Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-wing coalition and its proposed judicial reforms to reduce powers of the Supreme Court in Tel Aviv, Israel on Feb. 4.RONEN ZVULUN
From pulpits to philanthropies, in congregational conversations and university colloquiums, the angst, anxiety and anguish is palpable. American Jews are torn up, and torn apart, by recent developments in Israel.
The causes are manifold: The return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu amid questions about his ethics. The Prime Minister’s notions of judicial overhaul that would substantially weaken the country’s Supreme Court. The spike in conflicts between Israeli forces and Palestinians. The growing power of an ultra-orthodox fringe to prevail in religious, cultural and political matters.
This nagging unease about developments in contemporary Israel and apprehension about the Jewish state’s future is dominating the conversation of American Jews, who have been the bedrock of Israel’s support – political, moral and financial – from before its independence in 1948 though its various wars, its changing demographics, its struggles with Palestinians and its subtle but unmistakable struggle with Iran.
“It’s hard to think of a bigger moment of dissent among American Jews toward Israel,” said Brian Katulis, vice-president of policy at the non-partisan Middle East Institute, the oldest American think tank focused on the region. “They see a threat to Israeli democracy from within, and though the American Jewish community – I’m not a member of it – has largely rallied behind Israel in the face of external threats, now the very definition of what Israel stands for is up for grabs.”
Jews by their nature have been prone to consternation and questioning – the Book of Proverbs speaks of “anxiety in a man’s mind” and Borscht Belt and late-night television cabaret comedians have long made that character element a part of their spiels – so disquiet in this community is not entirely novel.
But it is occurring in a corner of the Jewish conversation – support for Israel – that has been remarkably stable for decades. Indeed, financial support for Israel by American Jews grew between 2000 and 2015, according to a Brandeis University study, and peak years for American Jewish giving to Israel coincided with the Second Intifada (2000-2005), the Israel–Hezbollah War (2006) and the war in Gaza (2008).
Even so, concerns about the course Israel has taken with settlements in occupied territories, and relations with Palestinians more generally, have grown through the new century, with declines in the rate of growth of American Jewish contributions to Israel in recent years amid questions about the direction of the country’s domestic and military policies.
“Netanyahu now has removed any quandary from most American Jews,” said Mara Rudman, a former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama national security official who now is executive vice-president for policy at the Center for American Progress, a non-partisan think tank. “We have long seen a Jewish homeland and a democracy as one and the same, and that is why for generations we have backed Israel and brought around the generations behind us to support Israel.
“But right now,’’ she said, “Israel is close to being like Hungary, or like Turkey, or like countries we do not have shared values with.”
The latest flashpoint: Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to put limits on the country’s Supreme Court to review and strike down laws – prerogatives the U.S. Supreme Court has had since 1803 and thus a fundamental and unremarkable element of American Jews’ conception of judicial authority.
This led Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, to say in an interview: “These guys are fascists and they are pressing a fascist agenda.”
The contemporary rift between American Jews and the state they once supported with few reservations illuminates the character of both Israel and the United States.
About three-quarters of American Jews are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, according to a Pew Research Center study.
Many of them are likely to be aware of how the 1937 attempt by then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt to pack the U.S. Supreme Court, an effort to interfere in high-court matters, shocked the country and led to the Democrats losing 72 House and eight Senate seats in the 1938 midterm congressional elections.
Many contemporary Democrats, moreover, are attuned to identity issues that make them open to, if not outright supporters of, Palestinian rights. At the same time, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has become a prominent presence on American college campuses.
This week’s decision by Israeli military reservists to refuse to join non-essential duty or even to withdraw from training missions adds to the turmoil in the country, which has included mass demonstrations and expressions of unease in its vital technology sector.
The American dissent is coming not from the traditional sector of “Jewish leaders” – the phrase usually applied to heads of foundation and philanthropic organizations, who tend to mute their views so as to broaden their appeals – but from American leaders who are Jewish.
Michael Bloomberg, the media tech entrepreneur and former mayor of New York, until now had never criticized the Israeli government and has made substantial financial contributions to medical facilities and co-founded the Bloomberg-Sagol Center for City Leadership at Tel Aviv University. This week he wrote a blistering op-ed in The New York Times titled “Israel is courting disaster.”
Thomas Friedman, a prominent New York Times columnist known for blending critiques of Israel with genuine affection for the country, wrote a piece titled “Netanyahu is shattering Israeli society” that began with this sentence: “Israel today is a boiler with way, way too much steam building up inside, and the bolts are about to fly off in all directions.”
Mr. Indyk, the Lowy Distinguished Fellow in U.S.-Middle East Diplomacy at the uber-establishment Council on Foreign Relations, said the pressure among American Jews to speak out is growing.
“It’s lubricated by the fact that there is a broad civil-society revolt going on in Israel, a revolt of the centre not the left, that is led by kippah-wearing judges,” he said in a reference to the skull caps that many observant Jews wear in public or at prayer. “The good Israelis are out on the street, demonstrating. It is very hard for us Jews who love Israel to remain quiet.”
Not all prominent Jews feel that way, to be sure. Lee Smith, senior fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, wrote in Tablet, an online magazine, this month that “what Netanyahu’s opponents hysterically describe as an anti-democratic putsch is in reality a plan for a modified version of the ‘checks and balances’” in the American constitutional system.
The political stakes for Israel are substantial. President Joe Biden has expressed his unease with Mr. Netanyahu and though Republicans generally have been extremely supportive of Israel on Capitol Hill, Democratic ardour for the country is not assured. Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who is Jewish, expressed his “fullest support” for Israel during a visit to the country late last month, more than 200 protesters gathered outside his Brooklyn home Sunday.
The financial stakes are just as vital. Financial donations from American Jews were increasing as late as eight years ago, when, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, contributions reached the level of US$2.1-billion.
However, the decline in the rate of growth is an ominous signal that may portend significant erosion in American Jews’ financial support for the country – a prospect the respected journal Inside Philanthropy noted when it found that “reflexive support for Israel” has been eroding as many younger Jews “lack a deep religious or cultural affiliation with Judaism, and therefore with Israel as a homeland.”