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Jewish Peace Letter Vol. 44 No. 6 Published by the Jewish Peace Fellowship September 2015 Ein Briera A JPF Statement on the Iran Nuclear Agreement HE JEWISH PEACE FELLOWSHIP SUppORTS the tions proposes or does — and a coalition of right-wing agreement with Iran to scale back its nuclear American Jews and self-proclaimed Christian Zion- Tprograms. ists who willingly cede formulation of large swaths of After several years, during which Israeli Prime American foreign policy to Israel’s prime minister. Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled readiness to Caught in the middle are an embarrassed, ner- bomb Iran’s nuclear installations to end what he terms vous core of elected Democrats, many of them Jew- “an existential threat” to the Jewish State, Teheran ish, many of them otherwise liberal, who overlook has accepted internationally negotiated demands to opinion polling that American Jews generally support severely restrict for the next ten years programs which the agreement, but are intimidated by the noise and could give it the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. threats of Israel’s uncritical supporters among their The core of the agreement provides that Iran constituents. cease enriching uranium to the point that it becomes Howl and bray as opponents of the agreement may, weapons-grade; that it allow international inspec- they have yet to offer any realistic, feasible alternative. tors into its nuclear facilities to assure compliance; Their only true alternative — unvoiced — is war. and that international sanctions, which have crippled True friends of Israel recognize that this Iran Iran’s economy for decades, will be re-imposed and agreement is — at the moment, and for the next ten strengthened should it fail to comply. years — the only way forward. And now that this Diplomacy is frequently war by other means, and agreement has been negotiated, launching strikes this agreement is a textbook example of that dictum. against Iran’s nuclear installations — as Prime Minis- The question now is whether, confronted with an ter Netanyahu in the past has broadly hinted he might agreement, a host of warmongers in the United States do — would be suicidal, given the current instability and Israel will be satisfied only when missiles fly over roiling the region from Tunis to Kabul. Indeed, if in Teheran, dropping bunker-busters and spreading un- the wake of this agreement there remains “an exis- told death to Iranians and American troops. tential threat” to the Jewish State, it may well rest in The future of the agreement now hinges largely Jerusalem, in the Prime Minister’s Office. on whether the US Congress will resist a pact negoti- American Jews who hold the notion that Ameri- ated by Secretary of State John Kerry and other na- can foreign policy in the Middle East begins and tions. Arrayed in opposition are two overlapping fac- ends with what Israel’s government says is in its in- tions: Obama-hating right-wing Republicans — who terest, along with Christian Zionists, quivering Jew- have vowed since the president’s inauguration in 2008 ish Democrats in Congress — and American Jews in to oppose anything and everything his administra- general — should take note. Y ISSN: 0197-9115 From ‘Mobilization’ to ‘Engagement’ Samuel Goldman A Parting of the Way? American Jews and Israel re Americans Jews drifting away from Israel? been lamented by major players in organized Jewish life. He The conventional wisdom is that they are. In a 2007 contends that the appearance of a major change in American report, Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman argued Jews’ relation to Israel is partly illusory. According to Sas- Athat “We are in the midst of a massive shift of attitudes to- son, differences in attitudes have historically been correlated ward Israel…” They attribute with stage of life rather than the change to the replace- generation. ment of an older generation In other words, Sasson with sentimental ties to Israel argues that it is not the case by a new cohort whose affin- that American Jews under ity is much weaker. fifty or so are less attached to A 2013 Pew poll sup- Israel than were their parents ports this claim. It found that or grandparents. Instead, while seventy-seven percent younger Americans Jews have of American Jews over fifty always tended to be less inter- describe themselves as very ested in Israel, but developed or somewhat attached to Is- stronger attachments as they rael, only sixty-one percent grew older. If this pattern under fifty do so. Young Jews holds, there is reason to think are especially skeptical that that today’s skeptics may be Israel is acting in good faith Israel’s passionate supporters in regard to the Palestinians. of tomorrow. The same survey found that That does not mean only twenty-six percent of Sasson thinks nothing has Jews between eighteen and changed. The book’s central twenty-nine believe that the claim is that the mass mo- “Israeli government is mak- bilization that characterized ing a sincere effort” toward a American Jews’ relations peace settlement. with Israel until the 1980s has In The New American Zi- been replaced by an “engage- onism, Theodore Sasson, pro- ment” approach. For Sasson, fessor of international and there has been no overall de- global studies at Middlebury cline in the intensity of Amer- College and senior research ican Jewish support for Israel. scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, of- Rather there has been a turn away from support based on fers a counterintuitive spin on these numbers, which have ideological consensus and channeled through large organi- zations in favor of direct connections with a broad array of Samuel Goldman is an assistant professor of politi- movements and institutions in Israel. cal science at George Washington University, where he is In one sense, this leads toward uncharted territory for director of the Politics & Values Program. American Jewry, which has been characterized for decades 2 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter September 2015 Jewish Peace Fellowship by a striking degree of vertical integration. But it also reflects dividual judgment in the domains of political advocacy and a return to normality, both in an historical sense and in com- philanthropy.” He also observes that the Internet renders the parison to other diasporas. Before 1948, American Jews were kind of mediating organizations that once dominated Amer- much more diverse in their relations with the yishuv — the icans’ relations with Israel much less useful. You don’t have pre-Israel Jewish community in Palestine — and the Zionist to donate to the United Jewish Appeal when you can easily movement than they were in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. work directly with your favored causes. Political and institutional pluralism is also common This is certainly a plausible hypothesis. But Sasson does among diaspora groups, who tend “to support competing not provide enough information to judge whether it is true. political objectives and rival homeland parties.” They carry One disadvantage of the descriptive approach applied here over political allegiances and institutional affiliations from is that it can make it difficult to distinguish long-term shifts their original homes to their new countries of residence. from merely temporary changes. One justification for establishment of the State of Israel was This is not just an academic consideration. The ques- to give Jews a homeland comparable to the ones enjoyed by tion that looms over The New American Zionism is whether other people. An ironic consequence may have been to re- the tendency of American Jews to identify with Israel more make the distinctive Galut —Jews living outside of Israel and strongly as they age will continue in the future. If its causes Palestine — on a pattern comparable to far-flung communi- included lack of information and opportunity for contact ties of South Asians, Latin Americans and Africans. with Israeli people and institutions, then we should not ex- The New American Zionism is primarily descriptive. In ad- pect the same pattern to hold under current conditions. dition to analyses of survey data and institutional arrangements, Some American Jews, then, may remain involved with the book includes information from focus groups that gave par- Israel — perhaps even more actively than members of previ- ticipants opportunites to explain their views in more detail than ous generations. But others are likely to drift toward the pas- polls allow. These results are consistent with Sasson’s claim about sive expression of opinions, or even outright indifference. As changing styles of support. Rather than expressing unambigu- Sasson acknowledges, this tendency is likely to be especially ous approval or disapproval for Israel, participants tended to dis- pronounced among the children of intermarriage. We can- tinguish between causes or areas of Israeli society they endorse not discuss the intensity of support for Israel among Ameri- and those that trouble them. The “engagement” model allows can Jews without taking into account the relative shrinking them to direct their support accordingly. of this group. The explanatory argument is less developed. Sasson not- On the level of anecdote, that’s the pattern I’ve observed ed that the mobilization approach was based on a highly ide- in my own generation (I’m thirty-five). People who strongly alized image of Israel. Because few American Jews traveled identify as Jewish care about Israel a lot — although this there or had access to firsthand information about Israel, it concern is often expressed in the form of criticism. But not was relatively easy to build consensus around support for the everyone of Jewish descent sees this as central to their iden- inspiring underdog evoked so vividly in Leon Uris’s novel, tity. And those who don’t also don’t care much about Israel Exodus.