Trouble in the Tribe

The American Jewish Conflict over Israel

Dov Waxman

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781400880355
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Advocacy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How Israel is dividing American Jews Trouble in the Tribe explores the increasingly contentious place of Israel in the American Jewish community. In a fundamental shift, growing numbers of American Jews have become less willing to unquestioningly support Israel and more willing to publicly criticize its government. More than ever before, American Jews are arguing about Israeli policies, and many, especially younger ones, are becoming uncomfortable with Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Dov Waxman argues that Israel is fast becoming a source of disunity for American Jewry, and that a new era of American Jewish conflict over Israel is replacing the old era of solidarity.Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews with American Jewish leaders and activists, Waxman shows why Israel has become such a divisive issue among American Jews. He delves into the American Jewish debate about Israel, examining the impact that the conflict over Israel is having on Jewish communities, national Jewish organizations, and on the pro-Israel lobby. Waxman sets this conflict in the context of broader cultural, political, institutional, and demographic changes happening in the American Jewish community. He offers a nuanced and balanced account of how this conflict over Israel has developed and what it means for the future of American Jewish politics.Israel used to bring American Jews together. Now it is driving them apart. Trouble in the Tribe explains why.

1.

THE CHANGING AMERICAN JEWISH RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

Supporting and loving Israel should be more than a simply yes-or-no proposition. It should be a meaningful relationship filled with hugging and wrestling, questioning and arguing.

—Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of J Street¹

To any passer-by, the sight of thousands of American Jews marching along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue proudly waving blue and white Israeli flags and carrying banners with Hebrew slogans in New York City’s annual Celebrate Israel Parade is a hugely impressive demonstration of American Jewish support for Israel. That is, of course, the parade’s purpose—to publicly display the passionate commitment of American Jews to Israel. In this sense, it is undoubtedly a great success. Since it was first held in 1964, the parade (formerly known as the Salute to Israel Parade) has grown in size to become, according to its organizers, “the largest yearly gathering of support for Israel in the world,”² with more than 30,000 participants in recent years. But the parade has changed in other ways too. It has become much more religiously Orthodox in composition, and also much more contentious. These changes point to the profound shifts occurring in the nature of American Jewish support for Israel.

Although aimed at gathering Jews from across the religious spectrum, over the years the Celebrate Israel Parade has attracted fewer and fewer secular Jews. Instead, it has become an event mostly for Orthodox Jews, as the majority of the marchers—mainly children who attend Orthodox day schools and Hebrew schools—and many of the spectators lining Fifth Avenue are Orthodox. Without this large contingent of Orthodox Jews, the parade would be a much smaller and quieter affair. The possible implications of this have alarmed some commentators in the American Jewish community. The editor of a local Jewish newspaper in New York, for example, has ruefully observed:

The naked fact is that the great majority of New York Jewry is nowhere to be found on the one day of the year we celebrate Israel together.… Perhaps it tells us more than we care to know about the engaged pro-Israel community of New York when we look up and down Fifth Avenue and note the disproportionate involvement of Modern Orthodox Jewry and core activists, and wonder about the level of participation—or lack thereof—of the great majority of New York Jews. Is this a microcosm of the American Jewish relationship with Israel going forward?³

If attracting Jews from across the religious spectrum is one problem that the parade has faced in recent years, another problem has been trying to include Jews from across the political spectrum. Although the parade’s organizers have emphasized its political inclusiveness, right-wing Jewish activists have challenged this inclusivity and tried to prevent the participation of left-wing Jewish groups. In the run-up to the 2012 parade, for instance, a campaign was launched by a group calling itself the “Committee for a Pro-Israel Parade” to pressure the parade organizers, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the UJA-Federation of New York, into not allowing a host of American Jewish organizations that they accused of being anti-Israel to march in the parade.⁴ During the parade itself, some spectators even booed the members of these left-wing organizations as they passed by—hardly the kind of demonstration of American Jewish unity in support of Israel that the parade’s organizers touted it to be.⁵

Instead of simply being a festive showcase of wall-to-wall American Jewish support for Israel, the Celebrate Israel Parade also reveals the cracks in this façade of unity. Support for Israel among American Jews, though still strong, is not as broad and deep as many, inside and outside the American Jewish community, believe it to be. Nor is it as unconditional and uncritical as it is often depicted in the media. Rather, the nature of American Jewish support for Israel is more complex, more fluid, and—increasingly—more ambivalent than the popular image of a passionately pro-Israel American Jewish community.

This chapter explores the nature of American Jewish support for Israel. I examine how strong and extensive it is, the underlying factors motivating this support, and how American Jewish attitudes to Israel have changed over time. I argue that while most American Jews still care about Israel, growing numbers of them are becoming disillusioned with the country and more critical of its governments. Disillusionment does not engender indifference. Contrary to the predictions of many scholars and the fears of many officials and activists in the Jewish community, American Jews have not become emotionally disconnected and detached from Israel; but they have become more critical of Israeli government actions and policies, especially concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, the majority of American Jews still support Israel, but not necessarily the policies of its governments. This split between emotional attachment to Israel and political support for its governments is fundamentally reshaping the relationship between American Jews and Israel. As such, the American Jewish relationship with Israel is evolving, but not eroding (at least not yet).

Before discussing how the collective attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of American Jews concerning Israel have changed over time, it is first necessary to immediately dispel a popular misconception about American Jewish support for Israel, and then explain what really motivates this support.

DEMYSTIFYING AMERICAN JEWISH SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

The notion that all Jews wholeheartedly support Israel, except for perhaps a few renegades and outcasts, is widely held, not just in the United States, but around the world. Indeed, this popular belief has been a boon to Israel over the years as it has encouraged numerous countries to improve their relations with the Jewish state in the hopes of gaining favor with world, and especially American, Jewry.⁶ In public discourse and the mass media in the United States, American Jewish support for Israel is generally taken for granted. American Jews are frequently depicted in the media as being obsessed with Israel and single-minded in their devotion to it, as if Israel’s security and well-being was their chief concern. In the run-up to local and national elections, for example, journalists routinely describe how politicians try to win the “Jewish vote” by emphasizing their staunch support for Israel and how Jewish voters try to decide who to vote for based upon who they consider to be the most “pro-Israel.” The implicit assumption is that American Jews are so committed to Israel that its interests will be uppermost in their minds in the voting booth, rather than other interests of theirs, or priorities held by many Americans.

This is not, in fact, the case. Israel is not at the top of the list of American Jews’ political concerns. It is not even close.⁷ Nor is it only when they vote that American Jews are not quite as devoted to Israel as they are often depicted to be. Many American Jews rarely even talk about Israel and probably don’t think about it all that much.⁸ Most have never been to Israel,⁹ and most don’t know much about it.¹⁰ To be sure, according to surveys, the majority of American Jews do care about Israel, but observers should not exaggerate the importance of Israel to American Jews, or the extent and depth of American Jewish support for Israel, as so often happens. In a major landmark survey of American Jews conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013, just 43 percent of respondents said that caring about Israel is an essential part of what being Jewish meant to them—strikingly, this was almost the same number as those who said that having a good sense of humor was essential to their Jewish identity!¹¹ By comparison, almost three-quarters of American Jews said that remembering the Holocaust was essential to their sense of Jewishness, and more than half, 56 percent, said that working for justice and equality was essential to what being Jewish meant to them.¹² The Pew survey also revealed a large generational divide in the importance attached to caring about Israel,¹³ and significant differences among Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews in the importance they attach to Israel.¹⁴

There is, therefore, much more diversity in American Jewish attitudes toward Israel than is commonly acknowledged in the media (and by most American Jewish organizations). The level of concern for and commitment to Israel varies considerably among American Jews.¹⁵ Contrary to the popular stereotype and sweeping generalizations made about American Jews, surveys show that only a minority—around 30 percent or so—feel very strongly attached to Israel, while a similar number feel distant. The rest are just moderately attached to Israel.¹⁶ In their emotional connection to Israel, therefore, the American Jewish population can be roughly divided into thirds: a third are very connected, a third are somewhat connected, and a third are disconnected.¹⁷ Unsurprisingly, it is those American Jews who are most strongly attached to Israel, not the majority who are not, that tend to dominate the discussion of Israel within the American Jewish community, shaping the community’s public stance concerning Israel, as well as American Jewry’s relationship with Israel. They are the American Jews whose voices are heard most often, both in the United States and in Israel.

American Jewish support for Israel is neither universal nor automatic. The fact that not all American Jews really care about Israel requires us to explain what motivates those Jews who do. This analysis is seldom done. All too often, American Jewish support for Israel is simply assumed, rather than explained, as if supporting Israel was somehow intrinsic or essential to being Jewish. But, clearly, being Jewish and supporting Israel are not the same, and there is no necessary, inevitable connection between them (despite repeated proclamations by Israeli governments and major American Jewish organizations). Although attachment to Israel is positively associated with attachment to Jewishness—generally speaking, the more Jewish one feels, the more attached to Israel one is—quite a few American Jews are not attached to Israel, despite their attachment to their Jewish identities.¹⁸ In the words of Judith Butler, a prominent American Jewish academic who has been outspoken in her criticism of Israel and Zionism:

The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the state of Israel is untrue. Some have a heartfelt investment in corned beef sandwiches or in certain Talmudic tales, religious rituals and liturgy, in memories of their grandmother, the taste of borscht or the sounds of the old Yiddish theatre. Others have an investment in historical and cultural archives from Eastern Europe or from the Holocaust, or in forms of labor activism, civil rights struggles and social justice that are thoroughly secular, and exist in relative independence from the question of Israel.¹⁹

If supporting Israel is not intrinsic to Jewishness, then why do so many American Jews support Israel?

THE FIVE PILLARS OF PRO-ISRAELISM: FAMILISM, FEAR, FUNCTIONALITY, FAITH, AND FANTASY

At the heart of American Jewish support for Israel lays a deep familial sentiment, “a sense of familial solidarity” in the words of Gideon Shimoni.²⁰ Many American Jews have traditionally felt a strong sense of kinship—seeing themselves as “part of an extended family”—and this “familism” promotes a sense of mutual responsibility among them.²¹ The belief that Jews, as members of a kind of extended family, have a responsibility toward one another is, according to Charles Liebman and Steven Cohen, “an axiomatic principle of public Jewish life.”²² It has motivated much of the charitable activities of the organized American Jewish community directed toward poor, hungry, and destitute Jews, in the United States and elsewhere, and it has also motivated American Jewish support for Israel—more specifically, for Jews in Israel.²³ Helping Israeli Jews, whether financially or politically, is, in this respect, essentially equivalent to helping other Jews in need, wherever they may be. It is an act of charity, driven by feelings of kinship, not by ideological beliefs or political sentiments. Just as many American Jews have traditionally felt obliged to help other less fortunate American Jews (or, in the past, Soviet Jews, for example), they have also felt obliged to help Jews in Israel, and thus, by extension, the State of Israel.

While familism is perhaps the most fundamental force motivating American Jewish support for Israel, it is not the only one. Fear is another powerful motive. As Steven Cohen writes: “American Jewish feelings about Israel are dominated by fear far more than hope, by nightmares more than dreams.”²⁴ There is a combination of fears at work here: a fear for the safety of Israeli Jews who are believed to be threatened by a hostile Arab world (and, more recently, by Iran); a fear for the safety of Jews in other countries who are believed to be threatened by anti-Semitism in their societies; and a fear for their own safety and that of their children and grandchildren who, despite living in a seemingly safe American environment largely free of anti-Semitism, are nevertheless believed to be always at risk from a resurgence of this age-old hatred.

Harboring a deep sense of victimhood and an abiding fear of persecution, anti-Semitism, real or imagined—whether in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, or elsewhere—is a continual source of anxiety for American Jews, and a constant motivation behind their support for Israel. Since the establishment of the State, American Jews have regarded Israel as a safe haven for persecuted and endangered Jews (especially following the Holocaust). Indeed, Israel has served as a refuge for Holocaust survivors, North African and Middle Eastern Jews, Ethiopian Jews, and Soviet Jews, as well as other endangered Jews. Although Israel’s role as a place of refuge for Jews at risk is, in the minds of most American Jews, primarily...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Changing American Jewish Relationship with Israel
• 2. The End of “Israel, Right or Wrong”
• 3. The Argument About Israel
• 4. The Erosion of Consensus
• 5. The Fracturing of the Pro-Israel Lobby
• 6. The Challenge to the Jewish Establishment
• 7. The Polarization of American Jewry
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index