10 | JANUARY 19 • 2023

PURELY COMMENTARY

opinion
How American Jews Should Navigate
Israel’s New Political Reality
I

n the wake of the recent elections,
many progressives have expressed
angst at the new leadership in
Israel. Matti Friedman wrote a piece
in Tablet (tabletmag.com) about
the election aftermath
in Israel. It is “not
threatening ‘democracy,’
or the ‘peace process,’
which hasn’t existed for
more than 20 years,” he
wrote. “It’s dismantling the
ability of Israeli Jews, and
possibly the Jewish world
as a whole, to act together
in our common interests.”
How should American Jews respond
to these developments?

1. ADOPT A “THEY ARE US”
MINDSET
American Jews who criticize Israel
often come across like they are speaking
about an alien nation, not their beloved
state of the Jewish people. To be sure,
many (but not all) of these critics really
do love Israel. They should temper
their criticism just as thoughtful people
do when someone they love, such as
a family member, disappoints them.
American Jews should think of Israel’s
problems as our own, like troubles in
our own families.
Unlike Israel, the American Jewish
community is not a sovereign country.
Mainstream American Jews can go
their whole lives ignoring the haredi
Jews living blocks away who see the
role of women very differently from
how they see it. Likewise, they need
not encounter the radical right-wingers
who think Israel should annex every
inch of the West Bank.
Israelis, by contrast, must be in an
ongoing political dialogue with each
other over the nature of the state.
They must share the public space and

compromise with people very different
from themselves. Israel is the sovereign
expression of the Jewish people — they
are us, but with land, a parliament and
an army.
If the Kotel were in the U.S. and
belonged to American Jews, does
anyone think the fight for who prays
there would be any less contested than
it is in Israel? Othering Israel is a denial
of our own peoplehood.
What’s more, American Jews have
played an indispensable role in
facilitating the emigration of Jews to
Israel from around the world. In 1987,
as a student activist, I organized buses
to Washington to the largest American
Jewish protest in history demanding the
release of Soviet Jews.
Many of the emigres American Jews
helped bring to Israel do not share their
progressive political leanings. Russian-
speaking Jews may have even shifted
rightward the political balance in Israel.
Israeli “Jews of color” from all over the
world tend to be politically rightwing.

Some of them voted for Ben Gvir. Not a
few American Jews from the same part
of the world would have as well.
American Jews own a share of not
just Israel’s triumphs, but also its
failures. Adopting the “they are us”
posture conditions American Jews
to engage Israel and Israelis in a
thoughtful, sympathetic manner that is
more likely to be heard and less likely
to drive a permanent wedge in the
relationship.

2. CURB THE HEATED MORAL
RHETORIC
Now is not the time for more open
letters and petitions denouncing
demagogic figures in Israel. Although
some Jews may find Ben Gvir
despicable, no one is saying that
Temple Beth Shalom of Pico-Robertson
should invite him to speak at its spring
shabbaton (he wouldn’t come anyway).
The American Jewish moral posture
— our impulse to condemn hateful
rhetoric and render moral judgment

David
Bernstein
Times of
Israel

Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu with Otzma Yehudit party head Itamar Ben Gvir at a vote in
the assembly hall of the Knesset on Dec. 28, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90/Times of Israel)