In one of the most important pieces written during the course of this conflict, Shmuel Rosner has taken to the website of the New York Times, where he is a contributing opinion writer, with a profoundly thoughtful riposte to the disapora Jews who have expressed their disaffection with Israel as a result of the goings-on—from Jon Stewart to Ezra Klein, from Peter Beinart to Roger Cohen.
Rosner says these men may be right that Israel is in danger of losing its bedrock support among American Jews in particular. He says that would put Israel in a difficult position and represent a near-tragic development. But his central point is this: Israel is not actually their country. They do not live in Israel, they do not vote in Israel, their children are not in the Israeli army. Israel is a nation of 8 million people, and it must act in accordance with the views of its electorate and the existential needs of its people as Israelis define them. These liberal Jews, Rosner writes,
seem to believe that the implied threat that Israel might lose Jewish supporters abroad will somehow convince the government to alter its policies. This is a self-aggrandizing fantasy and reveals a poor grasp of the way Israel operates. To put it bluntly: These Jews are very important, but not nearly important enough to make Israelis pursue policies that put Israeli lives at risk.Let me be clear: I believe Israel’s relations with Jews around the world are crucially important. Indeed, I’ve devoted a great deal of my career to thinking and writing about this topic. I often find myself preaching to Israelis about the need to be more considerate of more liberal Jewish views on issues ranging from religious conversion to women’s prayer at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. But I would never expect Israelis to gamble on our security and our lives for the sake of accommodating the political sensitivities of people who live far away.
American Jews who condition their support of Israel by standing in superior judgment of the extremely difficult choices it has been forced to make, for decades now, are guilty of converting a country of flesh-and-blood people into a one-dimensional player performing in an abstract moral pageant of their own staging and design.
These “fair weather friends,” as Rosner dubs them, hold Israel to a standard to which they do not hold other countries—and then claim they do so out of commonality and brotherhood. Light unto the nations and all that. But of course the act of separating yourself from your brethren by being their harshest critics is almost the polar opposite of true familial behavior, as Rosner notes:
If all Jews are a family, it would be natural for Israelis to expect the unconditional love of their non-Israeli Jewish kin. If Jews aren’t a family, and their support can be withdrawn, then Israelis have no reason to pay special attention to the complaints of non-Israeli Jews.
Or, to be cutesy about it, your grandmother might tell you to be a mensch while she’s stuffing you with brisket, but she does so while she stuffs you with brisket, not while she wags her finger at you and sends you to bed without your supper.
Moreover, she would be a fool if she told you that menschlichkeit required you to allow yourself to exist in a state of constant peril lest you violate some abstract moral stricture. And your grandmother is not a fool.
Which is why the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone all too often taken by these fair-weather critics is so utterly and infamously disingenuous. They are using what they have in common with Israel as a weapon against it, all the while claiming they are acting on its loving behalf.
