Abstract

The Jewish Divide on Israel

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents, along with their powerful fellow travelers, Christian Zionists, have forged a bipartisan consensus in United States politics that Middle East policy must privilege the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. In practice, this solid consensus means putting Israeli security before peace; supporting even such extreme Israeli measures as the separation wall and assassinations; and delegitimizing the Palestinian leadership. But surveys have consistently found that 50 to 60 percent of American Jews favor ending the occupation and dismantling settlements in return for peace. 2002 was a banner year: At a pro-Israel rally in Washington that April, busloads of demonstrators from Jewish social-service agencies and Hillels (the network of Jewish campus organizations) booed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for speaking about Palestinian suffering, and the Anti-Defamation League and other groups published manuals on how to discredit "anti-Israel propaganda" on campuses. But tens of thousands of American Jews have had a very different response to the failed talks and the new Palestinian uprising. Most of the new organizations are explicitly Jewish, but American Jewish activists have also been central players in the founding of multiethnic organizations like the International Solidarity Movement, which sends international observers, about a fifth of whom are American Jews, into the occupied territories, and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which advocates divestment from Israel bonds. In April 2004, Brit Tzedek organized 10,000 U.S. Jews to sign another open letter, this one calling on Israel and the United States to fund the relocation of Jewish settlers from the occupied territories to Israel.