Progressive Jews should not give up on Israel
The prevailing feeling among progressive Jews is that Israel has a government not even a Jewish mother could love.
By Adam ChandlerDaniel Sieradski's resume reads like a love poem to the world of Jewish activism. Sieradski, 32, is the creator of several influential Jewish websites and digital platforms, including JewSchool.com, and his expertise is coveted by publications and nonprofit organizations alike. Additionally, Sieradski has been an extremely visible advocate for progressive Israeli and Jewish causes as well as an outspoken watchdog against anti-Semitism. And so, when he recently announced to his nearly 2,400 followers on Twitter that he would no longer be commenting publicly about Israel, some were taken aback.
"I've decided that after 10 years of fighting for a progressive Israeli course correction, that our efforts are futile," he wrote in June. "I officially give up. As the Jewish nation proceeds to march off a cliff, I will now go back to caring about everything else I cared about before Israel."
Considering Sieradski's large following and his pioneer status, one might expect his declaration to precipitate a similar wave of emotional and ideological disengagement from Israel by other young, like-minded American Jews.
His sentiments reflect more than the simple waning of interest among young and uncommitted Jewish Americans; it is the apostasy of believers who deeply supported Israel. We're talking about American Jewish Zionists who revile Hamas and Hezbollah, fear for Israel's safety in the face of Iran's nuclear program, and pray for Israel's long-term strength and viability as a Jewish and democratic state.
It's no surprise that progressives are disillusioned. The continuing expansion of settlements and the Boycott Law are manifestations of trends in Israel that make it increasingly difficult for many of us to speak in its favor in public forums abroad, on college campuses, even at kitchen tables.
As a writer on these themes, I come across the daily torrent of anti-Israel rhetoric, written by people whose perspectives I loathe - and yet, I find myself agreeing more and more with what's being said about Israel's ruling coalition. The prevailing feeling among progressive Jews is that Israel has a government not even a Jewish mother could love and that the country's democratic values are gradually being eroded from within.
Within a minute of meeting with Sieradski, he cites a report released in June by Repair the World, a trans-denominational Jewish nonprofit, focused on volunteerism and social activism. The report describes how "millennials" - the organization's label for Jewish Americans ages 18-35 - recently ranked "Israel/Middle East peace" 10th on a list of social action causes with which they identify.
"For millennials, Israel is less important than animal rights and the environment," Sieradski comments.
Whether this conclusion is alarming or obvious, it's possible that a potential paradigm for how to connect both young Diaspora Jews and lost progressives to Israel is concealed in this disquieting data. For the many whose priorities have shifted away from Israel, now is the time to focus on specific issues. The alternatives - either to tune out or relinquish the vision of a better future for Israel - will only hasten the complete corruption of the values the country needs to maintain its allies.
There are countless Israeli organizations whose work embodies liberal values, but are imperiled by the ugly political climate in Israel today. There are, for example, widely acclaimed (and maligned ) human-rights and coexistence groups, as well as lesser-known organizations working with asylum-seeking African refugees. Such organizations need support more than Israel needs trees.
For issues that captivate a younger generation, Israel's eminence in fields like technology and medicine are well known, but there is also groundbreaking work being done by Israeli ecologists, who are dreaming up desperately needed sustainability initiatives. Creating global partnerships for this work links Israel to both the world and the future.
For those less engrossed by politics, Israel's cultural exports represent the creative expression of an open society. Israeli musicians and dancers tour the globe, attracting many admirers. The works of Israeli artists hang in galleries and museums in the world's major cultural centers. Additionally, there may not be better ambassadors for the soul of Israel than writers like Amos Oz, Etgar Keret and David Grossman - cherished figures in numerous literary communities abroad.
Most important, there is a burgeoning of political groups in Israel building momentum through salons and demonstrations, groups that may, despite a political climate that is increasingly hostile to them, someday emerge as part of a powerful new Zionist left. Behind these groups are tens of thousands of Israelis who share a progressive vision for their country. They desperately need allies abroad who believe in their goals, and can help define and advance their movement.
The need for a democratic counterweight in Israel has never been more dire. We have it in our power - and it is our responsibility - to help strengthen Israeli democracy and ensure its survival. This work cannot be done without its Sieradskis here in America and across the Diaspora. And without concentrated pushback, the madness leading Israel off its rational course will only deepen.
Adam Chandler is a writer who lives in New York. He is currently working on a book about the Second Lebanon War.
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you people know nothing about israel. you represent a tiny minority of jews in the world, and nearly none in israel. if you want to repair the world, leave israel alone. israel has enough problems without having to deal with the lunatic fringe in the diaspora who obviously do not even know that the united states has an anti-boycott law with criminal penalties. if israel is tenth on your list of concerns, then stop meddling.
I used to live in Israel and after leaving the country I kept interested and tried to exercise any kind of influence for a progressive and democratic israel. I give up,israelis and in some way palestinians are not interested in a just and fair settlement, the occupiers keep growing, the israeli government keeps enacting antidemocratic laws, the siege of gaza continues, ......
Why not! They all seem to have given up on God?
I've given up on the latter
Not that the censors let that many posts through anyways.
Even old Zionists like me have given up, even if we continue to wish the present were not really so. Time to register that the ship has left the port, and we chose not to go. There seems to be no turning back from the pessimism in Israel that is its own self-fulfilling prophecy.
What exactly does "progressive" mean. You can't say there are no Israeli progressives if you don't even define it. I am guessing you define it as belonging to or to the left of Gush Shalom.
Never heard of a dictionary? Or are you too feeble to use one? Progressive means "one believing in moderate political change and especially social improvement by governmental action." Clearly the current government of Israel is utterly opposed to these principles. Thus for the terminally ignorant and moronic perhaps we could simply define 'progressive' as the opposite of 'regressive' and thus the contrary to Israel today.
I do support Israel's right to exist and also even believe in a final peace deal Israel should keep settlement blocks. However actions like refusing to dismantle illegal outposts like yitzhar who attack IDF and Palestinians does not in any way enhance Israel's security. Also many of Israel's founders like David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan called for Israel to return the West Bank. Bibi also seems to forgot Herzl's Altneualand Herzl's vision of the Jewish state he called for a Jewish state with only Western laws. Ironically in Altneualand a nationalist Jewish party in defeated in elections for parliament.
Who is the founder of Israel. Isn't that God Almighty? Didn't He say that all the land that Arbraham set foot on was to belong to his children through Isaac (and then Jacobn)?I will let you in on a little secret: God Almighty doesn't give a rat's ass about anybody's opinion regarding Israel except that He will never forget someone who tries to take away the Land from His Chosen People.
Netanyahu and the Israeli majority which supports him are comfortable in military occupation. Progressive Jews, finding this tyranny over weaker neighbors antithetical to Judaism, are not. Israel, drunk with military hegemony, has chosen to abandon what once made it inspirational. It is a sad conclusion to an historic experiment. That "light unto the nations" has been extinguished in a sewer of duplicitous racism whose icons are Netanyahu and the goyacide rabbis of the settlers.
Netanyahu and the Israeli majority which supports him are comfortable in military occupation. Progressive Jews, finding this tyranny over weaker neighbors antithetical to Judaism, are not. Israel, drunk with military hegemony, has chosen to abandon what once made it inspirational. It is a sad conclusion to an historic experiment. That "light unto the nations" has been extinguished in a sewer of duplicitous racism whose icons are Netanyahu and the goyacide rabbis of the settlers.
The point of no return for a fair 2 state solution has passed. Israel will never make peace, and progressive minded people should jump ship rather than go down with it!
for the law prohbiting boycotting products from the settlements, or for the rabbis who say don't rent to Arabs, or for the rabbis who get Arabs fired for flirting with Jews, or for the rabbis who would sacrifice individual rights for which Jews have fought for centuries on the alter of tribalism not to mention their own power. Israel was compelling as an act of self redemption of a persecuted people. As a home for chauvinists and religious bigots, it's leaves me and many others cold. The present goverment rubs in ones face again and again the perspective of the chauvinists and bigots. Do they really expect loyalty of the diaspora in return (other than the minority of right wingers in the diaspora). Can't wait for the orthodox rabbis to tell me that I'm not Jewish and that if I wanted to come to Israel, I need to convert, unless I can get birth certificates going back seven generations proving Jewish mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, and so on.
is that in North America, any criticism of Israel's current government policies is deemed as anti-semitic by mainstream media, instead of engaging the arguments presented. This has led, IMO, to the "your either with us or against us" kind of thinking prevalent on this, and many issues in North America which destroys productive dialog.
Israel turned on Progressive Jews decades ago.
Its not difficult to agree that Israeli progressives need the support of the progressive Jewish diaspora. But from the point of view of a Jewish person living with full civil rights in another state, there's more to life than the notion of a Jewish state. The creation of Israel was always going to be a tricky exercise given that the land selected for the Jewish state was actually inhabited mainly by Arabs. Time to move on and let the Israelis be responsible for Israel. Not all Jews have to believe in Zionism or put the interests of people who are content to occupay another people for over 40 years over other more deserving causes. So long, nice to know you.
for cheering up discouraged self-hatred Jews who were about to give up their fight to destroy Israel.
Dear friends. We are living in challenging times, where CHANGE is constant and rapid - world wide! It's not the "same" Europe, or USA, or the Arab World. The future belongs to the YOUNGER generation, worldwide. For Israel - this generation is AWSOME. So - support them! they are the source of HELP.
What is interesting here is not that; "For millennials, Israel is less important than animal rights and the environment," but that Israelis have a problem seeing them as anything other than 2-dimensional cardboard cut-outs who sit around all day giving Israel a thumbs up or a thumbs down everytime it passes wind. I got news for you; America is now in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the great depression. Most American Jews are focused on either getting a job (millenials), keeping the one they have, or figuring out how to rebuild their pension fund so they don’t end up living in a cardboard box and eating gov’t cheese when their 72 (Generation X'ers). You're worried about Iran? Make a deal with them or bomb them to kingdom come. You like Amos Oz.? Than you read his books, because believe me when I tell you, we have better things to do.
Mr. Chandler - this is an important piece. One group - Partners for Progressive Israel - has already started to implement what you're calling for, staging Thursday demonstrations in NYC for a progressive Israel. For details - http://bit.ly/pYDzVg
As a Jew who lived for ten years in Israel, I can say that a major factor in my decision to return to the USA is the Israeli governing "sysem." It is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy. The Members of the Knesset owe allegiance only to the party chiefs who put them on the partyl list. The citizens have no way of impacting the government other than mass protests with no legal standing. All citizens can choose is whose noses are in the trough. The system is inherently anti-democratic. Furthermore, the successul politicians' backgrounds are from autocratic countries of the Middle Esat and the former Soviet Union. The surest way to go nowhere in Israeli politics is to come from a democracy like the US or UK. I saw no way to change this impossible system, so I left.
...but in the end "cherry tomatoes" will have a tough time trumping "settlements and occupation" (outside of Israel).
Present day Israel is what not Herzl had envisioned.
And who can blame him - according to the alamist goverment of Israel they are at daily risk of destruction by Iran, and the only thing to do is panic, support said goverment blindly and silence anyone who is 'unpatriotic' and critical of said goverment
He did? And, I thought that all that was wrong with NYC was that Bloomberg was in charge.
I escaped Shoah as a toddler while father was fighting Nazis, heard in 1946/48 of fight of uncle in Palestine/Israël and have been in favour of Israël untl the sixties. From then I progressively lost any hope of seeing during my life Israël being a normal state as was the project of early zionists. Utter racism, religious zealotry, despise of human rights and greed have taken power in such manner and worsening every day so it cannot change under my eyes.
Liberalism & socialism do not work.
But I cannot post what he said about Israel becaucse you will not present such a post
I believe that Daniel has had to face a truth that all friends and relatives of troubled people have had to face; that sometimes "tough love" is needed, even if that tough love means letting those you love hit rock bottom with no possibility of them picking themselves up. It is truly unfortunate that, as in the case of troubled individuals, Israel cannot see what it is doing to itself.
If you find yourself agreeing more and more with what's being said about Israel's ruling coalition, are you REALLY sure that ALL those people whose perspectives you say you loathe are anti-Israel? And do you ALSO run across a daily torrent of pro-Israel rhetoric, written by people whose 'perspectives' you loathe? Just curious...
What is happening in Israel vis a vis democratic values is a backlash against the previously prevailing tendency in Israel to imagine that we are living in, let's say, Scandinavia in the 1970s. I have lived in Israel for 30 years and have seen Hamas prisoners in our jails thrive under better conditions than the reserve soldiers who guard them; Israeli Arab parliament leaders who collaborate with our enemies and rouse their followers to treason, foreign media that make media stars and their own reputations out of our traitors and tribulations. I see so-called progressive folks challenging our legitimacy as a state for the Jews. As proud as I am of Israel's insistence upon staying a democracy in the face of pressures no other country could withstand (I always wondered why a country so beset with war did never succumb to a military coup; a lesser country would have many times over), I can understand this need to self-correct. But, this is not the time for quitting. Progressive thinkers must stick it out here with the rest of us. Giving up is never, ever the right thing to do.
It really is incredible how Israel has come as far as it has, and it brings up hope that Israelis will soon begin mending our ways and reforming our society to make it better again.
Have you noticed how many Lovers of Israel have to compare it, its laws, its treatment of Palestinians, to other places, and other situations? Why can't they just look at the situation objectively, and ask the questions about the morality or the point of the case at issue. For the man in jail, it is hardly relevant to tell him that someone else in , say , Mogadishu, is having it worse. The rhetoric is clearly a way to an exculpatory dialogue with oneself that convinces no one but the person trying to square it with his conscience.