The Fantasies That Jews Project Onto Israel

From Brooklyn to Melbourne, too many Jews see Israel not as it is, but as a canvas for their politics, nostalgia, and illusions.

photo: Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Diaspora Jews across the political spectrum do not see Israel as the country it is, but as one that exists only in their politics, nostalgia, or fantasy.

The October 7th massacre and subsequent war in Gaza should have stripped away these illusions, but for many they seems to have become entrenched.

It is amazing how many Jews in the West are flatout ignorant about Israel. They have have confused their care for the country with knowledge of it, and the two are not synonymous. The Left-wing diaspora often sees an Israel that is somehow still only one Oslo Accords¹ handshake away from peace, if only the government was not so hawkish and brave enough to take the necessary risks. Those on the Right see Israel as a fortress that must never flinch, never concede, and that must grind its enemies into dust.

Both mistakes are born of distance — from the land, from the daily threats, and from the human cost of living in a place where rockets and terrorists come across every border.

Let us start with the diaspora Left. They have noble instincts for compassion, equality, and justice, but this manifests as catastrophic naivety when it comes to how to deal with Israel’s enemies.

“Progressive” Western Jews cling to the two-state solution delusion like a talisman. They invoke it as if speaking the phrase will summon peace, much as the misguided international community believes it can will a Palestinian state into existence, despite it being an absurd proposition.

Even after the horrors of October 7th, the diaspora Left criticizes Israel’s war of self defense in Gaza, swallowing the United Nations’ and media’s wholesale lies about what is happening there. Some have even stooped to repeating the blood libel allegations of genocide and starvation. Even many less strident ones think Israel has “gone too far,” whatever that means.

Those living in Tel Aviv or Sderot know there is no such thing as “overreaction” when rockets arc over your children’s playgrounds and terrorists rape, kill, and kidnap your neighbors. There is only reaction, or death. Israelis are not warmongers; they are exhausted realists who have learned, through blood, that every territorial concession has resulted in more violence.

The appetite in Israel for a two-state solution is like my appetite for mushrooms — zero (though I might be open to the hallucinogenic ones). This loss of appetite does not stem from an ideological hardening, but from Israelis seeing clearly that there is nothing resembling a peace partner on the Palestinian side. It is amazing how many Jews in the West are flatout ignorant about Israel.

Hamas is made up of jihadist lunatics, and the Palestinian Authority is the same, but with better PR. Polling from the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research shows that 72 percent of Palestinians supported the October 7th massacre, so it is not a case of the average Palestinians being “moderate” but stuck with crazy leaders.

The diaspora Left’s moral lectures ring hollow to people in Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, and Kfar Aza, who pay the price for weakness and appeasement, unlike those in Brooklyn, London or Melbourne.

The diaspora Right has a different fantasy. They see Israel as a citadel that must never compromise, never relent, and that must always answer blood with overwhelming force.

There is truth to this worldview; strength is the only language Israel’s enemies understand. Yet, the Right-wingers in the diaspora speak as though Israel’s military strength comes without cost, when the price is high and paid for in Israeli Jewish blood. They want Israel to raze Gaza, but they do not sit at the shiva (house of mourning) for the 19-year-old soldiers who will never come home.

Israelis know defending themselves is a necessity, but they are tired of burying their young, living in constant vigilance, and fighting endless wars.

For every diaspora pundit demanding “total victory,” there is an Israeli family praying that their son fighting in Khan Younis will survive the week. The hawkish in the diaspora mistake resolve for a lack of pain. Israelis know better. Every decision to go into Gaza or Lebanon comes with a grim understanding that some soldiers will not return, and Israel’s army is a people’s army if ever there was one.

These misjudgments persist because distance breeds certainty. Holding an unwavering political position is easy when you are not the one scrambling into a bomb shelter, or counting the seconds between siren and blast. In New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Toronto, the conflict is a political debate. In Israel, it is your neighbor’s funeral, your friend’s amputated leg, and your child’s backpack with a gas mask inside.

The Left wants Israel to be better than its enemies, an exemplar of Jewish ethical aspirations. The Right wants Israel to crush its enemies like in a story from the Torah.

Israelis want something simpler: They want survival not to be the first item on their daily agenda. They want to live normally without having to check the news before walking their child to school, and without fearing that the customer beside them in the grocery store is a suicide bomber.

What October 7th did for many Israelis was an end to illusions. They know now, if they did not already, that negotiating with a death cult such as Hamas is futile. They also know that, while military strength and superiority are essential, a country cannot live indefinitely at full mobilization without eroding its soul, its treasury, and its collective mental health.

Most Israelis, contrary to the diaspora who read their favorite bias-confirming media, occupy a middle ground. They no longer believe in the two-state solution, but they also do not want endless war. They believe in defending the country with overwhelming force when necessary, but also in seeking stability whenever possible. They are necessarily pragmatic.

Diaspora Jews should absolutely care about Israel and what happens there. Israel is the Jews’ ancestral homeland and a vital expression of Judaism. Yet, with caring comes the responsibility to understand the reality Israelis live in, rather than the Israel they wish existed or imagine exists.

It is not for diaspora Jews to impose their politics on Israel, but to stand with Israelis in the tough choices they face and make. That means listening, not lecturing. It means supporting, not second-guessing. Most of all it means recognizing that the stakes, for Israelis, are not theoretical.

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1. The Oslo Accords were a pair of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s, aiming to establish a framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.