For American Jews, Dissent Against Israel Has Become Mainstream

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By Tony Karon, Tomdispatch.com

The exceedingly narrow range of "correct opinion" on Israel for American Jews isn't holding together like it used to. Is a Jewish glasnost coming to America?

A New Landscape of Jewish Dissent

The Kahanists are a fringe movement, but their self-defeating list may nonetheless be a metaphor for the coming crisis in more mainstream nationalist efforts to police Jewish identity. The Zionist establishment has had remarkable success over the past half-century in convincing others that Israel and its supporters speak for, and represent, "the Jews." The value to their cause of making Israel indistinguishable from Jews at large is that it becomes a lot easier to shield Israel from reproach. It suggests, in the most emphatic terms, that serious criticism of Israel amounts to criticism of Jews. More than a millennium of violent Christian persecution of Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, has made many in the West rightly sensitive towards any claims of anti-Semitism, a sensitivity many Zionists like to exploit to gain a carte blanche exemption from criticism for a state they claim to be the very personification of Jewishness.

So, despite Israel's ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, then-Harvard president Larry Summers evidently had no trouble saying, in 2002, that harsh criticisms of Israel are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent."

Robin Shepherd of the usually sensible British think-tank Chatham House has gone even further, arguing that comparing Israel with apartheid South Africa is "objective anti-Semitism."

Says Shepherd: "Of course one can criticize Israel, but there is a litmus test, and that is when the critics begin using constant key references to South Africa and the Nazis, using terms such as ‘bantustans.' None of these people, of course, will admit to being racist, but this kind of anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated form of racism, and the kind of hate-filled rhetoric and imagery are on the same moral level as racism, so gross and distorted that they are defaming an entire people, since Israel is an essentially Jewish project."

I'd agree that the Nazi analogy is specious -- not only wrong but offensive in its intent, although not "racist". But the logic of suggesting it is "racist" to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa is simply bizarre. What if Israel objectively behaves like apartheid South Africa? What then?

Actually, Mr. Shepherd, I'd be more inclined to pin the racist label on anyone who conflates the world's 13 million Jews with a country in which 8.2 million of them -- almost two thirds -- have chosen not to live.

Although you wouldn't know it -- not if you followed Jewish life simply through the activities of such major Jewish communal bodies as the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League -- the extent to which the eight million Jews of the Diaspora identify with Israel is increasingly open to question (much to the horror of the Zionist-oriented Jewish establishment). In a recent study funded by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (an important donor to Jewish communal organizations), Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman revealed that their survey data had yielded some extraordinary findings: In order to measure the depth of attachment of American Jews to Israel, the researchers asked whether respondents would consider the destruction of the State of Israel a "personal tragedy." Less than half of those aged under 35 answered "yes" and only 54% percent of those aged 35-50 agreed (compared with 78% of those over 65). The study found that only 54% of those under 35 felt comfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state.

http://alternet.org/story/62618/

Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME.com where he analyzes the Middle East and other international conflicts. South African-born and raised, yet a lifelong fan of Liverpool, he offers comment and analysis -- as well as a World Cup blog -- on his own web site Rootless Cosmopolitan. He also edits Global Beat, an annotated weekly digest of international conflict coverage.

Edited September 15, 2007 by Mister Fancypants

[DeadPoolX 9]

I'd like to see just where the researchers took their samples from. They claim that "only 54% of those under 35 felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state" but they don't say where the study took place, how it took place or where they got the samples from. All of that makes a big difference.

Where the study took place is important. For instance, if the questions were asked in the northeast, you'd probably get different answers than if you asked them in the south. Americans (Jews included) vary in different areas of the country. We're not one big hive-mind.

How the study took place is also important. If the researchers (or their assistants) told their participants they were partaking in this, then maybe the answers given were skewed. Some people answer how they think they're "supposed to answer." This can affect the study dramatically.

Where they got the samples and participants from is probably the most important though. The article says the researchers took people under the age of 35. So... what does that mean? Someone who's 34? How about 15? What about 26? The age range here is quite a large one and with such a wide range, thoughts, beliefs and attitudes could be wildly different, but still fall under the umbrella of "under 35 years of age."

I think before anyone puts too much stock into the statistics in this study, we'd need to see some more information. Otherwise, the numbers just don't mean that much.

[mawilson 2,133]

Very sad.

I bet they'll change their mind when the pogroms begin.

Israel's doors will remain open to all Jews in need regardless of their race or place of origin.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Goooo Israel!!!!!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Goooo Israel!!!!!

Do you have a sideline in package holidays?

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Goooo Israel!!!!!

Do you have a sideline in package holidays?

Fly to Israel for $99!!!!!!!

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