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)

