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NY Times, Mar. 21 2015
Netanyahu Tactics Anger Many U.S. Jews, Deepening a Divide
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Long before the latest election in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu was a
polarizing figure among American Jews. But even many of his supporters
said this week that they were appalled at his last-minute bid to
mobilize Jewish voters by warning that Arabs were going to the polls in
droves, and his renunciation of a two-state solution to the Palestinian
crisis.
Mr. Netanyahu’s party won the election and cheers from hawkish American
Jews. But in interviews this week, rabbis, scholars and Jews from across
the country and a range of denominations said that with his campaign
tactics, he had further divided American Jews and alienated even some
conservatives, who had already suspected that he was more committed to
building settlements than to building peace with the Palestinians.
Even with Mr. Netanyahu’s postelection interview walking back his
statements against a two-state plan for peace with Palestinians, many
Jews say they are worried that the most lasting outcome of the elections
will be the increasing isolation of Israel — not only around the world
but also from the younger generation of American Jews. Unlike their
parents and grandparents, these Jews have grown up in an era when Israel
is portrayed not as a heroic underdog but as an oppressive occupier, and
many of them tend to see Mr. Netanyahu as out of step with their views
on Israel and the world.
Aaron Voldman, 27, who recently returned to Wisconsin after a year
studying on a fellowship in Israel, said he was still “outraged” at Mr.
Netanyahu’s campaign, especially his election-eve pledge that there
would be no Palestinian state if he was re-elected.
“It is the only viable option to secure peace in the Holy Land — how
could he, in good conscience, just write it off?” said Mr. Voldman, who
like many Israelis speaks of Mr. Netanyahu using his nickname. “Bibi is
not committed to doing what needs to be done to secure peace and
justice. The Palestinians did not have a willing partner in his
administration during the last round of negotiations.”
Anguish over Israel, after intensifying through the final days of the
campaign, is now stirring up discussion among American Jews online, at
synagogues from coast to coast and even among some rabbis and Jewish
organizational leaders who are understanding of Mr. Netanyahu’s
statements that he is above all concerned about Israel’s security. They
say they have watched as American Jews pull away from Israel, alienated
by the intractable conflict with the Palestinians and the expansion of
Jewish settlements.
Rabbi Misha Zinkow at Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, said that one of
his foremost concerns was “the lack of engagement of North American Jews
with Israel” — a trend that he sees expanding among younger Jews.
“The scare tactics that emerged in the 11th hour of the election
appealed to very deep anxiety and fear,” said Rabbi Zinkow, who leads a
145-year-old Reform congregation with a membership of about 550
households. “They deepen the distance and provide fodder for those who
want to disengage. Those statements appealed to emotions that young
American Jews just don’t have, and they sound racist.”
He was planning in his Friday night sermon to talk about the
relationship between American Jews and Israel. “We’re family,” he plans
to say. “Families have disagreements and disappointments and betrayal.
“Don’t let your disappointments cause you to walk away.”
The Jewish establishment’s calls for unity, however, are now competing
with demands for escalated activism.
In a widely discussed opinion piece in Haaretz, Peter Beinart, a liberal
critic of Israel, argued this week that those who support Israel should
pressure the Obama administration to present its own peace plan “and to
punish — yes, punish — the Israeli government for rejecting it.
“It means making sure that every time Benjamin Netanyahu and the members
of his cabinet walk into a Jewish event outside Israel,” he wrote, “they
see diaspora Jews protesting outside.”
Rob Eshman, publisher and editor in chief of The Jewish Journal, a
mainstream Jewish newspaper in Los Angeles, wrote this week that the
election results show that Israeli and American Jews “are drifting apart.”
And on Thursday, the Conservative Jewish movement’s rabbinical arm, the
Rabbinical Assembly, took the unusual step of issuing a statement
condemning Mr. Netanyahu for putting out a video on social media during
the election campaign warning that “right-wing rule is in danger”
because Arab voters were streaming to the polls. The video was widely
criticized as race-baiting, and it offended the sensibilities of
American Jewish leaders who have long proclaimed with pride that Israel
is a democracy in which the Arab minority has the right to vote.
Rabbi William Gershon and Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the president and
executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said, “This
statement, which indefensibly singled out the Arab citizens of Israel,
is unacceptable and undermines the principles upon which the State of
Israel was founded.”
Mr. Netanyahu tried to explain himself in interviews on Thursday with
several American outlets. “I wasn’t trying to block anyone from voting;
I was trying to mobilize my own voters,” he told National Public Radio.
And of course, plenty of American Jews were not disappointed by the
election results. At Congregation B’nai Israel, a politically active
Reform synagogue in Sacramento, Rabbi Mona Alfi said that she had been
teaching a women’s study group in the evening as the election results
were coming in, and that there had been a wide range of opinions on Mr.
Netanyahu’s candidacy.
“One woman was really excited when it looked like Bibi was winning the
exit polls,” Rabbi Alfi said. “Another was expressing hope that it would
be a different result. My congregation is like the majority of American
Jews. It is more of a center-left congregation on Israeli politics, but
we do have a very strong contingent of Bibi supporters as well.”
Orthodox Jews are often more reliable supporters of Mr. Netanyahu and
his party, Likud, and they have tended to stay loyal. Rabbi Sidney
Shoham is a retired Modern Orthodox rabbi who at 86 spends his winters
in a predominantly Jewish apartment building in Boca Raton, Fla., where
the televisions in the gym are often tuned to Fox News. He said he and
other residents cheered Mr. Netanyahu’s recent speech to the joint
meeting of Congress warning President Obama against signing a nuclear
deal with Iran, and he welcomed the prime minister’s re-election.
“My greatest thrill is that Netanyahu was able to pull off a feat that
in my opinion was not only good for the morale of Israel and the
security of Israel, but finally put Obama in his place,” said Rabbi Shoham.
He said that he saw Israel was becoming more isolated internationally,
but that he was not terribly troubled by it because of what he said was
a basic Jewish principle: “Being more or less in control of your own
self, your own country, or your own being is much more important than
being loved by others.”
But as criticism of Mr. Netanyahu continues to mount — Mr. Obama
directly told him Thursday that the United States would have to
“reassess our options” after the prime minister’s “new positions and
comments” on the two-state solution — many other Jewish leaders are
deeply disturbed at the prospect of Israel as a pariah.
“Having Israel so isolated and marginalized in so many places is
profoundly troubling,” said Rabbi Richard Jacobs, president of the Union
for Reform Judaism. Rabbi Jacobs said that the gap between Jews in the
United States and Israel was “potentially widening” and that it needed
to be addressed with openness and transparency.
“I think we have to work very hard,” he said, “and do more creative and
honest work to have these deep, open conversations in our Jewish
community and not simply paper over differences.”
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