Diaspora Jews’ views

Editorial

Most Israelis think their government should be engaging with Diaspora Jewish groups that are critical of Israeli policies. According to a poll, 71 percent of Israelis say their government should engage in dialogue with Jewish groups in the Diaspora even if they are critical of its policies.

The survey, conducted by Kevoon and commissioned by B’nai B’rith International, is an unsubtle critique of the policies of the Israeli government that, for example, prevent its officials from participating in events organized by J Street, the “progressive” or left-leaning advocacy group challenging the hegemonic American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“This poll underscores what we have always said, which is that even if an Israeli government disagrees with the criticism or alternative policies put forward by Jews living abroad, it still must engage with them,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, told the Jerusalem Post. “At a time when the state and people of Israel are finding themselves more and more isolated internationally, the appropriate response to criticism would be to welcome the debate, engage in an open and candid discussion and not to seek to impose litmus tests based on loyalty or the content of one’s views.”

Ben-Ami’s perspective seems sensible – and J Street members seem genuine in their form of Zionism. But, at the risk of haphazardly applying psychosocial theory to large swaths of people, there is more to it than this.

While J Streeters and various other conscientious Zionists with dissenting views may be reflecting well-considered moral positions, there are other Jewish critics of Israel who are less assiduously principled. These come in at least two varieties. There are the complete, off-the-wall anti-Israel crackers who devote themselves to opposing everything about Israel, including its existence as a Jewish state; Jews whose views are so extreme that they are, at times, effectively useful idiots in the service of those who are proven to be less than friends of the Jewish people. Another variety is far less malignant. It is a large group of moderately engaged Diaspora Jews who genuinely seek peace and security for the Jewish state, but whose depth of understanding or comfort level with being associated with an unpopular cause results in queer judgment.

Prof. Alan Dershowitz said, when he spoke in Vancouver last year, that some Jewish critics of Israel adopt their positions in part because it is easier than having to defend Israel at dinner parties. These Diaspora Jews may be inclined to pressure Israel to take positions that are easy to defend, rather than strategically wise. That is, with the best of intentions and out of a love for the Jewish homeland, Diaspora Jews may take positions that are more accommodating of their own personal comfort as Jews in Canada, or the United States or Europe, than they are for the security of Israel. This is probably mostly unconscious and it is understandable – but it illuminates a phenomenon that Israelis and Diaspora Jews should begin to acknowledge more openly.

There was a time when overseas Zionists had a reputation for being more hardline than hardline Israelis, seeing the conflict from the crude simplicity only distance can provide. While there are still those among us whose strong views are informed more by ideology than facts on the ground, a converse phenomenon seems more widespread these days. It is an accommodationist Zionism that responds to anti-Israel criticism by accepting and adopting it. For instance, while settlements are repeatedly thrown up as a severe obstruction to peace, we know intellectually that these communities are not anywhere near the top of the areas of conflict in a moral morass where children are nurtured to aspire to martyrdom. Still, a well-intentioned Israel supporter living in the West might think, if we can just get our Israeli brothers and sisters to halt construction, at least it would be one less thing we’d have to defend them against.

This is a seawater-drinking proposition, of course, because, as nominal as the settlements issue is in the bigger scheme, there will be another puffed-up issue waiting to take its place that is just as “humiliating” to the Palestinians, which “proves” Israel has no intention to live in peace, and which can just as easily be used to justify the killing of Jews.

As a general principle, it is always wise to consider criticism, especially from friends. But it is prudent also to consider varied motivations, self-interests and concealed motives (conscious and unconscious) before taking criticism too much to heart. This week’s poll suggests that Israelis are open-minded toward their friendly critics. Their government’s reticence may be a prudent counterbalance to the public’s guilelessness.

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