Israel I: Young American Jews and Zionism

Peter Beinert teaches journalism and political science at CUNY and is a senior fellow at the New American Foundation. He was formerly editor of The New Republic, and he mentions in the article that his family attends an Orthodox Jewish synagogue.

In an article in The New York Review of Books, June 10, 2010, Beinert examines the changing views toward Israel and Zionism among young American Jews. Frank Luntz studied attitudes of Jewish college students about their Jewishness and about Israel. In groups of students they brought together to discuss those topics, the most characteristic attitude toward Israel was indifference.

“Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”

In 2008 at Brandeis, the only non-sectarian, Jewish sponsored university in the U.S., the student senate rejected a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state.

Because this contrasts so sharply with the vigorous support for Israel among older Jews in the U.S., particularly those affiliated with groups like AIPAC, Luntz attempted to explain the difference. He found that the college students want the right to question Israeli policies and actions, they resist "group think," they desperately want there to be peace, and they have more empathy for the plight of the Palestinians.

In short, concludes Beinert:

Most of the students, in other words, were liberals, broadly defined. They had imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights. And in their innocence, they did not realize that they were supposed to shed those values when it came to Israel. The only kind of Zionism they found attractive was a Zionism that recognized Palestinians as deserving of dignity and capable of peace, and they were quite willing to condemn an Israeli government that did not share those beliefs. Luntz did not grasp the irony. The only kind of Zionism they found attractive was the kind that the American Jewish establishment has been working against for most of their lives. . . .

For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead. . . .

Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age. And it starts where Luntz’s students wanted it to start: by talking frankly about Israel’s current government, by no longer averting our eyes.

The long article goes on, but this is the take home message, in my opinion. It was particularly of interest to me, because years ago I ended my subscription to The New Republic at a time when Beinert was the young editor, in the position that Andrew Sullivan had once occupied and also left.

I didn't end my subscription because of Beinert, however; he was very smart and informed and wrote well. He more or less followed TNR's character: liberal on social issues, hawkish on foreign/military policy. They favored invading Iraq. I could abide that, because it gave me the other side's argument about the war without all the other right-wing crap. What I could not longer abide was the absolute knee-jerk reaction of the owner and publisher Martin Peretz toward any criticism of Israel and his viciousness in denouncing anyone who dared to stand up for the Palestinians. I don't know how long Beinert lasted after I quit them, but I notice that he does not list TNR in his bio with this article.

It seems likely that what he describes from the Luntz study may be similar to what he himself experienced as a young editor working for an unyielding, absolute defender of Israel, right or wrong. I do not pretend to know the answers to the problems in the mideast, but I am convinced that Israel-right-or-wrong is not the answer, just as Palestine-right-or-wrong is not the answer either.

Ralph