“American Jews, wrote Albert Vorspan, a leader of Reform Judaism, in 1988, “have made of Israel an icon — a surrogate faith, surrogate synagogue, surrogate God.” It’s no surprise that American Jews have long sought to fuse them by describing Zionism as a liberal cause. “
“It has always been a strange pairing. American liberals generally consider themselves advocates of equal citizenship irrespective of ethnicity, religion and race. Zionism — or at the least the political Zionism that has guided Israel since its founding — requires Jewish dominance. From 1948 until 1966, Israel held most of its Palestinian citizens under military law; since 1967 it has ruled millions of Palestinians who hold no citizenship at all. But despite this, American Jews could until recently assert their Zionism without having their liberal credentials challenged.”
“The primary reason was the absence from American public discourse of Palestinians, the people whose testimony would cast those credentials into greatest doubt. But in recent years, Palestinian voices, while still embattled and even censored, have begun to carry. Palestinians have turned to social media to combat their exclusion from the mainstream press.”
“And because opinion about Israel cleaves along generational lines, that pro-Palestinian skew is much greater among the young. According to a November Quinnipiac University poll, Democrats under the age of 35 sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis by 58 points.”
“But the American Jews who insist that Zionism and liberalism remain compatible should ask themselves why Israel now attracts the fervent support of Ms. Stefanik but repels the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Automobile Workers. Why it enjoys the admiration of Elon Musk and Viktor Orban but is labeled a perpetrator of apartheid by Human Rights Watch and compared to the Jim Crow South by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Why it is more likely to retain unconditional American support if Mr. Trump succeeds in turning the United States into a white Christian supremacist state than if he fails.”“For many decades, American Jews have built our political identity on a contradiction: Pursue equal citizenship here; defend group supremacy there. Now here and there are converging. In the years to come, we will have to choose.”
posted by F.Sheikh