An Apology to my Israeli Brothers and Sisters from a Liberal American Jew

As we approach the month of Elul and the time for repentance, my thoughts turn to wishful thinking that some of my fellow liberal Jewish Americans will repent for their sins against the Jewish homeland. However, since that is unlikely, I offer a wishful ‘mea culpa’ on their behalf:

I am truly sorry.  I am sorry for my reckless, thankless, and rude behavior.  I am sorry for my use of hostile and delegitimizing language, support for racist American politicians, insensitivity to your security concerns, disregard for your suffering, and for my attempts to inflame American public opinion against you.

I am sorry for calling you an Apartheid State, a Settler-Colonial State, and an Ethnocentric State.

I am sorry for accusing you of committing Ethnic Cleansing.

I am sorry for supporting Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswomen Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ihan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, even though they publicly defame you and hope to enact punitive legislation to harm you.

I am sorry for the Jewish academics who endorsed a petition that blamed you for defending yourself after you were attacked by Hamas in the recent war.

I am sorry for the 100 rabbinical students who endorsed a petition, in the middle of the recent war with Hamas, that sought to defund you from receiving American aid.

I am sorry for maintaining a subscription to the New York Times, even though it has affirmatively turned against you.

I am sorry for not supporting the Abraham Accords because my dislike for Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump vastly outweighs my desire for you to live in peace.

I am sorry for not supporting the decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem due to my baseless fear that the relocation would lead to war.

I am sorry for not speaking out against the Palestinian’s use of incendiary devices which are a form of eco-terror whose purpose is to destroy your property and terrorize your southern communities.

I am sorry for lobbying to make U.S. foreign aid conditional on terms that would be harmful to you.

I am sorry for the Jewish Currents and Tikkun Magazine, both of which are petri dishes of anti-Israel propaganda.

I am sorry for IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, organizations whose overwhelming sympathy for your enemies and overt hostility towards you aligns them with those seek to destroy you.

I am sorry for my anti-Zionist beliefs and for seeking to cancel you.

I am sorry for Peter Beinart who, with obsessive and compulsive focus, willfully seeks to eliminate you.

I am sorry for the elected and non-elected Jewish leaders who agree that the public use of delegitimizing language used against you is wrong, but nevertheless refuse to publicly defend you.

I am sorry for only castigating you for perceived wrongdoings, rather than directing my energies to protesting actual atrocities occurring in numerous other countries around the world.

I am sorry for falsely accusing my former day school of lying about Israel’s history and accusing the late Leon Uris of committing fraud in his literary masterpiece, Exodus.

I am sorry for my unfounded attitude of moral superiority, and my for demand that you strictly comply with my imperious utopian ideals.

I am sorry for criticizing you in English, rather than Hebrew or Arabic, which, if examined, reveals my true purpose is to elevate my own professional and personal status within my liberal Jewish community, and not to actually effect change in Israel.

I am sorry for criticizing and meddling in the existential border and security-related decisions that you make, even though I do not and never intend to reside within range of Iranian and Hezbollah missiles, Hamas rockets, and potential Iranian nuclear bombs.

For all the above, and far more, I ask for your forgiveness.

Please know that I apologize on behalf of a minority of self-described liberal American Jews.  The rest of us care about you, respect you, and will always support you.