opinion
Can US Jews Love the Real Israel
— or Only the Fantasy Version?
T Jonathan S. Tobin
he Israeli government that was sworn in on Dec.

29 brings with it new challenges for those who
care about the Jewish state.

The characterization of the latest coalition led by Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the “most right-wing”
in the country’s nearly 75-year history is not wrong. And
most American Jews are not happy about it.

The question is whether enough of them can swallow
their abhorrence for Netanyahu or his coalition partners,
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security
Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to avoid the kind of open break
between the two communities that would do real, perhaps
permanent, damage to the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The answer is that they should, for a number of reasons
— not the least of which is that a palpable breach in the
relationship will be exploited by the intersectional left
wing of the Democratic Party and others who are either
anti-Zionist or indiff erent to Israel’s fate. It’s far from
clear, however, that mainstream liberal Jewish groups are
capable of transcending their ideological diff erences with
the new constellation in Jerusalem.

Nor is it likely that they’ll demonstrate the leadership
required to unite a divided community behind the idea
that the wishes of Israel’s voters should be respected, and
that U.S. pressure to “save the Jewish state from itself”
should be vociferously opposed. For one thing, the split
has an obvious cause.

Israel is a center-right country, with a clear major-
ity preferring parties of the Netanyahu-led right-wing/
religious bloc. American Jews lean heavily to the left,
with most supporting Democrats over the generally more
pro-Israel Republicans.

The partisan aspect of this dilemma mustn’t be under-
estimated. At a time when politics has replaced the role
that religion used to play in the lives of most Americans,
the fact that a growing number of American Jews regard
the Jewish state as the moral equivalent of a red state
creates an enormous barrier between them and Israelis.

If Americans — including Jews — are now more opposed
to “inter-political marriage” than to interracial or interfaith
relationships, Jewish Democrats are bound to fi nd it
increasingly diffi cult to feel close to Israel.

Religious diff erences are also important. The majority of
Americans identify with the non-Orthodox denominations
the center of whose faith is liberal politics. And though
most Israelis are not religious, even the secular tend to
see Orthodoxy as the only legitimate form of Judaism.

Americans have trouble fathoming this mindset and the
fact that more than 26% of Israelis voted for the explicitly
Orthodox parties of varying stripes whose representatives
14 JANUARY 5, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
make up half of the governing coalition.

Yet the diff erence between these two tribes goes
beyond politics or religion, and extends into the realm of
identity. It’s about whether liberal Americans are able to
accept the idea of a sectarian state.

The United States is a country whose existence is
rooted in universal values that seek to break down the
barriers between peoples and faiths. In contrast, Israel —
like most other nations — is an embodiment of particular-
ism. Its priority is to reconstitute and defend sovereignty in
the ancient homeland of the Jews, not to be the last and
best hope of all mankind.

The inherent tension between a state whose purpose is
sectarian, but which seeks to govern itself democratically
and with respect for the rights of the religious and ethnic
minorities within its borders, is a perennial theme of Israeli
debates. The current coalition represents the view that
defending Jewish rights and safety should be prioritized,
even while honoring and upholding — despite the slander
of its opponents — basic democratic principles.

Meanwhile, the assumption that American Jews were
always steadfast proponents of Zionism, and only began
to become disillusioned by the ascendancy of the Likud
in 1977 — especially over the 13 years of Netanyahu’s
unprecedented run as prime minister — is a myth. The
periods of the greatest American-Jewish enthusiasm for
Israel were more the exception than the rule.

American-Jewish resistance to Zionism was ferocious
in the half century from its founding to the birth of Israel
in 1948. Though two Reform rabbis — Stephen Wise and
Abba Hillel Silver — became leading advocates for a Jewish
state in the 1930s and 1940s, the Reform movement was
ideologically opposed to any thought of a promised land
other than the United States. Mainstream groups like the
American Jewish Committee had a similar bent.

The Holocaust, and then the drama of Israel’s creation
and early wars, eff ectively squelched anti-Zionist senti-
ment as an active political force for a time. But that
consensus ended once the murder of 6 million Jews —
who had no homeland to fl ee to before there was an Israel
— was safely in the distant past. After 1973, the possibility
of a second genocide, should the Jewish state suff er a
catastrophic military defeat, no longer seemed realistic.

The revival of the pre-1948 debate about Zionism was
inevitable. An Israel still confronted with the arduous, often
messy problems of conducting a generational war against
Islamists and Arab nationalists incapable of accepting the
legitimacy of a Jewish state was bound to horrify Jews.

For the fi rst decades of Israel’s existence, the above
diff erences with Americans were papered over by the
dominance of Labor Zionism, whose universalist rhetoric
meshed nicely with liberal sensibilities, even if the security
policies it pursued did not. But even in its most idealized
form, a particularistic project such as Zionism has been a
diffi cult sell for American Jews, the overwhelming bulk of
whom see sectarian concerns not only as antithetical to
their well-being, but possibly racist, as well.

Having found a home in which they were granted free
access to every sector of American society, and in which
the non-Jewish majority proved willing to marry them,
they unsurprisingly have had diffi culty with an avowedly
ethno-religious state with such a diff erent raison d’être.

Moreover, an American-Jewish population in which
the acceptance of assimilation has created a large and
fast-growing group the demographers call “Jews of no
religion” is bound to take a dim view of a country that
specifi cally defi nes itself as a Jewish state, no matter
how generous its policies toward the Palestinians or the
non-Orthodox denominations might be. If many American
Jews are no longer certain that their community’s survival
matters, how can one possibly expect them to regard the
interest of Israeli Jews in preserving their state against
dangerous foes with anything but indiff erence?
Many Jews talk about their willingness to support a
nicer, less nationalist and religious Israel than the one
that elected Netanyahu and his allies. They support
eff orts by Democrats to pressure it to make suicidal
concessions to Palestinians who, whether Americans
are willing to admit it or not, purpose Israel’s elimina-
tion. They also want it to be more welcoming to liberal
variants of Judaism that Americans practice, and for
the Orthodox to have less infl uence.

But even if you think those changes would make Israel
better or safer, a majority of Israelis disagree. So, while
much of the criticism is framed as a defense of democracy
to sync with Democratic Party talking points that smear
Republicans, there’s nothing democratic about thwarting
the will of a nation’s voters or seeking to impose a mindset
they regard as alien to their needs.

The challenge for liberals is not just how to cope with
an Israel led by Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, or to
put aside the partisan hyperbole branding it as a fascist or
fundamentalist tyranny. It’s accepting the fact that Israel
is not a Middle Eastern variant of the blue state enclaves
where most American Jews live.

They need to grasp that simple, but still diffi cult-to-ac-
cept concept and forget about the Israel of liberal fanta-
sies. If they can, it should be easy for them to understand
that no matter who is running Israel — or how its people
think, worship or vote — the sole Jewish state’s continued
survival is still a just and worthy cause. ■
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish
News Syndicate).