{"id":12212,"date":"2023-10-26T13:08:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-26T10:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12212"},"modified":"2024-01-14T18:30:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-14T16:30:03","slug":"american-jews-need-to-reexamine-their-blinding-conzeptzia-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/american-jews-need-to-reexamine-their-blinding-conzeptzia-too\/","title":{"rendered":"American Jews Need to Reexamine their Blinding \u2018Conzeptzia Too\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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hen the war ends and the commissions begin, Israelis will reexamine\u00a0 the \u201cconceptzia,\u201d the blinding assumptions that failed to prevent October 7.<\/span><\/h3>\n

When the war ends and the commissions begin, Israelis will reexamine\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>the \u201cconceptzia,\u201d the blinding assumptions that failed to prevent October 7. Meanwhile, Diaspora Jewry must stay united too, supporting Israel wholeheartedly, apolitically, until our hostages are returned home, and Israelis\u2019 sense of safety is restored. Still, with memories of the Jew-hating viciousness so fresh, with Israeli soldiers endangered, and the hostages enduring unimaginable abuses daily, it\u2019s time to start re-examining \u201cthe conceptzia\u201d that distorted the American Jewish community conversation about Israel for so long.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s \u201cBlack Saturday\u201d was followed by Sobering Sunday for many American Jews. If in the 1980s, you defined a conservative as a liberal who\u2019s been mugged, today\u2019s new liberal liberals are woke liberals who\u2019ve been bombed \u2013 or seen innocents slaughtered cruelly by Hamas.<\/p>\n

I am less dismayed by the loud, vicious minority that found the bloodshed \u201cexhilarating\u201d and celebrates paragliders used to slaughter 260 concert-goers as some symbol of \u201cresistance.\u201d Exploring how some Jews accepted these inhumane fanatics as allies, as they forged a new form of Jew-hatred through their Zionophobia, is for another time. So, too, is the fascinating ideological and sociological question of how this \u201csocial justice\u201d ideology, which cheered the most ungodly, inhumane attacks, so seduced so many American Jews into forgetting that \u201ctikkun olam<\/i>\u201d \u2013 repairing the world \u2013 is done \u201cbemalchut shaddai<\/i>\u201d \u2013 under God\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Far more disturbing were the pale, generic denunciations from more mainstream liberals of \u201cthe violence\u201d \u2013 as if it were a natural phenomenon, not carefully-planned Palestinian war crimes. Cornell University\u2019s president, Martha Pollack, declared \u201cThe loss of human life is always tragic, whether caused by human actions such as terrorism, war or mass shootings, or by natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires or floods.\u201d With donors revolted and revolting, she apologized.<\/p>\n

Clearly, grade-grubbing radicals and simpering centrists ignored the facts \u2013 just how personal, antisemitic, and barbaric, Hamas\u2019 evil was. Today\u2019s young liberals waking up to the heartless cruelty of these MacBook revolutionaries should realize: you didn\u2019t betray your ideals; you\u2019re supposed allies betrayed your shared ideals \u2013 and you, too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As well-meaning Americans support Jewish students or \u201cour Jewish friends\u201d in distress \u2014 they still fail to get it. These Palestinians and their campus Kapos assaulted civilization, not just Jews.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Few Americans turned their fury against Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion into an outreach to Ukrainian-Americans. Most of us recognized Russia\u2019s offensive as on assault on the good, threatening us all.<\/p>\n

Reeling from good people\u2019s inability to process new facts, in a spirit of education not recrimination, I propose that we reassess some of the communal blindspots we\u2019ve developed when discussing Israel \u2013 and the challenges the Jewish state faces.<\/p>\n

For decades, too many American Jewish leaders swallowed the Palestinian narrative. Even as polls showed most Jews pro-Israel, a growing number of rabbis, professors, and community activists kept blaming Israel far more than the Palestinians for the conflict. Beyond treating Hamas as \u201cpragmatic\u201d and Palestinians as \u201cvictimized\u201d and thus forever blameless, the language of \u201ccycle of violence,\u201d \u201cdisproportionate response,\u201d \u201ctwo-state,\u201d \u201cWest Bank,\u201d \u201coccupiers,\u201d \u201csettlers,\u201d \u201cthe settlements,\u201d became mainstreamed, even among those who avoided the more delegitimizing language of racism, colonialism, imperialism, and Jewish supremacy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes, historical cataclysms shake-up opinions. To misread politics is human; to refuse to update is diabolical.<\/p>\n

Targeting civilians so brutally, along with the Palestinian mob\u2019s sadistic delight in parading hostages and degrading bodies, exposed the kind of enemy Israel faces. We saw their Jew-hatred, their misogyny, their evil. Can anyone who has seen these horrific images still believe that this is merely a territorial dispute, that if Israel only had conceded more territory, the Palestinian leadership would make peace? Can anyone today make a convincing case that Israel should just trust these neighbors to act peacefully?<\/p>\n

Some of us didn\u2019t need this traumatic wake-up call. Even before this unhappy Simchat Torah, we recognized Palestinian rejectionism and extremism. I am not foolish enough to claim Israel is perfect. But no one should be blind enough to overlook the consistent rejection in mainstream Palestinian culture of Israel\u2019s existence, let alone genuine peace.<\/p>\n

To blame Israel constantly \u2013 pressuring it to make more concessions no matter what the outcome \u2013 you already had to ignore many facts, before October 7.<\/p>\n

You had to ignore Palestinians\u2019 refusal to compromise. It began by repudiating the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan. It continued with Yasser Arafat\u2019s unwillingness to negotiate with Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000. It was confirmed by the 2005 Gaza withdrawal\u2019s failure to spawn a peaceful neighbor. And it culminated with Mahmoud Abbas\u2019s rejection of Ehud Olmert\u2019s offer of all but 6.3 percent of the West Bank in 2008.<\/p>\n

You had to ignore Palestinian political culture\u2019s sexism, homophobia, and hostility to democracy. We judge societies by how they treat their weakest and most vulnerable \u2013 why aren\u2019t Palestinians held to such standards? Calling the Palestinian Authority \u201cmoderate,\u201d is like calling carbon monoxide \u201csafe\u201d because it takes longer to kill than cyanide. True, the PA is less awful than Hamas, but it remains a dictatorship that abuses its people while crushing dissent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You had to ignore Hamas\u2019s antisemitic charter which seeks to destroy Israel. Do any Peace-Nowers doubt that if Hamas ruled, liberals would be the first in line to be shot?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You had to ignore Palestinians\u2019 culture of negation. While I hope for a solution, and, as a nationalist, respect Palestinians\u2019 desire for national self-determination, \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d often negates Jews\u2019 ties to the land. Treating the \u201cWest Bank\u201d as an organic whole, exclusively belonging to the Palestinians, misses Jews\u2019 deep connection to Hebron, Shiloh and many other places. It overlooks the randomness of the hastily-drawn 1949 armistice border, which became sanctified as THE Green Line defining THE West Bank.<\/p>\n

You had to ignore the toxic impact of enabling Palestinian terrorism, which has murdered thousands.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>In that silly debate about \u201cwhich is worse, right-wing antisemitism or left-wing antisemitism,\u201d liberals emphasize that right-winger Jew-haters killed more Jews, especially at Pittsburgh. But the Palestinian-generated death toll dwarfed those numbers \u2013 even before October 7. Many terrorists are hopped up on a Jew-hatred unintentionally validated \u201ccycle of violence\u201d talk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You also had to ignore the patriotism and survival instincts of liberals\u2019 natural allies on the Israeli left. Oslo\u2019s failure disillusioned many Peace Now types and two-state solution cheerleaders. Once Palestinians turned away from negotiations to terrorism in 2000, many Israelis realized that another slice of territory here or there would never satisfy Palestinian maximalists \u2013 who crush Palestinian moderates. Even more Israelis sobered up seven years later, when the Gaza Disengagement delusion disappeared as Hamas brutalized fellow Palestinians to take over Gaza. This debacle turned what could have been the Riviera of the Middle East into a cesspool for dictators, terrorists, sexists, homophobes and theocrats. Watch Israel\u2019s protest leaders \u2013 they detest Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, but, despite their threats of refusal, mobilized to defend their home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, you had to ignore the Abraham Accords. Admittedly, Donald Trump and Netanyahu have their fingerprints on them. But they prove that Israelis are not anti-Arab, only opposed to those Arabs who target them; they prove that many Israelis and Arabs want to work together; and they prove how toxic the Palestinian boycott is. Boycotting Israel negates the people-to-people and business-to-business ties the Abraham Accords facilitate \u2014 and the Saudi agreement would generate. Like Hamas\u2019s actions, they expose the end game, showing how fanatically anti-Israel too many Palestinians continue to be.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, from afar, it seems easy: just draw a line in those faraway sands, give everyone something, and peace will prevail. Hmm. Time to approach Israel with solidarity, empathy, understanding, and humility.<\/p>\n

This is our defining moment. Western civilization must see this fight against Hamas as a fight for democracy and decency. Our non-Jewish friends must understand that we are all in this together. And we, Jews, from left to right, must reevaluate our now-outdated assumptions, finding new visions and new policies \u2013 while upholding our core ideals.<\/p>\n

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Professor Gil Troy<\/b>, a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the JPPI, the Global Think Tank of the Jewish People, is an American presidential historian, and, most recently, the editor of the three-volume set, Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings<\/em><\/p>\n

Published by the Jewish Journal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[420,380],"class_list":["post-12212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-american-jews","tag-gaza-war","topics-swords-of-iron","topics-us-jewry","topics-us-israel-relations","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13010,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12212\/revisions\/13010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}