US Zionist actiivist: US Jews see danger in aligning with ugly Israel
Another kiss of death
M.J. Rosenberg Ha’aretz Friday, April 25, 2008
For American Jews like me, for whom Israel is central in their lives, this week's story about an alleged spy who worked for Israel in the U.S. two decades ago is another kiss of death. That is because more ugly headlines about Israel - worst of all about an American spying for it - only contribute to the indifference to the Jewish state that seems to be growing every day...
Israel is just not what it once was for American Jews. The state's imminent 60th anniversary has aroused hardly any interest here. Yes, the usual crowd is excited. Mostly older, heavily Orthodox, they are the folks who continue to give the campaign dollars linked to "support for Israel." They still march in the "Salute to Israel" parades. Their kids often fight anti-Israel propaganda on campus. But their circle is not widening.
And now there is this spy case. It doesn't look like much. The alleged spy is now 84 and the deeds he is said to have committed took place 25 years ago. Unfortunately, though, it is not a stand-alone case. The same Israeli who was "running" Jonathan Pollard was supposedly running this guy. That means the Pollard case will be in the news again and that is not good.
It is hard to overestimate how much damage Pollard did to the American Jewish community. Young American Jews who want to work in any security-related government agency know that there is a strong possibility they won't get the job if they are viewed as having too much "Israel" on their resumes...
Many people here, wrongly, believe that the United States went into Iraq because of Israel. It's not true. But it does not help American Jews when the loudest advocates for the war were people known to have close affiliations to right-wingers in Israel...
It's not good. You start with a situation in which genuine ardor for Israel has been diminishing year after year. Add to it the association of Israel with defenders of a war most Americans oppose. Add to that the upcoming trial of two Jewish AIPAC employees accused of passing classified information to Israel. And then, out of the blue, Act II of the Pollard case explodes in the media...
Jews like me who became ardently pro-Israel in 1967 and remain involved with Israel in good times and bad, are increasingly out-of-step with the Jewish population at large...
All by itself, the latest wrinkle in the Pollard story wouldn't matter. But combined with the seemingly endless Israeli- Palestinian conflict and the inept information efforts of Israel's defenders, it almost surely will. The long honeymoon between Israel and American Jews could be ending.
M.J. Rosenberg is the director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum in Washington, D.C.