring power of Palestinianism, Israel’s conservative ascendancy, and the even more pronounced conservative ascendancy in the American pro-Israel community are factors that preclude American Jewish progressives from returning to the pro-Israel stance some of them took in Israel’s early days.
Brog, in claiming that American Jewish liberals “are the ones who can most effectively defend Israel by invoking progressive principles to their progressive colleagues,” is right on a rational level. Along with its conservative and religious coloration, Israel remains a remarkable democratic success story in a dark region. Seemingly its record on such matters as freedom of expression, political pluralism, judicial independence, and women’s, gay, and minority rights should stir American Jewish progressives to not only support it, but do so with enthusiasm.
That they do not do so is not, however, a “failure” but an inevitable result of their mindset.
liberal first, jewish second.
That is part of it – Many American Jews consider being “Jewish” as a culture, not religion: like being Italian or Irish. Some still go through the motions of the holidays but most of the religious trappings are gone, or at least no one seems sure why they do them other than “Their grandparents used to do it”.
They feel little or no connection to Israel since their grandparents (or older generations) immigrated from Eastern Europe or some other country. Few have even visited and then only for a vacation, so there is no cultural connection to Israel for them, so they view it as just another country. Here’s where the liberal part kicks in: a US ally with superior weapons fighting a poor group that claims the land was originally theirs. Liberal knee-jerk reaction is to oppose the US ally.
Exactly…
Liberals in general are hostile towards the civilization that got them where they are.
The author: “for many years, the liberal base of the Democratic Party has been steadily turning against the Jewish state.”
And so also have they been turning against the American State. The fact American Liberal Jews can (and do) undermine their own “national interests” with regard to Israel, should be considered no more shocking to observers than American Liberal Secularists undermining the foundation of America.
Particularly, with the circumstances you mention, of having no family from, or ever visiting Israel.
In this regard, it is even easier to do.
Few American Secular Liberals will ever decide to visit “spiritual” places of their countries heritige, like Gettyburg…and go there alone.
To just go there to satisfy a NEED, some undefined NEED to see it… to just be there, and to reflect. They have no “spiritual” connection to our past. If they do visit, it will be for a conference, or a protest… a book signing supporting some version of “ax grinding” they support…only for something of THAT nature will you find a Liberal, by themself, in places like Gettysburg.
Its the same for Washington. They’ll never go there for “themselves” to think, and reflect… to just SEE those Archived Documents, to witness the physical proof of this Magnificent Legend, and weep silently with reverence when no one is looking…
They will only go there to promote their causes, in groups and with grievances, maneuvering for a political advantage, because they are HOSTILE to our past, to our civilization and they and seek to discredit it. Reverence of its “hallowed” places is the antithesis of their political outlook, they are more likely to VANDALIZE its monuments than lay flowers… at their own expense, and with no fanfare, simply because they wanted to.
And they do that in the country they were BORN AND LIVE IN.
They will certainly will do it for another place, a place they likewise despise, and yet have never seen.
I weep for America. I am sad for Israel, also. Some of their own people hate them and believe a two-party state will mean peace. If it comes about Israel is doomed.
Well, gosh, the Native Americans should have had the American Jews on their side, then.
It’s a real shame none of them have taken the time to learn what really happened, how Israel really came into being, what the Arab warlords really thought of the worthless land before the Jewish people reclaimed it from the swamps and deserts, who it was that fired the first shots and which group it was that decided they would voluntarily leave their homes and land and become refugees in neigboring Syria, etc., as a political weapon, which group vowed from the start, in the face of the UN resolution for partition, to wipe Israel off the map, which group consorted with the Nazi relics after WWII to slaughter Jewish settlements, which group started the war in 1967, which group does, in fact, have a land known as Palestine granted at the same time as the partition which created Israel. Israel was born of blood, sweat and tears, and the American Jews can’t even honor that by showing that they expect America to honor its treaties with Israel instead of throwing it to the world’s wolves.
You can’t fix stupid, though. The first group to claim they’re the Chosen People, and the first to also turn their backs on God. And that is probably why God continues to teach them lessons. Unfortunately, they don’t learn.
Actually, what the liberal denominations of both Christianity and Judaism have done is replace the Bible (and in the Jewsih case, the Talmud) with the Democratic party platform (aka “tikun olam”).
Jews constitute neither a religion nor a culture (although there is a Jewish religion and a Jewish culture). Jews are a distinct sub-species of Homo sapiens. When there are genetic diseases specific to Jews, I don’t think it’s too difficult to connect the dots. I recommend “The Culture of Critique” by Kevin MacDonald, if you want to understand the historic role of Jews in Western/Christian/European civilization. And who in the Hell is pushing this change in our 1,500-year-old calendar from B.C./A.D. to BCE/CE?? And who staffs the ACLU??
The preceding comment should be flagged and deleted for promoting a known anti-Semitic work and author.
Jacobite, that was a very stupid thing to say. Imbecilic. The existence of genetic defect diseases is by no means limited to Jews. Even if it were, how would you explain that Tay Sachs disease is vastly more common among Ashkenazi Jews as opposed to Sephardic and other subgroups among Jews? Would you make Ashkenazi Jews a separate race from Sephardic Jews? What about disorders of hemoglobin or glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency which tend to concentrate among people whose ancestry hails from certain parts of the world? Are people who have those genetic abnormalities somehow a ‘different’ race? How do the genetic diseases concentrated among Jews define them as separate from the rest of humanity? Careful. You’re just one or two intellectual sidesteps away from history’s murderous bigots.
so…from which sub-species did you inherit your poor little brain? sure as shooting wasn’t from the jews! lol…
Dennis Prager has been forcefully arguing of late that leftism/Progressivism is a religion (it certainly is a faith) and that it plays that role for many Jews, who view their Jewishness as an ethnic identity only. One may quibble with his terminology, but there is no doubt that for many Jews, especially thoroughly secular Jews, Progressive values (which some erroneously try to equate with the prophetic tradition) trump Biblical values and Zionism whenever a choice between the two is required.
The problem is not only that liberalism as a religion trumps solidarity with Israel. The problem is the master narrative that liberals and leftists alike use to explain the past, and that stigmatizes capitalism itself as a Jewish plague. I wrote about that here: http://clarespark.com/2012/11/07/capitalism-is-on-the-line/. In the past, liberal Jews are very uncomfortable with such analyses, as they toe the populist-progressive line.
For more on this subject, see http://clarespark.com/2011/06/17/the-famed-jewish-vote/. I reject the notion of a Jewish vote and explain why.
Thanks for your work Dr. Spark. I am a fan of your website and the goals of YDS because of its emphasis on historicity as opposed to a cultural narrative which has corrupted our national dialogue on events of the past. Moreover, your writing is surprisingly accessible for such scholarly content.
Well, all of you people who screamed about dual loyalty – a charge somehow not made against Irish Anericans who supported the IRA terrorists – you are now reaping what you sowed. Their loyalty is primarily towards their (distorted) image of what’s good for America. Enjoy.
We should know by now being liberal, within the accepted power centers, is not what it used to be. It has taken on a wholly different context, and its former incarnation is rendered meaningless. DOA.
Therefore, in order for Jews (and others too) to be accepted in the Dem circles and inner milieus, they must toe the accepted ‘progressive’ line. And this is why they will never return to the fold-so to speak.
Far be it for this Zionist Jew, and a Conservative American to boot, to lecture my brethren on their political choices, but honestly is demanded, otherwise they are mendacious too.
And the fact of the matter is that the Dem party IS anti-Israel, even though individual Dems may not be – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/09/02/the-subversion-of-america-through-the-fault-lines-of-democracy-muslims-in-america-plotting-in-plain-sight-with-their-leftist-counterparts-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
The facts are on my side, though many will pooh pooh them. No matter.
Let us all call an ace an ace, and a spade a spade. Then we call all move forward in an honest discussion.
Calling things as they are is sorely needed in discussions of the middle east in general, and Israel specifically.
I’ve said what I have to say about American ‘Jews’ in the most recent article by Roger Simon on the disaster that is the Obama re-election, also today, so I’m not going to repeat it here.
However I will add this. Hornik’s piece represents all that is wrong with conservatism. I mean he is right, but it avoids the nitty gritty, it avoids the gloves off approach. It isn’t plain talk, it’s all diplomatese. It’s all about playing nice. Just like Romney. Well that worked out right? Uh guess not. I myself have made that mistake, thinking you can reach out to them, reason with those who have no reason and those who spit on the truth with lies. It was a big mistake. Live and learn.
This is how it is: American Jews overwhelmingly voted for a Jew-hater whose foreign policy only encourages Islamists bent on another genocide of Jewry. If these Islamists succeed, liberals in America and the West (Jewish and gentile) will be culpable. Hence American liberal Jews are traitors, idiots, self-hating Jews. It really is that simple. If pro-Israel American (or Israeli for that matter) Jews do not engage in such plain talk, I no longer pay them much attention. What are you waiting for, until after Tel Aviv goes up in a mushroom cloud? Or even then, will you just get together with liberal anti-Israel Jews and collectively mourn with them (gag reflex), giving them a free pass and let bygones be bygones? Let them rewrite history?
I mean when can we call them self-hating Jews if not when they vote – SECOND TIME AROUND – for a president with probably the most overt and transparent anti-Semitic record of any in living memory? Saying that these Jews just don’t care about Israel, which is true enough, is just the point. If they don’t care about Israel, they are self-hating Jews IN PRINCIPLE. I don’t expect Hispanics or Native Americans, African Americans to care about the Jewish homeland, why should they? However I do expect it from Jews especially in our most perilous hour and if they give us the finger, then in principle they are self-hating Jews. This is not rocket science.
Or what is Hornik going to tell me, he doesn’t want to offend self-hating Jews, otherwise they might uh do what – vote a Jew-hater into the White House?
“Hence American liberal Jews are traitors, idiots, self-hating Jews”
can not be repeated often enough!
Why? They are putting their (mistaken) view of what is good for America over what is “good for the Jews”. Isn’t that what evereyone told us we should do? Isn’t that what we did (mostly) during the Holocaust? Weren’t we supposed to “assimilate”? Well, now American Jewry are the least religious group in America, and this is the result.
America has reaped what it sowed.
Larry! The problem of Israel and the Jews is the problem of eternal Jewish survival that is the essence of Judaism.Diasphora Jews as the eggs must be kept in the different baskets for the reliability and can be sacrificed.Muslims turned anti-semitism into the world-anti-semitism with the Israel-singularity in the centre of it.The Israel`s egg is too dangerous for the Diasphora and masses of the Jes dream of the deliverance.You Israelis must be strong and not burden the frightened Diasphora,I think.
Surviving through dispersion isn’t as much of an option today. Whereas once Jews could be found almost everywhere, today over 80% of Jews are found in just TWO countries – Israel and the US. 90% are found in just FIVE countries, but one of those is FRANCE where Jews are outnumbered by a hostile Muslim population more than 10 to 1. Anti-Semitism is rife in much of Europe. The same holds for places like Venezuela, once home to a vibrant community. The growing Arab and Muslim populations of Australia and Canada suggest a troubled future even there. (The campus Israel Apartheid Week phenomenon started in Canada and quickly spread to the US.)
Larry,
Its is the Political Softness of Comfort that propells these people. Yes, you can argue they are traitors, but it is a mental disease thet afflicts the Guilty Affluent Liberals of all stripes, not just Jews.
Soft-on Crime White “Caffeteria Catholics” are no differnt with regard to treason to their roots.
Same for Secular Leftists who seek to destroy the underpinnings of our Natural, GOD GIVEN rights to property and self-determination.
They have it too easy, so they give “lip service” and then some, to our enemies assage their guilt…
That, or they are simply evil.
My money is on 10% evil pushing the 90% seeking pennance/forgiveness.
Either way, its no shock this phenomenon occurs with Jews.
Because it occurs with a “certain percentage” all soft, educated, westernized people who have too much time on their hands, food in their bellies, and books on their shelves.
Jews in America, being very industrious and prizing education for their children, tend now to be “over-represented” in that catagory, ironically, due to their history of sucess, sacrifice, and hard work.
It a Paradox for us in The West…and probably will always be
I would make an addition to “Larry in Israel’s” comments: why assume that today’s Jewish Americans are intelligent? Yes, they are credentialed up the wazoo, but as anyone who has hired ivy league grads, it is obvious that you can be quite stupid and attain the credential your parents dreamed of.
To be ‘intelligent’ means more than getting good grades in school, it requires some hardship (ie, well, let’s say, no dishwasher, OK?) to operate. The American Jew is soft and sodden with luxury. Of course he disapproves of Israel’s militarism, it is so ‘ick’ to your sensitive snowflake in urban America.
You are describing the the difference between “intelligent” and “smart”
Obama is Intelligent…Rush Limbaugh is smart
General McClellen was Intelligent…General Sherman was Smart
Lawyers are Intelligent…Engineers are Smart
Liberal Jews in america are very intelligent, but they are not.
Too.
Smart.
I’m a conservative American Jew who voted for Romney. I really don’t know what to say to my liberal counterparts who voted for Obama.
I fear for Israel’s future, but I am on Israel’s side.
Not Jews by any biblical definition. JINO’s my friend – JINO’s. These people belong to Synagogues, yes, much like the church Obama attended for show. I have known these phonies all my life. They are ethnically Jewish by birth, but have turned from G-d and deserve scorn, as they are the enemies of Jews and Israel, not to mention US, much like Kapos of Holocaust. Best friends of Israel – Evangelical Christians, bless them. Not the JINO trash. Those who curse Israel will be cursed. Pretty clear, I would say.
Todah rabah Still. Evangelical Believers are Israel’s friend because of Jesus. Liberal Jews are(as the NT book of Revelation stated) ‘those who say they are Jews, but are not.’ Many in the Church, unfortunately, have never been able to distinguish between apostate Jews (what liberal Jews truly are, having abandoned belief in the One True God and disbelieving anything He has to say) and the imperfectly believing Jews. The latter believe in the One True God, but not on Jesus (Yeshua) as Messiah (Moschiach).
Now that Evangelical Bible-believing Christians are falling into the minority in the US, support for Israel will wane.
I’m a bit of a different cookie in the bag. I support Israel for a different reason than most Christians. Israel isn’t perfect, but it IS more righteous than the nations which surround it, and THAT is why I personally support Israel’s actions in the region.
That’s OK. The feeling is mutual.
So we Pharisees (and that is what we are) are the only true Jews?
Two-thirds of evangelicals did not vote.
Some of the above comments are kind of harsh. However, the large majority of American Jews’ vote for a second term for Obama, after all that’s happened, does seem to signal a decisive break with Jewish concerns.
“the large majority of American Jews’ vote for a second term for Obama, after all that’s happened, does seem to signal a decisive break with Jewish concerns.”
I don’t think so. I think it’s fear. It’s appeasement. People are hoping to avoid a confrontation with reality that they are simply accelerating. The future is going to be very interesting.
In the past European Jews have demonstrated how “smart” they are, it did not save a single Jew who ended up in the grip of the nazis. American Jews have this pathological urge to demonstrate how “good” they are, it will not save them from the next Shoa.
For most it’s not fear; it’s conviction. I witnessed great satisfaction among some when ObamaCare was upheld by the Supreme Court, and lots of smiles around after Obama’s reelection. One sister, after telling me that she was going for Romney, reported that another sister had made clear she “could never vote for a Republican”. One Jewish fellow I know (albeit not well) is a prominent Democratic strategist and works with J Street. Another I know less well is the head of NJDC. And I see them both in synagogue.
I fear me the future is going to be very deadly. And what do you want to bet that the cry will go up, “We didn’t know! We didn’t expect it to be this bad! Why didn’t you tell us?”.
Well, we have all been warned, repeatedly, through the last few decades, and most recently by Mitt Romney. And they chose not to listen.
I have said for at least a generation that WWIII would be started, not by Russia or the US, but by some Third World pipsqueak with delusions of grandeur. I have never liked being a Kassandra.
Collectivism, Statism,& Russian Communism are using race, gender, sexual preference, and economic envy to ruin the USA. Being successful and white are two of the cardinal sins that mark Jews as the enemy. However,the Jews are so inculcated with liberalism they don’t trust conservatives. They believe in the big lie that fascism is conservative, when in fact it is a form of communism.
The Jews are voting against their own self-interests, perhaps it is self-hate, when it could just be misinformation. Wake up, the blacks, the Hispanics and the generational poor are not your friends. Why do you vote with them? You will be the first to be slaughtered when absolute power is upon us.
There is one problem with this article: the great majority of liberal Jews do in fact support Israel. Unfortunately, their support is undermined by the failure of the Israelis to state their own case. Even as opinion in every part of the world is being influenced by a long running propaganda campaign against Israel, the message from much of the Israeli media and many of the prominent cultural figures is, first, that Israel is guilty, and second, that everything is the fault of the Israeli right! What can the liberal Jews do? It’s no surprise that, under these circumstances, they are reduced to repeating the Israeli-leftist line that one must confine the blame for Israel’s “crimes” to the bad Jews on the Israeli right and their American supporters.
I said there was one problem with the article, but there’s another one: the assertion that liberal Jews are the best positioned to defend Israel. But Jews are not well positioned to defend Israel as Jews. The reason is that it’s expected, and perfectly natural, that the Jews will defend Israel — no matter what. The circumstance that the Jews (and Israel) have had so few forcible advocates not from their own ranks, which is very sad, is one of the reasons why the arguments in their behalf meet with persistent skepticism. To be well positioned to defend Israel one should at least seem not to have a personal stake in the fate of the country.
maybe it’s me, but I do not see, in your comment, an explanation why american jews voted for obama
To no. 7, the above article does not make any “assertion that liberal Jews are the best positioned to defend Israel.” It quotes Brog’s article as making that assertion, but contends that the assertion is inaccurate.
American Jews are he most ignorant Jews in history. Hebrew illiterate, Bible illiterate stupids with advanced degrees. Their first mission is losing themselves in the crowd and not being singled out for belonging to a faith which they know nothing about.
For most American Jews, Jewish history begins with the holocaust. Like African Americans for whom history begins with American slavery, Jewish Americans are shallow, rootless folk. They care as much for Israel and Israelis as African Americans care for Africa and Africans.
I don’t know a great deal about Germany during the Weimar period but I suspect that strong parallels may be drawn between the German Jews of that time with American Jews today. If the Jews of Germany were anything like the Hollywood and Manhattan and Vermont Jews of today, doing to traditional German values what American Jews are doing to the values and intentions of the Founding Fathers, conservative Germans had a legitimate beef.
One of the reasons Jews were hated in the time of the Weimar Republic has to do with a “Green Movement” going on at the time. There was a yearning to go back to a more idyllic, pastoral time where there was more connection to the land. Jews represented urbanization.
this is one of the dumbest revisionist comments I have read in a long time
I don’t think those urban Jews were stopping any Germans from going back to the land if they wanted to. I know there was a German back-to-nature movement around that time that included at least some Jews, including eden ahbez, songwriter of Nat Cole’s Nature Boy.
A review of the antisemetic film “The Eternal Jew” from the Third Reich’s propaganda organ “Unser Wille und Weg” is helpful in understanding why the NAZIs (National SOCIALIST Workers Party) held Jews in contempt:
“No one will fail to shudder at the sneaking servility and dirty bartering of the Jews when they start out, at the perfidy, insidiousness and vulgarity of their methods, at the brutality and all-devouring hatred they exhibit when they reach their goal and control finance.”
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ewig.htm
Jews are portrayed as being sneaky, rootless, venal merchants; NAZIs, by contrast, are heroes–bound not to an artificial and alien bourgeois culture but beholden only to tribe and soil (Blut und Boden). The NAZIs were bitterly anticapitalistic and overtly hostile to free-market enterprise. Jews personified everything NAZIs despised.
German anti-sematism is a lot older than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_legend
Of course, if goes back even further than that, but your narrative is ill-founded.
The reason why the left hates Israel is that it is evidence for the existence of God. It is a Biblical prophesy come to fruition. If Israel is every destroyed, the left could say “See, we told you so. This silly book is a book of lies”.
And that is what the desperately want, which is why they consistently take the side of those oh-so-progressively tolerant Muslims.
Jews began to turn away from Israel when Menacham Begin was elected prime minister because he rejected communism. Having been a “guest” of socialism at the infamous Kolmya concentration camp, known as the Auschwitz of the USSR, he saw the Soviet Union for what it was. That put him at odds with the overwhelming majority of American Jews who still saw the Soviets as the “radiant future.”
Let’s face it, the religion of a majority American Jews has been Socialism for the past century. Since they perceive that Israel has rejected the true faith they see no reason to give them their support. Furthermore, the “Palestinian” people are are a creation of Soviet era KGB they see them as brothers-in-arms fighting for Socialism.
Nailed it!
The founders of Israel were hard Stalinists.
In fact ordered Yugosalvia to give their Air Force their first fighter aircraft ; the Bfw (ME 109)
You left out the most important reason. 6. Israel won’t exist long enough for theme to change their minds now that it stands alone after the American election.
Israel will out live the U. S.
Israel is not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who provide material and spiritual support to Isreal, and will continue to do so, despite our pathetic government.
Israeli built weapons systems are good, but much support and material comes from the US. The last attempt to build an Israeli fighter, the Lavi, failed. Even that borrowed much from the F-16. They want our bunker busters. To survive the fall is the US they would need none of these things.
If Israel truly could stand without the US they would have done so already if they could.
In a radioactive cloud along with its enemies most likely. Even if it still stands it will be pyrrhic victory.
To whom will Israel turn if not the US?
I also meant to add none of these things are the sort of items your individual supporters can provide.
Israel will turn to Whom it always turns. Trust in the Lord.
Liberal American Jews are not against Israel they just have the same relationship with it that they have with Judaism; indifferent, shallow, and slightly embarrassed.
They join the Reform Temple briefly to get through the Bat Mitzva which has nothing to do with religion. Then they just stop involvement altogether. They would rather take a cruise in Italy than a trip to Israel. Some of their children might rediscover their roots, perhaps on a Taglit (birthright Israel) trip and will find a warm reception from the Jewish and Israeli communities.
Mostly they are not relevent to the smaller core of us who have much stronger identity and committment. They are Jews in name only and will drop off the register in a few generations. Assimilation is nothing new in Jewish history and we will keep trying to keep as many in the fold as possible but you cannot fight history.
It is not the end of Judaism and Israel will endure without them. Israel itself has lived on the principle that growth and survival depend on a qualitative edge, not a quantitative one and it is stronger than ever. Mostly these folks are shallow social climbers and who needs them anyway.
I am working on a “history of Israel” based on British Foreign Office documents, British White Papers, Palestine Commission reports, British reports to the League of Nations and transcripts of all discussions of the UN General Assembly and Security Council concerning Palestine and US State Department Documents. After having printed more than seven thousand pages I asked some of my Jewish brethren, who all pretended enthusiastic interest, to make a contribution to the cost of paper and printing-ink. Not ONE volunteered. I was not surprised.
Interesting project. How are you liking it? I personally would like to slap the British for their part. I hold them about 90% responsible for the unrest in the Middle East that has been going on since the Forties, and has led us inexorably to today.
The project is fascinating. I agree with you about the British!!! I just discovered recently declassified documents of the British Foreign Office confirming Count Bernadotte’s collusion with the British to reverse the UN partition resolution.
I’ll bite. Why would Sweden be opposed to a Jewish state? I thought they were the enlightened country compared to the rest of us. Or so they would have us believe.
Ah, The British and the French…Don’t forget the Germans,…those Cultured, Superior Europeans….
One can hold them “responsible” for quite a lot of “stuff” both before AND after the 1940’s….
My grandfather fought with the US Army in WW1 in France,
So did several of his brothers, my “Great Uncles”.
My Father sailed with The Merchant Marine bringing War Material to England in WW2.
Several of his brothers, My Uncles, fought in Europe and Asia.
My older Brother tramped the Rice Paddies not far from the site of the French Debacle of Bien Ben Phu,
15 years later.
I fought in the former (fractured) French Colony of Lebanon with the US Marines, and served as a member of the Multi National Peacekeeping Force in the Sinai Peninsula, and in Desert Storm
My son and my niece both have several tours apiece in “other” middle eastern Sh*t Holes, former protectorates, ambitions and empires across The Chess Boards of the Previously Inept.
My family is proud…though weary….to have always gone and done what no Englishman or Frenchman (or Vietnamese, Kuwaiti, Somalian, Quatri, Iraqi, Afgan etc etc etc) could COMPETENTLY do for themselves.
We have repeatedly cleaned the messes, and have been soiled by, the mistakes and follies and FAILURES, of the Foolish and the Incapable……
The tarnished and dusty Grand Designs, of The “Grand Old World”.
I agree with you. The behaviour of the British was Nazi like.
I mentioned it to fred Capio, but do read The Rape of Palestine by Willima B Ziff. The British banned it, but it’s now available on bookdepository.co.uk.
in Europe the Jews were eliminated by rape, in America the Jews are eliminated by seduction.
P.S. thanks for the link
Perhaps “real” Israel supporters can explain to liberal Jews how to talk about the West Bank. Israel, apparently, can not safely try to give it back anytime soon, and furthermore must continue to increase the settlement there of Jews who insist on permanent Jewish rule of “Judea” and “Samaria.”
So…please tell us liberal Jews how we are supposed to explain to our liberal friends why Israel must permanently rule over 3 or 4 or 5 million Arabs without giving them the same rights as Arabs in the rest of Israel, and how she will do this while remaining committed to democracy and western values?
Israel needs to rule over 5 million Arabs in the West Bank like a hole in the head. Since Israel has not annexed the WB the Arabs there are not Israeli citizens and are governed by a OETA (occupied enemy territory administration) What Israel needs, under the present circumstances, is a buffer-zone against attacks from the east. (have you looked at a map of Israel lately?)Finally, what is wrong with the settlers? Just because the Palestinians dream of a Jew-free future state. You seem to be one of those who criticize Israel for every fallen bicycle in the WB but ignore the utterances against Israel in the Hamas Charter.
Fred do you realize you contradict yourself when you express support for the settlers on one hand, and on the other hand say Israel needs a bigger security buffer and “needs to rule over 5 million Arabs in the West Bank like a hole in the head”? Settlers will never leave, will always insist on living under an Israeli flag and under IDF protection. Settlements REDUCE the size of the security buffer by bringing Israeli citizens CLOSER to the enemy. Settlements necessitate Israeli rule over 4 or 5 million Arabs.
If you’re calling instead for military rather than civilian occupation by Israel to be returned when Palestinians are willing to live in peace, that’s fine, but it’s not what Netanyahu and the right wing Jews on this site have in mind. They want Israeli rule over Arabs in West Bank, or they want the Arabs to go east across the Jordan River.
” when Palestinians are willing to live in peace…”
Hey, Markus, seriously… that IS pretty funny….
Spit coffee out my NOSE funny!
” when Palestinians are willing to live in peace…”
We all know when THAT will occur, don’t we?
When Mohammads Ghost rises up out of the dung heap, and says:
“WHAT?….Kill them all…. Kill them ALL!
Stooopid, I said THANK THEM ALL, AND TRY TO BE JUST LIKE THEM…
Otherwise, we’re stuck in this crappy desert forever…
Poverty stricken, Illiterate vagabonds for the next 15 centuries!”
and by the way, “the settlers will never leave”? says who? remember Gaza?
Yes indeed Fred…
And that costly, dangerous, and yet incredibly magnanimous gesture, unparalleled by any OTHER civilization in history, yielded what?
Respect? Admiration? Peace?
It yielded what we all KNEW it would yield…an ever more violent Muslim Horde, THAT much closer to Tel-Aviv.
You are so wrong on so many levels that it is hard to respond.
example: you know nothing about the strategic function of the settlements and you ignore the fact that Israel has delegated most of the “ruling” to the Palestine Authorities. The story that the Arabs may evacuate the part of Palestine which is now the West Bank and cross the Jordan River into Jordan is so old that even Jabotinsky did not believe it.
Stop obfuscating. Are you comfortable defending the right of the Jewish minority in the West Bank to rule over the Arab majority, without giving them any political rights beyond limited autonomy and “self-government”?
Stop obfuscating.
Are YOU comfortable exposing your (well, not YOURS of course…you’ll expose OTHER PEOPLES) throats to the knifes of savages who have sworn to kill them, sworn to lie and engage in FALSE NEGOTIATIONS to get close enough to slit them, because it is Their God Command to kill all Jews?
Stop obfuscating. Are YOU or are you NOT, going to demand recognition of, peaceful co-existence with, and an unequivocal renouncement and full cessation of, all Terror Activities against Israel, as PRECONDITION TO ANY AND ALL FURTHER CONVERSATION?
We gave them Gaza. We got rockets in return.
Israel has continuously proven her commitments to Peace since Day One.
THEY need to step up and act like Respectable Human Beings for once.
No further negotiations, until THEY DO.
To ask these questions, Root, is to answer them. The point is, Markus is able to look at himself in the mirror and congratulate the handsome dude he sees there on his political fashionability and ability to strike stirring (though cost-free, of course) moral postures. What’s a few dead Jews in exchange for that?
Official Israeli policy is no new settlements. Zero. Nada. The so-called “new settlements: are generally on porperty of existing settlements.
This is arguably against the Palestinian Mandate which calls for “close Jewish settlement”. The mandate insists the civil rights of the Arabs be preserved (something the Moslem Palestinian Autority is NOT doing) but says nothing about “political rights”. Besides, what further political rights can be given, since the PA calls Israel “the enemy” and refuses to een talk?
The settlers are not ruling over any Arabs. How could they?
And why don’t we hear compaints about the gross violations of human rights of the Arabs by the Palestinian Authority?
Le Cracquere:
” is able to look at himself in the mirror and congratulate the handsome dude he sees there on his political fashionability and ability to strike stirring (though cost-free, of course) moral postures”
Congratulations: That is the most succinct description yet of the disease, or at least the most noticeable SYMPTOM of the disease, that is the Downfall of Western Civilization.
But it’s STILL to long for a BUMBER STICKER, you see…..
We need to come up with something shorter, you know to compete with the laughable naiveté of those popular COEXIST bumper stickers all the Beautiful People (but curiously, no muslims) put on their Priuses?
Damn, that ugly truth…its so hard to MARKET it.
” 5 million Arabs in the West Bank ”
They are 1.5 million,no more
Unconvinced?
Seek yoram Ettinger demographics articles on google !
Gee, I don’t know, could it be because those four or five million Arabs want to destroy Israel while those that actually live in Israel like their life there and are actually happy being Israeli citizens?
Those Palestinian Arabs would gladly become happy Israeli citizens. That’s what “right of return” is all about, you know? They want to become Arab Israeli Citizens so that they can eventually turn Israel into an Arab majority state.
I have an idea: how about including the Jews in that “right of return” thingy?? Like there are homes throughout Cairo and Baghdad and Damascus and etc, that belonged to Jews, some for hundreds if not thousands of years. Yet.
Fairness.
I think the so-called “Palestinians” want Israel so they can loot it.
The land lost by Jews in the Arab world is many times larger than the entire state of Israel. There was a recent meeting in the UN (that is, on UN grounds) about it.
The reason nobody pays attention is the same reason no-one knows about Fast and Furious. It doesn’t fit the narrative or the self-interest of the rest of the world. The US is not always right, but it is the only country in the world that has any morality in its foreign policy, the opinions of Obama and Paul notwithstanding.
The world will care about the land stolen from Jews at the same time that it will care about the PA tranpling on the civil rights of its subjects. (When was the last time there was an election?)
Whatever they personally may want (and none of us has any idea), no “liberal” cares about them. Gaza being de facto independent (and at war with the state of Israel), let’s say Israel declares Judea/Samaria annexed, and offers the 1.5M residents citizenship. The world will scream bloody murder, especially the Muslim world.
The purpose of the “Palestinians” is to have a dagger at the heart of Israel. No-one really wants to help them. When Israel controlled Gaza, Israel tried to move people out of the refugee camps into nice apartments. The Arabs and the UN screamed bloody murder, and the project was abandoned.
my eye! It’s at most 1.5 or 1.6 million Arabs
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/in_israel_is_demography_destin.html
Liberal Jew, you tell me just how Israel’s Jews are supposed to survive surrounded by 384 million arabs, genocidal maniacs sworn and dedicated to Israel’s destruction, just as their like-minded coreligionists are in Turkey and Iran?
Israel has a justified claim to Israel’s ancestral homelands in Judea and Samaria, without which she will not survive.
Well, then, since the demographics are so favorable, why don’t you just annex your ancestral lands and make its inhabitants citizens?
i’ve got your argument by the balls and you know it.
nah- they should do as they have been done to by Muslims in every land that Moahmmedeans ethnic cleansed the JEWS out of— Yemen, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, Gaza, march them to the borders and OUT- Judea and Samaria and GAZA and Jordan are ISRAELI LAND legally- it is Muslims who are occupying Jewish lands- Kahane was right but Jews like you cannot stomach what needs to be done. Not a single Muslim should remain in Israel and their abomination sitting atop the TEMPLE can be shipped brick by brick to their holy city Mecca. There is no such thing as Palestinians- a made up name for Egyptians who tried to finish their idol Hitler’s work…
Kahaneism is Jewish Nazism.
you got yourself by the balls
must be a habit, you don’t even know it
annexation is in the works
the levy report is the first step
politics take time
go suck your thumb for a change
Annexation? Does that make the Arab residents new Israeli citizens?
if you’re looking for nazis
check your beloved palestinians out
kahane defined the enemy
he never called for mass murder
will the Arab residents
become citizens
the answer is
until proven otherwise
being the genocidal
maniacs they are now
the answer is
no
That might not be a bad idea. But they don’t WANT citizenship. (Maybe they do, but they aren’t exactly free to state their opinion.)
If you really cared about them, you might be concerned about the opression of the Judea/Samaria Arab population by the people who actually rule over it, the Palestinain Authority. Oh, but that wouldn’t fit, since they aren’t Jews, right?
“So…please tell us liberal Jews how we are supposed to explain to our liberal friends… ”
1.Yes , that is the real crux of the American Jewish problem.
2. How do you explain it to your liberal friends.
3. Israeli Jews, like myself, have to worry about Arab suicide bombers blowing up our families, or Arab rockets from Lebanon or Gaza killing us, or Iranian nuclear weapons vaporizing Israel and slaughtering another 6 million Jews and 1.5 million Israeli Arabs.
4. American liberal Jews have to explain to their liberal friends. They have to deal with the daunting challenge of the embarrasment of explaining to their friends why Israeli Jews have the right to defend their lives.
5. The fact of the matter is , “Liberal Jew” is that you are a frightened little yiddele. You are what Jean-Paul Sartre in his book “Anti-Semite and Jew” describes as an “inauthentic Jew”. You have found your safe haven and you want to save your place and yourself at all costs. Your psyche has been so warped by 2,000 years of being part of persecuted minority you feel that if you should dare stand up as a Jew and call attention to yourself than the leftist-liberals who have given you haven will deny it to you. Keep a low profile , blend in, become a chameleon , all that’s important is that you and your family are safe.
You are cowards,and it is no wonder that the popular image of the American Jew in American mass culture is the Woody Allen nebbish.
6. Dare we say it, you resent Israeli Jews because they prove to you that you don’t have to be cowards, you can be “authentic Jews” you can have the courage to be heroes and fight, risk your lives, and even die for something greater than yourselves.
7. You are strawmen , you build false images of what it takes to have courage, and then think you have proven yourself heroes by marching by synagogues with signs saying “Stop the Occupation”. How many of you have the courage of my upstairs neighbor who lost two sons who fought and died in wars to protect the continued existance of Israel.
8. And now “Liberal Yiddele” I will explain to you how you undertake daring task of “explaining to your liberal friends” how Israel can continue to occupy the territories without giving the residents the same rights as Israeli Arabs.
9. The territories are a weapon. The same as a gun , pointed to the heart of Israel. The same way that law enforcement authorities can expropriate a weapon used by a criminal in committing a crime, so too can Israel expropriate the territories and deny the Palestinians voting rights until they are willing to forgo their desire to destroy Israel and use the territories as a means of doing so.
10. The territories as you well know were all in the hands of the Palestinians until the 1967 war. Since that war they have had numerous opportunities to reach a peaceful settlement with us in which the territories would be returned if they agreed to let us continue in peace as a Jewish state. The last most comprehensive attempt were the Clinton negotiations.
11. The Palestinians have rejected all negotiations, all territories we have unilaterally retreated from, Gaza and Lebanon. have been turned into bases for attacking us , firing rockets at Israeli civilians.
12. The problem is not one of territory. We could give up every square centimeter of land taken in the 6 Day War and they would continue to fight us because they feel that all the land is theirs. They think that time is on their side,that we are only 6 million Jews and they are hundreds of millions of Arabs and close to 2 billion Moslems, and eventually they will overcome us, so why give up anything.
13. Why should this surprise you, you feel that a settlement must be reached now. Why? How many centuries did European powers fight amongst themselves until the historical circumstances developed to the point to where they could actually make peace? Why do you think it should take any less time in the Middle East?
14. In the meantime, who is preventing peace is the Arabs, who lost the territories when they used them as a jumping off point to attack us were the Arabs, who continues to launch rockets at Israeli civilians from any territory we leave is the Arabs, who would use the occupied territories again as a jumping off point to threaten the existance of the State of Israel are the Arabs, and who would use any voting rights to end the existance of the Jewish State are the Arabs.
15. Like I wrote, when the Palestinians are willing to live in peace with us they can get the territories back. Until then they don’t get back the weapon they tried to kill us with and they certainly don’t get an improved version, i.e. voting rights to vote us out of existance.
16. There’s the explanation.If you can develop 1% of the courage of the Jews who live here in Israel than use it with your “Liberal friends”.
17. If you insist on living life as a quivering bowl of traitorous Jello than stop bothering us and assimilate away as millions of other cowardly Jews did during 2,000 years of the Diaspora.
18. As did Esau, you have sold your birthright for a porridge of lentils.
fantastic comment, thank you!
Hey, don’t hold back.
Tell him what you really think of him.
9. The territories are a weapon. The same as a gun , pointed to the heart of Israel. The same way that law enforcement authorities can expropriate a weapon used by a criminal in committing a crime, so too can Israel expropriate the territories and deny the Palestinians voting rights until they are willing to forgo their desire to destroy Israel and use the territories as a means of doing so.
Well said!
One slight correction. We haven’t denied them voting rights. The PA did.
As far as voting rights in Israel – well they aren’t IN Israel.
Aharon,
God will bless you for your honesty and forthrightness. Few people have the courage to live by the truth- much less express it with the clarity you have in your post herein. I know that there is God and God recognizes those rare individuals and they will be rewarded. May God bless you and keep you safe, may hi he lift his face to you and grant you peace and success in your life and all your efforts.
David Levine- Colorado, USA
The 5 reasons that I will not support Israel:
1. Israel is racist (if you disagree, please explain Avigdor Lieberman, etc.)
2. Israel is into petty land theft and nickel-dime expropriations of Palestinian taxes – this is not being heroic, this is being a goniff and a schnorrer (as my old Mother-in-Law would have put it).
3. Israelis want a middle class Western economic lifestyle in a relatively poor part of the World – expecting someone else to make up the difference.
4. Israel does not put its trust in G-d, It trusts its nuclear weapons more.
5. Israel is corrupt – it tolerates trafficing in body parts, “white slavery” and designer drugs and counterfeit goods
“how do we [liberal jews] to explain to our liberal friends why Israel must permanently rule over 3 or 4 or 5 million Arabs without giving them the same rights as Arabs in the rest of Israel…while remaining committed to democracy and western values?
You just answered your own question:
The answer is, Israel has a DEMONSTRATED record of Democracy and Western Values TOWARDS the people who are her “enemies” …and they live without fear of bloody murder just for daring to exist, within HER boarders. They can VOTE, and you will certainly PROSECUTE any Israeli citizen or soldier who might unjustly harm a muslim, don’t you? Pretty Magnanimous gestures there, long standing too
And……its been Absolutely Unrequited, correct?
All over the WORLD?
So, tell your Liberal friends its simply THEIR TURN to act like Decent Human Beings for the first time in recorded history…. they will be treated with dignity outside of Israel, when they ACT with dignity outside Israel…
Or better yet, just say:
“shut up you ignorant f*ck, where have you BEEN the last four thousand years?”
Oh, and you are not a liberal.
I doubt he’s Jewish, either.
It’s called defence.
Ask your “liberal” friends why non Israeli citizens will not pursue peace by giving up jihad. Ask them why they show up with bombs every single day, and then ask your liberal friends why they themselves support jihadis, murder and the very ABSENCE of peace.
When they reply with the tired and false “Israelis took land from the Arabs” ask them why EVERY single “indigenous” group in the world that has been conquered has NOT sought to kill their conquerors with molotov cocktails, rockets, bombs and tried to kill random civilians.
Only the Muslims -especially Palestinisn – do this.
It’s the ideology. Nothing else.
The real reason is that Zionism is a religious dogma, and liberal Jews do not want to put America’s freedom at stake for a religious dogma.
Zionism is not religious dogma, it is Jewish ethnic nationalism. Jews are a people, not the followers of a single religion. In fact, the religion of most Jews today is a kind of liberal secular humanism. I have no problem with Jewish or any other ethnic nationalism, as long as it doesn’t threaten or oppress other peoples.
So are most “Christians”. Almost all Jews in Israel practice something, and the official statistics say the younger, the more religious. Israel may be the only country in the West where the majority religion is becoming more religious.
But Zionism (most of it) is not a religious concept, although it started out as one. By the way, while David ben-Gurion may not have believe im God, he did most assuredly believe in the Bible.
Most Western Christians, I mean.
it’s liberal Jews who are in the grip of a religious dogma, secular messianism.
They are ready and willing to put America’s freedom at stake for another religious dogma, one sworn to America’s destruction, and to Israel’s also, namely, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which Obama and most Jews support.
Your claim is the equivalent of saying conservatives hate america because they do not agree with Obama’s policies. I love Israel and have family there, but I do not agree with the policies of the Government.
No you lie Brian N. Those like you always have. We were told that if there was a real move to autonomy you would support Israel if the Palestinians would continue their terrorist ways. They did but you are more firmly pro-Palestinian than ever even with the Arab Spring and the obvious truth that these are violent people bent on destruction even of each other. You told us you love Jerusalem and it will be fine to divide it but if it is taken from the Jews altogether you will stand with the Jews. When they do try to totally take it away (they are now Islamicist governments after all) you will stand with them against the Jews.
A Conservative stands with America because he loves the basic principles of America which go far beyond the government and deals with individual rights. Therefore he supports the rights and holds his nose at the government. You Brian N are the exact opposite. You hate the basic principles and wish for a strong central government with a resulting caste system from which you hope to benefit from at the expense of others. Go back to Europe. That is their way. It is not the Jewish or American way. Learn about Chanukah. Learn about the civil war and which side you would have stood on given your leanings. You lost. You will lose again.
If I can interject something here–the talkbackers critical of Israel are assuming that there is a solution to the problem of ruling over Arabs in the West Bank–namely, that Israel could withdraw from the West Bank and negotiate a deal whereby a peaceful, nonbelligerent Palestinian state would take its place. There is no excuse for not being aware, or obfuscating the fact, that such offers were made at repeated junctures beginning in 1937, up to the Barak and Olmert offers in 2000 and 2008, and were always rejected by the Palestinian side, which does not accept such a compromise because it regards itself as the rightful possessor of all the land, including Haifa and Tel Aviv, a message inculculate ad nauseum by Palestinian (in both the West Bank and Gaza) schools, preschools, mosques, and media every hour and every day. Cognizant of this problem, Israel tried the “solution” of unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza in 2005. It didn’t work out too well. So please, put the moral solipsism aside and talk about the real harsh reality that Israel has to deal with. Pro-Israel conservatives take into account this reality. Liberal Israel-bashers do not, because they don’t have the gumption and the spine to stick up for Israel throughout its difficult existence in the Middle East.
The harsh reality can be dealt with by agreeing to the Clinton parameters in principle, ending all settlements outside those parameters, and saying that the West Bank will remain under Israeli military occupation until a peace partner to impliment those parameters can be found, whether that takes a year or a hundred.
Ethnic nationalism is indefensible when seeks to rule over unwilling peoples, and legitimate when it doesn’t. The moral legitimacy of both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are therefore contingent on mutual recognition.
is a crock of crap
from the get-go
aimed at destroying Israel
that’s all
Narkus–re. you post in reply to my no. 18 post–ending all settlements outside the Clinton parameters for 100 years until a peace partner is found (and it could be much more than 100 years, like many hundreds of years, because the Palestinians are deeply enmeshed in an Islamic civlization that will not accept ANY infidel rule of what they consider sacred Muslim land, i.e., all of Israel including the bars of Tel Aviv) is rather difficult because it means declaring most of Judea and Samaria OFF LIMITS to Jews and to Jews only whereas Muslims and Christians are free to build and live there. Another of your assumptions is that creating another Muslim Arab state is inherently desirable, and that it’s a terrible thing if a couple of million Muslim Arabs (the Palestinians) live in a situation of enhanced autonomy (control of all aspects of their lives except security, and some of that too) while 300 million other Muslim Arabs enjoy full sovereignty in 21 states. If one looks at the current situation and recent history of Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, to name a few, is it really a given that creating still another sovereign Muslim Arab state is a moral and beneficial thing to do. If and when Palestine is created, will you be visiting its torture chambers? Well, you don’t have to wait–you can visit the torture chambers that already exist in the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, and whose horrors have been documented extensively by Human Rights Watch and others. Are you sure you should be castigating Israel because it doesn’t adopt the creation of another Arab state–squeezed up alongside itself, in Qassam range of major strategic sites–as an urgent goal, if at all?
We tried that in Gaza. We got homeless Jews and lots of missles.
The headline is wrong. Those who do not support the right of Jews to live on their own land are neither liberal nor Jews.
Commenting on the five issues:
1) Guns – it’s the Arabs doing all of the shooting at the Jews and celebrating death, murder, and genocide. Whoever opposes the Jews because they shoot back, on the issue that the Jews also have guns, is both hypocrite and racist.
2) Religion – is irrelevant. The Zionists were (and most of them still are) secular socialists.
3) The power of the Palestinian narrative – This is the key problem: the mainstream media has been publishing lies about Israel which average people, who are not historians, believe because they do not know any better. There is the lie of the Arabs being a “Palestinian people”, a phrase that used to mean the Jews, pushed by the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. There is the lie of the “occupied West Bank” which had been disputed between Israel and Jordan until it was officially ceded to Israel in 1994. There are the lesser lies alleging massacres, genocide, apartheid, and smaller hostilities on the part of the Jews, with the newspapers themselves fabricating the evidence and celebrating the bravery of the so-called journalists who do so. All this is made worse by allegedly pro-Israel voices, including the Israeli media and government at times, adopting these same lies.
4) A right-of-center Israel – is nonsense. Likud maps closely to mainstream Democrats and to someplace between European Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. They may be center-right, but a lot closer to the center than they are to the right. The Israeli left is split between multiple left-wing parties which could outnumber Likud if they formed a single ticket.
The problem is that the organized anti-semite movement calls Israel right-wing often enough and loudly enough for people to believe it.
5) A right-of-center pro-Israel community – Part of this problem is that anti-semites have falsely accused the left-of-center pro-Israel community of being “right-wing” until the average Democrat accepted them as “the Other” and began to exclude them. The old organs of the pro-Israel left still exist: AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America, and the so-called “neoconservative” movement, so called because they opposed the Soviet world war and were thus condemned by pro-Soviet, pro-war voices as “conservative”. These are ideological liberals and leftists, loyal Democrats, who will get no consideration from the average Democrat once they are identified with the word “AIPAC”, “Zionist”, or “Neocon”.
There are organized groups of anti-semites on the major Democratic message boards who agitate for war against Israel, often in the name of “peace”, and who pressure the administrators to ban opposing voices. The result has been the expulsion of Democratic leftists who will speak up for Israel and for peace, to the point that anti-semitism has become part of the Democratic Party identity. If you do not hate the Jews, you will not last long in Democratic circles. As evidence we are having this discussion here on Pajamas Media, and Barry Rubin writes for this website when as a liberal Democrat he should be writing for Think Progress. They will not have him because he does not hate the Jews.
The Democratic Jewish left needs to organize and push back against this.
The “Democratic Jewish left” is Left first, Democrat second, and Jewish a far distant third. Expecting them to “push back” against anything Left, or anything Democratic, is a pipedream.
Reason # 6: Because they are dumb. When faced with an existential threat even the dumbest of animals know which way to jump. Liberal American Jews; they can’t even recognize a threat much less act intelligently. Will the last one into the ovens please turn off the lights. Disgusted.
It probably just boils down to an extreme form of head-in-the-sand disease.
When the first rumblings against the Jews in Germany were being felt, Jews in the other European countries hunkered down further into denial, just knowing their countries would never go down that path, disregarding the historical condition of anti-semitism that pervaded every country in Europe, and indeed, most of the world, except America. Of course, we know how that went. The relatively few Jews without faulty reality testing got out and were able to come to the U.S. Now I suspect they feel safe from the anti-semitism that is once more rampant throughout the world, thinking it could never happen here.
I hate to say it, but it’s on its way, as the liberal idiots on the left permit Sharia law to gain ever more ground in our legal system.
Obama, having prevailed once again, will not wait long both to throw Israel completely under the bus and to remove his wolf’s skin and openly reveal that he is and has always been Muslim, he will openly celebrate as a Muslim and overtly suppress all other religions as well as incrementally implement the principles of Sharia law into United States policies and the legal system.
That is Kassandra’s second prediction for the day.
“because they are dumb” You are right, what we see here is the corrosive and debilitating power of osmosis and inter-marriage
Will a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv be enough to convince liberal (i.e. secular) Jews of their folly? Sadly, we may get an answer to that question in the near future.
it won’t be enough
they’ll say
it’s Israel’s fault
she had it coming
Most American Jews are “secular,” i.e., not observant except for pro forma observance of a very few holidays, thus:
1) Passover, which they celebrate as a “festival of freedom” which usually takes the form of celebrating modern leftist “liberation” movements. They do not clean their houses of chometz, do not understand that Passover is a festival which actually celebrates, not “freedom,” but God’s promise to redeem them, first, from Egyptian slavery, and second, from the Exile. The Haggadah, which was designed as book to a) comfort Jews reeling from the disaster of the Exile, and b) to provide, in one evening, a short-form guidebook to Jewish scholarship for people who had little chance to foregather or study throughout the year, is hurried through and glossed over in bowdlerized and debased editions so as to get to the meal.
2) Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, in which the unwelcome duty of going to the synagogue they largely ignore the rest of the year is offset by being able to parade new outfits and publicly pledge fundraising sums. Since the services at these holidays are the longest of the year, these annual attendees flee as soon as possible, having reaffirmed that services are “boring.” Because they are unfamiliar with the liturgy due to minimal attendance, this “observance” reinforces alienation rather than reaffirming commitment.
3) Chanukah, which is inflated into “Jewish Christmas.” Most secular Jews would be appalled to realize that what Chanukah celebrates is the military victory of the Hasidim of that day, who began their revolt against the “secularizing” influence of Greek culture by killing a Jew who was offering a sacrifice to a Greek idol. The Hasmoneans would not appreciate today’s “secular” Jews’ support for same-sex marriage.
Having ditched anything akin to a belief in God—”secular” Jews would rather believe the scientific fraud of “global warming”—the one real connection “secular” Jews retain with their forefathers is a reflexive fear and distrust of Christians; having abandoned the faith of their fathers, “secular” Jews cling ever more strongly to the memory of the persecutions their grandparents suffered in the old country or the discrimination their parents may have faced in America, much as blacks who have never experienced segregation or Jim Crow laws hark back ever more to slavery. The fact that religious Christians support Israel gives the “secular” Jew pause, just as the unabashed religion of Jews in Israel does, because actual commitment to religious belief, by Jews or Christians, makes the “secular” Jew embarrassed and uneasy.
The American support, and support of the American Jews is vital for Israel.
Of all the reasons mentioned in the article the success of Palestinianism is the most important.
This must be reversed if Israel is to survive.
The quickest and most effective means to switch the leftist position from against to for Israel is by informing them about Islam.
All leftists will change camps once they realize that Islam is ideology just like Naizm: inhuman, imperialist, colonialist, racist, antisemitic, genocidal and anti-woman.
Additionally some Jewish leftist will wake up when they learn about history of their own people and the history of antisemitism.
I found it shocking that when talking with American Jews, I hear from them that they are “Russians” (or Hungarians, or Ukrainians or Lithuanians, etc. )
they are in denial that Jews are a nation, and not just Russians of Jewish faith.
They imagine that tsarist Russia was like America today, with Presbyterians, Jews, Episcopalians, etc.
They don’t know that Jews were not even citizens of Russia, they were a foreign nation of refugees living in isolated communities, speaking separate language, of distinctly different racial features, with their own music, food, dress, and everything else that makes a nation.
But deep down the do know that they are different. Deep down they know they are a different nation, and they are only trying to repress this because it is uncomfortable.
I have found that it is possible to unearth their true identity, and this results in a shift in their relationship to Israel.
Your racial essentialism, your assertion that a Jew can never be anything really but a Jew, is in perfect accord with what the Nazis and other anti-Semites say about us. It’s not true — I am of partial Jewish descent but was not raised Jewish. I have some cultural affinity with American Jews, but not enough to feel part of the tribe. The only things that could deepen my attachment I imagine would be either falling in love with a Jewish girl or a lot of anti-Semitism directed at me.
“I have some cultural affinity with American Jews, but not enough to feel part of the tribe”
And they will slit your throat when the time comes ANYWAY.
Your Infidel children too, perhaps they’ll make you WATCH.
You will accept them, and treat them with respect as a human beings….but he WILL Follow Mohammad as soon as the call goes out, because YOU can never be anything to him but a Jew.
Its the WAY THEY ARE.
you’re talking to the wall
What will the next four years bring? Look to the European model. The doors remain open for Moslem immigration to this country. The Jewish voice (liberal or conservative) will be minimized. Anti-Semitism will come out in the open. In short, all we have to do is look at France, Belgium, England, Sweden or any number of European countries. Jews will be afraid to walk the streets for fear of attack. Jewish homes and businesses will be attacked. It has already started. I see graffiti on the streets, a simple word, “Jew”, and its all over a Jewish neighborhood. The anti-Israel narrative quickly morphs into open anti-Semitism. In essence, you can’t be a Jew without being an Israeli. If Israel is the bad guy, so are you. Media has chosen its narrative. Poor Moslems, poor Palestinians, peace loving Islam, Arab Spring is the new mantra. Benghazi, nobody ever heard of it. And, so it will go.
The Jews in this country would sell Israel to the devil in a minute. I don’t think they care about those people getting nuked off the face of the earth by Iran or another Muslim nation that hates Jews. All they care about is their jobs, homes and lives in this country. To them, Jerusalem and Israel is nothing but a neat vacation spot.
Israel has not taken the steps necessary to create a secure state. As it is, it is not even a decent tripwire: no help can come in time to save the place. The fault lies with the Marxist ideology which believes that a synthesis is possible which will deliver a peace acceptable to all. Israelis know it is a lies, and many are making sure their dual citizenship papers are OK. I know that from my sources in US intelligence.
I believe Obama and the Left are planning on Israel’s destruction. It will not happen real soon, but the calculus is in place, and they believe that an nuclear Iran, which will destroy Israel when it can no matter the cost, is best. Such a scenario would create a much strong bloc of allies, than is possible with Israel in the mix.
I personally don’t believe that Israel’s deterrence is credible in light of the political culture. There are simply too many people who would rather die than kill.
Right Bob, its a numbers game….
They dont care about Israel or Jerusalem or that Ugly Dome.
(funny how its ON TOP OF the Temple, yet THEY were their first right?)
They just want to “win” and “winning” isn’t about land, its about DEAD JEWS.
Nukes are a indeed a game changer. They WILL GLADLY vaporize the majority of Israelis (and the so-called “Palestinians” too) to fulfill Mohammad’s vision. Send human wave suicide squads in to the radioactive wasteland to bulldoze whats left. They have the manpower to do that, they are like ants (or cockroaches, take your pick). Its GOING to happen if Iran gets a nuke, period.
Wait for muslim Indonesia to threaten the whole of Pacific Rim Manufacturing Base nations/interests with Nukes if anyone retaliates on Israels behalf…ditto for the Paki’s against Europe. Threats on Multiple Fronts and Barry-O will balk for sure.
These are people who saw off the heads of CHILDREN with their BARE HANDS.
You cannot “negotiate” with them any more than Sharon Tate could “negotiate” with The Manson Killers.
Israel is a land stealer.
the map jack
all that arab/muslim land
was stolen by them
I was only 600 years ago that the Muslims invaded the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople and converted the Worlds largest cathedral into a Mosque.
Hardly “Muslim Lands”.
How strange it is for me a fench, conservative jew to read that so many american jews are ” liberal ” meaning in plain english ” leftist “.I guess that because they have been far from the danger and convulsions of world history they can afford the luxury to live and dream into their bubble of irreal ideas.here in Europe, the danger is very much present now exactly as it was present some 70 years ago during nazi-fascist occupation.The only difference is that today’s danger is muslim invasion wich goes along an anti-israel speech very common all over Europe:Actually the anti-israel speech is a diversion exercised as an art, by muslim and leftist propaganders to deflect the attention from the slow and steady muslim invasion of Europe.Maybe at some point when America too will be invaded by muslim immigration some of those enlightened liberal will understand theur mistake but it will be too late
Good post. Makes me wonder: Why do conservatives love Jews in Israel and hate Jews in the US? Antisemitism is alive and well.
Gee, Brutus, all of the conservatives I know personally are philo-Semitic as well as pro-Israel. The anti-Semites I know personally are invariably liberals . . . or, at least, affiliated with the Democratic Party. Can you supply any empirical evidence to bolster you assertion regarding conservatives’ hatred of American Jews? (I always stand ready to change my mind when confronted with a legitimately sound argument contravening my beliefs.)
N. B.: Disagreeing with left-wing tropes and pet “progressive” causes is not acceptable evidence of anti-Semitism.
I eagerly await your reply.
Carlos Perera
The American Jews are fundamentally anti Zionist out of selfishness. There is no solution to this situation except death or a new version of unrestrained fanaticism leading to mass killing. In the meantime they enjoy the umbrella effect from the existence of the Jewish state. They love to get free stuff (socialism).
Many in the Jewish diaspora are no different than the American Jews.
American Jews are doomed to repeat history. Within the United States Jewish parents have neglected the teachings of the past. Adolph Hitler is a cult figure
just as another mass Murderer Mao Tse-Tung. The Liberal Progressive movement holds many cult figures with high esteem. That is what is being taught along with Communist/Socialist agenda’s to your children. They are learning quotes and theory from Mao:
” Socialism must be developed in China, and the route toward such an end is a democratic revolution, which will enable socialist and communist consolidation over a length of time. It is also important to unite with the middle peasants, and educate them on the failings of capitalism.
“The revolution, and the recognition of class and class struggle, are necessary for peasants and the Chinese people to overcome both domestic and foreign enemy elements. This is not a simple, clean, or quick struggle”.
They should be learning what happened at Auschwitz. For a little history, trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau frequently with transports of Jews from virtually every country in Europe occupied by or allied to Germany. These transports arrived from 1942 to the end of summer 1944. The breakdown of deportations from individual countries, given in approximate figures, is: Hungary: 426,000; Poland: 300,000; France: 69,000; Netherlands: 60,000; Greece: 55,000; Bohemia and Moravia: 46,000; Slovakia: 27,000; Belgium: 25,000; Yugoslavia: 10,000; Italy: 7,500; Norway: 690; other (including concentration camps): 34,000.
With the deportations from Hungary, the role of Auschwitz-Birkenau as an instrument in the German plan to murder the Jews of Europe achieved its highest effectiveness. Between late April and early July 1944, approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported, around 426,000 of them to Auschwitz. The SS sent approximately 320,000 of them directly to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau and deployed approximately 110,000 at forced labor in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. The SS authorities transferred many of these Hungarian Jewish forced laborers within weeks of their arrival in Auschwitz to other concentration camps in Germany and Austria.
In total, approximately 1.1 million Jews were deported to Auschwitz. SS and police authorities deported approximately 200,000 other victims to Auschwitz, including 140,000-150,000 non-Jewish Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 25,000 others (Soviet civilians, Lithuanians, Czechs, French, Yugoslavs, Germans, Austrians, and Italians).
New arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau underwent selection. The SS staff determined The belongings of those gassed were confiscated and sorted in the “Kanada” (Canada) warehouse for shipment back to Germany. Canada symbolized wealth to the prisoners.
At least 960,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war; and 10,000-15,000 members of other nationalities (Soviet civilians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, and Austrians).
Without a knowledge of history many Jews will never see it coming and history will repeat itself. Islam, and the Progressive liberal movement finish a Islamic Caliphate in the West and we could very well see ethnic cleansing here in America.
American Jews are doomed to repeat history. Within the United States Jewish parents have neglected the teachings of the past. Adolph Hitler is a cult figure
just as another mass Murderer Mao Tse-Tung. The Liberal Progressive movement holds many cult figures with high esteem. That is what is being taught along with Communist/Socialist agenda’s to your children. They are learning quotes and theory from Mao:
” Socialism must be developed in China, and the route toward such an end is a democratic revolution, which will enable socialist and communist consolidation over a length of time. It is also important to unite with the middle peasants, and educate them on the failings of capitalism.
“The revolution, and the recognition of class and class struggle, are necessary for peasants and the Chinese people to overcome both domestic and foreign enemy elements. This is not a simple, clean, or quick struggle”.
They should be learning what happened at Auschwitz. For a little history, trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau frequently with transports of Jews from virtually every country in Europe occupied by or allied to Germany. These transports arrived from 1942 to the end of summer 1944. The breakdown of deportations from individual countries, given in approximate figures, is: Hungary: 426,000; Poland: 300,000; France: 69,000; Netherlands: 60,000; Greece: 55,000; Bohemia and Moravia: 46,000; Slovakia: 27,000; Belgium: 25,000; Yugoslavia: 10,000; Italy: 7,500; Norway: 690; other (including concentration camps): 34,000.
With the deportations from Hungary, the role of Auschwitz-Birkenau as an instrument in the German plan to murder the Jews of Europe achieved its highest effectiveness. Between late April and early July 1944, approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported, around 426,000 of them to Auschwitz. The SS sent approximately 320,000 of them directly to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau and deployed approximately 110,000 at forced labor in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. The SS authorities transferred many of these Hungarian Jewish forced laborers within weeks of their arrival in Auschwitz to other concentration camps in Germany and Austria.
In total, approximately 1.1 million Jews were deported to Auschwitz. SS and police authorities deported approximately 200,000 other victims to Auschwitz, including 140,000-150,000 non-Jewish Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 25,000 others (Soviet civilians, Lithuanians, Czechs, French, Yugoslavs, Germans, Austrians, and Italians).
New arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau underwent selection. The SS staff determined The belongings of those gassed were confiscated and sorted in the “Kanada” (Canada) warehouse for shipment back to Germany. Canada symbolized wealth to the prisoners.
At least 960,000 Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war; and 10,000-15,000 members of other nationalities (Soviet civilians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, French, Germans, and Austrians).
Without a knowledge of history many Jews will never see it coming and history will repeat itself. Islam, and the Progressive liberal movement finish a Islamic Caliphate in the West and we could very well see ethnic cleansing here in America.
Something just registered with me all of a sudden. Years ago people in Israel probably thought “Aren’t we fortunate that millions of Jews are living and voting in America as that helps with gaining more support for our survival”. And that was true some years ago, but now it’s the opposite. If the Jews living in America had all moved someplace else, Obama might well have just lost the election as probably about 70% of American Jews voted for him and influenced others to do the same. What an irony.
How any Jew could even consider voting for Obama is astounding. On top of all the clearly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel things he has done, like being a member of an anti-Semites “church’ for 20 years, he just said a few weeks ago that all those who insult the prophet of Islam don’t have a future. Well guess what, one of the biggest “insults to the prophet” is the existence of Israel, and for that matter the existence of any Jew at all.
Since the majority of voters fo Obama were Mexicans, Marxist churchgoers,liberals and public union people, not to mention New Black Panthers and blacks and Asians, as well as all the white liberals and morons, I fail to see how you can be correct.
the number of Jews in Amercia is tiny. Even if they all voted for Obama they would have barely registered in electoral numbers.
No, dear, you can’t blame this on the Jews. You didn’t work hard or smart enough to defeat Obama and Co. Terribly sad for you isn’t it?
Jill dear, Jews in America may well be small in numbers, but most are very prosperous and with that prosperity they support and fund the democratic party’s cause. I know many Jews and all of them were very proud to vote again for the second time for obama.
I hate self-hating Jews. Oy…..
It’s nice to see that many of the talkbacks are passionate and thoughtful, and that many share my perceptions of the problematic American Jewish leftism and how it relates (or, more accurately, doesn’t relate) to the Israel that actually exists and has to cope with whole other, Middle Eastern dimensions of reality.
Let’s be fair, though. There are still a lot of left-wing Jews who are pro-Israel. When there was a move to boycott a film festival concentrating on Tel Aviv, many Hollywood personalities defended the festival. (I supported the boycott – Israeli artists are not pro-Israel.) Alan Dershowitz put out a book that has convinced a lot of people to support Israel.
Also, things are more complex. The fog of the MSM has convinced many that Obama is not anti-Israel, and some honestly want to put America first. When Gerald Ford and Bush I put their hands around Israel’s throat (yes, they did, and both were worse than Obama) most religious Jews voted against them, but some felt they had ot put the country first and vote for the Republican. It works both ways.
For me, a left-wing Jew who claims to be pro-Israel and voted for Obama is an oxymoron. He is just using the anti-Israel president as a proxy.
The Missus voted for Obama twice and for Netanyahu (Likud) once. How does that fit in with your thesis?
What if I had voted for Bush I instead of Clinton. Would I have been a self-hater?
“How does that fit in with your thesis?”
Very simple: the missus is a traitor (and if she lives in Israel, even more so) because she voted for a president who is a danger to Israel. Whatever his name is.
And by the way, the article is about “American Liberal Jews” and has nothing to do with religion. Your multiple references to religion, including your own, are superfluous.
Isn’t George Soros a jew?
I can’t imagine the Jewish people would acknowledge his claim considering he sold out his people to the Nazis and recalled it fondly as “the happiest time of my life”. To hell with that sick, misanthropic rat bastard.
The anti-left hysterics won`t help to understand the anti-Israel positions of many right-wingers in America and EU where many of the conservative parties in power are anti-Israel.American Jews try hard to be favourite for everybody and that`s the trouble.
where in Europe are the “many conservative parties in power” that are anti-Israel??? Great Britain was always anti-Israel, Hungary was always anti-Semitic and Germany with a semi-conservative coalition government is a quiet but strong supporter of Israel.
Today’s Liberal American Jews are the decedent of Reform/Liberal Jews who originally rejected the establishment of Jewish state. Everything start with their misinterpretation of Jewish religion, history and tradition. For them being Jew is nothing more than being a member of a country club with no string attached
Huh?? Just to whom exactly are you referring? It is my recollection that the 19th and early 20th century Zionists were radical atheist socialists. The people who come to mind who are unalterably opposed to the secular Jewish state prior to the appearance of the Messiah (Meshuggine in Yiddish) are those guys in beaver hats and side-curls who live in Brooklyn (and Israel)… the Ultra-Orthodox.
Ah, generalization, the first step in bigotry.
Meshuga is a Hebrew word and appears in Sefer Devarim (Deut.) in the Bible.
I am “ultra-Orthodox” – I hate that insulting term – and extremely pro-Israel. I live in Haifa, program for small cell phone companies in the US, and pay Israel 50% taxes at the margin. I think Israel is correct on relations with our neighbors who seem to like to try to kill us. (You are aware that the two largest “settlements” in the West Bank are “ultra-Orthodox”, the next two are mostly secular? A lot of the others are religious Zionist.)
The Zionist movement started religious, then quickly turned secular. However, msot religious Jews in Israel are religious Zionist.
I do not have a beaver hat of side curls. However, Jews from Yemen in Northern Aftica – who also live in Israel and New York – traditionally do.
This is simply incorrect, Attila. The original Zionists were the reform and secular Jews. Orthodox Jewry only came on board later, after Israel was established, and some of the ultra-Orthodox still oppose Israel to this day.
Please learn some real history.
Ziomism (aliya Aleph) was religious, some would even say “ultra-Orthodox”. However, the successful settlers were secular, although there was always a religious component. The so-called “ultra-Orthodox” (meaning “a Jew who is too Orthodox for my taste”) in Israel, who represented the original Western community in Jerusalem, split because of the situation – I assume the Arab murders of Jews before the State – and many joined in the call for a State and joined in the fight for independence. The ones who still opposed do not vote or take givenment money for their institutions.
In Eastern Europe, the religious community was split. In the US, most Orthodox rabbis were Zionist. The religious Israel was changed when the Jews of the Middle East were forced out of their homes, and so they made the country more religious.
Currently the Israeli Jewish population country is 10% “ultra-Orthodox”, 15% religious Zionist, 20-30% “traditional”, and the rest “secular”. 85% or 95% (forgot) keep something, and 85% believe in God. The younger the demographic, the more religious. The secular son of the secular(?) Prime Minister won our International Bible contest.
@mzk1
Max Nordau
Theodor Herzl
Zeev Jabotinsky
Leon Pinsker
Chaim Weizman
Walter Rothshild
The founders of Zionism, not one of them religious!
Your postings are confused, inconsistent or completely untrue.
Reform traditionally was against any connection with the land of Israel, while even the most anti-Zionist Jews believe – still do – in that connection. In the US, there was a split off Reform that was Zionist – but until the Holocaust refugees came, the American Orthodox rabbinate was overwhelmingly Zionist. I doubt there were very many non-Orthodox congragations at the start of the State. Even today, I would say the Jewish population is at least 80% Orthodox in the American sense – if they go to a synagogue, it will be an Orthodox one.
So that part of your statement is complete garbage.
I hope you are aware that in Israel there are not the same divisions of belief as there are in the US. Over there, there is not much Reform or Conservative Judaism. There are the Seculars (majority of the Jewish population), the Religious Zionists aka National Religious (roughly corresponding to Modern Orthodox in the US but in many cases less religious), and the Haredim. If a Secular Israeli goes to services with his bubbe once a year, that does not make him Orthodox, whether in the American sense or the Israeli one – that is just a ridiculous contention.
In any case, your history of the contributions to the establishment of the state of Israel is selectively incomplete. The original western Jews that settled in Jerusalem were indeed Haredim, but the state itself, and its institutions, were built by Seculars, and to a lesser extent by the National Religious. They are the ones who won the wars and built the economy. Israel was – and to a large extent still is – a secular Jewish country.
As for American denominations, they were all split on the question of the state of Israel. Reform Judaism emphasized assimilation from the 1860s through the 1940s, so it is no surprise they were lukewarm on the state of Israel. However they were still more supportive than elements of the ultra-Orthodox, and once Israel was a fact on the ground and especially after 1967 they have been very supportive.
The bottom line is that it is simply incorrect to deny the historically important role of secular and non-religious Jews in the founding and building of Israel. Without them, Israel would not have happened.
@mzk1
Max Nordau
Theodor Herzl
Zeev Jabotinsky
Leon Pinsker
Chaim Weizman
Walter Rothshild
The founders of Zionism, not one of them religious!
Your postings are confused, inconsistent or completely untrue.
A remarkably unnuanced view from a Jewish American (I’m guessing). It was hard to identify from the article who was left and who was right. I read the Jerusalem Post and I would say that the diversity of opinion is broader, on every metric, than the populace in the US, hard as that is to believe. The question are you “for Israel” or “against Israel” is absurd for a Jew, secular or otherwise, when it comes to questions of the continued existence of the Jewish state. Also, in my experience, asking the question “do you believe in G-d” also goes unanswered. I think it’s more a question of actions. Are you living consistently with Jewish ethics? Another question that I found offended some Jewish acquaintances was about whether or not they found it easy to adhere to some of the dietary practices of traditional Judaism. It’s possible that many Jews who used to support Israel financially through purchase of bonds for example, in my father’s day, in the 50′s, 60′s, and 70′s, as a salesman for the State of Israel Bond organization, but their children and grandchildren are likely to “support Israel”, unless support had to be defined in that Neocon way that you think defines “support”
Please try to forgive the awkward sentence structure, the missing verbs, and run-on connecters. Fill in the blanks. You’ll do just fine.
Liberal Jewish Americans just look silly and even self-hatred comes to mind. It’s ok to assimilate when moving to America from Europe but their insistence on supporting the liberal commie agenda is unacceptable. The majority of Jews in America are neither intelligent nor smart. They just have no common sense and that is sad.
Does anybody really give a shi’ite what left wing Jews think? I know I don’t.
This whole thing is based on a premise that isn’t true. Liberal American Jews are, for the most part, very pro-Israel. Sure, there are assorted anti-Zionist loudmouths like Philip Weiss and the like, but the vast majority are not of that mindset.
The suburbs of New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, LA, and the Bay Area are full of liberal Jews who visit Israel, donate to the JNF and Megan David Adom, happily send their children on birthright trips, and oppose BDS boycotts and antics in their towns. They may be secular or even atheists, but they are proud Jews. I suggest the author of this article and the commenters who are so virulently convinced that American Liberal Jews are traitors to Israel actually go out and meet a few.
…so why did they vote for Obama who is definitely not a reliable ally of Israel?
Fred, I disagree with your contention that Obama is not a reliable ally of Israel. But even if we accept it, then that doesn’t mean that Liberal American Jews don’t support Israel. They could still believe or be under the impression that Obama is supportive of Israel. Or they could believe that even if he isn’t, Israel will do fine either way, and they support him on other issues. And so on. There are as many reasons to vote for someone as there are people.
I think some actual data is useful. Here is a study (http://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/pdfs/still.connected.08.25.10.3.pdf). Among the conclusions:
“Political differences on the liberal-to-conservative continuum [among Jewish Americans] were unrelated to measures of attachment to Israel. Liberals felt no less connected than conservatives and were no less likely to regard Israel as important to their Jewish identities. These observations hold true for both younger and older respondents.”
“to regard Israel as important to their Jewish identities”
That’s an interesting statement. I am very pro-Israel, moved there and became a citizen, and pay taxes there. But I do not consider the State of Israel – as opposed to the Land of Israel itself – part of my religious identity.
I wonder how I would answer that question.
By the way, I’m glad they support us. Do us a lot of ggod after they get us all killed (heaven forbid).
But what about your ethnic or national identity though? Jews are not a religion, we are a people.
Dear fizziks
In a nutshell: The forge of my opinion is my personal history, being closer to the holocaust generation, my experiences of 1967 and 1973 and my daily intercourse with my infuriatingly complacent brethren. And not a report. Israel is in danger, comparable with 1948 and much greater than 67/73. A fact not appreciated enough by the younger generation. I have followed your suggestion and read the Brandeis-report and have found even there information that supports my view. Example: “Connection [of American Jews] to Israel by Age 30 to 44 = 22%”. A percentage that must even disappoint you. The report also states: “younger respondents are more likely to view Israel as an ‘occupying power’”. A true statement, but the problem is that the “younger” have adopted this view without examination and don’t give much thought as to why Israel is still occupying the West-Bank but has given up its occupation of the Sinai which is, form a military point of view, equally important. I am also of the opinion, not shared by many, that Israel must not be criticised, by Jews, in public. Why? Because Israel is “sui generis” and in a position unlike any other country in the world. We must not supply the enemy with ammunition. When Obama demanded that Israel must desist construction in Jerusalem, he suggested to the Palestinian Authority to use this argument as a “conditio sine qua non” in a negotiation with Israel. Do you think that Abbas can, after this, afford to be less demanding than Obama? He is not helping. I could go on, but why?
Fred,
I agree with much of what you said. I don’t think Israel should be criticized by Jews to others, and I also think Obama messed up in asking for the freeze on construction in Jerusalem. However, those were not my contention here. My contention is that Liberal American Jews are generally pro-Israel, and therefore this entire article is based on a false premise.
ist like 1930 the libreals voted hitler in a 2nd term i just hope and pray its not the same.
Liberal Jews are a lost people. Reading some of the comments on this site shows that they are not only ignorant of the facts, but proudly so.
Time for the rest of us to move on.
Recently PBS reran documentaries on the American musical, its changing fashions, and its notable contributors. I was reminded of the force of theater and particularly of the powerful representation of the Jews as a culture in “Fiddler On The Roof” and it occurred to me that Fiddler was perhaps a watershed event for middleclass, liberal American Jewry. For many of them, being inundated with the dark and bright, the deep and silly in the story of Tevia’s shtetl probably convinced them, intellectuals as they think themselves, that they were not really Jews–and that they did not really want to be Jews, either. Rather, they could choose to be sophisticated, politically “with it” people–and deny their Jewish roots and connections altogether. Many had much practice at that. And, later, many decided they could simply be the paradigms of modern Jewishness and make the Israelis and their supporters into the evil others. This seems to have worked out well for them–in that they can now live with themselves.