Diaspora Jews hardly recognise the Israel they once loved

Among the gutting outcomes of Netanyahu’s coalition with the far Right will be a widening gulf between the Diaspora and Israel.

For some time, the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jews has resembled that between a loved but abrasive husband and his more socially adept wife.

Israel does what he likes while Mrs Israel scurries behind, patching up his gaffes and excusing his most egregious behaviour with reference to his childhood traumas or exceptional irrelevant talents. He doesn’t listen to her advice, scoffs when she points out the damage he is doing to their friendships, and becomes increasingly uncompromising and offensive.

It can’t go on indefinitely. At some point Diaspora will notice she is getting little out of the relationship and decide she would be better off alone. Sure, she loves him, and they have great shared memories. But she is starting to wonder if he is still the man he was when they lay together as young marrieds planning their future. Sometimes he seems to have forgotten some of their deepest shared values.

It's a while since she has been alone, and she is not sure she knows how to survive without him anymore. But she did it for a long time before he was on the scene. She is nothing if not adaptable. Maybe he is just not worth it anymore.

Some form of this scenario went through the minds of many Diaspora Jews in the past week, as we watched Israel vote in a government that many of us find intolerable. Our hearts sank as we scrolled through newsfeeds that delivered our worst-case scenario. Israelis have not only returned a prime minister already on trial for corruption but have voted in a coalition that includes ultranationalist religious parties led by hate-mongering demagogues.

Israel has always had its extremists and compromise with religious parties has been the stuff of many Israeli governments. But this time is different. Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Religious Zionism bloc, which increased its representation from eight to 14 Knesset seats, expresses ideologies that are beyond the pale for most Jews – fascist, racist, homophobic hate.

They are nationalist extremists who care nothing for the values of liberal democracy and who are so wrapped up in their own sense of entitlement they cannot see either Israeli Arabs or Palestinians as people with their own needs and rights.

It is important to remember that only just over 5% of Israelis voted for the Religious Zionists. Even when combined with the vote for the Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, less than 20% of Israelis directly support the religious bloc.

The real problem is not that so many Israelis subscribe to this ideology – although any is too many – but that Likud voters are willing to do deals with these people, to let them into a coalition as the price for power (and, in Netanyahu’s case, in the hope that he can waylay his trial for corruption).

Israel’s Right refused to draw a line in the sand. Diaspora Jews drew it clearly.

It was striking indeed to hear many of Israel’s primary cheerleaders in Australia – the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Australian Jewish News, the Australian Union of Jewish Students – one by one declare against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Diaspora leaders who have long criticised others for “washing the community’s dirty laundry in public” discovered there was a point at which they could no longer pretend Israel worst excretions smelt of roses. 

Even the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Executive Council of Australia Jewry have expressed post-election concerns about Ben-Gvir and the Religious Zionism bloc.

The UK’s mainstream Jewish publication, the Jewish Chronicle, asked in a pre-election banner headline, "Where is the outrage?" (and was answered by the more progressive Jewish News post-election "Here is the outrage").

In the US, the Anti-Defamation League made a rare departure from finding antisemites under every critic of Israel’s bed to express its concern at Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s “racist, anti-Arab, homophobic and other hateful behaviour”. 

Diaspora Jews oppose Israel’s far Right – and the far Right everywhere – because it offends our moral sense, our Jewish values of tzedek (justice), chesed (kindness) and tikkun olam (repairing the world). Living as a minority we understand only too well the importance of the values of freedom and respect which elude Ben Gvir and his ilk.

That many Israelis do not feel the same sense of repulsion creates an enormous cultural and ethical gulf between us.

More and more Jews are going to find it easier to look elsewhere for their Jewish identity – to culture or religion or social action – or to turn away completely from the Jewish community rather than deal with a profound clash of values.

Diaspora Jews do not reject Israel’s far Right out of self-interest, but we will also be harmed by our association with a country which is now set to become even more of an international pariah. It is going to get harder to call oneself a Zionist, to talk about travelling to Israel, to pack one’s children off on a gap year to a country prepared to make compromises with racists and homophobes.

Even those who have been reluctant to do so are going to need to re-examine the stories we tell ourselves about modern Jewish history and the way we teach our children about Israel.

Jews survive and we will find a way to survive this crisis, as we have survived so many others.

Perhaps the shock will cause a pendulum to swing back, and the Israeli Left will somehow erect itself from the ashes. The US survived Trump (or at least Trump Mark I) and just a few days before Israel voted in the Netanyahu coalition, Brazil’s far-Right President Jair Bolsonaro was ejected from power. 

But while we are waiting for an Israel we can really believe in, Diaspora Jews are going to need to find a way to live with a new and deeply disappointing reality.

RELATED ANALYSIS

The world won’t save Israel from itself this time either (Noa Landau, Haaretz)

In recent days there have been hints and hopes that the enlightened world will boycott Ben-Gvir and perhaps even the entire extreme-Right government, but the truth is that there is no "political tsunami" on the horizon.

The Israel We Knew Is Gone (Thomas Friedman, NY Times)
Netanyahu has been propelled into power by bedfellows who: see Israeli Arab citizens as a fifth column who can’t be trusted; have vowed to take political control over judicial appointments; believe that Jewish settlements must be expanded so there is not an inch left anywhere in the West Bank for a Palestinian state; want to enact judicial changes that could freeze Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial; and express contempt for Israel’s long and strong embrace of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition could upend Israeli democracy (Ben Caspit, Al-Monitor)

Incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a dangerous deal with far-Right and religious radical partners who are sure to undercut Israeli's democratic institutions.

There is no ‘halachic state’ in Jewish law  (Naftali Rothenberg, Times of Israel)

Theocracy is simply not a Jewish legal concept – the halachic legal system applies its authority only to those who accept it

Demography Is Destiny in Israeli Politics? Not So Fast (Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz)

Following the Israeli election, some on the Left are complaining that the Right will remain in government forever due to demographic factors. But similar voices were heard in 1988 – four years before Labor’s Yitzhak Rabin took power.

Israel's Election: What to Think About Religious Zionists, Netanyahu, and Tales of Doomsday (Council on Foreign Relations)

Doomsday predictions about the consequences of Israel's election are overwrought. Some of the proposed legal reforms would bring Israel's system closer to the US model.

Image: Avi Katz