A few years ago, Donald Trump expressed anger with America’s Jews for broadly rejecting him despite a series of favors he had allegedly performed for Israel. He seemed clueless about Jewish sensitivity to accusations of divided loyalties, and was of course indifferent to the outcry.
American Jews generally do not want to be seen as single-issue voters on Israel, and the lessons of history make them especially sensitive to implications of divided loyalties, I write on Ask Questions Later. Indeed, some Jews are disinterested in Israel and a few even wholeheartedly dislike Zionism. But there is also another side: A 2021 Pew study found 25% of US Jews were “very” attached to Israel and another 32% “somewhat” attached. And the engaged ones are quite passionate: Over a quarter among the community said they visited Israel — at least 11 hours away by plane — more than once.
US Jews have stood behind Israel financially as well, helping make AIPAC one of the best-funded lobbies. According to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics, charitable gifts to Israeli organizations from sources outside of Israel – which means mostly US Jews – reached $2.91 billion in 2015. US Jews also contribute disproportionately to US political parties: with about 2% of the US population, they account for half of all donations to the Democratic Party and about a quarter of the Republican haul (which is amazing, as barely a fifth vote for them). While there is certainly no quid pro quo, this cannot hurt US interest in Israel’s well-being.
And the US has shown interest. Its support for Israel is manifold, with the smaller part being the billions of dollars in aid (mostly loans, but all of it extraordinary considering the recipient is one of the world’s richest countries). More important is the strategic and military alliance, which yields a vital global understanding that America has Israel’s back. Considering the degree of enmity Israel has faced from far larger neighbors over the years, this understanding has been critical to survival.
Why should US Jews care in this manner? After all, Italian-Americans don’t go out of their way to organize political backing for bumbling governments in Rome.
It may be because many American Jews can sense that they could easily have been Israeli themselves, if but for a turn of fate. I myself, born to parents who escaped Romania a few years before my birth, have had the pleasure of both experiences. As a little boy in Ramat Gan I felt the terror and then elation around the Six Day War; a few years later I experienced the angst for Israel felt by Jews in Philadelphia in 1973. It was a deep sense of shared memory and fate, so soon after the Holocaust, that pushed other differences aside. Sympathy for Israel was not a function of politics.
Why should US Jews care in this manner? After all, Italian-Americans don’t go out of their way to organize political backing for bumbling governments in Rome.
It may be because many American Jews can sense that they could easily have been Israeli themselves, if but for a turn of fate. I myself, born to parents who escaped Romania a few years before my birth, have had the pleasure of both experiences. As a little boy in Ramat Gan I felt the terror and then elation around the Six Day War; a few years later I experienced the angst for Israel felt by Jews in Philadelphia in 1973. It was a deep sense of shared memory and fate, so soon after the Holocaust, that pushed other differences aside. Sympathy for Israel was not a function of politics.
Israel is currently messing recklessly with this delicate equation.
After five elections in three years, the government under new-old Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assembled a far-right coalition featuring fanatics and convicts and racists and homophobes are they are embarking upon a very particular path – a path familiar in recent years in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, and also recognizable from quarters unmentionable somewhat further in the past. I have called it the Putinization of Israel. There are consequences to this path, which has many Israelis themselves fearing for the very survival of their country.
Some of Israel’s foolish actions are not new. For one thing, the new government is doubling down on the project of making itself inseparable from the Palestinians of the West Bank by Jewish settlement of that territory. If this continues, the result will be a binational state that is not democratic, because the Palestinians cannot vote.
Second, Israel is detaching itself from the modern world via the fantastical ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) birthrate combined with that community’s insistence on not educating its youth in marketable knowledge and adhering itself to the most rigid interpretation of Judaism. The government funding Haredi schools without a core curriculum, offering unlimited child allowances, and providing lifelong salaries (about to be doubled) for seminary students will deepen the disincentive to normalcy. The group now accounts for a fifth of Israel’s Jews and at this rate — almost seven children per family — will be a majority.
As if these two calamities were not enough, the government is adding a third: Israel is fast drifting away from the values of liberal democracy – which are the values of the United States and indeed the modern incarnation of Jewish values too. Under the guise of “reforms” to the judiciary the government plans to overhaul the system of government in ways that will institute dictatorship of the majority, eliminate human rights guarantees, and turn Israel into an authoritarian fake-democracy. Israel would be decisively joining the ranks of fake democracies inspired by the current mutation of global right-wing populism. All this is the very antithesis of the humanistic Jewish worldview that shaped Israel to date, and indeed to American values as well.
Let’s examine how this shift might sit with US Jews.
- The overwhelming majority of US Jews – 84% – are not politically conservative. Half say they are liberal and about a third call themselves moderate. Israel’s lurch toward populist illiberalism and racist hyper-nationalism will deeply dismay them.
- The overwhelming majority of American Jews – 71% – support the US Democratic Party. Netanyahu is at war with the Democrats, having campaigned in a 2015 speech in Congress against President Obama (on the Iran deal) and openly endorsed Trump in two presidential campaigns. The Israeli electorate’s Nov. 1 decision to return him to power will be viewed as an unfathomable mistake to most US Jews (even this is misleading, as the vote was a tie and the liberals ran a horribly misconceived campaign).
- According to a 2021 Pew study, the overwhelming majority of US Jews – 90% – are not Orthodox. More than a third are Reform. The flagrant disrespect of Israel’s religious and political figures toward Reform and even Conservative Judaism is anathema to them. The refusal to allow women to pray at the Western Wall or to recognize non-Orthodox conversions, and the flagrant disrespect by Israeli religious figures, are veritable insults to them. If the Haredim eventually dominate the rift will become complete: it is a delusion to expect U.S. Jews to feel kinship with a country that features segregation of the genders and is essentially a theocracy.
It is clear, then, that Israel is driving away most US Jews. Will America’s government, Congress and establishment continue to robustly back Israel after its Jews no longer care? Maybe. One could speculate that America’s support for Israel is also based on something else, with the candidates being realpolitik interests and shared values.
Interests are fickle. The US has many contradictory ones. It is not in America’s security interests, for example, for Israel to be riling up the Arabs. Israel used to call itself America’s “aircraft carrier,” but the fact is that Washington has other regional candidates for hosting military bases (such as Gulf countries that actually do).
And as for values? Well, one can be cynical about values in a country that once elected Trump. But America still believes in democracy and the rule of law; these, alongside the NFL the constitution and NASDAQ, are its values. There is quite a lot of daylight between that and the angry, tribal zeitgeist being furthered by rogues’ gallery that has seized control in Israel.
Without the support of America and its industrious, impressive and influential Jewish community, it could become most unpleasant for Israel very soon. Netanyahu is a Machiavellian cynic, but stupid he is not, and my experience with him (a history of it can be found here) suggests does care about his legacy.
There is an idea in some Jewish circles that one has no right to interfere with Israel unless one lives there (some apply it more broadly, to all countries and situations). This is a very foolish idea. Most people who have heard of it have a view of the regime in North Korea; they’d happily express a view and perhaps even support intervention to save its people, if the possibility were there.
Some of the American Jews who care about Israel probably support its current path, but they are a small minority. Those who do not have every right to make their feelings known. Indeed they might owe Israel transparency and a dose of reality. The moderate and peace-loving half of Israel — which is also wholly responsible for the Start-Up Nation miracle (described here) — would be very appreciative indeed.
American Jews speaking up loudly enough to be heard in Jerusalem would be more useful for everyone than the alternative of just drifting away in disgust. If a correction doesn’t happen soon in Israel, there will be plenty of time for that after the eulogies are written.
