opinion
US Panic Surrounding Israel’s
Next Government Is About
Politics, Not Values
BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN
A s far as many American Jews are concerned, this
time the Israelis have gone too far.

After more than four decades of tolerating, with
decreasing patience and growing disdain, Israeli
governments that were led by the Likud Party, the
results of this week’s Knesset election go beyond
the pale for a lot of liberals.

Their angst is not so much focused on the return
to power of Benjamin Netanyahu for his third stint
as the Jewish state’s prime minister, even though
he is widely viewed by many Jewish Democrats as
the moral equivalent of a red-state Republican. The
panic about the election results is caused by the
fact that the Religious Zionist Party and its leaders,
Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, will play a
leading role in the next governing coalition. The
party won 14 seats, making it the third-largest in the
Knesset and an indispensable part of the majority
that Netanyahu is about to assemble.

The prospect of Smotrich, and especially Ben-Gvir,
sitting in Netanyahu’s Cabinet has not just set off a
bout of pearl-clutching on the part of liberal Jewish
groups. It’s also led to the sort of ominous rhetoric
describing a crack-up of the relationship between
American and Israeli Jews that goes beyond the
usual rumblings about the growing distance between
the two communities.

There are legitimate questions to be posed about
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Time will tell whether they
are up to the challenge of their new responsibilities
and act in a manner that helps, rather than hurts,
Netanyahu’s eff orts to consolidate support for his
government at home and abroad. But what no one
seems to be considering is whether the rush to
judgment about them says more about Diaspora
Jewry’s obsessions than it does about the embrace
of nationalist and religious parties by Israel’s voters.

The pair is the embodiment of everything that
most American Jews don’t like about the Jewish
state. Their unapologetic nationalism and perceived
hostility to Arabs, gays and non-Orthodox Judaism
are anathema to liberal Americans.

But the interesting thing about the statements
coming out of groups like the Anti-Defamation
League, the American Jewish Committee and more
unabashedly leftist organizations is the way they
highlight their worries about the new Israeli govern-
ment by pointing to the supposed threat that the
Religious Zionist Party poses to Israeli democracy.

The talk about democracy is a red fl ag that there’s
16 NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
The root cause of
American-Jewish alienation from Israel has
little to do with politics.

It is a function of the
decline in a sense of
Jewish peoplehood.

something going on in this discussion above and
beyond the real issues that do separate American
and Israeli Jews.

Whatever one may think of Smotrich and Ben-
Gvir, they are not agitating for abandoning a system
through which Israel’s government is chosen by
democratic elections or pushing for one in which the
rule of law does not prevail.

The plank of their platform that has generated the
most heat from critics — judicial reform — is actually
a defense of democracy, not an attempt to overturn
it. It would bring a degree of democratic account-
ability to a system in which judges have arrogated to
themselves the right to overturn laws passed by the
Knesset without reference to any legal principles but
their personal ideas about what they think is good
for the country.

In his youth, Ben-Gvir was a supporter of Rabbi
Meir Kahane and his belief in expelling Arabs from
the Jewish state. His defense of Jewish rights and
emphasis on the threat from Arab terrorist violence
is not to the taste of those who prize rhetoric about
promoting coexistence. Yet that doesn’t make him a
foe of democracy.

Nor is the opposition on the part of many, if not
most, Israelis to the eff ort by the left to make the
country an essentially non-sectarian state, rather
than an avowedly Jewish one. This sense — that
Israel should prioritize the mission of promoting
Jewish peoplehood — has fueled support for all of
the parties in Netanyahu’s coalition.

Zionism and Jewish nationalism are not antithetical
to democracy. On the contrary, they are an expres-
sion of a basic democratic value that prizes the right
to self-determination by all peoples, including Jews.

The root cause of American-Jewish alienation
from Israel has little to do with politics. It is a func-
tion of the decline in a sense of Jewish peoplehood
among a rapidly assimilating population, with the
largest-growing sector labeled by demographers as
“Jews of no religion.”
And if Jews don’t care about being Jewish, then
they aren’t going to be inclined to support Israel, no
matter who is in its government.

What, then, is behind the talk about democracy
being threatened, or the use of the terms “Jewish
supremacist” and “fascist” to describe Ben-Gvir and
the voters who have made his party a kingmaker in
Israeli politics?
Within Israel, there is a long tradition on the left,
dating back to the pre-state era, of demonizing
right-wing opponents. But the alarm bells being
rung by American Jews about Israeli democracy has
little or nothing to do with the never-ending laments
from leftist former ruling elites about the right-wing,
religious and Mizrachi Jews who have largely domi-
nated the country’s politics since Menachem Begin
and the Likud fi rst defeated the Labor Party in 1977.

The anger about Netanyahu and his allies is driven
by a growing belief on the part of many liberals that
Israelis are on the other side of the great political
divide that is tearing apart the United States. What
they miss is that the facile comparisons between
the GOP and the Likud/Religious Zionists tell us little
about the very diff erent issues that both countries
face. At a moment in history when politics plays the
same role that religion used to occupy in the lives
of most Americans, it’s hardly surprising that liberal
Jews view Israel’s electoral strife as an extension of
what is happening in the United States. But their use
of the “war on democracy” battle cry to delegitimize
Israelis in the same way that they do Republicans is
both wrongheaded and can undermine the already
frayed ties between the two nations.

The outrage that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are gen-
erating in the United States has as much, if not more,
to do with American issues than it does with those
that divide Israelis. Those who wish to bring the
Americans and Israelis together need to focus every
bit as much on getting the former to view the latter’s
leaders without the distortions of red-blue antago-
nisms as they are on the actual points of contention
between two diff erent Jewish tribes. JE
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.




feature story
Philadelphia Jewish
Film and Media
FINDS ITS FILM FESTIVAL FOOTING
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of Ofi r Raul Graizer
Stillfx / AdobeStock
F orty-two isn’t a number that’s oft en celebrated.

It’s not a multiple of fi ve that’s easily memorable,
nor is it a multiple of 18, giving it signifi cance in
Jewish numerology.

But for Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media, the
organization behind the Philadelphia Jewish Film
Festival, 42 is still a number to salute.

Th e 42nd Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival, tak-
ing place from Nov. 12-19, marks one year of the
organization rebranding itself from the Gershman
Philadelphia Film Festival to PJFM to embrace the
evolution of fi lm and art to multimedia platforms.

Th is year’s fi lm fest will spotlight seven interna-
tional feature-length movies, a shorts program, a
FilmShul course on Hollywood’s Jewish New Wave of
the ’60s and ’70s, and a brunch screening of “Funny
Girl” in honor of the musical movie’s 55th anniver-
sary next year. Most of the fi lms will premiere at the
Weitzman Museum of American Jewish History.

“One thing that was really important for all the
fi lms that we do — not just in the festival but through-
out the year, throughout our annual programming —
is I really want the fi lms that we select to be diverse,
and to really create a sense of hope at the end,” PJFM
Program Director Matthew Bussy said.

Receiving hundreds of fi lm submissions for the fes-
tival each year, PJFM’s screening committee must not
only fi nd fi lms that are unique and represent a wide
swath of Jewish life but also factor in ways to remain
relevant in an era where in-home fi lm streaming has
taken a bite out of cinema’s popularity.

Before the festival, some of the featured fi lmmakers
shared their thoughts on their fi lms and the changing
fi lm industry.

and oppression.

“Beyond simply telling the story of this family in
Monticello, it allowed me to tell this broader story
about basically the history of antisemitism through-
out American history,” Pressman said.

Some Virginia residents in the 19th century were
opposed to a Jewish family caring for Jeff erson’s
estate. While there were few Jews in the coun-
try during the Revolutionary War, the population
swelled from 15,000 to 150,000 by the Civil War. By
the early 20th century, 3-4 million Jews were living
in the U.S.

As the Jewish population increased, so, too, did
antisemitism. In the late 19th century, Virginia resi-
dents condemned the Jewish ownership of Monticello.

“It’s the old story,” Pressman said. “People just
don’t like Jews.”
While the victims of antisemitism, the Levy family
continued Jeff erson’s legacy of slavery, keeping the
enslaved people who had for generations worked on
the estate.

“How do you reconcile that with a Jewish family,
with a Jewish owner that has enslaved people? And
you can’t,” Pressman said. ‘I mean, no more than
you can reconcile Th omas Jeff erson, the author of the
Declaration of Independence, with the paradox of
Ofri Biterman and Michael Moshonov in “America”
Antisemitism Beyond the Holocaust
On Nov. 13 and 14, documentarian Steven Pressman
will have the Philadelphia premiere of his fi lm “Th e
Levys of Monticello” — the story of a Jewish family
who came to own and preserve the Charlottesville,
Virginia, estate of Th omas Jeff erson.

Pressman’s documentary positions itself precar-
iously in the conversation around discrimination
Oshrat Ingadashet in “America”
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 17