The Washington Post reports: “Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.” Sixty-one percent believe Israel “committed war crimes,” while four in 10 find it “guilty of genocide.” One-third agree that “the US is too supportive of Israel.”
Really?
I planned on writing this October 7 about the scandalous complicity of fellow academics, who enable campus celebrations of Hamas’s massacre by not denouncing them. Instead, because I expect more of them, I’m even more ashamed of those American Jews swallowing these antisemitic “war crimes” libels, betraying themselves, not just their people.
Believing this “genocide” charge requires intellectual sloppiness, moral cowardice, and flamboyant disloyalty. How else can we explain joining this unjustified pile-on against your own people, who were attacked so brutally? My advice: Sharpen your brains, grow a spine, and watch your back.
Media bias
Like most Israelis, I shout “God Bless America,” appreciating most American Jews – and non-Jews – who keep supporting us. Their outpouring of tears, love, money, political support, and weaponry has been life-saving. The Post confirms “that many American Jews retain strong emotional, cultural, and political bonds with Israel and its identity as a Jewish state.”
Seventy-six percent “believe Israel’s existence is vital for the future of the Jewish people.” Predictably, 63% of those who say being Jewish “is not at all important” to them are hypercritical, while 63% of those who say “being Jewish is important” approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza.
I get it. The media pounding is overwhelming. My Essential Guide to October 7 and Its Aftermath compared the 6,656 New York Times articles about the Israel-Hamas War in the nine months after October 7 to merely 80 articles mentioning America’s nine-month battle of Mosul, which killed as many as 40,000 truly innocent, pro-Western civilians.
In Tablet, Zach Goldberg showed that the Times and other media outlets linked the words “Israel” and “genocide” nine times more than their “peak coverage” of the actual, intentional Rwandan genocide.
Our October 7 calendar, however, is filled with too many memorials, and heaven is overflowing with too many fresh angels, to pull punches this week.
False charges of genocide
While wary of some Zionists’ tendency to call too many attacks on Israel “antisemitic,” I find this genocide libel bigoted, not just false. This custom-made-for-Israel definition of “genocide” – nation-destruction – eliminates the requirement of an “intent to destroy.”
No genocidal army ever imported 14,125 tons of aid in one week alone or deployed soldiers, including friends of mine, risking their lives, to protect humanitarian aid convoys. And no genocidal army ever had lawyers assessing military targets or officers aborting missions to minimize civilian damage.
Second, this manufactured charge was hatched long before October 7, repeated before Israel counterattacked, and spread by bots along with a systematic network funded by Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.
Third, this is inversion-perversion. Accusing the Jewish state – engaged in a difficult war that Hamas started, with hostages still being starved – of the horrific crime Jews endured in the 1940s reeks of the diabolical hatred Jews endured for millennia.
Finally, this newly diluted definition of genocide applies to any military conflict that kills civilians. By these standards, anyone marking Lincoln’s Birthday celebrates the “genocide” of 50,000 civilians during the Civil War. Anyone honoring World War II veterans salutes “genociders,” given the two to four million German and Japanese civilians killed. And any Israel critic over thirty who remained silent as America killed over 940,000 civilians during the justified post-9/11 wars was “complicit” in their own country’s “genocide.”
Hmm. Perhaps it’s just true that “war is hell.”
American Jewry's response
Healthy relationships balance finger-pointing with hugging. Recently, American Jews, including many rabbis and Jewish establishment leaders who should know better, have been blaming Israel too much, without hugging enough. Too many don’t give Israel the benefit of the doubt, failing to acknowledge the anguished dilemmas, this war’s horrors, and the targeting of Jews and Israel supporters worldwide, too.
Much of the American Jewish conversation, especially among less involved Jews, is topsy-turvy. They think antisemitism surged because Israelis have fought back so aggressively since October 7. But antisemitism surged because Jews bled so broadly on October 7. Our momentary weakness emboldened the haters. They rejoiced and started libeling Israel while targeting Jews during the bloodbath itself.
Many bash-Israel-firsters should check their allies, not their privilege. So many campus progressives, feminists, and minority activists applauded the carnage, mocking decades of Jewish-community relationship-building with them.
That 50% of young Jews buy these lies reflects a stunning educational failure. Most were raised to fit in, to never fight back, to reduce Judaism to Christian charity and the latest liberal agenda gussied up with the fancy name “tikkun olam.” Most weren’t taught about loyalty, solidarity, patriotism, or how to sift true friends from real enemies.
Perhaps the real miracle is that one of every two young Jews resists their generation’s political fetish.
The right side
Ultimately, I sleep well. I know that, despite our flaws and our leaders’ mistakes, we’re on the right side of history: Israel is winning this civilizational conflict.
People like me, on the speaking circuit, aren’t supposed to write so frankly. Too many fear losing speaking gigs. I’ll take that chance. My parents didn’t raise me to be a pretzel Jew, twisting to please others. Moreover, I know too many swivel-headed academics, hurting their necks by always looking over their shoulders.
If I absorb a backlash, I’ll enjoy more time in Israel. Here, our kids – like our Sukkot lulavs (palm branches) – have strong, stiff spines. And they live big, bold, beautiful lives – like perfect etrogim (citrons), although ever-aware of the delicate pitom (tip of the etrog), reflecting life’s fragility, too.
The writer, an American presidential historian and Zionist activist, is author of To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and Its Aftermath. His e-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-hatred, can be downloaded on the Jewish People Policy Institute website.