Young Jews are ‘walking away from Judaism’ because its only content is ‘pro-Israelism’ –Alterman

Eric Alterman is an important liberal Zionist intellectual, and he is losing patience with Israel. Speaking at Tel Aviv University at the end of May, he said that Israel has lost the American left, and Judaism is itself in crisis because its only content is pro-Israelism.

And p.s., Alterman has cut Israeli peace organizations out of his will because Israeli society is going the wrong way.

“Israel has lost the left. No question about it, and it can’t get it back as long as it has this occupation. And even your good government has 72 votes on the right and is building 4000 new settlements, it’s doing terrible things every day,” Alterman said.

Israel has lost American Jews and liberals because it has no “content” to offer besides stale Everyone-hates-the-Jews propaganda that is meaningless to young Jews. Alterman:

Israel has a hasbara program, and all of these groups are attempting to reach out to American liberals. But they have nothing to reach out to them with anymore. Because the argument that I was given that made sense to me when I was growing up and maybe made sense to my daughter, that there was a Holocaust, and Jews have never been safe, and Israelis were invaded and are at risk at every minute–that argument doesn’t hold water any more. The American Jews are still being given the exact same argument by Jewish organizations and their parents and grandparents but they’re learning something very different in college… They’re seeing something very, very different on the news… For the first time– this is very important– you can actually get good information from Israel Palestine if you want it. It’s all available on social media and the internet and Haaretz. What they see they don’t like. You can say OK we’re nicer to gay people than anybody else in the region. They have an answer to that.

Young secular Jews are abandoning Judaism itself.

The American Jewish rabbinate is turning pro-Palestinian. American Jewish youth are walking away from Judaism. They’re either turning away from Israel by and large or they’re walking away from Judaism entirely. Because Judaism has no answers for them, because the answer they get is, ‘Pro-Israel, watch out for antisemitism.’ There is no content. This is not true for the orthodox… But secular American Judaism is dying on the vine, because it’s been replaced by nothing but pro-Israelism, and pro-Israelism doesn’t work any more.

Alterman, who has a book coming out called “We Are Not One” about the chasm between American Jews and Israeli Jews, says that if you want to save Judaism, some of the $50 million that Jewish organizations have spent on Birthright– shipping young Jews out to Israel for 10 days– should be going to teach the “wonders of Jewish history and Jewish culture,” so as to rejuvenate American Jewish institutions and social justice institutions.

The writer is putting his money where his mouth is. Alterman, 62, told the leftwing Israeli audience that he is cutting Israeli peace organizations out of his will.

I’m sorry, I’m abandoning you and your colleagues. I’m going to devote my attention to rejuvenating American Judaism. Those are my people. I used to have in my will Israeli peace groups, I’m changing my will and I’m funding American Jewish scholarly and charitable institutions. With one exception. [T’ruah.]

Moderator Yael Sternhell said, “Seriously?” and Alterman said that Israel left him, he didn’t leave Israel:

I feel like Israel has said to American Jews, we’re going on our way, and you can take it or leave it. And more and more American Jews and American liberals are just going to leave. They’re not going to have this fight. Because it’s no longer central to their identity. the way it was for a generation who had grandparents who had been through the Holocaust… who could watch Exodus and believe it.

It’s funny that Alterman would publicly take Israeli groups out of his will, because that society has lost its way; and yet say he doesn’t believe in BDS. When actually he is effecting his own type of political boycott. (More on BDS further down).

Alterman gave a very good encapsulization of the mood of the left on Israel.

“The norm is to talk about Israel as a settler colonial state. The norm is [to say] apartheid…

All elite universities are pro-Palestinian. Every liberal/left journal is pro-Palestinian, from The New Republic to The New York Review of Books. “I was the last person who would ever defend Israel under any circumstances at the Nation.”

Since the 80s Israel has forced liberals to choose between liberalism and Zionism, “because the occupation is forever” and “Zionism is very problematic the way it is being enacted.” Liberals don’t like the idea of a Jewish state.

Among American liberals, it has become uncomfortable. What is the reason that people living next to each other have such different rights. How do you explain it, if the occupation is not going anywhere.

Good questions. Israel answers, “Arabs are going to destroy us. Shut up and sign the check,” Alterman says, and the American liberal response is to walk away.

Now let me get into the bits of Alterman’s speech that I found unpersuasive. Here’s some of his argument against BDS:

BDS doesn’t actually do anything for the Palestinians except maybe make them feel better that they haven’t been forgotten entirely… It’s counter productive in many ways. It’s given American politicians and Israeli politicians a reason to shut down the discourse. Boycotting Jews is a bad idea; they don’t respond well to it, they don’t give you what they want…. [The idea that you tell] Israeli filmmakers and artists and musicians not to come to America and speak to university students, is crazy. The only way there can be peace and dignity for Palestinians… is if Israel decides it’s OK. Because Israel can prevent it. In the last four elections there was not even a discussion [about Palestinian rights]. BDS is counterproductive in all those ways. Not one major university, or local government, or labor union has endorsed it.

My swift response is, This is a conservative argument; its values should hold no appeal to progressives. The claim that It is not important that BDS makes Palestinians feel not forgotten is ugly. Palestinians are getting killed every day, and if Palestinians want BDS because it brings attention only, we need to listen to them, because they are the people experiencing the persecution, just like we listened to black people under Jim Crow.

The idea that Israel is the only avenue to providing Palestinians peace and dignity is also very conservative. The whole point of BDS is that Israel will never grant Palestinians rights, the society is very happy with apartheid, and people must take power into their own hands. That is a very traditional progressive response (South Africa).

I think that Alterman is also conservative and unimaginative when it comes to the U.S. discourse. He sees the left turning on Israel, but he says this will have no political consequences.

“Because the powers that be are so entrenched. The Republican Party is so dedicated to its position on Israel, and Democrats are so afraid of taking on this monster that will come down on them if they step over the line, that there’s no value in it. As far as I can tell. I can’t see anything good happening with the occupation. So I just see the lines getting nastier and nastier and more and more arguments over words like apartheid, but very little systematic or institutional change in the way the American government operates vis-a-vis Israel.”

And if America said, Enough, to Israel, Israel would just ignore that, Alterman says.

“It’s a problem for Israel’s reputation, and for your friends, maybe your relatives’ children, and tsuris, but I don’t see any fundamental change. I just see the argument getting uglier and uglier.”

I think Alterman is rationalizing the political order as it is, with the Israel lobby dictating policy, because he likes it that way. My view is that the Israel lobby is the “monster,” as Alterman puts it — and if you break the lobby, that will change policy. Right now J Street is sensing that it can oust AIPAC from the Democratic Party and install its own pro-Israel agenda. That’s a big development. If you’re a progressive, you have to believe that the Squad — which Alterman says has no traction — will begin to peel off more anti-occupation Democrats to stop funding apartheid.