In the past, I’ve remarked to friends that the difference between
a Jewish liberal and a Jewish conservative is that when a Jewish
liberal walks out of the Holocaust Museum, he feels, “This shows
why we need to have more tolerance and multiculturalism.” The
Jewish conservative feels, “We should have killed a lot more
Nazis, and sooner.”
I thought of this as I read Peter Beinart’s new
essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,”
which argues that “liberal Zionism” is in danger unless groups
such as AIPAC start to take a more critical view of Israel’s
actions. Beinart, using a Frank Luntz survey of young American
Jews as a jumping off point, writes:
Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer
American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American
Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading
institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster —
indeed, have actively opposed — a Zionism that challenges
Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward
its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish
establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism
at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding
that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.
The problem, however, isn’t with leading Jewish organizations
that defend Israel, but with liberalism. As sickening as it
sounds, Jewish liberals see their fellow Jews as noble when they
are victims being led helplessly into the gas chambers, but
recoil at the thought of Jews who refuse to be victims, and
actually take actions to defend themselves. It isn’t too
different from American liberal attitudes toward criminal justice
or terrorism, where morality is turned upside down and the lines
between criminals and victims become blurred, and in certain
cases, even reversed.
In the case of Israel, what changed over time was that Israel
went from a state that exemplified Jewish victimhood (a role that
Jewish liberals are comfortable with) to one in which Jews were
actually in a position of power, which liberals are not
comfortable with. Meanwhile, Palestinians, aided by the media,
effectively exploited Jewish liberals by portraying themselves as
the real victims, and Israel as the oppressors. I experienced
this first hand once when I went on a Birthright Israel trip
(which is a paid trip for American Jews to travel to Israel). At
one point, we went to the cemetery at Mount Herzl, which is sort
of Israel’s equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery, and is
located by Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust Museum. While
stopping at the cemetery, we were asked to offer our feelings
standing in a cemetery honoring fallen Israeli soldiers, and the
first American Jew who commented was this liberal girl who
reflected, “All I can think about is how many Palestinian graves
there are.”
Israel, right now, is surrounded by terorrist groups dedicated to
the nation’s destruction. Palestinian society teaches its
children to aspire to slaughter Jews much in the same fashion as
the Nazis indoctrinated their young. Suicide bombers who die in
the act of killing Jewish civilians are celebrated as heroes.
It’s a culture that glorifies death and uses women and children
as human shields to gain sympathy from the international
community — and especially liberal Jews. And the terrorists are
receiving aid from Iran, a radical nation that vows to wipe
Israel off the map within the context of seeking a nuclear
weapon.
Yet against this backdrop, all liberal Jews want to do is to pin
the blame on Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and engage in the
magical thinking that more Jewish concessions will create peace
and security. By doing so, they are helping the enemies of the
Jews who are intent on finishing the job that Hitler started.
While Israel has no shortage of critics, when Jewish liberals
attack Israel, it’s that much more damaging, because Israel’s
enemies can say, “See, even Jews admit that Israel is the
oppressor.”
While I would never suggest that Jews who happen to be
politically liberal would want a second Holocaust to happen, I do
think that by participating in a campaign to defang Israel and
prevent it from taking the actions necessary to defend itself,
that Jewish liberals are making things significantly easier for
those who do want to carry out a second Holocaust.
Luckily, though, there are a lot of Jews in Israel who are
determined not to let that happen.
