The Israel conversation American Jewish leaders aren't willing to have
Don't ignore or demonize the young American Jews flirting with anti-Zionism. Argue with them.
By Peter Beinart | Oct. 14, 2014 | 4:35 PM
A pro-BDS student attending the first Open Hillel conference in Harvard, Oct., 2014. Photo by Gili Getz
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On Sunday I spoke at the inaugural conference of Open Hillel,
a new student organization that, as the name implies, wants to open
Hillel—which oversees Jewish life on America’s college campuses—to a
broader debate about Israel. It was an invigorating experience, and a
strange one. When it comes to Israel, I’m not used to being among the
most hawkish people in the room.
Open
Hillel has no political agenda beyond facilitating a more open
discussion about Israel inside the American Jewish community. So why did
the conversation—at least the part I witnessed—have such an
anti-Zionist feel?
The
first reason is generational. For the most part, older American Jews
don’t question Zionism, even if they don’t like Israel’s policies,
because they don’t question the need for a Jewish state of refuge.
Generationally, they are close enough to the Holocaust, to the Soviet
and Ethiopian emigrations of the 1980s and '90s, and to personal
experiences of anti-Semitism in the United States, to believe that
Diaspora Jewish life can be fragile. They may not be able to imagine
moving to Israel themselves, but they sleep better knowing it’s there.
For
younger American Jews, it’s different. They’ve never seen any
significant group of Jews fleeing to Israel to avoid state-sponsored
anti-Semitic persecution. And they’ve faced no barriers as a result of
being Jewish in the United States. So the Zionism of refuge strikes no
chord. As a result, when they grow alienated from Israeli policy—as many
of the students at the conference clearly were—they’re more likely to
question the entire basis for the state. Unlike their parents, they
don’t distinguish between what Israel does and what Israel is.
The
second reason the conference leaned so far left is because of Gaza.
Among American Jews, this summer’s war was an equal opportunity
radicalizer. It pushed hawkish Jews further right and dovish Jews further left.
J Street, which opposes Israeli settlement policy but seeks acceptance
within the American Jewish mainstream, largely sat the war out. That
proved a boon for the anti-Zionist, pro-Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) group, Jewish Voices for Peace, whose ranks were swelled by American Jews alienated by the war.
According to executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson, JVP has added 25
new chapters and 60,000 new online supporters since mid-June. That
newfound strength was on display at Open Hillel.
But
the third reason the conference leaned so far left is the simplest: No
one from the right showed up. Conference organizers say that, among
others, they invited representatives from AIPAC, Stand With Us, the
David Project, Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston and, of course,
Hillel International—but none came. They almost never do. For years,
the American Jewish establishment has dealt with Jews who cross its
ideological red lines by either ignoring or vilifying them—but almost
never publicly talking to them. To do so, they claim, would legitimize
fundamentally illegitimate views.
That
decision is growing ever more self-defeating. The young American Jews
at Open Hillel who are flirting with anti-Zionism are not anti-Semites.
(Although, of course, some anti-Zionists are). They are merely doing
what young people always do: Challenging settled assumptions based on a
different life experience. They don’t need the American Jewish
establishment’s legitimization; that establishment is illegitimate to
them. What they need, in the best Jewish tradition, is to be argued
with.
But
I’m not sure the American Jewish establishment knows how. For years,
mainstream American Jewish groups have short-circuited discussions about
Zionism by accusing its critics of anti-Semitism.
They’ve grown so dependent on that rhetorical crutch that they rarely
publicly grapple with how Zionism - a movement that privileges one
ethnic and religious group - can be reconciled with the pledge in
Israel’s declaration of independence to offer “complete equality of
social and political rights irrespective of race, religion or sex.”
Unlike some at Open Hillel, I don’t believe this tension requires
abandoning Zionism or the belief in a democratic Jewish state alongside a
Palestinian one. But the students I met on Sunday
are asking hard, important questions, and they deserve a communal
leadership that responds with ideas rather than silence or slurs.
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