The world has changed. It is time for Israel and the Jews to wake up.
Many people are still "living" in a world that does not exist anymore. Israel is not as strong as some people think, the U.S. is not Israel's best friend, and the Jews are not safe and sound.
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A few weeks ago, I spoke with someone about Israel and the Jewish world.
This person is Jewish, in their late 60s, born in Europe, raised and living in the United States, and has visited Israel many times.
But it was clear that she was looking at Israel and the Jewish world through an “Old World” lens, specifically between the years of 1967 through the 1980s.
In 1967, after Israel miraculously won the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, much of the Jewish Diaspora was suddenly inspired and swept up in overwhelming support for the nascent Jewish state.
According to Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, the war enabled Diaspora Jews to “walk with their backs straight and flex their political muscle as never before.” And Jewish organizations “which had previously kept Israel at arms length suddenly proclaimed their Zionism.”
Today, many Jews are still Zionists, but the outside world has dramatically changed. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when the tide started to turn from “Old World” thinking to “New World” thinking — through the lens of Israel and the Jews — but retroactively speaking it seems to have fomented in the 1980s, with elements of the foundation being laid in previous decades. Here are a few notable highlights:
Palestinians increasingly rallied around the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was formed in Cairo in 1964. The group grew in popularity during the following years, especially under the nationalistic orientation of Yasser Arafat’s leadership.
The meaning of the “Nakba” (the Arabs’ name for the Arab defeat in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, which the Arabs started) was then changed after Arafat, chairman of the PLO from 1969 to 2004, rose to power. Politically, it made sense for him modify the definition. His version, which is still promoted by Palestinian leaders and their supporters to this day, assigns exclusive blame for the 1948 catastrophe to the Jews, while proposing an absurd solution (“the right of return”) that would mean suicide for the Jewish state.
The term “Palestinian People” as a descriptive of Arabs in the Levant appeared for the first time in the preamble of the 1964 PLO Charter, drafted in Moscow. Yes, you read that correctly: in Moscow.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets were in the business of creating “liberation” for a variety of countries: Bolivia in 1964, Columbia the following year, in the 1970s “The Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia” that bombed U.S. airline offices in Europe, and “The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine” that waged terrorism against Israel.
The PLO was by far the Soviets’ most enduring success. Major General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, wrote that for nearly four decades, the PLO was the largest, wealthiest, and most politically connected terrorist organization in the world.
At the Soviets’ urging, Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu persuaded Arafat to abandon his open desire to annihilate the Jews in Israel, in favor of “liberating the Palestinian People” in Israel. It was a brilliant communications strategy, and the first step in reframing the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, from religious jihad to secular nationalism, in a quest for political self-determination, a posture far less offensive to the West, especially in the wake of overwhelming guilt following the Holocaust.
After the PLO leadership and its Fatah brigade were expelled from Jordan in 1970 and 1971 for fomenting a revolt, they entered Southern Lebanon, resulting in an increase of internal and cross-border violence. This paved the way for Hezbollah to gain the status and notoriety is has today, and the serious threat that it poses both to Lebanon and all of Israel.
Meanwhile, in the Diaspora, many Jews were being born and raised in relatively assimilated ways. The Zionist support that their parents might have held was not automatically passed down for a variety of reasons, including:
Those who are part of a generation once or twice removed from the horrors of the Holocaust do not always consider the Holocaust as a core part of their Jewish identity, which has the potential to reduce attachment to or otherwise inhibit one’s Zionism.
Israel developed the perception of Goliath, and the Palestinians of David, which does not sit well with many Jews who (mistakenly) see the conflict in this (inaccurate) light.
Many Jews have never visited Israel and therefore have minimal experience with the country and its people and culture. Studies have shown that experiencing Israel tends to have the strongest impact on developing one’s Zionism.
Because of both internal and external factors, we are now living in a “New World” paradigm with regard to Israel and the Jews. This requires us to update our opinions, beliefs, and perspectives if we want Israel and the Jews to continue thriving.
Here are a few examples of what I mean:
1) Israel has one of the world’s strongest armies.
This is technically true, but having one of the strongest armies in the world does not mean that you can and will win every war. As we have seen since the 1990s, and especially today, Israel also has to fight an information war and a diplomatic war, which in some ways are more important than the actual battles on the ground.
There is no doubt that Israel is giving Hamas a good whooping in Gaza, and it would probably do the same to Hezbollah in Lebanon, but we Israelis are tremendously struggling in the information war and the diplomatic war. Ultimately, this might prohibit Israel from achieving proper victory in Gaza and perhaps in future conflicts.
Additionally, we must understand that the wars which Israel previously won — such as the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War — are much different in nature than this current one. Those wars were country-versus-country conflicts, but today’s war is “country versus terror group deeply embedded within a civilian population” — a deliberate and admittedly creative strategy by Israel’s enemies (chiefly, Iran).
This gives the appearance, especially in the media and on social media, of a country-versus-people war, which does not bode well in successfully fighting the information war and diplomatic war.
2) Israel is strong.
To be strong, you need to have leverage. And Israel does not have as much leverage as, say, Qatar. Six months into this war, many people still do not realize the depth and sophistication to which the Qataris are involved in this war. And I am not talking about the hostage negotiations.
The Qataris have been playing geopolitical games for awhile now. It includes strategically spending multiple billions of dollars over multiple decades on political lobbying, public relations messaging, and massive investments in Western assets to whitewash the Persian Gulf country’s reputation.
It is well-documented that Qatar supplies Hamas with as much as $480 million annually. The Qataris also give substantial support to Hamas through its Al Jazeera television network, which provides a central platform for Hamas leaders and incitement against Israel.
Yigal Carmon, president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute, put it quite bluntly: “Qatar is Hamas and Hamas is Qatar.”1
Indeed, Qatar has a long history of supporting terror and destabilizing the Middle East. Qatari funds and political support have reportedly made their way to groups like the Janjaweed, which carried out the infamous genocide in Darfur, Sudan, as well as to various branches of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt severed ties with Qatar and imposed a blockade on the Gulf nation. The Saudis and Emiratis accused the Qataris of backing the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that gave rise to Hamas.
Also in 2017, a U.S. congressional hearing confirmed that a top Qatari official “provided support” to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Top U.S. officials have said that Qatar created a “permissive terrorist financing environment.”
Still, the U.S. has its largest Middle East military presence in Qatar, and the Americans have used the Qataris for negotiations with the Taliban, the Iranian regime, and now Hamas. Being a mediator, though, is not what drives Qatar’s relations with regional radicals. The Qataris truly believe in the radical Islamist ideology that they peddle. The national security advisor to the Emir said that Qatar and the Taliban share “deep ideological ties.”
Qatar has gotten away with supporting terrorism and spreading radical ideology because of — you guessed it — money. Along with Iran, the Qataris own the South Pars/North Dome natural-gas condensate field located in the Persian Gulf, by far the world’s largest natural gas field. Qatar Energy is the country’s state-owned petroleum company, and its operations are directly linked with state planning agencies, regulatory authorities, and policy making bodies.
Together, revenues from oil and natural gas amount to 60 percent of the country’s GDP, and QatarEnergy is one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. Thus, there is a saying in Washington: If you walk by the Qatari embassy, your pockets will grow.
Qatar has spent many millions on public relations firms in the U.S. and other Western countries, in addition to becoming the top foreign donor to American universities, “gifting” some $4 billion since 2001.
It has also donated to top U.S. high schools, politicians, journalists, businesses, and think tanks of all political variations, including the Brookings Institution and Atlantic Council.
In addition to hosting and funding terror groups, the Qataris have been drawing closer to U.S. and European powers. As I noted, Qatar hosts the largest American military presence in the Middle East, in large part because the Qataris agreed to invest $1 billion to help the Americans build it.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have offered to move the American military base to their countries, but two years ago, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that Qatar would be designated a “major non-NATO ally,” a designation shared by a select few countries, including Israel. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, was not much better. One day after calling Qatar a sponsor of terrorism, he sold the nation $12 billion worth of weapons.
And it was Barack Obama’s presidency that facilitated Qatar’s rise to prominence. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State shifted the priorities in America’s Middle East policy, disassociating themselves from their traditional ally in Saudi Arabia for a new anchor in this region. They stayed their choice on Qatar, at least in part because the Qataris have granted tons of money to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation, thus giving the Qataris even greater leverage.
And leverage is a zero-sum game; the more that Qatar has, the less Israel has, and the more impactful a jihadist-inspired Qatar becomes in the already extremely volatile Middle East.
3) The U.S. is Israel’s best friend.
Despite Israel’s extraordinary efforts to avoid causing civilian casualties, U.S. administration officials have been complaining that Israelis are not doing enough.
“Far too many Palestinians have been killed,” declared Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while Vice President Kamala Harris suggested that Israel has failed to abide by international humanitarian law. Biden, himself, complained to American Jewish donors that Israel was losing international support due to its “indiscriminate bombing.”
These signals are part of a greater trend of woeful incompetence in the Democratic party, since Obama’s presidencies when Biden was Vice President, with regard to Middle East. In 2021, for example, the Biden Administration cut off its support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, and Washington later removed the Houthis from its list of terrorist organizations.
Starting in 2006 with Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then repeatedly — in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021 — the U.S. worked to impose a ceasefire in clashes between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
“American policy-makers, for many years now, have refused to understand that ignoring aggression and broadcasting fear in the Middle East is the surest way to encourage aggression and realize that fear,” wrote Michael Oren.2
The Americans have seemingly failed to grasp that there are societies which, unlike the West, favor religious ideology, and financial incentives to curb ideology do not tend to work. If anything, they can backfire. Additionally, the Americans still have not learned that thwarting mini wars, before their allies have won, results in larger wars that can engulf the region, if not the world.
Americans often think they “know better” than the rest of the world, and they probably do in many ways, but when it comes to the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy has been nothing short of dismal. And I am not just talking about Israel. The Americans deserted Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, and Gaddafi in Libya. For many Arab leaders and on the so-called Arab street, Russia and China are now much more trustworthy than is the United States.
In Israel, we are starting to cast serious doubt over whether the Americans have our country’s best interests at heart. Several weeks ago, the Biden administration rebuffed a temporary buffer zone the IDF is establishing on the Gaza side of the border with Israel, until Hamas is completely removed from power, even though a buffer zone is actually what is needed after attacks such as those on October 7th.
The U.S. has also pressured Israel to refrain from dealing a lethal blow to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, so that Israeli residents in the country’s north can feel safe and secure in their homes. For Israel, already engaged in a complicated struggle with Hamas, degrading Hezbollah is a matter of national survival.
To add insult to injury, American leaders during the last handful of weeks have been asking Israel, a country tremendously traumatized by the October 7th savagery, to contemplate a neighboring state for a people who overwhelmingly support the Palestinian terror attacks on October 7th, according to multiple polls.
Biden’s administration is thus honing in on a new anti-Israel doctrine involving an unprecedented push to immediately advance the creation of a demilitarized but viable Palestinian state.3
“There are some words missing in all the calls for a Palestinian state — words like democracy, human rights, and liberty,” wrote Elliot Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It seems the state on the west side of the Jordan River, Israel, must be democratic but not the new state on the east bank, Palestine. Why the distinction? Because no one thinks the Palestinian state will be a democratic state — or seems much to care.”4
“But there’s a much deeper problem: No one is explaining how that state will live in ‘peace and security’ with Israel if its people would prefer war with Israel,” added Abrams. “What if, to use Blinken’s language, ‘what the Palestinian people want’ is mostly to destroy Israel?”
4) The Jews are united.
The reality is, Jews both in Israel and the Diaspora are increasingly divided politically, geographically, socioeconomically, and about their definitions of and desires for Zionism.
Of course there was never really a time when the Jews were united across the board, so expecting us to be now is wishful thinking at best. But that does not mean we should not aim for more unity (not to be confused with homogeneity).
As Jews, we must admit: The vast majority of Jewish organizations have failed to deliver on their missions and promises. They have been engulfed by capitalistic tendencies, overly territorial and competitive against each other, which sets the “culture” of the greater Jewish world. It is no wonder why, for instance, many Reform Jews speak so disgustedly of Orthodox Jews, and vice versa.
No matter how religious each of us is, no matter our political associations, and no matter if we live in Israel or in the Diaspora, all Jews must understand a simple fact of Jewish life: It does not matter how each one of us defines and describes ourselves. To the outside world, a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. The rest is just details.
Thus, the Jewish world would greatly benefit from more Jews understanding and embracing the notion that Jewish unity is paramount to overall Jewish success, both individually and collectively.
5) The Jews are safe and sound.
“Part of Israel’s colossal failure of October 7th was a result of complacency,” wrote former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The same can be said about much of the Jewish world. Your typical Jew or Israeli was enjoying life, thinking about work, maybe the next investment, and an upcoming vacation. Wars? Nah, that is passé.
“We got soft,” wrote Bennett. “We lost tolerance to casualties. We forgot that we’re surrounded by the craziest terror savages on earth: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and ISIS. Physically on our borders.”
“October 7th is as if savages with machetes tore down the screens of ‘The Truman Show’ and we saw the barbarism hiding behind those tenuous facades,” he added. “We realized that our neighbors are not Belgium, Canada, or Vermont. We were cruelly reminded that Israel’s existence depends on our being constantly alert, vigilant, strong and very, very tough.”
Additionally, Jews in the Diaspora are not what we used to be socioeconomically, as a collective. The Arabs and Muslims have more money, more people, and thus more sociopolitical sway. That is not a conspiracy theory. That is a demographic fact, and it is how the modern democratic world has always worked.
As Jews and Israelis, it is time for the rest of us to accept the “New World” rules of this game, so we can learn how to better play by them.
“Israel Sends Mixed Messages To Iran’s Ally Qatar.” Iran International.
“When will America Learn?” Clarity With Michael Oren.
“A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big.” The New York Times.
“The Two-State Delusion.” Tablet.
Josh, your article contains truth but hitting people over the head with it is not always wise. The pessimists among us will take this as a sign to cast off their Judaism altogether and try to “pass” as whatever ethnicity happens to be convenient (and supposedly safe) for them. It wouldn’t be the first time. The Israelites who left bondage in Egypt were only about 20%. Some eighty percent remained, preferring slavery over the risk of freedom and independence. (I’m sure there were plenty of fellow slaves highlighting the dangers of following Moses!)
Rather than focus on elements of your article, I’d like to recommend a positive approach to coping during these dark times.
1) You can stop letting anti-Israel news get to you and listen to what Israeli leaders are actually saying and more importantly, what Israel is doing. There is so much “noise” in the media, most of it is not worth taking to heart.
2) The odds were against us before and we’re still here. Israelis are not like other people. They are more resourceful, more stubborn – and if they can stop their bickering long enough – they can rally incredibly and fight harder than anyone in the world. Support them in tangible ways.
3) Support your local Jewish organizations, too. Make them focus on Jewish security in your city or town. Encourage them to team up with potential allies (such as Iranian protest groups, who came out frequently in favor of Israel) and Christian churches that genuinely care about preserving Israel (not about trying to convert you).
4) Above all, start studying Torah, Talmud, the Zohar – any and all of our genuine Jewish scriptures. Grow your appreciation for their incredible wisdom and faith in Hashem. If you can’t believe that faith will save us at least keep your doubts to yourself. Our faith kept us going when other civilizations turned to dust.
Am Yisroel Chai.
I agree 100% with the article. Most of us Jews were born in a world where the State of Israel existed, and we have forgotten the helplessness of our grandparents in the face of anti-Semitic hatred. Personally, as of October 7, I feel the need to practice more Judaism and get closer to my roots. I am also a progressive person, and I believe that using the word "progressive" or "leftist" as an insult is unfair to all progressive people who defend Israel. That attitude also tries to place the Jewish community as having a right-wing ideology. "Anti-Semitic" "Jew Hater" are more expressive adjectives and, by opposition, include all Jews and non-Jews of any ideology. I share the idea that we need to make friends and that the world has changed: one of those changes is the breaking of this left/right divide, which is also a trap in the discourse.