Betar Vs. The Mainstream: Between Diaspora Mentality and Jewish Strength

In recent months, the Zionist youth movement Betar has come under increasingly intense criticism, particularly from liberal Jewish circles. From political attacks on its members to attempts at exclusion from Jewish organizations, and even the ADL’s classification of Betar US as a promoter of hate, the accusations range from ideological extremism to controversial methods employed in the context of the fight against antisemitism, and associations with far-right political currents. Yet behind these stated concerns—often rationalized in the name of vaguely defined ethical standards—lies a much older and deeper tension, rooted in the collective psyche of modern Jewry: the enduring legacy of Diaspora mentality, a form of cognitive colonization produced by two thousand years of exile that, consciously or not, continues to bind Diaspora Jewish communities to a quietist political posture.

Setting aside the specifics of recent controversies, one can discern in the criticisms against Betar the echo of a deeper psychocultural resistance — one that derives from the survival strategies of a persecuted minority.

Survival through Vulnerability: The Historical Pattern

To understand the crux of the matter, one must look backward. The Diaspora was not merely a geographical or political reality; it was a totalizing historical experience. For nearly two millennia, Jewish survival depended on the ability to live at the margins, avoiding direct confrontation, and adopting a posture of strategic invisibility. Power was perceived as a threat, strength as guilt. From this emerged a particular mindset — what could be called a “pedagogy of powerlessness” — that trained generations in caution, compromise, and the sublimation of identity into discretion.

Western Jewish emancipation did not erase this mentality; rather, it translated it into the language and practices of modern democracies. The dependence on Gentile protection morphed into a compulsive drive for acceptance by the majority, primarily by presenting oneself as the ideal minority — successful, moderate, and, to some degree, willing to assimilate.

Betar Shatters the “Good Jew” Archetype

In this context, Betar is not simply countercultural; it is a radical antithesis to the archetype of the “good Jew” — the one who says, “We don’t fight, we think. We don’t dominate, we survive. We win through ethics, not force.” For the quietist Jew, Betar is not troubling because of what it does, but because of what it represents. The image of a self-reliant Jew outside the context of the Israeli state destabilizes deeply ingrained Diasporic identity structures. The Jew who claims sovereignty, strength, and the right to self-defense breaks the centuries-old spell of an identity founded on not standing out, not provoking hostility, and avoiding militant posture.

This is why the reaction to Betar is often visceral, instinctive rather than analytical. It is accused of being excessive, aggressive, of betraying the gentleness many see as Judaism’s hallmark. But this critique reveals — more than any ethical reasoning — a kind of fear: the fear that Jewish strength, once acknowledged, might dissolve the hard-won ethical aura forged in the shadow of powerlessness.

A striking example of this dynamic emerged in the debate over the deportation from the United States of pro-Hamas activists who have played a key role in fueling a wave of antisemitism unprecedented in recent American history — a campaign in which Betar has taken an active part. Despite the fact that these individuals openly supported Hamas terrorism and virulent antisemitism, a multitude of mainstream Jewish organizations responded not with relief, but with hesitation — issuing caveats, ambiguities, reflections. Instead of unequivocally welcoming the removal of threats to Jewish life and democratic values, they chose ethical discomfort.

This, in the midst of an immigration debate only marginally related, illustrates the extent to which the “good Jew” archetype will go — even to the point of defending the indefensible — in the name of an absolutist ethical vision. A vision in which Jewish safety and dignity are sacrificed on the altar of victimhood, rather than pursued with reason, confidence, and clarity. It is a worldview tragically entangled with Western Christian thought: with Augustine’s concept of the Jew as the fossilized witness of Christian truth, with Jesus as the prototype of the only “acceptable” Jew — the suffering one, ideally suffering for the sake of humanity.

This same paradigm has corrupted European memory of the Holocaust, reducing it not to the ultimate expression of Europe’s antisemitic culture, but to a kind of civilizational baptism — the Jewish blood spilled serving as the moral foundation of contemporary European democracy.

And all this — without even considering the basic, human insult: if I were an immigrant myself, I would be offended to see Jewish organizations conflate my issues and struggles with that of those who defend pogroms, massacres, and rape.

The Real Question Is About Jewish Subjectivity

In the end, Betar poses a question that can no longer be avoided by Diaspora Jews. It is an existential question: What does it mean to be a free Jew today? If freedom includes the capacity to decide, to defend, to act — then claiming political agency, radical or otherwise, based on non-negotiable principles, is not deviance, but a necessary step toward Jewish historical maturity.

It is undeniable that Betar’s rejection of marginality as eternal fate challenges us to ask whether contemporary Judaism is capable of making peace with its own agency.

Many in the Diaspora still find comfort in an identity based on self-limitation, pluralism without protagonism, loyalty to an ethics that refuses to confront the challenge of Jewish power, born of Zionist self-emancipation — a challenge that, deep down, awakens ancient inner conflicts. The fear of power’s responsibilities is no longer just an anachronism; it becomes irrational in a world where the State of Israel is not a dream, but a fact. Jewish sovereignty is no longer a theological aspiration; it is a historical reality.

As we are witnessing once again the total failure of Jewish emancipation outside the Zionist paradigm, the challenge we face is not whether we are willing to accept Jewish strength, but whether we can wield it with dignity—without apology. Betar is unsettling because it reclaims something many thought best forgotten: the capacity of the Jew not only to survive history, but to shape it. Whether one agrees with its methods or not, its very existence demands that we ask ourselves whether we are prepared to inhabit a world where Jewish freedom is not earned through suffering, but exercised through agency. The point, then, is not whether we can defend ourselves — but whether we can finally permit ourselves to stop needing permission.