Jews Were Betrayed by the Left? It Goes Both Ways

On my flight back to Seattle from a work trip, I found myself sitting next to a man a few years older than me with an unmistakably Jewish exterior (many say the same applies to me). It turned out we attended the same conference but didn’t meet there. A university professor, he was admirably talkative and soon knew a lot about me, including that I had spent most of my life in Israel, semi-professionally researching and occasionally writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

With a sigh, he then confided in me about his daughter, who was in college. “You know, I consider myself a mainstream liberal,” he said, “and there are things about Israel I don’t like, but she’s moved so far to the dark side that we don’t understand each other anymore. I think she’s been brainwashed by the likes of people who throw pro-Hamas rallies on campuses. She’s become incredibly anti-Israel. That saddens me a lot, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

He didn’t ask me for advice. He wanted me to educate him about the conflict, which I did.

When I was done, a good couple of hours later, he gave another sigh and said: “I’m not sure this is what I hoped for, but I understand my daughter much better now. What you told me is extremely unsettling.” I told him nothing but the truth.

Many Jews in both Israel and the US now feel betrayed by the Left. They cannot fathom how people in some of the world’s best temples of high education can dismiss, justify, or outright support the atrocities committed by Hamas on that black October day.

I get it. My blood, too, boils when I see people chanting in praise of Hamas or calling on Israeli Jews to “go back to Poland.” But if my decades of studying the conflict taught me anything, it’s that if you want to understand things, you must venture beyond your outrage. So, I want to talk about another betrayal: that of the Left by Jews.

Soon after moving to the US, I learned a term that immediately struck a chord with me: PEP – Progressive, Except for Palestine. Since then, I’ve met, in person and online, innumerable PEPs.

Contrary to a popular misconception, Israeli propaganda has been incredibly successful. It managed to warp reality to such an extent that otherwise sane people abandon their values when it comes to Israel – hence PEP.

For instance, we all know that the goal doesn’t justify the means, right? Wrong! Everything Israel does is a priori justified by “security considerations.” Anyone who dares to suggest the opposite, to go back to normal morals, is accused of denying Israel’s right to defend itself. The segregation, the decades-long military rule, the illegal settlements that have nothing to do with security, the daily depravity and oppression of millions of people, the collective punishment, and the head-spinning bloodiness of the current war – all whitewashed by Israel “fighting for survival” while being “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

American Jews (a majority of them) have casually justified things that cannot be justified. They have always declined to see the occupation for what it is: a monumental injustice on a scale rarely seen in the 21st century. They also refuse to see Israel for what it has become: a democracy, yes, but also a power-drunk ethnocratic semi-religious state. The US during the Jim Crow era was a democracy, too.

American Jews have been woefully uncritical of Israeli propaganda and helped spread it. Even the liberal ones have found moral refuge in paying lip service to the two-state solution without lifting a finger to promote it or in pretending that the problem lies with this specific Right-wing government (which is like not seeing a systemic problem behind the rise of Trumpism).

American Jews are uniquely positioned to save Israel from itself and Palestinians from its yoke, but instead, they have been blocking any serious attempts to hold Israel accountable. They have spoiled their favorite country to the point where it became a cruel, capricious bully.

So, what do people like me who are appalled by the occupation and the violence it engenders can do? Where can they go? Where can they find someone who will understand them and be ready to actually do something? People need a camp to belong to. I know I feel lonely.

This is why, if I may guess, you are losing so many of your children to the radical Left with all its excesses and craziness. Your bleeding-hearted daughters and sons don’t have any reasonable alternative. You have failed to give them one. They drift away because you don’t share their sense of moral urgency.

This can’t be solved by putting a lid on anti-Israeli protests. You don’t quench a moral outrage of this magnitude by force.

What can you do then? First, stop believing Israeli propaganda. It’s full of lies. Most of what you know about the conflict is probably wrong. Educate yourself using good sources, however painful that may be. Think of Israel as a family member with an addiction. Israel is addicted to power and self-righteousness and will lie profusely to keep getting its poison.

Here is an example of how pervasive this propaganda is. In a tense exchange between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tony Dokupil on CBS, the latter asked: “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” The same lie was repeated in The Atlantic’s recent review of Coates’ book (and you’d think that top-tier journalists would know better).

The easily discoverable truth is that two of Israel’s four immediate neighbors have peace treaties with it. Jordan recently participated in defending Israel from two Iranian missile attacks. Syria has always been interested in peace in exchange for the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1981. A peace treaty between the two countries was almost signed during Ehud Barak’s tenure. In Lebanon, Israel faces a non-state enemy, while the state of Lebanon has no intention (or ability) to “eliminate” Israel.

Israel has normalized relationships with several Arab countries it doesn’t border and was a step away from doing the same with Saudi Arabia. Moreover, all Arab states have joined the Saudi Peace Initiative of 2002, which offers Israel normalization in exchange for a deal with the Palestinians. What’s even more interesting is that in 2013, Iran tacitly expressed its support for the initiative by signing the relevant Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s resolution. Israel has ignored all this completely.

Coates’ new book, The Message, is relevant to this conversation in another important way. Despite not being an expert and making some mistakes, he manages to grasp this sense of moral urgency and unwillingness to justify the unjustifiable. His refusal to discuss whether a decades-long human rights nightmare is “necessary” or “complex” is brave and admirable. Maybe this is the book you can bond with your children over.

It’s not that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved in an instant. It’s that Israel hasn’t tried to do this for years, and no one is pressing it to. Dear American Jews, you’re not doing your job. You’re betraying liberalism and your values.

The problem is deeper than my companion’s relationship with his daughter. I fear things to come. I fear that Jews of the world will be seen as complicit in hideous crimes – not because of their religion, but because of them actually being enablers. I also fear that if nothing changes, Israel, a country I still love deeply in my own way, will grow into a full-blown monster or cease to exist.