Gap Between Jewish Values, Israeli Policies Becoming Apparent to More Western Jews

By Allan C. Brownfeld

There is growing evidence that the gap between Jewish values and Israeli policies, particularly with regard to the Palestinians both within Israel and in the occupied territories, is leading to widespread alienation from the State of Israel on the part of Jews in both the U.S. and other Western countries.

While the official Zionist mantra that Israel is the “homeland” for all Jews, that those Jews living in other countries are “in exile,” and that Israel is “central” to Judaism, continues to be expressed by both Israel’s government and many Jewish organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere, fewer and fewer Jews seem to share that philosophy.

In an important new book, New Jews (New York University Press), David Shneer, director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, and Caryn Aviv, a Marsico lecturer and affiliated faculty member with the center, argue that for many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the “Promised Land” or “center” of the Jewish universe. They reject the very idea of Jews living outside of Israel being in “Diaspora.”

Their book, Shneer and Aviv explain, “suggests the end of diaspora, because the majority of Jews in the United States, Russia, Germany, and elsewhere no longer see themselves ‘in diaspora’ but instead see themselves at home, not pining for a Promised Land…The emphasis on ‘diaspora’ and ‘Israel’ has prevented Jews from exploring the diversity of Jewish experience and the way that Jews craft their identities at home in the places they live...Most American Jews, even the most self-professed Zionists, did not think of Israel/Palestine as the yearned-for homeland. Most American Zionists before World War II supported the establishment of Zion as a refuge for persecuted, downtrodden Jews, but not for themselves.”

In the view of Shneer and Aviv, many Jews, both secular and religious, “have gone so far as to question the certainty of the Zionist idea. Is there a place for a Jewish state in a multicultural, transnational world? Is it ethical to have two tiers of Israeli citizenship based on one’s ethnic background, a system in which Jews were given more status than Arabs? By the 1990s, the Jewish voices of criticism, especially within Israel but also around the world, became louder. And thus was born the idea of post-Zionism—an ideology formulated by Israelis who questioned the foundational myths and ideologies of Israel. A whole generation of scholars and intellectuals…challenged passionately held beliefs about Israel’s founding and about Israel’s role in the Jewish world.…For some, post-Zionism led to the question of whether a secular Jewish national state was even necessary for Jews to find pride in Jewish culture.”

For many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the “Promised Land.”

In a recently published study, Steven M. Cohen, research professor of Jewish social policy at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, showed that among American Jews “a sense of commitment to a particular people—the Jewish people—is in decline. To take an illustration, those aged 35-44 are less likely than their elders, 55-64, to strongly agree that Jews in the United States and Jews around the world share a common destiny’ (35 percent vs. 44 percent). They are also less likely to strongly agree that ‘when people are in distress, American Jews have a greater responsibility to rescue Jews than non-Jews’ (25 percent vs. 32 percent); and they are less likely to strongly agree that ‘I have a special responsibility to take care of Jews in need around the world’ (25 percent vs. 32 percent, again)...The slide in feelings of belonging to the Jewish people stretches over a 50-year age span. In like fashion, the Jews of 2000/01 registered less attachment to Israel than those in 1990...”

In the United Kingdom, a new organization has been created to provide an alternative voice to the official representative of Anglo-Jewry on issues relating to Israel. Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), launched with advertisements in the Times, Guardian and Jewish Chronicle newspapers—and a week of op-ed articles on the Guardian’s blog site, “Comment Is Free”—comprises academics, media personalities and peace activists who oppose what they insist is British Jewry’s unquestioning support for Israel.

Independent Jewish Voices

More than 100 signatories, including celebrities like playwright and 2006 Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter, film director Mike Leigh and fashion designer Nicole Farhi, stated in ads that they have come together “in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole.”

The group described it members as having “resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of both Israelis and Palestinians as well as the stability of the whole region.”

One of IJV’s founding members, Oxford University philosophy professor Brian Klug, pointed to statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during last year’s Lebanon war, when he reportedly told an American audience: “I believe that this is a war that is being waged by all Jews.”

Statements such as this, stated Dr. Klug, create a dangerous “fallacy since it tars all Jews with the same brush. Yet this misconception is reinforced here by those who, claiming to speak for British Jews collectively or allowing that impression to go unchallenged, only ever reflect one position on the Middle East.”

The IJV controversy, according to the March 5, 2007 Jerusalem Report, “follows another heated dispute in the Jewish community over the appointment of academic Anthony Lerman as director of the Institute for Jewish Public Policy Research (IJPPR), which conducts research into policy strategies for Jewish communities in Europe. In a public meeting before his appointment, Lerman had expressed support for the creation of a secular, binational state as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has also repeatedly cast doubt on the accuracy of statistics reflecting the rising rate of anti-Semitism in the UK. Four IJPPR board members and one of its honorary patrons, the Conservative peer Lord Kalms, have resigned as a result.”

A declaration criticizing Israeli territorial policies is also stirring controversy in the German Jewish community. At issue is a declaration published in January in one of the country’s most widely read Jewish newspapers, Die Judische Zeitung (The Jewish Newspaper). The statement was titled “Berlin Declaration Shalom 5767”—a reference to the current year in the Jewish calendar—and organized by a member of the presiding committee of the Central Council of German Jews, Rolf Verleger, professor of neuropsychology at the University of Lubek. It called on Germany’s government to do more to press Israel to make concessions, and asserted that the “root of the problem is the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967.” A related advertisement was placed in two of Germany’s major daily newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Suddeutsche Zeitung.

In addition, Die Judische Zeitung published an opinion essay by Kurt Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor and honorary chairman of the International Auschwitz Committee, rebutting criticism of the declaration. “It was said that a Declaration like ‘Shalom 5767’ is grist to the mill of anti-Semitism in the entire world,” Goldstein wrote. “However, the reality is that there is nothing more that helps anti-Semitism than what Israel did in the War in Lebanon.”

In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that a new Australian group, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, has launched an online campaign, with one organizer saying that Australian Jews were “basically brainwashed” into uncritical support of Israel.

There has been an increasing discussion, world-wide, about the relationship between Jews outside of Israel and the Jewish state. In a Jan. 13, 2007 article entitled “Israel and the Jews: Diaspora Blues,” The Economist asked: “What is a Jewish state for, and what should it be like? Jews have been debating that for 200 years. Even today, with Israel already 58 years old and taken for granted by most of the rest of the world, they still cannot agree.…In Israel secular Jews found Israeliness a handy substitute for religious observance. Some religious Jews, for their part, revived the previously fringe creed of messianic Zionism, holding that to settle all the biblical land—including the lands Israel captured after 1967—is a God-given duty...Meanwhile, diaspora Jews have developed an even more eclectic mix of Jewish culture and attitudes to Zionism. And that is partly because, as the threat of genocide or of Israel’s destruction has receded, a growing number of diaspora Jews neither feel comfortable with always standing up for Israel, nor feel a need to invoke Israel in defining what makes them Jewish.”

Strong Enough for Strong Words

Discussing the growing division between Jewish opinion and the positions taken by major Jewish organizations, The Economist noted that “the big Jewish diaspora institutions have not caught up. Their relationship to Israel is still based mainly around supporting it in times of crisis and defending it from critics...Often these lobbies have ended up representing not Israel but its right-wing political establishment, with American defenders of Israel accusing critics of being ‘anti-Semitic’ for saying things that are commonplace in Israel’s own internal debate...The tendency to stand by Israel right or wrong brings a second problem. It locks diaspora Jews out of the fateful and often bitter debates that rage inside Israel itself...Helping Israel should no longer mean defending it uncritically. Israel is strong enough to cope with strong words from its friends. So diaspora institutions should, for example, feel free to criticize Israeli politicians who preach racism and intolerance, such as recently appointed cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman.”

Beyond this, reported The Economist, more and more Jews outside of Israel “find the uncritical attitude to Israel distasteful; others simply find Israel irrelevant. Some strike out on their own, finding new and creative ways to explore their Judaism. But many are simply drifting away...Israelis may still speak of the gola [exile]; but the Jews who fled to the Hellenistic world after the destruction of Jerusalem’s Second Temple in 70 AD deliberately adopted the Greek word diaspora, ‘dispersal,’ because it was more neutral. ‘Diasporism’—the idea that Jews are better off outside the Holy Land—is a tradition that began with the prophet Jeremiah and still exists among a few ultra-Orthodox Jews. But increasingly, today’s young Jews see the future not as a choice between Zion and exile, but as a fruitful fusion of both.”

More and more, Jewish critics of Israeli policies are speaking up, and refuse to be silenced by pressure of mainstream groups which charge them with aiding and abetting anti-Semitism. Jewish Voice for Peace, a San Francisco-based organization, recently launched a blog to track what it describes as a growing epidemic of intimidation and harassment from fellow Jews seeking to stifle open debate over U.S. policy on Israel. The inception of a daily blog, MuzzleWatch.com, comes at a time when one mainstream group, the American Jewish Committee, is facing growing criticism for publishing an essay charging liberal Jews with helping to breed a virulent new form of anti-Semitism. “As we’ve become more effective and more visible, there’s definitely been an increase in the backlash,” said Cecilie Surasky, communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

What this backlash indicates, it seems evident, is that Jewish alienation from Israel is growing as the gap between Jewish values and Israeli policies becomes clear to more and more men and women who are committed to Judaism’s universal values of morality and equal justice for all, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity—the opposite of the “Israel right or wrong” philosophy of much of the official Jewish establishment.

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.