Israel vs. the Diaspora

When the members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convened in Washington this past weekend for their annual conference, they had their work cut out for them. AIPAC spends its time trying to ensure that the United States and Israel get along. Unfortunately for the lobby, their conference came after the largest kerfuffle in U.S.-Israel relations in quite a while. On March 9, Israel announced its intention to build  new housing units in East Jerusalem — just as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden landed in Jerusalem to try to jump-start indirect peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Among the blowback from the Barack Obama administration was a comment made by presidential advisor David Axelrod, who announced on ABC’s This Week that "What happened there was an affront. It was an insult."

If the point was to get Israel to listen, then Axelrod — who is American, Jewish, and works just down the hall from Obama — wasn’t the best person to speak out. Since even before the founding of Israel, Israeli Jews have tended to bristle when challenged too much by members of the Jewish diaspora, like Axelrod. Whether there was a concrete reaction this time or not, the point remains: Israeli Jews don’t take it well if those in the diaspora are seen to be giving orders.

Why the tension? Don’t the vast majority of Jews today value Israel as a Jewish homeland? Of course. But for most Jews, Israel is not literally home. Of the approximately 13 million Jews worldwide, only about 40 percent live in Israel. It was only in 2007 that the country became home to the world’s largest Jewish population.

Zionist thinkers have often viewed life in Israel as a higher plane of Jewish existence. The Hebrew phrase used to describe immigration of Jews to Israel — to make aliyah — means to ascend or go up. Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, saw sovereignty as key to Jewish life. Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of another, more assertive form of Zionism, in 1926 called "upon every Jew not only to give but to come and share the responsibility with us." In his view, each Jewish person in the diaspora "who offers his money while openly denying that he acknowledges the Zionist ideal" might be welcomed as "coworkers," but "[t]he political work, the construction of the Jewish state, is the exclusive prerogative of those who profess to be Zionists." In other words, diaspora Jews who want to criticize Israel’s political decisions should either move there or butt out.

Jabotinsky’s views are especially relevant given that they helped serve as the founding philosophy of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.  Indeed, during his first stint as prime minister, Netanyahu expressed his hope that diaspora Jews would continue to move to Israel in large numbers. As a practical matter, the prime minister seems to accept the fact that Jews do and will continue to live elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean that relations between diaspora and Israeli Jews are any easier.

Polling data suggest that a majority of Israeli Jews do respect the diaspora’s right to criticize Israel — but among those, a majority say it’s OK only in certain situations. Even then, Israelis want to decide especially sensitive issues, such as the final status of Jerusalem, without input from their foreign cousins, according to one poll conducted last year. Israeli leaders often share that view; Netanyahu, for instance, allegedly had some choice words for Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel last year, calling them "self-hating Jews" (a charge that the Israeli prime minister quickly denied).

The situation gets especially vexing when disapora Jews have the ear of the American president.  Some American Jews who worked in the White House have succeeded in reaching their Israeli counterparts. Henry Kissinger, for example, portrayed his message as one coming from the White House, through a sympathetic voice. But there is always a risk that Israelis will hear only a diaspora Jew dictating to Israel, using the White House as a megaphone. In short, the messenger matters.

Perhaps that’s why, after Israel announced its new housing units during the Biden visit, it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who is not Jewish) who called Netanyahu for nearly an hour to try to set Israel straight. Clinton was also the one invited to give the keynote address at AIPAC’s annual meeting, on March 22. For anyone hoping to increase the chances that Israel will listen to the Obama administration, maybe it’s best to hope that the White House continues to leave the talking to her.