Thanks to Netanyahu, American Jews Are Wondering What Zionism Really Means

U.S. Jews are undergoing an agonizing self-appraisal, questioning Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and Lebanon, disgusted by an Israeli government of autocratic Jewish populists and, most of all, distraught that Netanyahu does not give a damn about the hostages.

American Jews are drifting away from Israel. Or to be more precise, the government of Israel is pushing Jews away, alienating them from Jewish values and the Jewish state.

The evidence for this proposition, I admit, is uncertain. In fact, this is a moment when many Jews are making precisely the opposite argument: they are saying that at a time when Israel’s very existence is threatened by enemies near and far and the Diaspora is under attack, most American Jews are both embracing the Jewish state and their Jewish identity.

But evidence for such an awakening is weak, and to the extent that it has happened at all, it was short-lived.

The American Jewish Committee, for example, in a survey released last June, announced that “American Jews are deeply and increasingly connected to Israel.” So what proof was offered? Consider the following: slightly more than half of American Jews have avoided talking about the Israel-Hamas war with other people. Twenty-seven percent have hidden their Jewish identity when meeting a new person since the war began. Sixty percent feel unsafe when sharing views on Israel with friends. How exactly any of this leads to American Jews being “increasingly connected to Israel” is a mystery to me. If anything, it leads to the opposite conclusion.

So what is happening? American Jews, I suggest, are undergoing a slow but measurable process of doubting and questioning Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and Lebanon. And this agonizing self-appraisal is accompanied by rising disgust and revulsion at an Israeli government that seems not only indifferent to the views of Israel’s allies but, even more important to American Jews, to the bonds that bind American and world Jewry to the Jewish state.

And I am not referring here to the bogus charges of war crimes or genocide against Israel’s military. American Jews, as I have written a thousand times, are sensible centrists, and they have no time or patience for the antisemitic claptrap regularly emerging from international organizations. Yes, Israel is not perfect, and must be held accountable when crimes are committed. But the fact is that Israel has achieved one of the lowest ratios of civilian-to-combatant deaths in the history of urban warfare, and American Jews are not buying into the ICC’s perverse version of “international justice” for Israel.

Well, then, what are American Jews upset about? It is hard to know where to begin.

Most American Jews feel a deep attachment to Israel. Nonetheless, they have watched in mostly stunned silence as Israel’s government goes from one act of madness to another. How can it be, they wonder, that this government is so openly contemptuous of all of its citizens, and so willing to promote hatred and division between Jew and Jew? How can the solidarity of the Jewish people – the very premise of Zionist ideology – and its canonical vision – the Jewish values of the Declaration of Independence – be laughingly dismissed by the autocratic Jewish populists who assault democratic institutions?

American Jews don’t get it. They have always been patient with Israel, and are especially patient now, when the memories of October 7 are still so fresh. But why, they wonder, are not more Jewish leaders speaking up? And having no answer to that critical question, they do something that is both reasonable and outrageous, understandable and profoundly sad: they retreat into an embarrassed silence, because they refuse to do anything that might risk Israeli lives.

The best example of this is the hostage issue, once an issue that mobilized and united the entire American Jewish community. Rallies were held; posters were posted; op-eds were written; Congress was called upon. American Jews, with a dazzling display of organizational expertise, made all this happen, and not only as an organizational tool but out of sincere belief and profound conviction: American Jews wanted the hostages freed, and they were sure that it was the right thing to do. They were sure too that the overwhelming majority of Israelis, and the government they had elected, wanted this too.

But then, to their utter astonishment, American Jews began to comprehend that the government of Israel did not want the hostages freed, or at the very least, saw their release at the very bottom of their priority list.

What I cannot understand, and what American Jews cannot understand, is how this issue could be dismissed by a prime minister who obviously doesn’t care about the hostages, who rarely speaks about them, who has demonstrated no deep, emotional commitment to their survival, and who has spent more time talking about the petty politics of his office staff than about the life and death of Israelis held captive in Gaza and left there to rot by their government. When it comes to the hostages, Bibi does not give a damn.

And because American Jews have now caught on, we can see why they are silent. How can they fight for the freedom of the hostages when the government of Israel no longer cares? And yet, is it right for American Jews to be a critical voice at a difficult time of political transition for both Israel and the United States? And so, confused, distressed, and agitated, American Jews remain quiet, loving Israel but drifting away, bit by bit.

This fall, I lectured at my synagogue on the subject of Israel’s war and what it meant for the Jewish state and the Jewish people. While I dealt honestly with Israel’s mistakes in Gaza, I emphasized the horror and despair that Israelis had experienced.

The discussion afterward was vigorous, but the most important part of the lecture came at the very end. A small group asked for a few minutes of my time. I knew them all. They were politically diverse, but alike in one way: they are the most dedicated Israel activists in the congregation. And they were troubled.

All had been involved in efforts to bring the hostages home. They had put up posters and replaced them when they were torn down. They had organized congregational meetings and demonstrations. They had met with local politicians. They had sat with Israeli diplomats and attended rally after rally. But then, all of a sudden, everything changed.

Jewish leaders, who had helped them before, were less interested in helping them now. Israel’s representatives would meet with them, but less frequently. The talking points that they received from Jewish organizations mentioned the hostages only in passing. They asked: What had changed? They wondered why Israel’s prime minister could muster so little passion on behalf of those Israelis suffering and dying in Gaza. And why, they asked, looking me in the eye, had I, in my lecture, said so little about the hostages? Did that really mean, if I were being honest, that the hostages were less important to Israel and the Jewish people? And what should they do now?

I was mortified and chastened. These good Jews, devoted lovers of Israel, had caught me. They had seen a simple truth that I had not seen: the Prime Minister of Israel had decided that the hostages could be set aside and abandoned; and I had gone along.

The hostages are a complicated issue. Nonetheless, no matter how complicated it is, no definition of “victory” that does not include a return of the hostages can ever be acceptable to the Jewish people. No “victory” is a victory at all if it means tailoring Israel’s hostage policy to satisfy every far-right lunatic in the Netanyahu government.

And what should they do? Most important is what they should not do.

They must not listen to Bibi. They must not lower their voices. They must not bow to the zealots in Israel’s government. They must insist, at this moment in history, that the State of Israel must embrace all Jews. That there is no such thing as Jewish unity if a single hostage remains behind.

We need less talk of Zionism and more acts of Zionism. And Zionism means this: there can be no return to the Land of Israel, the God of Israel, and the tradition of Israel if a single hostage remains in the hellhole of Gaza.