Diaspora, Kinship and Loyalty: the Renewal of Jewish National Security

Diaspora, kinship and loyalty: the renewal of Jewish national security

YOSSI SHAIN AND BARRY BRISTMAN

The beginning of a new round of Palestinian–Israeli violence in September 2000 and the complete collapse of the Oslo process brought to an end, at least for the time being, Israeli and diasporic Jewish expectations of peace and a transformation in their relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds. These developments also, by extension, brought about an apparent end to Israeli and Jewish hopes for a permanent release from both a perceived sense of isolation internationally and a persistent preoccupation with existential questions of security and, indeed, survival. The war of attrition that has followed the initial outbreak of riots has also ‘resecuritized’ the relationship between Israel and the Jewish diaspora, just as the events of 11 September 2001 took the subject of ¼ Jewish kinship and security dilemmas one dramatic step further. The Israeli–Jewish diaspora relationship had been evolving in different directions during the Oslo years. For almost a decade, many Israelis and diaspora Jews believed that a comprehensive Middle East peace would alter funda- mentally both Israel’s Jewish character and relations between the sovereign Jewish state and Jewish existence in the West. Peace would have enabled Israel to achieve a level of normalization that would have loosened the bonds of involvement with and responsibility for the diaspora, while releasing the diaspora from burdensome entanglements with Israeli security issues that had overshadowed their lives in their countries of domicile for over a generation. Until very recently many American observers remarked upon this process of growing detachment, called by one writer the ‘waning of the American Jewish love affair with Israel’.1 This redefinition of relations between the two communities was indeed most noticeable where the link between Israeli security and the diaspora had been the strongest in terms of identity formation and community mobilization: in the United States, whose political system facilitates ethnic involvement in foreign policy. Jewish Americans clearly have the strongest voice among US-based diasporas. In the west European context, Jews

1 Steven T. Rosenthal, Irreconcilable differences? The waning of the American Jewish love affair with Israel (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001).

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expected peace to produce a further decline in anti-Semitism and improve relations with the European Union’s growing Muslim population, confirming Jews’ successful integration in European society. Notwithstanding conflicting assessments of European Jewry, as a ‘vanishing diaspora’ or as revitalized ‘new Jews’ with a prominent role in a new Europe, the fact is that the new manifestations of the Middle East conflict and the September attacks on the United States have returned the question of Jewish security to the heart of Jewish communities worldwide, and to the core of diasporic relations with Israel. In this article we assess the new thinking on Jewish security, both inside and outside the State of Israel. To what extent are diaspora voices and concerns being heeded in Israel, and how are new manifestations of anti-Semitism being addressed in this context? What is the new role that Israel ascribes to the diaspora in its redefinition of itself and its security environment as a consequence of events during the second intifada? Also, how is the diaspora responding to these new challenges and how is it defining its own role? All of these elements will be examined in the different contexts of Israel, western Europe and the United States. We argue that the terms of the Israel–Jewish security nexus and the security dilemmas faced by Jewish communities are being expressed differently in western Europe and in the United States, for several reasons. The historical experiences and the power structures of the two diasporas, the political and foreign policy environments in which they exist, and their respective positions vis-à-vis Israel and Zionism determine the unique dilemmas each faces and the way they are viewed in the new understanding of Jewish security. The power of American Jewry in international affairs is well documented. On the other side of the Atlantic, despite greater EU integration, the west European Jewish community remains divided by language differences and by national boundaries across which it is still very mobile. Western Europe’s Jews are fragmented organizationally, far smaller in number than the west European Muslim population, and more vulnerable to anti-Semitism than those of America. They have a far weaker tradition of political lobbying, and are often still reluctant to declare themselves publicly as Jews. All of these elements militate against Jewish political strength, especially in a political atmosphere less conducive to ethnic involvement in foreign policy. In fact, many west Europeans are very critical of the ethnic dimension of American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, and see it as a problem in west European–American relations in general. There are those who claim that the EU tends to take a less favourable line towards Israel as a way of opposing US foreign policy and asserting an independent voice on the world stage. In a leading article in Foreign Affairs in the spring of 2001, William Wallace branded US Middle East policy as irrational, claiming that west European governments seeking to influence US policy are ‘blocked by Washing- ton’s insistence that Middle East diplomacy is an American preserve and by the attention that U.S. policymakers pay to domestic audiences on the subject’.2 At

2 William Wallace, ‘Europe, the necessary partner’, Foreign Affairs 80: 3, May/June 2001, p. 23.

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the same time, however, Wallace welcomes the growing Muslim influence on west European domestic politics and foreign policy, suggesting, interestingly enough, that somehow certain domestic influences are more legitimate than others. These arguments appear under a new light in the wake of the recent attacks on the United States, as anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism have become further entangled. The large differences between the American and west European diasporas, and between the different positions of the United States and the EU, affect Israel’s perceptions when it considers the diasporas’ roles in its new security posture. Israel now perceives the American diaspora as a normalized and permanent centre of Jewish existence and identity, whose importance approaches that of Israel itself. This vision motivates Israeli elites to be more attentive to issues of anti- Semitism, and to articulate a desire to expand the security role of their Jewish kin in the United States in ways that may empower diaspora voices on the most fundamental issues of boundaries and sovereignty. This development challenges the traditional perspective on security, which stresses the critical role of Jewish independent state power in contrast to Jewish weakness in the diaspora. While the expanding role of the American Jewish community in Jewish security dilutes the original content of Zionism, the west European context provides new nourishment for traditional Zionist claims of endemic Jewish insecurity and the absolute centrality of Israel as the answer to that insecurity. For this reason, we have recently witnessed, even before the September terror attacks, a growing Israeli focus on anti-Semitism as a core issue of security and foreign policy—in contrast with the previous decade at least, during which bilateral state relations frequently suppressed Israeli involvement in issues of anti-Semitism abroad. Israelis are latecomers and not as fully committed to an endeavour long dominated by American Jews, who have for decades cham- pioned the cause of threatened Jewish communities throughout the world. Israel still privileges the health of its bilateral relations with other countries over the interests of Jewish communities resident there, though it certainly does not ignore them. In the same way, while Israel denounces anti-Semitism worldwide as a dangerous phenomenon in general, it is selective in its particular con- demnations, hesitant when interests it perceives as more important are at stake. So, for example, while Israel withdrew its ambassador to politically and econo- mically marginal Austria to protest against the inclusion of Jörg Haider’s party in the governing coalition, it refrained from criticism of the inclusion of neo- fascists in Italy’s new government, which promised to take a more pro-Israel line in its foreign policy. Similarly, Prime Ministers Begin and Barak asked the Anti-Defamation League chief Abraham Foxman to refrain from attacking widespread anti-Semitic rhetoric in Egypt’s press and official statements at times when Israel sought Egyptian political cooperation or understanding on regional security matters.3 In July 2000 Foxman characterized the new wave of Arab anti-Semitism as unprecedented in its depth, venom and utter lack of restraint. 3 Information given by Abraham Foxman to Yossi Shain, after lecture on 29 July 2001.

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The virulence of Arab/Muslim anti-Semitic propaganda was particularly evident after the September attacks on New York and Washington, when Israel and ‘the Jews’ were blamed throughout the Islamic world for committing these acts, and for allegedly ensuring that Jews working at the World Trade Center were given prior warning so they could spare themselves.4 Although these accusations were especially harsh, their subject matter was not new.

Over the last few years, [for example,] the Egyptian press has announced ‘Jewish con- spiracies’ to spread a deadly virus to eradicate the Arab world’s crop of date palms, and to export to the Arab world both Israeli-made belts that cause impotence and Israeli- made chewing gum that drives women to debauchery. It has gone as far as reports [in 2000] in the popular press that Cairo’s air pollution is the doing of the Mossad.5

This anti-Semitism is a way for Muslims to vent their frustration at Israel, an enemy seemingly undefeatable by conventional, military means. Bernard Lewis has written that ‘resentment of Israel is the only grievance that can be freely and safely expressed in those Muslim countries where the media are either wholly owned or strictly overseen by the government’.6 While Israel used to downplay the significance of Arab and Islamic anti-Semitic attack, it has now come to share the diaspora’s realization of the dangers posed by such persistent and aggravated assaults on world Jewry.

A new security threat During the breathing space provided by the Oslo years, Israelis allowed themselves to divert some attention from security to pressing domestic issues of postwar identity: the incorporation of Israeli culture into the Middle East; the enhancement of citizenship for Israeli Arabs; the relationship between Israel and the diaspora on religious pluralism; shifts towards a globalized market economy; growing class disparities; and various interlocking issues pertaining to the nature of the Jewish Zionist state, manifestations of a long-running debate between universalism and particularism. During these years, many politicians and intellectuals began conceiving of the possibility of a postwar Jewish state in more universal—some would say post-Zionist—terms. The idea of Jewish normality embodied, among other things, a notion of retreat from the Zionist dictum that statehood and military power were the ultimate tools for overcoming Jewish powerlessness. Some proponents of political accommodation with the PLO argued that narratives of Jewish heroism epitomized by the ‘Masada myth’ were no longer needed, while others began disputing the very notion that Israel faces security dilemmas of an exceptional nature. Yoram Hazony, in his book The

4 On the prevalence of these ideas in Egypt, see Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘Letter from Cairo: behind Mubarak: Egyptian clerics and intellectuals respond to terrorism’, New Yorker, 8 Oct. 2001. 5 Michel Sailhan, ‘September 11 attacks spawn rumors and conspiracy theories in Arab world’, Agence France-Presse, 4 Nov. 2001. 6 Bernard Lewis, ‘The Revolt of Islam’, New Yorker, 19 Nov. 2001.

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Jewish state: the struggle for Israel’s soul, discusses how the Israel Defence Forces have changed its own image from the Army of the Jews with a Jewish mission into an army that should safeguard ‘the state, citizens, and democracy’.7 He contends that the IDF, under the influence of postmodern philosophies that have penetrated many other Israeli institutions in education, immigration, foreign and constitutional affairs, has deviated from its original pledge to be loyal to the Jewish people and the Zionist ideal. According to him, this new posture is likely to inhibit the IDF from carrying out extended missions on behalf of the diaspora as well. Moreover, since the 1993 Oslo accords, it has been the conscious strategy of Israel’s pro-Oslo politicians to create

the impression that without such cooperation [with the Palestinian Authority] it will not be able to protect its citizens properly. International intermediaries, including the President of the United States, have begged the PA to cooperate with Israel on security matters. This has given rise to the impression … that the security of Israel and its citizens depends on the goodwill of the Palestinian security organizations.8

Former prime minister Ehud Barak went so far as to threaten the Israeli public with the dire consequences of failure to make sufficient concessions to the PLO, up to and including the probability of all-out war. The peace process and the concomitant Israeli drive for normalization also had a strong impact on Jewish communities outside of Israel, and on Israeli perceptions of intra-Jewish relations worldwide. A major Jewish Agency study from 1996, Israel 2020: master plan for Israel in the 21st century, based all future relations between Israel and the diaspora on the assumption of Middle East peace and a consequent loosening of the security bond between them.9 Indeed, the US-based diaspora, which had organized and mobilized itself around Israeli issues, decentralized to some extent and turned increasingly to a domestic agenda of community-building, Jewish education and social advocacy, encouraged by an Israeli government that urged them to focus more on their own affairs instead of those of the Middle East. With Israel apparently on the road to peace, Jewish American institutions sought to find new bases for communal organization and fundraising. Most American Jews had supported Oslo from the start, but a significant minority, generally more conservative politically and more observant religiously, rejected the sweeping concessions inherent in the process.10 For the Jews of western Europe, the biggest impact of the transformation of international politics and the abatement of Israel’s isolation in the early

7 Yoram Hazony, The Jewish state: the struggle for Israel’s soul (New York: New Republic/Basic Books, 2000), p. 54. 8 Ze’ev Schiff, ‘Who needs security cooperation?’, Ha’aretz, 13 April 2001. 9 Anat Goren and Smadar Foegl, eds, Israel 2020: master plan for Israel in the 21st century, special volume of The macro scenarios: Israel and the Jewish people (Haifa: Technion, 1996). 10 Even after the unsuccessful July 2000 Camp David talks, as negotiations continued sporadically, different Jewish groups demonstrated for and against the anticipated outlines of an agreement with the Palestinians.

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1990s was the revival and strengthening of many Jewish communities on the continent. Jews from the former Soviet Union migrated westward in substantial numbers, particularly to Germany, leading to the reopening of schools, synago- gues and other communal institutions. European Jewish organizations became more politically assertive and aspired to the status of a ‘third pillar’ of world Jewry, equal to and independent from the larger Israeli and American communities. The recent violence in Israel and the occupied territories and the breakdown of the Oslo process have changed radically the perceptions and political environments of Israeli and diaspora Jews. Surveys carried out in June 2001 showed that an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews and Arabs ‘think’ or ‘are certain’ that ‘there will not be peace in the coming years’,11 and Israeli Jews continue to express unprecedented support for the Likud prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Even former prime minister Ehud Barak now contends that peace with Arafat is im- possible and that further negotiations can succeed only with a new Palestinian leadership ready for historic compromise.12 The eruption of mass violence in the Middle East deeply affected the thinking and organizational efforts of the majority of American Jewry, who had for the most part become habituated to thinking and acting in a ‘peace’ mode. American Jewish organizations that had spent the better part of the 1990s learning to focus inward on domestic challenges and searching for new roles in the changed political environment produced by the Oslo accords quickly reverted to their pre-Oslo programming and rallied to Israel’s side as the extent of the danger to Israel became clear. The conflict in which Israel finds itself has broadened beyond the seemingly manageable proportions of a national dispute largely about borders to one encompassing religion and the fundamentals of Jewish national identity. Many in Israel and the diaspora, including leading doves, now see the threat to ‘Jewish security’ in the most basic terms of national legitimacy and Jewish existence. They consider the focused assault of Arabs and Muslims on Jewish identity and its sources and symbols as no less than a declaration of war on the entire Jewish people. This fundamental reorientation is but a small indication of the critical expansion of the Middle East conflict from an Arab–Israeli dispute to one between the Jewish and Islamic worlds: in other words, the magnification and spread of a theoretically solvable conflict between competing nationalisms over tangible and potentially shareable assets such as land and water into a con- frontation between mutually exclusive religious absolutes. Yasser Arafat, coming out of Camp David to embark on a tour of Arab and Muslim countries in defence of Jerusalem, was instrumental in transforming the conflict from a national to a religious one, especially in the context of the struggle over the Temple Mount. For Arafat and the PLO this was a departure from previous rhetoric that theirs was a nationalist struggle, and that their quarrel was therefore with Zionism, and not with Jews. The new PLO posture reflected, in fact, the philosophy of Hamas, which denies Jewish religious connections to Israel and considers Zionism

11 Tami Steinmetz Center, Tel Aviv University, June 2001 Peace Index. 12 See e.g. Ehud Barak, ‘Israel needs a true partner for peace’, New York Times, 30 July 2001.

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‘simply a racist entity responsible for translating the aggressive Jewish idea into a belligerent reality’.13 During the late 1980s and the 1990s, the PLO and many Arab leaders held an extensive political dialogue with American and west European Jews, always maintaining that they had no quarrel with Jews or the Jewish faith. The distinction between Israel as a political issue and the Jews collapsed fully during the second intifada that began at the end of September 2000. In response to the PLO’s and Muslim organizations’ religious-oriented campaign, dozens of Jewish diaspora leaders, including six former chairmen of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, took out a full-page advertisement in Israel’s leading newspapers, in the New York Times and in major Jewish Ameri- can publications, declaring that ‘Israel must not surrender Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount’.14 After nearly a year of violence, Mort Zuckerman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents, commented, ‘one of the things Arafat has accomplished is a greater degree of unity among Jews in Israel and [the United States]. There is a wider degree of support and unanimity within this community than has existed in a long time’.15 The growing tendency of Arabs to broaden their political language to express hostility to Jews and not just Israel has spread and intensified since the Septem- ber 2001 attacks on the United States, and has reduced the Jewish and Israeli political focus to an ‘us versus them’ posture that many in Israel and the diaspora had thought had been superseded by a new reality of peace and normalization. The anti-Semitic attacks on diaspora Jews that accompanied the violence in the Middle East, and the international campaign once again to isolate and delegitimize Israel and equate Zionism with racism, produced greater Jewish unity. French Jews organized to protest against the visit to Paris of Syrian president Bashar Assad, who had made anti-Semitic pronouncements in the presence of the Pope.16 As Robert Wistrich had written earlier, ‘for European and American Jews, delegitimizing Zionism as “racism” or even worse as Nazism, is seen as an attack on the right of Jews to collective emancipation as a people, and as a deliberate slur and as a peculiarly wounding accusation when directed against a 13 Meir Litvak, ‘The Islamization of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: the case of Hamas’, Middle Eastern Studies 34: 1, Jan. 1998, p. 152. The focus on Jerusalem produced an interesting debate between the Israeli government and certain diasporic groups and advocates over who has the right to determine Jerusalem’s future. Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein, for example, proposed a ‘democratic referendum throughout the Jewish world on the future of Jerusalem’. Michael Melchior, then Israel’s minister responsible for diaspora affairs, responded that while he encouraged the diaspora to ‘have an opinion on what goes on … in Israel, be it issues of war and peace or of Jerusalem’, he was prepared to allow a vote (as opposed to a voice) only to those Jews who immigrated to Israel, i.e. became citizens. ‘There’s a difference between having a common purpose—as all Jews of the world have, and should have—and being part of the day-to-day life of the State of Israel.’ Jerusalem Report, 28 Aug. 2000, p. 56. 14 Jerusalem Report, 28 Aug. 2000, p. 56. 15 Melissa Radler, ‘Presidents’ conference chairman: Arafat has unified the Jews’, Jerusalem Post, 13 July 2001. 16 Joshua Schuster, ‘French Jews find their voice’, Jerusalem Post, 3 Aug. 2001. In May 2001 in Syria, in front of a silent Pope John Paul II, Assad delivered an incendiary speech full of anti-Semitic language, accusing Jews of being ‘worse than Nazis’ and reprising their evil historic role as Christ-killers through their current persecution of Muslims. Jerusalem Post editorial, 13 May 2001.

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national grouping (in this case the Jews) who more than any other has suffered from genocidal racism in this century’.17 After the events of 11 September, the struggle against anti-Semitism has for many become entangled with the struggle against Islamic radicalism, on both sides of the Atlantic. The renewed Jewish unity manifested itself in political mobilization on Israel’s behalf and greater emphasis on anti-Semitism as a core issue of the conflict. Mobilization on this scale, involving national and international informational, lobbying and solidarity campaigns that at least temporarily pushed aside intra- communal debates over Jewish identity, had not been seen in many years. US Jewish organizations also reversed the trend towards increasing use of fundraising for domestic causes and targeting funds to ‘Jewish identity transformation’ causes in Israel, opting to focus more on Israeli security, as they had done before Oslo. In the west European context, where Israel’s image has long been far more negative, and where ethnic lobbies are not as central to foreign policy- making, Jews nevertheless attempted to unite to become an effective voice on behalf of Israel. After the devastating terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in June 2001, the second European Jewish General Assembly issued a firm declaration of solidarity with Israel and political support for the Israeli government’s stand, on behalf of Jews from 39 European countries. An Assembly workshop also called for ‘expanded political activism’ to combat anti-Israel and anti-Semitic media images and commentary, and to lobby European politicians to ‘adopt a fair position regarding the current crisis in the Middle East and also put pressure on Arafat to stop the violence’. The workshop also called upon Israel to give greater support to diaspora Jews.18

Reviving Zionism: a new opportunity Israel, in its perceived isolation after the start of the violence in the autumn of 2000, made a concentrated effort to deepen its security involvement and other ties with the diaspora. Many in Israel have expressed a deep yearning for Jewish unity in this time of peril, and some others have seen in the newly found unity around ‘Jewish security’ a unique opportunity to reverse the tide towards a schism between Jewish communities, and especially to undo Israel’s apparent retreat from Zionism and Jewish identity into ‘post-Zionism’.19 After Sharon’s huge electoral victory in February 2001, the incoming education minister Limor Livnat

17 Robert S. Wistrich, ‘Anti-Semitism in Europe after 1945’, in R. Wistrich, ed., Terms of survival: the Jewish world since 1945 (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 276–7. 18 European Council of Jewish Communities reports on 2001 General Assembly, at . 19 In Yoram Hazony’s The Jewish state, post-Zionism is depicted as a broad pro-peace left-orientated cultural drift that demystifies the Zionist and Jewish character of Israel. The book has attracted great attention and praise in neo-conservative Jewish American circles. Its message is that Israel must restore its Jewish character by embellishing its ties to the diaspora. It also became a rallying cry in the current post-Oslo Zeitgeist. Among other weaknesses, Hazony’s analysis of post-Zionism overlooks the deep divisions within the Israeli political left between proponents and critics of Zionism. See Amnon Rubinstein, From Herzl to Rabin: the changing image of Zionism (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000).

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declared a new era in the Israeli education system, which would be marked by the return to core Jewish and Zionist values and the eradication of post-Zionism. In this new vision, Jewish solidarity and Jewish security are completely intertwined with Israeli security. This view was articulated strongly by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in his address to a large gathering at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on 19 March 2001. The theme of Sharon’s speech was the urgency of a renewed focus on Jewish security. Sharon announced that he considers himself ‘first and foremost as a Jew’ and that he sees himself as having been given a mandate to unify not only Israel but ‘Jews worldwide’. He further declared, ‘The future of Israel is not just a matter for Israelis who live there. Israel belongs to the entire Jewish people. And Israel would not be what it is today if it were not for the efforts of all Jews worldwide.’ From its inception, Zionism rejected the possibility and the efficacy of assimilation as an answer to European Jewish insecurity. Only a sovereign Jewish homeland could provide an answer. Yet Zionism failed to save the majority of European Jews, for whom the creation of a sovereign Jewish homeland—the State of Israel—came too late. However, Zionism was able after 1948 to provide refuge for the bulk of Jewish displaced people and for those escaping the totalitarian regimes ascending in eastern Europe. Israel also became a safe haven for Jews from the Muslim and Arab world. Yet, even after the Holocaust and the emergence of the State of Israel, competing Jewish alternatives to the Zionist ultimate conception of security remained, especially among ultra-Orthodox Jews, some of whom have argued that the Holocaust was no less than a punish- ment for the Zionists’ heresy in working to build an infidel state instead of awaiting a Jewish return to the land upon the arrival of the Messiah. Undeniably, Zionism was trying to provide a secular concept of security that would obliterate the abject dependence on messianic or other divine protection. (Israel betach bashem—‘Israel: trust in God.’ The root of the Hebrew word for security, bitachon, is a cognate of the word for trust.) Yet even within the State of Israel this concept has proved remarkably resilient among the ultra-Orthodox segments of the population, who see their Torah study as a higher calling, even in a security sense, than the mandatory military service most of them refuse to do. The erosion of the perception that Israel’s security forces are invulnerable (in the light of repeated failures in Lebanon and on other fronts) encouraged an escapist brand of spirituality. This pseudo-mystical flight from reality manifests itself in such forms as car stickers and billboard posters, especially at times of peril, which declare: Ein al mi lismoch ela al elohim shebashamayim: ‘There is no one to rely upon but God.’ Sometimes such slogans have the mnemonic advan- tage of rhyming, like Tehilim neged tilim, ‘Anti-missile Psalms’.20

20 We are indebted to Gil Merom, who notes that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish organizations distributing such stickers have a twofold purpose in mind: first, to establish their security credentials among their constituency, in the absence of military service; second, to mobilize their constituency by playing on their political, social and other anxieties—in other words, preservation and extension of their political and religious clientele.

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The solution adopted by the US Jewish community after the Holocaust was integration within American society; Zionism, ironically, gradually emerged as an important variable in this process. Indeed, the inclusive nature of the American political system led to a curious form of Zionism—American Zionists were dedicated to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine for Jews from eastern Europe and other Jewish communities in danger, but not for themselves. Only one per cent of US Jews have immigrated to Israel since its establishment. Jewish politics in the United States allowed the development of an American Zionist position compatible with the vision of integration.

The Israelization of diaspora security: western Europe and the United States After its establishment in 1948, the Israeli state, with all of its struggles, became a ‘Jewish struggle’. The State of Israel was declared the solution to protecting not only state boundaries but also the Jewish people. Israel took upon itself the role of protector of the kin communities, the Jewish faith and the demographic viability of the nation, absorbing the ancient idea that Jews are mutually responsible, that they are their brothers’ keepers. According to Zionist ideology, all Jewish insecurities abroad—assimilation, anti-Semitism, loss of identity—could in theory be terminated by aliyah, emigration to Israel. Saving Jews from assimilation and from persecution became the two poles of ‘Jewish security’. Indeed, Israeli foreign and security concerns have always extended beyond the frontiers of the homeland. Israeli foreign policy has placed a high priority on saving Jews individually and as groups, expending great resources to free Jews in Syria, the USSR, Argentina, Romania, Ethiopia and elsewhere. Yet this has always been done in the context of the Zionist vision of the ingathering of the exiles, of ultimately uniting the nation inside the state, and not of perpetuating Jewish communities in their foreign domiciles. The idea that the relationship could be reversed, that the diaspora could have a hand in saving Israel, was at the very least problematic for Israeli Zionists. Most of the funds used to finance the Mossad’s clandestine campaign of buying Jews’ freedom from communist east European governments, in order to bring them ‘illegally’ to British-ruled Palestine, came from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (‘Joint’), despite the fact that such funding was illegal under US law and went against the interests of America’s major ally, Britain.21 Yet Israeli leaders of the 1950s and 1960s downplayed these involvements, con- structing instead the image of a strong country taking care of its own defence and reaching out to extend this security to the Jews of the diaspora. The deeply rooted perception of diaspora-born weakness was essential to Zionist ideology, which considered diasporic existence nationally degenerating.The same perception lay behind the early reluctance to recognize the important contribution of

21 Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s foreign policy orientation 1948–1956 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 82.

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Zionist Holocaust survivors to Israeli forces during the War of Independence.22 Altogether the diaspora remained secondary to Ben-Gurion’s Israelocentrism, according to which Israeli security was synonymous with Jewish security.23 Obviously, there has always been a less hierarchical relationship between Israel and Jews abroad than Ben-Gurion envisioned. The strong feature of mutual responsibility that characterizes Israel–diaspora relations—the great willingness of Jews, wherever they may be, to take on the concerns and fears for personal and community survival of their kin in other countries—finds its source in the talmudic maxim kol Yisrael ‘arevin zeh ba-zeh, ‘all Jews are responsible for each other’. Yet, during the long period of Jewish exile, ‘this doctrine of positive, mutual responsibility [always had a] darker gloss that it was the way of the world anyway for Jews to be held responsible for the deeds, real or alleged, of other Jews’.24 The benefits and the costs of this relationship have become even more dramatic since the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state. Indeed, diaspora and Israeli legacies have interacted to the benefit and the imperilment of both sides. Diaspora Jews gained security from the mere fact of the existence of the State of Israel, a potential refuge that had been absent for two thousand years. Israeli actions contributed to diaspora security through diplomacy and, where deemed necessary, the rescue of persons or communities in distress. Israel’s secret services continue to help Jews in threatened communities maintain personal and community security, especially in the former Soviet bloc, but also in other parts of Europe and in Latin America. The endangerment of even one Jew outside of Israel could trigger intensive Israeli involvement to secure that person’s safety, as was done in the case of Argentine Jewish dissidents and intellectuals such as Jacobo Timmerman. This phenomenon is an emphatic affirmation of ethnic/tribal links across state boundaries, very much in the main line of Jewish history, where individual life and kinship ties were treated as paramount, and where Jews with access to foreign courts would intervene on behalf of their brethren in distress. Diaspora Jewish communities help each other as well. Over time a pattern has emerged of a division of labour between the sovereign state of Israel and diasporic (mainly American) Jewish activists and emissaries, each partner characterized by its own set of powers and limitations. Wherever Israel cannot intervene because it lacks diplomatic relations with another government, or in places where Israel finds it impolitic to get involved directly, diaspora Jews and Jewish organizations intercede on behalf of Jews and Jewish communities in distress. This was true of the principally diasporic campaign in the 1970s and 1980s to free Soviet Jewry, as well as the later battle to release the Jews of Syria

22 Yehuda Bauer, ‘We are condemned to remember’, Jerusalem Post, 19 April 2001. 23 ‘It was always my view that we have to consider the interests of Diaspora Jewry—any Jewish community that was concerned. But there is one crucial distinction—not what they think are their interests, but what we regard as their interests. If it was a case vital for Israel, and the interests of Jews concerned were different, the vital interests of Israel came first—because Israel is vital for world Jewry.’ Cited in Giora Goldberg, ‘Ben-Gurion and Jewish foreign policy’, Jewish Political Studies Review 3: 1–2, Spring 1991, p. 92. 24 David Vital, A people apart: the Jews in Europe, 1789–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 19.

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from decades of effective imprisonment. Even the much-heralded Israeli rescue of Ethiopian Jewry would never have occurred had diaspora Jewish activists not continually petitioned the Israeli government to take on the role of responsibility for that threatened community. The recent international effort to over- turn Iranian court convictions of Jews was diaspora-led, in the knowledge that a high Israeli profile in the case would only worsen the prisoners’ chances of being treated with leniency.

The American context Until the mid-1960s American Jewish organizations were preoccupied mainly with their campaign to eliminate all forms of discrimination inside the country. They worked to build a tolerant society that would welcome them as fully integrated members, in contrast to their position as frequently unwelcome guests in Europe and other diasporic centres, where they had led a precarious and continually threatened existence. In his book Jews against prejudice, Stuart Svonkin has shown how Jewish activism against anti-Semitism helped the organized community to emerge as leaders of a broader liberal movement in the United States.25 The shift from universalistic liberalism to the cultural assertion and political neo-conservatism of later decades was tied not only to domestic American developments such as the progress of the civil rights movement, but also to Israeli triumphs, particularly the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eich- mann and victory in the Six Day War, which allowed many Jews to overcome images of weakness, insecurity and victimization, and to feel ‘normal’. These monumental events also allowed American Jews to reckon with the Holocaust and to build memory and power around it. Even though American Jews rejected the Zionist notion of shelilat ha-golah (the negation of the diaspora), from this time forward Israel and Israeli security became a collective concern of central importance. The campaign to ensure Israel’s security and Jewish security worldwide became the beacon of Jewish institution-building and political empowerment. As noted above, the diaspora can incur high security costs as a result of its ties with Israel, balancing the positive contributions Israel makes to its security. Since the 1970s the negative ‘Israel effect’ on diaspora security has grown as a diasporic concern. The notion began to take root that most of the violence that Jews experienced seemed to be a spillover from the Middle East rather than a consequence of locally engendered ethnic hostility, and the ‘fatigue factor’ in attitudes to Israel’s security legacies and behaviour proliferated at the same time that Israel itself started to question its own legacies and the efficacy of its power, after the sobering experience of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. ‘When Israel attacks PLO headquarters in Tunis or kills a PLO official there, local Jews, not the State of Israel, are in immediate danger of retaliation.’26 Organizations opposed to

25 Stuart Svonkin, Jews against prejudice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 26 Yakov M. Rabkin, ‘Auto-emancipation in a post-Zionist age’, in Israel: a middle age crisis, proceedings of Bar-Ilan Conference, 12 May 1988, p. xxiii.

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Israel, instead of confronting the state directly, often attack more vulnerable Jewish targets worldwide, as in the grenade attack on an Istanbul synagogue in 1986, and the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994. Gabriel Sheffer has written, ‘At best it is highly questionable whether Israel has been able to contribute significantly to Jewish well being, except for national pride.’ Perhaps, he writes, ‘Israel is a Jewish liability rather than an asset.’27 Indeed, since the late 1980s many have noted among American Jews both a rapid decline in the post-1967 identification with Israel, and the phenomenon of diaspora critics of the state, often mobilized by Israeli ideological counterparts. By the time of the first Oslo Agreement in 1993, significant segments of Ameri- can Jewry had changed their focus from supporting Israeli security to criticizing Israeli security policies. Many considered Israeli behaviour in the war in Lebanon, the Pollard Affair and the first intifada as morally questionable. This disillusion- ment was often expressed in terms of ‘dissent’ and criticism of Israeli ‘brutality’, or in pressure on Israel to engage in direct negotiations with the PLO. Even a prominent supporter of Israel like the New York Times’ Abe Rosenthal wrote, ‘Jews should not break bones.’28 The more liberal Jewish establishment got involved in Israeli security matters by pushing for a political deal with the PLO. By May 1987 a self-described Jewish American ‘peace lobby’ was established as an antidote to AIPAC; Jews went to Tunis to meet the PLO leadership and worked with Arab Americans to organize anti-Israeli demonstrations.29 American Jews were among those instrumental in the successful lobbying of the Reagan administration to recognize the PLO. At that point, neo-conservatives like Norman Podhoretz argued that Jews had no moral right to criticize Israel’s security policies and that such criticism had both provided cover for the enemies of Israel and led US decision-makers to believe that they could put pressure on Israel with impunity. Podhoretz, however, did not see any problem with his own criticism of Rabin’s policy because he felt that he was trying to save Israel from itself.30 In a similar spirit, during the heated debate over Prime Minister Barak’s proposed concessions in Jerusalem, Ronald Lauder, President of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, took the unprecedented step of attending a pro-Jerusalem (and in effect anti-government) rally. Barak government members roundly criticized this unprecedented step by such a major American Jewish public figure as unconscionable political interference.31 As Israel began to reassess its own security posture and behaviour, in the course of re-evaluating its own identity, the diaspora became confused and unsure of Israel’s security needs. The late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin openly criticized the Oslo-agnostic AIPAC, a stalwart ally and political lobbyist on

27 Gabriel Sheffer, ‘The elusive question: Jews and Jewry in Israeli foreign policy’, Jerusalem Quarterly 46, Spring 1988, p. 107. 28 New York Times, 22 Jan. 1988. 29 Rael Jean Isaac, ‘America’s Jewish lobby for the PLO’, Jerusalem Post, 23 Aug. 1990. 30 Commentary 95, April 1993, pp. 19–23. 31 See Eli Wohlgernter, Jerusalem Post, 5 Jan. 2001.

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behalf of Israel and its security needs, and urged it to direct its efforts elsewhere. Later, Prime Minister Barak made a point during his first visit to the United States of ignoring AIPAC and addressing instead the New Israel Forum, which focused on cultural and social issues such as religious pluralism and was more in line with the Israeli Labour Party’s political thinking. The broad perception encouraged by Israeli officials that the Jewish state’s security was assured by the peace process allowed for a certain ‘normalization’ of the Israeli–American Jewish relationship, meaning a pattern of homeland–diaspora relations more closely resembling those of other US-based diasporas, most of which defined their homeland connections more in terms of cultural affiliations and other ‘soft’ kinship ties than in ‘hard’ terms of securing the homeland’s existence.32 To some, Oslo represented the empowerment of Jewish peace voices, even if the Palestinians did not always see it that way. American Jewish personalities, among them Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Aaron Miller, dominated the US diplomatic team in the Middle East. Others have maintained that pro-Oslo American Jews were used by the Clinton administration both to deflect charges by other US Jews and by the Israeli government that American policies were hostile to Israel, and to gain leverage on Israel.33 Both claims undercut Jewish empowerment, and of course both were emphatically rejected. It is ironic that while many Arabs in the United States and the Middle East favoured the election of George W. Bush (or at least preferred him over the Democratic ticket that included Jewish American Senator Lieberman) because he was not tied to the Jewish vote or Jewish organizational interests, some American Jewish activists felt relieved by the far smaller Jewish presence in the new president’s foreign policy team. In fact, the Zionist Organization of America and others more sympathetic to the Likud camp in Israel went so far as to oppose the recent appointment of American Jew Daniel Kurtzer as US ambassador to Israel, on the grounds that he had, through his past statements and activities, compromised Israeli security. After 11 September, many Arabs faulted Bush for not engaging in Middle East diplomacy, and yet again attributed the blame for this to Jewish influence.

Redefining kinship: the US diaspora and Israeli security In the wake of Ehud Barak’s dramatic diplomatic efforts at Camp David and the subsequent violent collapse of the Oslo process, many leading Israelis seemed to be willing to reconsider their views of Jewish security and the diaspora’s status in the equation. With Israelis themselves now recognizing the relevance of the issues at stake to their identity and security, prominent Israeli politicians, civil servants and journalists, and most notably members of the highest echelon of 32 Yossi Shain, ‘Ethnic American loyalties and political power’, Foreign Service Journal, Oct. 2000. 33 Martin Peretz of the New Republic harshly criticized top Jewish American journalists (especially Tom Friedman) and government officials as ‘peace processors’ who sold Arafat and the PLO to the American and Israeli publics, even though they now claim that Arafat was never reliable and never intended to abandon violence as a political tool. ‘Apologies’, New Republic, 23 July 2001, p. 46.

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the Israeli security establishment, have for the first time invited American Jews to become part of the ongoing security debate, and to take a share in determining the character and direction of Israeli security policy. This change is potentially a fundamental one, going beyond an ad hoc response to the crisis that began in late 2000, and it may be reflective of the beginning of a basic rethinking of the relationship between Israel and the US-based diaspora, in terms of legitimacy, status, power and identity. It is important to note the semantic change emerging in Jewish discourse, with terms such as the negative galut (‘exile’) and later the neutral tfutzot (‘diaspora’) being replaced by references to partnership with ha’am hayehudi (‘the Jewish people’), regardless of their geographical location inside or outside the ancient homeland. Key players in Israel’s political and military establishment are encouraging the redefinition of security concerns along kin-community lines as opposed to strictly state lines. Therefore, instead of blocking the debate over the Israel–diaspora nexus, the revival of an ‘us versus them’ conflict has added dimensions to the negotiation between the State of Israel and the diaspora over their respective roles in maintaining the Jewish world, and has brought the two sides closer together. Diasporic Jewish support for Israel is not automatic, however, as made evident by most US Jewish leaders’ backing of President Bush in rebuking Prime Minister Sharon for comparing Israel’s absence from the US-led coalition to the allies’ abandonment of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The US-based diaspora is of critical importance to Israelis’ feelings of security, to Israel’s deterrence capabilities, and to its ability to craft diplomatic and military alliances. While the Israeli government may have temporarily forgotten during the Oslo era the significance of American Jews, it has long been well understood by many other governments and actors throughout the world that the path to influence in American governmental circles is often accessed through doors opened or closed by American Jewry, whose views are strongly influenced by considerations of Jewish security around the globe. American Jews have been very successful in integrating the motto ‘Never Again’ into the American ethos and US foreign policy, and sensitizing US foreign-policy-makers to anti- Semitism, as proven once again at the recent Durban racism conference, where the US and Israel were the only two countries to withdraw in protest of anti- Jewish and anti-Israel language in draft resolutions. How a country treats its Jews and acts towards Jewish concerns significantly affects its relationship with the United States. That other governments know this helps to explain, for example, Syria’s sudden willingness in the early 1990s to free its Jews, and Azer- baijan’s enthusiastic publicity about how well it treats its Jewish community in an effort to mobilize American Jews on Azerbaijan’s behalf against Armenia. Egypt has recently found itself the subject of unwanted American attention because of official anti-Semitism, as expressed in the government-controlled media, with calls for US aid to Egypt to be reduced or eliminated.34

34 See e.g. Seth Lipsky, ‘Gentleman’s agreement? The press takes on Muslim anti-Semitism’, WSJ.com Opinion Journal, 13 Oct. 2001, at .

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Although the Israeli government may play a role in diplomatic and political issues pertaining to Jewish well-being worldwide, it does not control access to US Jewish organizations, nor does it direct their activities. American Jewish organizations are primarily responsible for initiating and pursuing such policies on behalf of world Jewry, their power amplified by the relative weakness of Israeli governments constrained by uncertainties and instability in the Israeli political system and in the Middle East as a whole. The influence of American Jewry extends beyond the reputation merited by its accomplishments. It en- compasses the psychological factor of the notion, current in many parts of the world, of overwhelming ‘Jewish power’ in the United States. The Israeli– Turkish alliance is the strongest case in point. The belief of Turkish government and military leaders that American Jews could assist in fulfilling the Turkish desire to wield greater influence over American decision-making was a primary motivator for Turkey’s establishing and developing a military alliance with Israel. Romanian president Adrian Nastase visited Israel in July 2001 for similar reasons, to ‘ask for the support of the Israeli government in helping Romania become a NATO member … we know that Israel has very close friends around the world’.35 The perception of Jewish influence can also endanger Jews, however, particularly when a government or elements therein wish to establish distance from the United States. Some commentators believe that the trial of 13 Iranian Jews in 2000 was the product of a campaign by Iranian conservatives to sabotage more pragmatic government members’ efforts to normalize relations with the United States. Such dangers confirm that, despite the establishment and strengthening of a Jewish state in the intervening years, the notion of ‘Jewish power’ can be as much of a double-edged sword for Jewish security today as it was in the time of Herzl. Some have gone so far as to argue that even though Israel’s establishment and its sovereign power are critical to Jewish security, especially for communities which are under stress, the American Jewish attainment of power is equally if not more critical in terms of Jewish history and security, since never in their history have Jews had so pivotal a role in shaping the policies of the world’s greatest power.36 This newly acquired Jewish American power, though often exaggerated and used as a justification for anti-Semitism, stands in sharp contrast to Jewish American helplessness in the face of the Shoah and The abandonment of the Jews, the title of David S. Wyman’s book.37

35 Herb Keinon, ‘Romania looks to Israel to pave entry into NATO’, Jerusalem Post, 17 July 2001. 36 J. J. Goldberg represents this view when he writes: ‘From the Vatican to the Kremlin, from the White House to Capitol Hill, the world’s movers and shakers view American Jewry as a force to be reckoned with. The New York offices of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League have become obligatory stops for presidents and prime ministers visiting the United Nations or passing through en route to Washington.’ Goldberg, Jewish power: inside the American Jewish establishment (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996), p. 4. See Avi Beker, ‘Lieberman and the Jewish condition’, Jerusalem Post, 15 Sept. 2000. 37 David S. Wyman, The abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1984).

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While Israel today readily recognizes the importance of American Jewry to its security, it wishes to maintain its internal ideological Zionist position as the core of Jewish security, both within and outside the state. Thus its recognition of diasporic strategic importance is accompanied by a two-pronged message. First, to the internal Jewish Israeli constituency, there is a constant reminder of just how precarious the position of the diaspora is. This message is intended once again to infuse Israel’s national security doctrine with the Zionist tenet of the supremacy of sovereign existence.38 Second, there is also a message to the American diaspora, that its position of power is itself dependent on the strength and viability of the homeland. When Ariel Sharon addressed Jewish leaders in New York shortly after becoming prime minister, he told them, ‘If Israel weakens, “or God forbid disappears,” their comfortable lives as American Jews “would not be the same”.’39 The suggestion has been raised by those in the Israeli government who seek to strengthen diaspora solidarity with the homeland that citizenship might be extended to Jews living abroad, providing a demographic counterweight to Israel’s growing Arab population and enhancing Israel’s ‘strategic depth’. More realistic in the shorter term is a proposal to give Israeli emigrants the right to vote abroad in Israeli elections. This new recognition of the diaspora’s role in Jewish security, including Israeli security, is a rather new formulation of Zionism. In fact, it may be seen as an affirmation of the old American Zionist formula. Whereas formerly Israeli Zionism, by it very nature, regarded diasporic vitality and power as oxymoronic, it now accepts the Ameri- can diaspora as an essential partner in the endeavour for Jewish empowerment. This new formula of Zionism fits neatly with the constant American diasporic quest for a unifying Jewish theme to buttress its organizational and bureau- cratic design. With the waning of domestic anti-Semitism and the apparent decline of Middle East conflict during the Oslo era, some had speculated that the unifying principles of the highly integrated American Jewry were disappear- ing. Simply put, the argument was that without the historical struggles, not only would the unifying principles necessary for mobilization become obsolete, but funding of Israel and the attention paid to its problems would end as well. Then the new wave of violence led to the shift described above and greater involvement. The March 2001 meeting of AIPAC, which set new records for Jewish participation and funding, clearly reflected the primacy of security to Jewish identity and mobilization in the United States.

38 When Amnon Rubinstein, one of Israel’s most respected parliamentarians, wrote recently about a new wave of anti-Semitism in Europe, he reminded Israelis of their latest forgetfulness of the Jewish condition: ‘Many Israelis have developed a very pessimistic outlook according to which the lives of Jews are in danger only in Israel whereas Diaspora Jewish communities are thriving . . . The proponents of this outlook argue that Jews live securely in both the West and the East, whereas, in their own homeland, they are sitting ducks for murderous terrorists. [They forget] that anti-Semitism is a strange beast: Even when you think it has become a corpse, it has the capacity to resurrect itself. Israel’s New Historians, in their formulation of an alternative world-view to the Zionist one, ignore the fact of anti- Jewish hatred, pretending that it never really existed.’ ‘Let us assume that Israel never existed’, Ha’aretz, 3 April 2001. 39 Ha’aretz, 23 March 2001.

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The west European context After the establishment of the State of Israel, its leaders saw European Jews as a depleted remnant living in a vast cemetery of their kin, with no future other than aliyah to Israel. Zionist institutions saw no legitimate possibility of Jewish restoration in Europe and insisted that displaced persons, survivors of the Holocaust, be brought to Israel. Israeli leaders could not take seriously the idea of political partnership with European Jewry of the kind that had begun to be established with the American community. Jewish communal life in Europe, with the exception of Britain, had been utterly destroyed, and European Jews could not act as a significant lobby on Israel’s behalf. Whereas American Jews were counted on to support the Zionist war and state-building effort both finan- cially and politically, Israel saw European Jews’ contribution to Israeli security as consisting entirely of mass immigration of displaced persons to Israel, to counter Arab thinking that the state of Israel was merely a passing phenomenon.40 In the postwar period, until 1967, European anti-Semitism, particularly in the western part of the continent, was widely repudiated, generally held to be in bad taste after the Holocaust. Many Europeans also genuinely admired Israel’s early successes in consolidating itself in the face of Arab enmity. Beyond these generalities, there were important differences in the large west European states’ bilateral relations with Israel and in the European Jewish communities’ political environments. Britain, which had taken its time recognizing the Jewish state, maintained its diplomatic distance from Israel until the accession of philo-Semite Harold Wilson in 1964. Apart from the brief Suez episode, Britain’s military and diplomatic weight was placed firmly on the Arab side. France’s war in Algeria, against forces supported by Nasser’s Egypt, produced a coincidence of interests with Israel, though the Israeli side saw it as much more than that at the time— indeed, the more smitten among the Israelis looked upon France as Israel’s best friend and the guarantor of its security. The Israeli–French connection was critical in facilitating secret Jewish immigration from North Africa, orchestrated by the Mossad.41 However, the security and diplomatic partnership between the two countries waned after Algerian independence and ended altogether after the Six Day War. Also during the postwar era, Germany provided reparations to Israel and to Jewish Holocaust survivors, and operated a clandestine arms pipeline to Israel until the mid-1960s. Israel saw Germany as its political point of access to a resurgent Europe, even though Germany delayed the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel until 1965, fearful of the impact on German commercial interests and of Arab recognition of East Germany. Germany saw Israel as its ticket to renewed membership in Western civilization, while Israel sought to enhance its security by ensuring Germany’s thorough fulfilment of its moral obligation to Israeli survival. In this context, Israel and these European

40 Dalia Ofer, ‘Emigration and aliyah: a reassessment of Israeli and Jewish policies’, in Wistrich, ed., Terms of survival, pp. 65–6. 41 Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s secret wars (London: Futura, 1991), pp. 174–82.

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governments considered the organizationally moribund and low-profile Jewish communities of Europe peripheral. The Six Day War completely changed Israeli–European relations. It also catalysed an energetic European Jewish reassertion of identity, focused on active and vocal support for Israel. De Gaulle used the war as an opportunity to break openly with Israel, exchanging the Israeli arms market for Arab ones, and taking a hostile stand against Israel in international forums. Aside from the inescapable fact of the divergence of French and Israeli interests, de Gaulle was personally insulted by what he saw as Israel’s role in exposing France’s irrevocable slide from great power status, evident with the failure of French diplomatic efforts to avert the war. In a bizarre speech in November 1967, de Gaulle unleashed his anger against both Israel and the Jewish people, claiming that their ‘elite’ and ‘domineering’ characteristics had brought world hostility upon them. However, the days of European primacy in Israeli security thinking were already over. Israel’s major ally was now the United States, whose leaders also increasingly saw western Europe as a peripheral player in Middle Eastern affairs. In response to de Gaulle’s obsession with convening a ‘four power’ conference on the Middle East crisis, President Johnson asked, ‘Which are the other two?’42 French Jews, the largest west European Jewish community, were electrified by Israel’s unexpected lightning victory over the Arabs: 100,000 supporters of Israel packed central Paris in celebration, just as days before the war they had converged in the centre of the capital in numbers almost as large to encourage Israel during the dark days of waiting, when the country’s very survival hung in the balance. This largest ever demonstration of identification with Israel, along with similar but smaller demonstrations in other west European cities, marked a new confidence among west European Jews in expressing their support for, and connectedness with, Israel. Even many non-Zionist French Jews felt concerned at the possibility of a ‘second Auschwitz’ should Israel be destroyed, and rejoiced at Israel’s sudden triumph. Raymond Aron wrote a week after the war ‘that within him too there mounted an irresistible feeling of solidarity’, and he argued that human civilization as a whole would have paid the price of Israel’s destruction.43 However, this surge of Zionist enthusiasm was not harnessed organizationally—certainly not in a manner anything like the mass mobilization of American Jews during the same period—and Israeli leaders did not look to west European Jews for the same kind of political and financial support that they expected from American Jews. For Israel, the ‘major powers’ of western Europe had ceased to be a serious international political factor, a view that also affected Israeli perceptions of the importance of west European Jewry.

42 Howard M. Sachar, Israel and Europe: an appraisal in history (New York: Vintage, 1998), p. 181. 43 Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing diaspora: the Jews in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 98. Aron wrote of his solidarity: ‘Peu importe d’où il vient. Si les grandes puissances, selon le calcul froid de leurs intérêts, laissent détruire le petit Etat qui n’est pas le mien, le crime, modeste à l’échelle du nombre, m’enleverait la force de vivre, et je crois que des millions et des millions auraient honte de l’humanité.’

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During the following decades, as American Jews increased their political influence in the context of an American security doctrine that treated Israel as a valuable ally and a permeable government policy-making environment open to diasporic voices, west European Jews supportive of Israel found themselves at increasing variance with their national governments, which expressed greater ambivalence in Middle East affairs and, in an increasing number of cases, outright hostility to Israel. Western Europe’s tilt towards the Arabs was based to a large extent on a calculation of strategic and economic interests in the Middle East and North Africa, leading to the European adoption of policies that often embarrassed their governments, but that were considered politically necessary. For example, west European governments, almost without exception, acquiesced in the secondary Arab boycott that placed companies even partially owned or run by Jews—including European citizens—off limits to trade with the Arab world. The west European liberal left, which had traditionally been sympathetic to Israel, increasingly embraced ‘third worldism’ and began to castigate Israel for its ‘colonialist occupation of Arab territory’, oppression and human rights abuses. Even a number of west European Jewish intellectuals and left-wingers joined in the extensive criticism. European Jewish voices in support of Israel paled in comparison with the gathering wave of condemnation, and French Jews who expressed such support complained that their loyalty to France had been impugned. The most staunch and substantial base of Zionist support in western Europe consisted of largely traditional and religious Sephardic Jewish immigrants to France who, while choosing not to go to Israel themselves, believed strongly in the Zionist cause and whose personal experience in Arab countries led them to be sceptical of Arab claims against Israel. In the 1970s, western Europe became a ‘surrogate battlefield’ of the Middle East conflict. ‘Between 1968 and 1980, [Palestinian factions] launched some eighty attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets outside the Middle East, sixty-six of them in Western Europe.’44 The toll included the Munich Olympics massacre, repeated hijackings from European airports, attacks on European Jewish community leaders and businessmen, and shootings and grenade attacks at Jewish schools and res- taurants. For the first time since the Second World War, Jewish security in western Europe was directly threatened, justified ideologically by Arab and left-wing Euro- pean delegitimization of Israel and diasporic Jewish support for Israel. European Jews, so recently inspired by Israel’s victories, quickly realized that they were now implicated in Israeli affairs in general, and could not choose to be shielded from the negative consequences of Israel’s conflicts. Israel’s government worried about the implications of this vulnerability and tried to engage its west European counterparts in closer security cooperation, often without much success. Israel also had to be careful to respect the boundaries of west European nations’ sovereignty in its efforts to protect Jewish targets and train Jews to protect themselves.45

44 Sachar, Israel and Europe, p. 243. 45 Ibid., p. 241; Yossi Shain discussion with Yossi Melman, Israeli journalist and expert on Israel’s security services, 13 Aug. 2001.

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A number of factors made the opening of this ‘second front’ possible. These included the difficulties of Palestinian guerrillas in penetrating Israeli defences in the West Bank and Gaza; Israel’s difficulties in protecting people abroad; western Europe’s relatively open borders; the proximity of east European training grounds for terrorists; Palestinian cooperation with European terrorist groups; the presence of many Jewish targets in western Europe that were hit ‘simply because they were Jewish and automatically associated with support for Israel’;46 the laxity of most west European security agencies in pursuing Palestinian agents; and west European governments’ willingness to free captured terrorists in the hopes of obtaining immunity from future attacks on their interests. ‘Finally, West Euro- pean governments and populations alike wished above all to be left alone to pursue the tangible blessings of improved living standards. The security of Israelis or of other Jews on their soil doubtless was not a matter of indifference to them; but neither was it their central preoccupation.’47 Israeli counterattacks also dis- turbed the peace and were therefore just as objectionable to Europeans, who saw Israel’s ‘Mafia-like underground campaign’ of assassinations as ‘narrow[ing] the qualitative distinction between them and the Palestinian guerrillas’.48 It was only at the end of the Cold War that terrorism against Jewish and Israeli targets in western Europe abated, though it certainly did not stop. West European security agencies finally included Israel’s security apparatus in their formal consul- tations, recognizing the value to Europeans of Israeli participation, while terrorist training grounds in eastern Europe shut down. Most importantly, the intifada refocused Palestinian attention on the Middle East, and Arafat’s PLO gave terror a lower profile, in order to cultivate European and American political support. Aside from the threat of terrorism, Israel continued to neglect western Europe as a factor in its security calculations during the 1980s and early 1990s, concentrating instead on upgrading Israel’s strategic relationship with the United States. Israeli economic, cultural and scientific ties with the European Community, its largest trading partner, grew steadily closer in those years, following up on earlier trade and association agreements. However, in the spheres of security and Middle East diplomacy Israel preferred that the EC, a major source of arms for Arab countries and of endless declarations (such as Venice in 1980) in support of the Palestinians, should defer to the United States. In Washington, Israel could rely on a well-organized and influential diasporic lobby to advance its security concerns, as well as a defence establishment that had recognized Israel as an American strategic asset since at least the late 1950s. In addition, Israel enjoyed the backing of US public opinion, a general Ameri- can conviction that Israel was an outpost of democracy and other ‘American’ values. In west European capitals, Israel was regarded in many ways as a strategic complication, a recurrent irritant in relations with the Arab world, and increasingly as deviant from ‘Western’ values, especially human rights. The ‘Jewish

46 Black and Morris, Israel’s secret wars, p. 280. 47 Sachar, Israel and Europe, p. 230. 48 Ibid., p. 241.

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lobby’ in west European states was far from being the conduit to national policy-makers that it was in the United States, and west European public opinion was increasingly hostile to Israel. When Israel wanted its interests raised in western Europe, it worked directly through Israeli representatives. In fact, European politicians and public opinion often saw Israeli diplomats as representatives of the local Jewish community, to the chagrin of the latter.49 The Oslo agreements contributed to a temporary easing of EU criticism of Israel and, for west European Jews, reduced the dissonance between support for Israel and allegiance to the humanistic values espoused by the EU. As much as anti-Jewish sentiments and violent attacks were often disguised as anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli feelings, the mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO in 1993 was seen by many as a positive development that would ‘diminish one of the external causes of anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe’.50 Wistrich wrote in 1995, ‘Jews have never enjoyed such outward acceptance, security and success, even if they themselves frequently do not perceive their situation in these terms.’51 West European Jews also turned their attention to assisting their kin in former eastern bloc countries such as Hungary and Poland to restore Jewish religious and communal life. In Germany, the fastest-growing Jewish community outside Israel underwent the beginnings of a renaissance with the arrival of tens of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union. German foreign minister Joschka Fischer said at an American Jewish Committee dinner in May 2001 that Germany’s response to the rebuilding of the Jewish community represented ‘Germany’s second chance’, the standard by which his country would be judged. In addition, the improved political atmosphere in the Middle East and the political changes in Europe provided Jewish leaders and organizations in France, Britain and elsewhere in western Europe with the opportunity to reach out to local Muslim communities to forge a better relationship as fellow Europeans. Just as American Jews embraced ‘American values’ and political ideals, Jews in the European Union became leading exponents of the EU’s themes of diversity and tolerance and its quest for a powerful and independent voice on the world stage. European Jewish activists recognized their organizational weakness and the necessity of working together to preserve and build their communities and to make their voices heard on matters of political importance. In 1999 they con- vened the first ever European Jewish General Assembly, bringing together hundreds of delegates from across the continent and issuing policy declarations on a variety of community, European and international issues. This was an attempted shift from European Jews’ traditional reluctance to organize as an ethnic lobby, ‘sensing that it was alien to European political traditions’, though there were historical precedents such as the Irish vote in Britain.52 The US

49 Authors’ interview with Dr Ovadia Sofer, former Israeli ambassador to France, 3 Aug. 2001. 50 Wistrich, ‘Anti-Semitism in Europe after 1945’, p. 291. 51 Ibid., p. 290. 52 Wasserstein, Vanishing diaspora, p. 234.

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Jewish leaders who attended congratulated European Jews on their new activism and emphasized to the European Jews that they had to work independently to establish their own identity and political strengths if they wanted to fulfil their aspirations of becoming the ‘third pillar’ of world Jewry.53 This was a message that many European Jewish activists were more than ready to hear. Although they valued their ties with both Israel and their kin in the United States, they resented Israeli and American Jewish interference on many issues such as bank wrongdoing and restitution for Holocaust victims, the introduction of far-right parties in the Swiss and Austrian governments, and a building dispute involving an old Jewish cemetery in Prague. European Jews also objected to their counterparts’ exaggeration of the precariousness of European Jewish life, including calls for immediate aliyah to escape European anti-Semitism. The outbreak of Israeli–Palestinian fighting in late 2000 represented a danger to European and European Jewish security, but at the same time served as a rallying point for European Jews. Violence directed against Jews threatened to make western Europe a ‘surrogate battlefield’ of the Arab–Israeli conflict,54 as it had been in the 1970s. A telling indication of the ideological expansion of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is that all the European targets attacked in autumn 2000 were Jewish, rather than Israeli. Israeli observers of the European Jewish scene claim that the community is lax in tracking anti-Semitic incidents, unlike their American counterparts who have built a vast infrastructure for reporting— and combating—such activities. Many Israeli officials are concerned that the Middle East conflict will once again spill over to the ‘soft underbelly’ of national security, the diaspora. European Jews contended in meetings with EU leaders that the latters’ harsh criticism of Israel at the start of the second intifada created a permissive atmosphere for one of the most serious waves of violence against west European Jews since the Second World War. Europe’s press has also been far more critical than the American media of Israeli policies, with some claiming that its coverage has frequently crossed the line into overt anti-Semitism. ‘Many Europeans, in writing about Israel, have felt free to conjure images of determined child killers and mass murderers.’55 A Middle East expert at Brussels University makes the controversial psychologically/politically based claim that the powerfully negative west European reaction to Israel is based on three factors. The first is their desire to absolve themselves from guilt for the Holocaust by claiming that Israel is now the oppressor, and that Europe, as a champion of human rights, must stop it. Second, by attacking Israel, Europe seeks to absolve itself of its own colonial sins. Third, those already of an anti-Israeli mindset are seeking to use the pasts of Ariel Sharon and other military veterans to delegitimize Israel’s

53 Ruth E. Gruber, ‘US Jews tell European Jews: you’re responsible for your future’, Jewish World Review, 21 Feb. 2001. 54 See Sachar, Israel and Europe, ch. 10, pp. 220–53. 55 Jonathan Rosen, ‘The uncomfortable question of anti-Semitism’, New York Times, 4 Nov. 2001, section 6, p. 48.

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security establishment and policies, and its human rights record. This is part of a general trend to debunk the basic tenets of Zionism.56 Jewish security has become even more of a focal point of west European political concern in the wake of the September 2001 attacks on the United States. Although west European leaders proclaimed solidarity with America’s war against terror, Europeans also expressed varying degrees of concern over US policy in the Middle East, which they saw as responsible in many ways for the terror attacks.57 American irresponsibility in its apparently excessive support of Israel compromised not only American security but European security as well, in the form of both potential terror attacks on European soil and violent disaffection within western Europe’s Muslim communities, particularly in France. A columnist for a paper in Ireland pointed to a convergence between anti- Americanism and anti-Semitism, not only among radical Muslims, but within the radical European left as well, where a Jewish-influenced American policy had become the scapegoat of choice.58 After the 11 September attacks, Jews, Jewish schools and other institutional property were again targeted by Muslim radicals in France, at this point looking for targets upon which to express their support for Osama bin Laden and their hatred for the West, in particular the United States and the Jews these militants saw as controlling US policy.59 European Jewish support for a firm Western response to radical Islam has been vocal and widespread, with British, French and German Jewish organizations, among others, expressing approval for their governments’ support of the US military campaign, and for the extension of government powers at home to combat terrorist groups and their activities. One British Jewish commentator remarked that the American-led war against terror offered a personal sense of liberation from isolation in the struggle for security, as the West took on responsibility for fighting a phenomenon that had long compromised Jewish security.60 This is in sharp contrast with many west European Islamic organizations and activists, who point to the dangers posed to civil liberties at home and the risk of civilian casualties abroad, among other objections. After the anti- Jewish violence in western Europe that followed the outbreak of the second intifada, Jewish and Islamic leaders in various west European countries stood together to condemn the violence. Although similar public displays of unity

56 Cited in Eran Tippenbron, ‘Lost in Europe’, Yediot Aharonot (Hebrew), Saturday supplement, 3 Aug. 2001, p. 6. 57 This sentiment exists at the popular level as well. For example, a late September 2001 poll in France revealed that ‘75% of those asked said they believed that American foreign policy bore some responsibility for the rise of Islamic fanaticism’. Cited by Philip H. Gordon and Benedicte Suzan of the Brookings Institution, ‘France, the United States, and the “war on terrorism”’, October 2001, at . 58 David Quinn, ‘Blaming America: what the European elite really think about 911’, guest comment on NRO, 24 Sept. 2001, at . 59 Chris Hedges, ‘“Bin-Laden!” becomes rallying cry for France’s dispossessed’, International Herald Tribune, 17 Oct. 2001. See also ‘ADL calls on President Chirac to take a stand against rising anti-Jewish sentiment in France’, Anti-Defamation League press release, 30 Oct. 2001, at . 60 ‘[W]hen we heard the firm declarations of war from President Bush and Prime Minister Blair . . . we felt relief. Jews have been at war with terrorists for decades. Now the rest of the democratic world was going to join us.’ Daniel Finkelstein, ‘We know the feeling’, The Times, 22 Oct. 2001.

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took place after the 11 September attacks, it remains to be seen whether a genuine rapprochement between European Jews and Muslims is possible, given the growing differences on such major issues and the role each community sees the other playing in undermining its security and well-being. British Jewish leaders have openly expressed concern over deteriorating relations with British Muslims and the potential for violence.61 In Israel, European Jewish insecurity was another component in raising anti- Semitism as a factor in Israeli security thinking and rhetoric. Whereas the resourceful Jewish American community was sought by the Israeli state as a security partner in a way that compromised the original Zionist vision, west European Jews’ vulnerability was seen as reaffirmation of the central Zionist tenet that only a strong sovereign Jewish state could ensure refuge and security for world Jewry.

Conclusions In this article we have examined the repercussions of recent Middle East and global events and their implications for the redefinition of Jewish security. Two distinct patterns are discernible, one in Israeli relations with American Jews, and the other in Israel’s relations with the Jews of western Europe. The new call for Jewish American involvement represents a sharp break with the older Zionist idea of state security as (1) overshadowing diaspora security (including during the pre-state yishuv period); (2) taking precedence over or controlling diaspora security (ingathering of exiles, refugees); and (3) controlling or directing diaspora voices in Israeli internal matters through a demand for unqualified support on issues of war and peace. Above all, this position represents a break from the heyday of the Oslo posture, when Shimon Peres and the late Yitzhak Rabin told the diaspora to stay away from Israeli security issues (when Jewish organizations pushed to move the US embassy to Jerusalem) and asked diaspora leaders to look after their communities’ own cultural survival. This new chapter may perhaps indicate a partial reversal of the relations between Israel in its early phases and American Jewry. Zionism sought to provide the ultimate solution to Jewish insecurity in the diaspora. Yet, as Alan Dowty has pointed out, ‘the state founded to solve the age-old problem of Jewish insecurity has itself been plagued by chronic insecurity’.62 The community in the United States, in contrast, seems to be more powerful and secure than ever before, and Israel’s insecurity dominates its agenda. American Jews have demonstrated continued political strength within the US political system, for example in generating congressional pledges of support for Israel and threats to down- grade aid and ties with Israel’s adversaries. With its Israel-centred successes the US-based diaspora enhances its own sense of security, confirming its position of

61 ‘“There is a disturbing, knee-jerk anti-Semitism”’, The Times, 22 Oct. 2001. 62 Alan Dowty, ‘Israeli foreign policy and the Jewish question’, MERIA Journal 3: 1, March 1999, p. 4.

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power and influence. Even though the American Jewish community struggles with concerns over demography, assimilation, cultural maintenance and community viability, these problems are largely the product of American Jews’ success in integrating into American society. For Jewish Americans, the changes in their ties with Israel have potential significant impacts. They are expected to visit Israel to demonstrate their solidarity, even in times of peril. They also understand that taking on additional consultative duties is a commitment that exposes them to possible risks domestically, such as being accused of becoming Israeli auxiliaries and of undermining US Middle East policy. The presence of American Jewish representatives at the Israeli security decision-making table makes American Jews ‘culpable’ even if they oppose certain decisions in private. Consultation implies obligation and a share in the responsibility for actions taken as a result. In addition, as much as speaking on behalf of Jewish security outside Israel is a natural kinship responsibility, one must remember that, when it comes to issues of sovereignty or peace and war in the Middle East, the diaspora, including that part of it based in the United States, will always remain secondary to Israeli decision-makers. Certainly, the Israeli security establishment remains unclear as to the limits of potential empowerment of the American diaspora. As we have seen before, the Israeli desire for an enhanced US diasporic role may pass as quickly as it emerged, as identity issues and conflict rapidly evolve. US Jewish organizations are taking a middle way in some respects on the concept of Jewish national security, pursuing a more vocal and assertive campaign against Arab and Islamic anti-Semitism, a subject that they had long followed but had been more circumspect about publicizing during the hopeful Oslo years. This brings anti-Semitism to a higher position on the Israeli agenda, including within security circles, whose upper echelons are now more disposed to understand the conflict in more Jewish terms. A July 2001 conference organized by Israeli security institutions directly addressed this topic, in cooperation with the US- based Anti-Defamation League. For west European Jews, like their American counterparts, renewed unity around Israeli security matters may help them contend with their fears for Israel’s safety, and by extension their own, and meets certain Jewish organizational needs. However, assertive support for Israeli security policies carries the risk of being assigned responsibility for those policies. The west European Jewish community also remains alert to the potential negative consequences of stressing its vulnerability and of being identified primarily with the issue of anti- Semitism, particularly at a time when it is working towards attaining a greater voice in European affairs as it reaches an advanced stage of integration in Europe. At the same time, if European governments do not heed their Jewish populations’ calls for affirmation and protection and the moderation of their language on the Middle East conflict, they expose their own citizens to physical danger and delegitimization. A failure to respond effectively would also betray the European Union’s aspirations to present itself as a protector of human rights

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and champion of minority integration. Finally, Israel’s focus on using renewed anti-Semitism as a vehicle for legitimizing and justifying its own actions and ideology may shift again once the Middle East conflict subsides, or when the perceived requirements of bilateral relations with Europe or the Arab world take precedence.

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