U.S. Jews Must Save Their People's Honor, Which Israel Is Putting At Stake
U.S. Jews are implicated in the moral drama of their people, even though it is occurring thousands of miles away.
By Peter Beinart | Jul. 3, 2014 | 3:26 PM
Earlier this year, I went to speak to the J Street U chapter at a prestigious American university. A student met me at my hotel, and walked me to the Hillel building for my speech. As we walked, he talked with fervor about J Street U. He spoke about how impressive he found the campus activists he had met from across the country. He said they were building a new generation of American Jewish leaders, committed both to progressive ideals and to their Jewish identity, who would eventually change organized American Jewry.
Listening to him, I felt an emotion that wells up infrequently during discussions about the American Jewish relationship to Israel: Hope. Then, in a flash, he extinguished it. He said that he and his friends believed J Street U would eventually branch out beyond Israel, to become a progressive Jewish movement on issues like gay marriage, immigration reform, economic inequality and climate change. My heart sank. This, I thought, is why we’re going to lose.
The data suggests that there are as many American Jews who share J Street’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as those who share AIPAC’s. When the sociologist Steven M. Cohen ran the numbers from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 survey of American Jews, he found that 35 percent of American Jews held views on Israel that he described as “dovish,” 31 percent were “moderate” and 33 percent were “hawkish.”
Yet politically, American liberal Zionists punch below our weight. Members of Congress generally feel that when it comes to winning American Jewish votes and acquiring American Jewish money, they can never back the Israeli government – or bash the Palestinians – enough. Although J Street has given liberal Zionists more visibility, many Washington politicians still consider us a marginal breed.
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