How can Israel spoil relations with American Jews

Фото: Depositphotos

For the average observer, Israel has never looked safer and more prosperous than it is now. His Arab neighbors are in chaos. Iran’s nuclear program is shut down for a while. Trump's team can't be friendlier, and the Palestinians are weaker. Everything is calm on the Tel Aviv front.

And now look again. In fact, the foundations of many years of national security are bursting at the seams, he writes in his column for The New York Times Thomas Friedman.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is expanding, while erasing the border between its state and Palestine - accepting 2.5 million Palestinians, which can de facto turn Israel into a bi-national Jewish-Arab state. And thus, to draw a line between themselves and the Jewish diaspora, in particular in America, which is especially important for Israeli security, diplomatic status and economic growth.

Netanyahu wants to become a key figure in Jewish history - a leader who burned bridges on the way to a two-state solution and to the Jewish diaspora.

I will not waste time telling how Bibi manipulated Trump to shift the blame on Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for the lack of progress in the peace process. Bibi truce brilliantly distracted Trump - a video of Abbas’s harsh statements (in which there was no mention of extremist actions by Israeli settlers).

It worked perfectly, distracting the American president from pressing issues: “Bibi, you win every debate, but in the meantime Israel’s separation from Palestine is becoming less and less likely to push the country into the“ slippery path of apartheid, ”as the former Israeli Prime Minister recently warned Ehud Barak. Where is your map? What are you going to do with 420 by the thousands of Jewish settlers on the West Coast. Where is your imagination when you need to reverse this trend, otherwise it will put an end to Israel as a democratic state?

But now an even greater threat looms. In recent weeks, Netanyahu has partnered with Orthodox Jewish parties to strike a double blow against non-Orthodox Jewish communities around the world, particularly in America. There are about 6 million Jews in Israel, another 6 in the United States and 4 in the rest of the world. About 75% of those 10 million are non-Orthodox Jews, who mostly support Reform and Conservative Judaism.

Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Depositphotos

First, in order not to risk his power, Netanyahu agreed with the demands of the orthodox parties and canceled the 2016 agreement of the year to create a separate, open to all prayer space at the western wall of the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem - the most sacred place of all Jews - where men and women of unorthodox movement might pray together. The orthodox rabbis who control the Wailing Wall insist that men should pray in one space and women in another, smaller space.

At the same time, Bibi approved the orthodoxy bill in the Knesset, which gave ultra-orthodox Jews the monopoly power over decisions to adopt Judaism, depriving non-Orthodox Jews of that opportunity. As Israeli journalists reported, Israeli Orthodox Jews and the Chief Rabbinate control “all Jewish weddings in Israel, and immigrants who want to get married in this country must first prove that they are Jews according to orthodox laws ... there is plenty of evidence. ”

As it was already written in one of the columns, Netanyahu "simply showed a finger to American Jews, dangerously worsening the already unstable relations between the Israeli government and the diaspora."

After the protest of the American pro-Israel lobbyist, Bibi agreed to postpone the commencement of the decree for six months. But this is a time bomb.

How could this happen? I asked Guidi Greenstein, the founder Reut group - Leading Israeli Public Opinion Research Institute.

“For Israel’s security and morality, Israel’s moment of truth comes,” Greenstein said. - Does Israel see itself as a nation-state of Israelis or as a nation-state of the entire Jewish people - almost 60% of whom live outside of Israel? Is Israel’s goal to serve the stability, prosperity and existence of the Jewish people, as the founders of Zionism assumed, or only its own interests? This is the question now. ”

And if you think the latter is true, then you have to go. Former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, chose expressions, telling the Israeli media that Bibi and the orthodox parties “had abandoned Zionism. The Wailing Wall belongs to all the Jewish people. ”

For years, according to Greenstein, “many unorthodox Jews, including myself, tried to ease the tension in this matter, believing that pragmatism would win.” Complaining to the orthodox rabbis, “we noted that several of them may have civil marriages abroad that can be legalized in Israel”, and that reformist and conservative rabbis have always been respected in Israel. Therefore, "recent government decisions are like a blow to the stomach."

Now many Jews from the diaspora have problems because of how the Israeli state and society look at them differently.

Israelis have long taken for granted that America - the world's greatest superpower - is Israel's constant supporter at the UN, provides Israel with a technological advantage and has already pledged $38 billion in security funding to the country over the next 10 years. As Greenstein noted, most Israelis “are unaware that this astonishing reality is the result of the tireless work of hundreds of thousands of Jewish Democrats and Republicans, most of them unorthodox, who patiently marshal their money and talent to ensure Israeli security and prosperity.” .

Today, Israel’s identity itself is at a crossroads: Jewish nationalism threatens the unification of Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, while orthodox politics breaks the country's ties with its most loyal allies.

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