Israel’s civil crisis: The deafening silence of Diaspora leadership bodies

Community and religious leaders are turning in on themselves, as if the situation is too painful to confront, focussing on the easier targets of antisemitism and Iran.

A Survation poll last week, commissioned by The Jewish News in the UK, indicated that 52% of British Jews felt their view of Israel was impacted by the presence of the far-Right in Netanyahu's government. Some 42% felt that it was not.

It also showed that older people were more reticent to criticise an Israeli government than younger people — of whom some 85% were ready to criticise publicly. The young were also more eager to tell Jewish organisations not to offer a platform to the likes of far-Right Israeli politicians Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Avi Maoz.

The questions in this survey targeted the imagery of Israel in the Diaspora psyche at its very roots. As if to add insult to injury, the poll also noted that 70% of the respondents believed that Israel was completely indifferent to the opinions of Diaspora Jews.

With the Kahanists at the heart of government, the dam of silent acquiescence for many Diaspora Jews is cracking. The Kahanists are severing the bond between public relations for Israel and public reality in Diaspora thinking.

Rabbi Meir Kahane emigrated to Israel from the US in the early 1970s. His presence coincided with the decline of the Left and the rise of the Right which came to power in 1977. The Right, however, then had to govern and to make pragmatic decisions. Many could not adapt after decades in the political wilderness. This led to splits and schisms — and this sowed the seeds of Kahanism without Kahane in Israel.

The far-Right emerged from the disputes within the Likud over Menachem Begin's willingness to sign the Camp David Accord with Egypt's Anwar Sadat in 1979. This agreement has brought over 40 years of peace between the two countries, but it also bore witness to the advance of a multitude of far-Right parties, entering the governments of first, Yitzhak Shamir in the early 1990s and then those of Benjamin Netanyahu.