The Diaspora Within the Diaspora
Progressive Jews wrestle with the monster that Israel has become.
The current street protests across Israel are telling us more about protest than what American Jews should or shouldn’t be deciding.
To Mr. Thomas Friedman, author, NYTimes Op Ed, “American Jews, You Have to Choose Sides on Israel” (1): The current debacle in Israel, which is a constitutional crisis in the making, provides America with an object lesson in political street protest, not exclusively a forced choice scenario for American Jews, as you propose.
“But as Netanyahu’s latest government has pressed ahead with its attempt to crush the independence of the Israeli judiciary, splitting Israeli society, Amercan Jewish leaders now have no choice but to choose sides.”
You, sir, have written a revanchist analysis, in my opinion, which fails to convince the reader of the meta-issue of autocracy posing as democracy, a current and familiar threat to progressive Jew and progressive non-Jew.
First, the current protests in Israel are very large, which means they appear to the non-Israeli American citizen as very unwieldy. One’s imagination trips over the scale of the protests. Could this happen in America?
Second, there are multiple protests within the protests:
Usurping the Judiciary;
Subverting the Israeli Constitution;
Sack of Huwara by Israeli settlers;
A convicted criminal in charge of the country;
Marginalization of Arab Knesset members;
Polarization of Israeli society…
to name a few.
Third, everyone, it seems, from multiple soap boxes in America are voicing an opinion. And feel obliged to share their opinion prior to examination.
Fourth, the government of Netanyahu is sidelining the protests, obfuscating the causes of outrage, dismissing participants as politically motivated.
Fifth, one witnesses the use of violence in holding onto power;
Sixth, one experiences in Israel, the government subverting reason with fiction, observation with misinformation.
Seventh, one notes the government conflating democracy with state sponsored terror (2).
America need look no further than its own diasporas to understand the root causes underpinning today’s Israeli protests:
1619 is yesterday’s 1948: a diaspora within a diaspora.
March 13
Notes
1-https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-protests.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
American Jews, You Have to Choose Sides on Israel
2-What Thomas Friedman Gets Wrong About Israel And Democracy | AJC
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