J Street seeks to depolarize Israel

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Half-Assed

J Street seeks to depolarize Israel

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Judah Isseroff

Columnist

February 24, 2012

The question of how young American Jews will relate to Israel in their adulthood is one that haunts the thoughts and plans of many older American Jews.

How else can one explain the fact that Birthright, the program that takes non-Israeli Jews on 10-day, expense-free "heritage trips" around Israel, has a budget in excess of $60 million (accumulated mostly via donations)?

Dollars follow dollars follow dollars to make sure that the next generation of American Jews poignantly feels a connection to Israel. On their short visits, these young Jews are shown two things: the beauty of the country and its existential peril.

Why? Because the American Jewish establishment must turn us into the next generation of lobbyists so as to perpetually secure the relationship between the United States and Israel.

The efficacy of the "Israel needs your unconditional support" paradigm of Zionism has remained solid and certain in many ways. American support for Israel has remained strong through the decades, and many young Jews (as well as Christian Zionists) appear devoted to the continuation of the hardline cause.

However, this position has two dangerous consequences.

First, such an uncompromising stance risks alienating many Jewish college students. As a matter of fact, this ideology already has. Conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are noticeably absent on campus.

Indeed, Bowdoin's Hillel (the Jewish student group on campus) has been notoriously and repeatedly reluctant to incorporate any Israel-related events into its programming.

Why is this?

Well, it's probably because many of us don't seem to care very much about it any more. All prominent positions on the issue of Israel seem to boil down to a militant hostility for the "other side," and few, if any, Bowdoin students are interested in embracing any sort of political hatred or violence.

In other words, the disease of partisan politics has reached its zenith in relation to questions of Israel and a future Palestine. There appears to be no middle ground and, as is often the case in such polarized situations, no actually prudent position. The politics of the conflict have essentially been those of unconditional love or unconditional hate, both of which are problematic.

There is a second and sadly even more unfortunate consequence of the obstinate partisanship shown by many who claim to be "pro-Israel." Such partisanship flamboyantly touts the notion that Israelis can afford to wait to make peace with the Palestinians.

This is in no way the case.

First, there is the demographic issue. On the land that Israel currently controls (Israel proper and the West Bank), the number of Palestinians will soon exceed that of Jews.

When this happens, Israel will truly cease to be a democracy; a minority of Jews will rule over a larger disenfranchised Palestinian population.

An undemocratic Israel would be a catastrophe.

The Arab world and much of Europe (parts of which are notoriously hostile to Israel) would then have a weapon in their arsenal of anti-Israel rhetoric that would be essentially irrefutable. Israel's place in the community of nations would degenerate into one of an unambiguous pariah. The largely justifiable protests of Israeli and diaspora Jews against the unfair treatment of Israel in many international forums would fade into illegitimate, unacknowledged squeals.

Moreover, the crest of the wave of attacks against Israel would not even be outside the country. Israel, already rife with divisions between the ultra-religious and the secular, would face its own unraveling from within.

For Jews like me, who desire to see the actualization of Jewish strength, prosperity and humanity in Israel, such a possibility is apocalyptic.

The rampant apathy of the Bowdoin campus on the question of Israel, particularly, of course, amongst the Jewish community, is quite the foreboding omen.

These reasons have prompted a friend and me to establish a chapter of J Street U at Bowdoin.

J Street, an organization founded in 2008, was created to redefine what it means to support Israel.Rather than understand the relationship between the United States and Israel as one of wholly unconditional support, J Street lobbies the U.S. Congress and the White House to provide the leadership and political will that is lacking but necessary to give the peace process a ray of hope.

On campus, J Street U Bowdoin aspires to do the work of providing a forum where students may re-engage with Israel without being force-fed a position that is entirely anathema to them. We hope that many of you, Jewish or otherwise, will join us.

Judah Isseroff is a member of the Class of 2013.

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