Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Why Fewer Young American Jews Share Their Parents’ View of Israel |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-10-03
We read this of the apparent split of opinion on Israel and Palestine, between elderly and younger American Jews: ”I’m trembling,” my mother says when I tell her I’m working on an article about how younger and older American Jews are reacting differently to the Palestinians’ bid for statehood at the United Nations. I understand the frustrations of the Palestinians who are dealing with ongoing Israeli settlement construction and sympathize with their decision to approach the U.N., but my mom supports President Obama’s promise to wield the U.S. veto, sharing his view that a two-state solution can be achieved only through negotiations with Israel.Why Fewer Young American Jews Share Their Parents’ View of Israel My take is that this phenomenon, at least as reflected in this anecdote, is that both the child and the parent feel the wrongfulness of Israel’s settlement project and of the USA’s holding peace hostage to it (by demanding that peace be achieved by talks with Israel’s government, which is itself either a hostage to or a proponent of the settlement project). The difference is that the child is willing to adopt a politics of standing up against Zionism-as-practiced[1] (that is, against the current policies of Israel and the USA) by demanding justice and human rights for Palestinians (perhaps via an absolute end to settlements) whereas the parent wants to grow old and die in the warm and fuzzy embrace of her long-held love and admiration and need for her much-dreamed-of Zionism, while refusing to willingly admit into consciousness any facts regarding Zionism-as-practiced which could in any way replace the warmth and fuzziness of her dream with the cold fear or the burning anger that the child may feel. Any criticism of Israel by the child, any telling of facts, is received by this parent as “strident”. Assuming that the child may have been brought up in Zionism, and left it, this makes me think of the rather modern problem faced by prospective parents who prudently have their doctors perform fetal and amniotic tests to determine the health of the fetus. They really do not want bad news, but they do the tests in order to get bad news in time to do an abortion. They realize that the much loved and desired baby (here the dream form of Zionism) may have developed in a way that would make its birth a disaster. The dream must be aborted before more damage is done. Israel, of course, has been born. But the belief in and support for Israel by American Jews—the mental state called being a Zionist—can still be aborted. And the State of Israel can be reformed. Justice and human rights for Palestinians can still, in useful if not in total measure, be achieved. Any person who has for many years been “pregnant with Zionism”—that is, has bought the promises and premises and so-far ignored the history and current events—and who now encounters the history and current events and has her eyes opened, may be considering an “abortion of Zionistic belief”. The child’s generation finds this easy, because they were (thanks to the parents!) brought up to believe in human rights, justice, etc., and have not “tied” their personal identities “to the wagon” of Zionism in the way that their parents may have done. The parent is too fixed in opinion, too fixed in POLITENESS and BEHAVIORAL CORRECTNESS[2], to begin to criticize Israel as “stridently” (that is, as reasonably) as the child so easily does. The child: If a belief in Zionism needs to be aborted, abandoned, or never adopted in the first place, well, get on with it. It is the right thing to do. The parent: If I have been an accomplice in an activity that people are beginning to call a crime, don’t require me to threaten my amour propre by admitting it, not even to myself. Don’t make me offend my friends and neighbors, who have joined me in this belief (this accomplice-ment) over many years. We are comfortable. Leave us in peace. Don’t rub our noses in this mess. We are too old to learn new tricks. The parent: It is not a matter of justice or human rights for THEM. It is a matter of comfort in our declining years for US. Forget justice and have some respect for your elders. We are too old to undergo a mental abortion, anyhow. The onlooker: Well, it’s understandable. That is the way people are. They taught their kids about justice and human rights. That’s something, anyhow. It could have been worse. Look at how a lot of young Jews in Israel have been brought up! ----------- [1] This was not the Zionist ideal of Eretz Yisrael as a light unto the nations that was bred into my soul as I was growing up. Nor is an Israel controlled by ultra-nationalist politicians, Arab baiters, ethnic cleansers, violent settlers, and Taliban-like religious fundamentalists. Nor is an Israeli army that increasingly reflects these hate-filled extremists. * * * Who needs virtually all progressive Jews in the world who want justice for Palestinians as well as security for Israel? Who needs that multitude of non-Jewish Western liberals who once were ardent supporters of another Israel, an Israel committed, or so it appeared, to justice for all, an Israel that might not quite have existed but that certainly has now disappeared, apparently forever.see: unholy alliance. ----------- [2] That is, the parent does not dare to offend her friends and neighbors by criticizing Israel, and those friends and neighbors feel the same way—so that, perhaps, they would ALL like to criticize and NONE dare to do so! |
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