Split in World Jewry: the ‘Diasporas’ vs. the Israelis

Tuesday, 28 July 2015

Split in World Jewry: the ‘Diasporas’ vs. the Israelis

Posted on July 26, 2015by Richard Edmondson

We seem to be seeing a major split in World Jewry over the policies of the state of Israel. A couple of recently-published articles are indicative of this.

One is a July 23 article that appeared in the Times of Israel about a new study that found, among other things, that diaspora Jews don’t feel the Israeli government is sincere about seeking a peaceful resolution with the Palestinians. Here is a brief excerpt.

World Jewry is finding it increasingly difficult to support Israel due to its ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, leading many communities to shun discussing the Jewish state altogether, a new major study has found.

The trend is eroding the Diaspora’s support for the Jewish state, warns the report by the Jewish People Policy Institute think tank, to be formally published next week.

Diaspora Jews, the report goes on to mention, are asking for an increased say in how Israel conducts its affairs. “Stop it! You’re making us look bad!”–that, essentially, when you boil it down, is what the diaspora Jews who responded to the survey are saying to the Israeli Jews.

The other article indicative of the split is an op-ed piece in the New York Times, published coincidentally the same day as the Times of Israel article, written by a Palestinian resident of the village of Susiya.

Susiya is a West Bank village which, as I reported in a couple of recent posts (see here andhere), is presently under an Israeli demolition order, and an international campaign has been launched to try and save it.

The op-ed piece is headlined, “Israel, Don’t Level My Village.” The author, Nasser Nawaja, discusses his family’s cyclic history of being made homeless by Israel, once in 1948 and again in 1986, going on to comment that the looming threat of a third dispossession “has now become immediate.”

Hardly any wonder, then, that diaspora Jews are starting to question whether Israel is really “sincere” about achieving peace–although one would perhaps allow that it is rather astonishing it has taken them this long to reach that conclusion.

At any rate, the decision by the New York Times to publish the piece by Nawaja would suggest that the split between diaspora and Israeli Jews is real and growing. Israel has been building illegal settlements in the West Bank for years. When did the New York Times ever voice any objection to it? I’m not aware of it if they ever did. What has changed now?

Perhaps it is that financially and politically powerful Jews, by virtue of the fact that Israel’s behavior has grown so egregious, are beginning to see the Jewish state as a threat to themselves and the empires they have constructed in their countries of residence. This is the subject of an article by Ariadna Theokopoulos and recently published at The Ugly Truth.

While being a Jew means never having to say you are sorry or engaging in delayed gratification, JP [“Jewish power”-ed.] has global agendas that do not welcome the light in which Israel defiantly basks, and, by association, draws attention to Jewish misdeeds worldwide, including the hijacking of power in the western world. It wants Israel to be mindful of PR.

Theokopoulos goes on to comment:

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians whose land they took over has been beyond despicable from the very beginnings of the state, yet well-organized hasbara has managed to inculcate into the minds of the Western Goyim the dichotomy: Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims = terrorists vs Israeli Jews = peace-loving, long-suffering victims. Not so anymore. Israel is no longer seen as even a “legitimate” state but a rogue nuclear power, a racist, expansionist war criminal and war monger. Of more concern, in attracting scrutiny to its successful flouting of international laws, it has led to an examination of what exactly allows it to act with complete impunity. It has exposed the lines of power that move the governments of the major world powers, like puppets on a string, to act as its enablers, indeed as its agents. The lines are now seen by more people than ever before to lead to the Jewish lobbies, to the ZPC, which does not reside in Israel, but permeates the power centers of the US and the UK, and not only.

You can go here and read the full article.

Jews have accrued enormous power in the US and other Western countries. That is a statement that will get you accused of anti-Semitism, but it is also an undeniable fact. And as Theokopoulos correctly points out, Israel’s actions, and its ability to violate international law with impunity, are drawing attention to that power.

Every time Israel tears down another Palestinian village or goes on a rampage and kills another four or five hundred children in Gaza, what do you suppose diaspora Jews feel?

My guess is a rising level of nervousness and discomfort.