My Controversial Vision for the Jewish People
The State of Israel and Jewish People must prepare for this ahead of time. Our very existence in the future could very well depend on it.
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We, the Jewish People, have been living under a post-Holocaust halo.
Part of this halo effect has deluded us into thinking that Western countries and Israel share a lot more in common than they actually do. Western countries and Israel share many interests — and when they coalesce, it is superb — but oftentimes they do not, and this puts Jews living in the West in a difficult position; an internal conflict between supporting the Jewish homeland versus their country of residence.
Since October 7th, many Jews in the West are understandably experiencing tremendous cognitive dissonance. On one hand, they are deeply connected to Israel, concerned about their fellow Jews and fearing for the safety of Israel. On the other hand, they want to feel “part” of the Western countries they live in, so they both-sides this war — faking empathy for those among Israel’s self-declared enemies in order not to be perceived as “too Jewish” within non-Jewish environments. As such, Western societies are forcing many Jews to question their Zionism.
This is made all the more complicated by societies that hold Jews in their country accountable for Israel’s actions, which says a lot more about these societies than it does about Israel or Jews.
Jews in these societies should recognize a familiar pattern of blaming Jews for things that have nothing to do with them, and that antisemitism merely formed into the more socially acceptable “anti-Zionism.”
Some people might argue that, had Israel not been successfully established 76 years ago in the volatile, antisemitic Middle East, the Jews would be without this ceaseless problem. Perhaps Zionists were asking for too much when they decided to achieve statehood in the Jews’ indigenous homeland.
This is wishful thinking.
The creation of Israel provided not only a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, but also a vital symbol of Jewish resilience, autonomy, and identity. Without Israel, Jews across the world would have faced ongoing displacement and vulnerability.
The existence of a Jewish state has also allowed Jews to assert a significant degree of political and cultural agency that would otherwise be diminished. Throughout much of history, Jews have been minorities in other nations, often at the mercy of changing political winds and scapegoating during times of turmoil. Israel, as a sovereign state, serves as a bulwark against these historical patterns. It offers the Jewish People a platform to participate in global discourse, advocate for Jewish rights, and defend Jews in ways that were not possible before.
Quite literally, the Mossad (Israel’s foreign intelligence agency) has departments dedicated to looking after Jews and Jewish targets across the world. The volume of global terrorist attacks planned against Jews and Israelis in foreign countries since October 7th and prevented by the Mossad has at least doubled that of the preceding year, reaching more than 50 such attempted attacks worldwide.1 Just prior to October 7th, Mossad Director David Barnea revealed that the Mossad had thwarted 27 global terrorist incidents in foreign countries which Iran had planned against Jews and Israelis.
This is why, without Israel, Jews would largely be defenseless at worst, and still subject to the goodwill of other nations at best — mind you, many nations that have not always been reliable in protecting Jews and Jewish communities.
Moreover, Israel’s absence could have far-reaching implications for Jewish identity and continuity. The Jewish People have always had a deep connection to their ancestral homeland, and the modern State of Israel plays a key role in sustaining this connection.
The cultural and spiritual revival that permeates Israel has strengthened Jewish pride and practice around the world. Without this national center, Jewish identity might have eroded more rapidly in the face of assimilation, persecution, and other external pressures. Israel’s innovations in education, technology, and culture have inspired Jewish communities globally, and without it, the Jewish Diaspora might be more fragmented, isolated, and disconnected from its roots.
In a world without Israel, antisemitism would likely be more pervasive as well, with fewer means to resist it. The security Israel provides for Jews under threat is crucial, as seen in the evacuations of Ethiopian Jewry or the refuge it offered to Jews from the Soviet Union.
In a reality where Jews have no state of their own, responses to persecution would be slower, weaker, and more vulnerable to the whims of international politics. The very existence of Israel has shifted the trajectory of Jewish history, ensuring that Jews have a place of safety, agency, and dignity in a world that has so often denied us these fundamental rights.
At the same time, Israel’s presence does not require that all Jews live here. Its meaningful existence enables Jews and Jewish communities to flourish across the world by keeping their host countries honest about ensuring their rights, for fear of suffering brain drain.
And yet, Jews have a unique identity. We always have. It is literally baked into our social, cultural, and spiritual DNA. We get along perfectly well with non-Jews and are typically unimposing, but we are ultimately unlike the rest of the world — no matter how much we try to assimilate. Israel provides Jews with a place to live their best Jewish lives for those who so choose, and it makes being a Jew safer across the world.
But there is an uncomfortable caveat that some Jews do not want to acknowledge, and this is one of the controversial elements: Every country not named Israel is a Jewish guesthouse that becomes more or less welcoming based on outside factors (e.g. economic volatility, social unrest, political revolutions, natural disasters) which are completely unrelated to Jews and Israel.
Accordingly, Jews across the world must realize that the politics in their countries are pretty insignificant. During this much-hyped U.S. election, for example, as well as in many other countries, Jews are being forced to play the identity politics game of Right versus Left, liberal versus conservative — which only hurts the Jewish People.
There is no political party, such as but not limited to the Democrats and Republicans, that truly has the Jews’ best interests at heart. Whenever politicians court “the Jews” in their country, they are doing so out of pure political favorability and nothing more. It is populism at its finest.
In many countries, there are Jewish politicians and political appointees. Heck, in Ukraine and Mexico, each president is Jewish. But this is deceiving. Jews think that, because some of our people are in positions of power, they will do what is best for Jews and even Israel.
Not so.
A Jewish politician or political appointee is chiefly responsible for serving their jurisdiction; hence why, for example, the Jewish U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not exactly been Israel’s best friend since October 7th. Indeed, his job is to look after the Americans’ interests, not those of Israel. And when American and Israeli interests inevitably diverge, he and anyone else in that role must pursue what is best for America, no holds barred.
Yet many Jews in the Diaspora feel indebted to certain political parties and politicians. These Jews are enamored by and convinced that their fate is tied to them. A plentiful sample size of Jewish history screams that this is a profound mistake. Political parties and politicians do not care about anyone but themselves. They will do whatever it takes to achieve and remain in power, including walking all over those who have previously shown great loyalty to them.
With an influx of Muslims into Western countries, they are gaining more money, more people, and thus more sociopolitical sway. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a demographic fact, and it is precisely how the democratic world is meant to work.
As I said earlier, Jews tend to be pretty tolerant of others (insofar as we are unlikely to attach strings to our sociopolitical desires that hurt other groups), but many Muslims are not the same way. They very much play a zero-sum game, stipulating all sorts of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demands from the politician and political parties they support.
There are a few reasons for this: First, Islam is not just a religion. It is a political system which explicitly sees infidels as sociopolitically inferior. Second, a successful, welcomed Jewish state (even if in the Jews’ indigenous homeland) indicates that the Islamic world is regressing, meaning that Muslims have withdrawn from land they once colonized, which is not how the Islamic story is supposed to go. Islam must be expanding, not contracting. A sovereign Jewish state on land that once belonged to the Islamic caliphate is an admission of defeat, a terrible debacle.
As such, Islamist “anti-Zionism” does not include anti-colonialism, Palestinian nationalism, dubious claims of Israeli “apartheid,” or classifying Jews as part of the “White oppressor class.” Islamist “anti-Zionism” is rooted in a 1,300-year-old Islamic narrative that is deligimitized if Israel is not.
This is why Left-wing antisemitism is on the rise, marked by the notorious “Red-Green Alliance” — referring to a political and ideological coalition between Left-wing (often socialist or Marxist, represented by “red”) and Islamist or Muslim-oriented groups (represented by “green”). This alliance was borne out of both group’s shared opposition to Western imperialism, capitalism (which they allege is controlled by the Jews), and Zionism (which they claim is a more recent iteration of Western imperialism).
Left-wing groups may frame their opposition as part of a broader anti-imperialist or anti-colonial struggle, while Islamist groups frequently oppose Israel on ethno-religious grounds. This convergence is especially evident in “pro-Palestinian” activism, where leftist organizations and Islamist groups collaborate in calling for the destruction of Israel by expressing solidarity for the Palestinian cause and its “right of return” (a right afforded to no other refugee group in the world).
And we already know enough about Right-wing antisemitism, which still very much exists, even if it has been predominantly reduced to societal fringes thanks to post-Holocaust guilt across the West. Indeed, what binds Right-wingers and leftists are their shared loathing of the Jews.
Hence why it is an act of self-sabotage for Jews in the Diaspora to wholeheartedly align themselves with any political party or politician. I am not saying that Diaspora Jewry should refrain from being politically involved and passionate. Of course they should be. But they ought not to be confused by the intoxication of identity politics. The way I see it, there is only one group that truly has the Jews’ best interests in mind: the Jews.
In other words, it is ultimately irrelevant that some Jews are Right-wingers and others are leftists. And we, as Jews, can harp on and on about how much of a multifaceted identity each one of us has — that we are not just Jewish, but also (and perhaps more so) American or Australian, liberal or conservative, entrepreneurial or academic, and so forth — but throughout our 4,000-year history, non-Jewish societies have always made it abundantly clear: A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
Of course, Jews can hide this portion of their identities in hopes of sheltering themselves from any backlash, discrimination, prejudice, or persecution. This would not be the first, second, or third time that Jews have attempted to do so, and there is nothing wrong with that. Self-preservation matters.
But I think we can all agree that self-preservation has a higher likelihood of success when the self is part of a group. And so, when push comes to shove, Jews can hide this portion of their identities all they want, but they will be doing so alone. The other option is to proudly and proactively participate in and give to the Jewish People so that we can truly be there for each other if and when things that are out of our control take a wrong turn (e.g. economic volatility, social unrest, political revolutions, natural disasters).
This is made all the more prescient by the fact that Western societies are undergoing notable changes. The United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and even South Africa are so prominently becoming countries of ever-changing immigrants, owing their colors not only to illegal immigration that is the focus of present-day election campaigns, but also to legal immigration. Immigration as a whole has been changing the face of the West all the time, since the dawn of its emergence.
As a result, Western societies are exceedingly multicultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious, as well as increasingly open to gender equality in the broadest sense of the word. Westerners, especially the younger ones, take for granted interracial and inter-ethnic marriages, as well as same-sex marriages. In addition, as always, due to socioeconomic reasons such as inflation, most Westerners of all ages are constantly busy with the struggle for daily economic sustenance.
To expect these people, even if they do not hate Jews, to support us in their day-to-day lives is faulty thinking. For three generations after the Holocaust, it seemed to us that Western support for the Jewish People — and, by extension, Israel — was taken for granted. But October 7th taught us that, even if this was true in the past (and I think it may have mostly been an illusion to begin with), today this support is quickly fading.
Remnants of it exist among the generation that still manages the political decision-making across the West, but it is quite possible that in the near future there will be miniscule traces of this support. The State of Israel and Jewish People must prepare for this ahead of time. Our very existence in the future could very well depend on it.
That is why we Jews must unite, not in homogeneity, but in homeostasis; engage more with “other” Jews (religious, Israeli, Diaspora, et cetera); learn to increasingly appreciate the wide spectrum of Jewry; and realize that our enemies (and they absolutely exist) do not care where we are on the sociopolitical or geopolitical spectrum.
Only when each of us Jews takes these challenges more seriously will the Jewish People confidently be safe and sound — when we are wholeheartedly united and strong as a family.
Like Charles Darwin said long ago, the most cohesive and cooperative groups generally beat the groups of selfish individualists. (Darwin’s ideas about group selection fell out of favor in the 1960s, but recent discoveries are putting his ideas back into play, and the implications are profound.)
All you have to do is look at the IDF as a prime example. They are utterly destroying the antisemitic, jihadist Iranian axis because they are united in the Jewish state’s mission — to protect and serve all of Israel. I have heard multiple Israeli soldiers tell me that, while the rest of Israeli society bickers about sociopolitical differences, no one in the IDF talks about them. They all recognize the importance of buying into the mission and acting as a cohesive, cooperative group.
(To be clear, soldiers do indeed have strong opinions about social and political issues, but they have the discipline to check these opinions at the proverbial door when they put on their uniforms and go to serve.)
The IDF is an interesting microcosm because it very much depicts the Jewish world’s promising potential. One of my Israeli ex-girlfriends used to tell me that the army is an amazing experience because it takes Israelis from all over the country, from every possible socioeconomic background and level of religiosity, and puts them into one system that does not discriminate or demonstrate favoritism based on who you are and where you came from.
Likewise, the Jewish world is a concoction of diverse groups and people who, when we are at our best, buy into something bigger than factions and individualism can accomplish separately. Just like the IDF would not be effective if it had the same people performing the same roles in the same places, the Jewish world would not be effective if we were all the same.
Our day-to-day differences — religious and secular, Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews, liberal and conservative, new immigrants to Israel and sabras (born and bred Israelis), older and younger, Jewish-by-birth and Jewish-by-conversion, and so on — make the Jewish world remarkable.
But it is not enough to just be different. Each of us must embrace these differences with increasing levels of tolerance and curiosity, and decreasing amounts of judgment and contempt. I firmly believe that most every Jew has something which they can both teach and learn from others. “Who is wise?” asked the ancient sage Rabbi Simeon ben Zoma. “He who learns from every person.”2
But embracing differences is difficult, especially in the age of mass misinformation, identity politics, and each person’s multifaceted identities which tug in different directions at their heart strings.
Thus, this requires a “test of wills” — akin to the wisdom of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister and a first-rate strategic genius. It was January 1948, four months before the State of Israel declared its independence, and Palestinian Arab militias were carrying out murderous attacks aimed at thwarting the United Nations partition plan calling for two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, in British Mandate Palestine.
Plus, the Zionists’ four Arab neighbors and Iraq were expected to launch a war with that same aim in mind as soon as the British concluded their Mandate that May. The situation was even more dire than what a far more powerful Israel faces today, but the similarities are still hard to miss.
While various factors played a role in determining how Israel’s War of Independence would end, Ben-Gurion singled out one, saying: “What will determine the outcome is the test of wills. … Whoever’s will reaches its maximum level will withstand the test and remain alive.”
Ben-Gurion concluded that the resources of the Jewish community in Israel had to be focused overwhelmingly on prosecuting the war, even if that meant temporarily neglecting areas of enormous significance, such as Jewish immigration and settling the land. But decisions on allocating resources made by the leadership, and the fighting carried out by the men and women in the front lines, were insufficient. Rather, he laid out two crucial imperatives for Israeli society, beginning with one incumbent on every person:
“We shall not withstand the test until each of us understands that the front is not “there” or “here” — but rather inside each of us, that it is not this farm or that point that are at the front, but rather every man and woman, every youth and elderly person … and we are called to a supreme effort that includes each of us.”
Second, Ben-Gurion acknowledged that Israel’s enemies were capable of mustering a powerful will to win, but rather than imitating them, the Jews had to reject the sources of their motivation and act on the basis of the Jewish worldviews.
“In this distinction,” he declared, “is revealed the difference between the perspective of people of peace, like ourselves, and the perspective of men of war like the Mufti (a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in British Mandate Palestine) and Hitler and their like. There is a historical philosophy that sees in war the highest destiny of mankind, the glory of man, the glory of power and the right that power accords, and this philosophy supports war as a free choice and as the supreme end.”
In confronting the representatives of that view — similar in many ways to recently assassinated Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and other modern-day antisemitic jihadists who have declared that, “We are going to win because the Jews love life and we love death.” — Ben-Gurion explained:
“It is necessary that we take up the yoke of war and show a greater will to win than these others. We shall do it precisely because for us war is not a goal in itself, and we see war as a terrible, accursed misfortune, and resort to war only from lack of choice — war and peace are nothing more than means to something else — and that ‘something’ will give us the advantage that our enemies do not have and that is denied to the followers of violence: a vision of life, a vision of national rebirth, of independence, equality and peace — for the Jewish nation and for all the nations of the world.”
Nowadays, the Jewish People are at war once again, like we were at war during the Holocaust. The difference now is that we have our own army and, thanks to modern technology (much of which Jews have developed), the means to rather easily rally support of all kinds across the Jewish world.
So many of us Jews look to our non-Jewish family, friends, neighbors, and communities for this support, and to the extent that they can provide it to us, that is an added bonus — but it is foolish to think that it will be the main artery. Indeed, we have seen that many causes which Jews have supported throughout the years have been incredibly unsupportive (or superficially supportive) of Jews since October 7th.
That is why we, the Jewish People, must buy into the overarching mission that, “All Jews are guarantors for one another,” as the Talmud states. We do not only have ourselves to rely upon, but the Jewish future starts and ends there. And if we act as a cohesive, cooperative group, I have no doubt that we will continue our extraordinary story.
“Mossad has stopped over 50 Iranian-backed terror attacks on Jews since Oct. 7 - sources.” The Jerusalem Post.
Pirkei Avot 4:1
Long article, but a good read. All valid points. Still, it's important for Zionists to seek political office in the Diaspora and this involves catering to a wider tent than the Jewish communities there. Right now we can find non-Jewish allies in this "wider tent" among conservative moderates who are appalled by the woke hegemony controlling media, academia and more. Most of these conservative moderates are, to varying degrees, "pro Israel". Bottom line: Don't abandon the country you are living in by isolating yourself politically. And help make sure that country doesn't abandon Israel.
Virulent antisemitism has been mainstreamed; it's not on the fringes right and left anymore. Every time I look at the news, I see Hamas lies trumpeted. I have lost close friends on both right and left because of their Jew hatred. I spoke yesterday with my sister who lives in educated southern Maine and she said all her Jewish acquaintances are antizionist. Most if not all antizionists don't know Israeli history and don't know much Jewish history, and if you don't have that information, if you don't know that Hamas and the PLO are foundationally genocidal, if you don't know that Israel offered the Palestinians their own state something like five times and each time it was rejected because they want all the Jews gone and killed, then you are operating out of the false information you get from mainstream news that says everything bad that happens to the Jews is their own fault because they're such terrible, dishonest, brutal people. Lack of curiosity has created a Diaspora fifth column, very much a ninth front in the war against Israel.
Let me remind everyone how much antisemitism there was all over the world during and after the Holocaust, how there were strict limits on US immigration that kept Jews out, that no one would take the Jews. That one of the reasons Great Britain supported the creation of Israel was because they wanted to ensure that after Partition, Palestinian Jews would not immigrate to England. Let me remind you that throughout most of the 20th century, Jews all over the US were changing their names to non-Jewish-sounding monikers, particularly in Hollywood, because a Jewish name would ensure they couldn't make a living. I once had a conversation with a Jewish guy who said we would never be endangered in the US because there are so many groups here to pick on, why would we be a target? He never expected that all those groups would gang up on us. But it has happened. The antizionist Jews don't want to know. They feel if they just laugh along with the Jew hatred, if they erase themselves, if they keep their heads down and just play nice, they'll be fine.
We've seen that before. It never works.