The Evolution of My Relationship With Israel as an American Jew

Before I write anything, I must begin by expressing my deepest and most profound sorrow for the horrific tragedies that took place in Israel on October 7th. The slaughtering of innocent (and I sincerely mean innocent) civilians at a music festival for peace and inside their homes represents humanity's absolute worst. No words can adequately describe or alleviate the pain felt not just by the families who have lost loved ones and the families for whom loved ones remain unaccounted but also by the global Jewish community at large. Hamas and all who support them are the embodiment of evil, and those responsible – both directly and indirectly – for the massacre must be brought to justice. This is categorical. Full stop. No debate about it.

In Judaism, we place a unique and earnest emphasis on our community. We build communities at our synagogues, summer camps, schools, and workplaces, but most importantly, we build community inside our homes. In Judaism, the home often serves as the place of both our initial and our strongest Jewish memories and experiences. Shabbat dinners, Chanukah celebrations, Passover seders, Yom Kippur break fasts, and shivas and brisses all occur either in our own homes or in the homes of our family and friends. Put simply, the home is not only a place where we as Jews live; it is the focal point of Jewish life and the nucleus of the Jewish experience. This is true for the American Jewish experience, the Israeli Jewish experience, and I am sure for the Jewish experiences in just about every other country on earth. Namely because throughout our history, the home has almost always served as the one reliable place of refuge from persecution and antisemitism. That the home might transform from a place of celebration of Jewish life to a place of Jewish bloodshed on a scale not experienced since the Holocaust is a thought and a horror incomprehensible to anyone with a conscience, and we must do everything possible to ensure that this never happens again.

I can only hope that in the wake of such unspeakable tragedy and loss of life, Israel and the global Jewish community keep in mind that Hamas does not represent the will or beliefs of all Palestinians and that we remember the fragility of life inside the Gaza Strip. After moments of such devastation, we often – and somewhat justifiably – act based on our emotions and our impulses to exact revenge and to inflict the pain commensurate with the gaping holes in our hearts and the voids in our communities. As Jews; however, we must not forget that fundamental to the way we live our lives is the sanctity of human life.

I believe that in committing these atrocities, Hamas knew precisely what it was doing and fully anticipated the aggressive Israeli response that we have seen play out over the past ten days: a response that, by all accounts, will soon become Israel’s largest ground invasion since 2006. Against the backdrop of last weekend’s attacks, of course, was the impending normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia – the birthplace of Islam and the home of two of the religion’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina. As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria outlines in his Washington Post column this week, Hamas is banking on an Israeli reaction so severe that Saudi Arabia is left with no choice but to scrap normalization indefinitely. This is Hamas’ goal, and we need not forget their willingness to risk the lives of as many civilians as possible to make this happen. Just as the best vengeance for the 9/11 attacks in the United States was not the trillions spent on wars but the relatively quick resumption of everyday life, the most painful blow not only to Hamas but also to Hezbollah and Iran would be the materialization of Saudi-Israeli normalization and the minimization of antisemitic animus around the world. 

I want to be completely honest here. I have never written or really spoken extensively about Israel with those outside my immediate circle. That’s primarily because we seem to discuss Israel most often amid ongoing violent skirmishes, which I rarely view as an appropriate time to express nuance on this issue. Factor in the added pressures of social media over the past ten years, and you have an environment in which those who may not express unapologetic support for a country in which they do not live feel uncomfortable in conveying views and ideas that may differ from those in our circles whose voices ring the loudest. Yet what I have always done in these times is think more deeply and cogently about my own relationship with Israel and engage in open and honest discourse with those who hold strong views across the ideological spectrum.

The thoughts I aim to express in the paragraphs below deal not with the geopolitical and historical nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict per se (of which I am no expert) but instead around how my views and my relationship with Israel have evolved over the years as I have grown older and as the notions of democracy and progress in Israel have decayed.

As some of you reading this likely know, I grew up attending Jewish day school in the suburbs of Atlanta. I walked into the Davis Academy in the Fall of 2002 and spent the next nine years building lifelong friendships and the foundation of my Jewish identity. I am immensely grateful for my upbringing and my time as a Jewish day school student, and I don’t find any coincidence in the fact that many of my closest friends today – more than 20 years later – are those with whom I spent those pivotal early years of life. I pride myself on maintaining these relationships, and I do not envision that ever changing. These relationships are the foundation of my Jewish identity.

It is no secret that core to the curriculum of American Jewish day schools is a thorough (yet surely one-sided) education of Zionism and the State of Israel. While my peers who lean more leftward than I may take issue with the mere existence of a Zionist curriculum, I want to make clear that that is not my belief. As I reflect on my years at Jewish day school, I am reminded by how consequential learning about the emergence of the Zionist Movement in the late 19th century and the ultimate creation of the State of Israel was to my understanding of the persecution of Jews throughout history. I also sympathize with the argument that young children cannot comprehend the nuances and the enormous sensitivities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I hark back to the first time I learned of the Gaza Strip: not from inside a classroom but from inside our van on a Tel Aviv highway, shut down as Israeli police searched vehicles for a Palestinian who had escaped Gaza at the tail end of my first trip to Israel in the summer of 2007. Further, I find it nearly impossible that parents who enroll their children in Jewish day school lack an understanding of their forthcoming Israel education, and parents have the right to make education decisions for their own children. Simple as that.

Yet, as I have grown older and begun to form my own opinions and beliefs, I have often found it challenging to reconcile the utopian illusion and illustration of Israel taught to me as a child with what I believe to be the starkly contrasted realities on the ground in the present day and the context and history omitted in my formal Jewish education. While we rightfully celebrate the creation of Israel as a Jewish state in the years immediately following the Holocaust and the country’s consistent perseverance and resilience to guarantee its own survival, we ignore the unjust and anti-democratic tactics taken to ensure that Israel – which we laud as the only democracy in the Middle East – remains a Jewish majority.

I reflect back on my last visit to Israel in 2015, an all-expense-paid trip afforded to me because of my Jewish birthright to visit my ancestral homeland. I remember our guide, a kind man who resided with his family in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, speaking proudly and unapologetically about how Israel cannot consider Palestinians equal citizens because if the state were to do so, non-Jews could outnumber Jews, posing a threat to the Jewish state. While such a statement felt appropriate and acceptable to me as a 19-year-old enjoying a complimentary vacation on the other side of the world merely for being Jewish, in the years since, as we have witnessed the erosion of our own democratic institutions and norms in the United States, I have come to recognize that such a practice is not only wrong and at odds with our collective understanding of democracy but also reminiscent of the tactics that many of us have decried as racist and anti-democratic here in the United States.

Yes, like any country, Israel must prioritize its security concerns; however, we should not ignore the irony sitting in plain sight: those of us who feel obligated to call out and protest the Republican Party for restricting voting rights, gerrymandering congressional districts, and spreading blatantly false lies about election results in the United States must not then endorse similar if not far more aggressive and dangerous behavior from within the Knesset: at least so long as we continue to hail Israel as a beacon of democratic hope in the Middle East. And while the proposed judiciary overhaul aimed at eroding Israel’s system of checks and balances – put forward by the most right-wing, nationalist government in the country’s history – likely represents the most severe example of blatant democratic erosion yet, we should not pretend that Netanyahu and his governing coalition’s eagerness and insistence for such radical reform occurred in a vacuum.

I began this essay by acknowledging in no uncertain terms how important it is to remember that Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization responsible for the murders of thousands of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, going back decades, does not represent the will or the views of all Palestinians. What is, of course, equally true is that neither Netanyahu nor his current hardline coalition, which holds just a slim majority in the Knesset, represent the views and beliefs of all Israelis; we can look at how the proposed judicial reform has been met with the largest protests in Israeli history. But at some point, for better or worse, a country becomes inextricably linked to its leadership, especially if that leadership – and the actions of that leadership – remains constant for decades.

In the case of Israel, except for a brief 18-month gap in 2021-22, a time that actually coincided with Israel’s first governing coalition that included an Arab party, the country has been and continues to be led by the same Prime Minister since 2009. A Prime Minister who just oversaw the worst intelligence failure and darkest day in his country’s history and whose discourse around an impending ground invasion reeks of ominous bravado and lacks an iota of compassion for the millions of civilians trapped in Gaza with nowhere to go nor palpable sympathy for the families whose loved ones are now being held hostage inside Gaza. A Prime Minister who, frankly, appears squarely focused almost exclusively on guaranteeing his own survival. This means that an entire generation of young Jews – myself included – have spent the duration of our coming of age effectively viewing Israel as the country of Benjamin Netanyahu and him as the de-facto figurehead of the state.

In the 14 years since Netanyahu assumed his second term (remember that Netanyahu briefly served as Prime Minister in the late 1990s after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin), the chipping away at democratic norms, the increased abrasiveness towards Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the insistence of overly aggressive military activity in Gaza have been consistent themes: largely all in the same of Israeli security.

On the heels of Hamas’ horrific terror attacks on October 7th, I think it is now acceptable to declare that Israel is no safer now than it was in the days Netanyahu initially assumed power all those years ago. What’s more, in pursuing an agenda of democracy erosion, increased military hawkishness, a disregard for final status issues, and a shameless embrace of leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu has seemingly deliberately sought to fracture the support and diverge the interests of American Jews from what he believes to be the interests of Israel.

I am an American Jew. A proud American Jew at that. But as an American Jew, I do not reside in Israel nor call Israel my home. My loyalty to country is, well, to the United States, not anywhere else and that includes my ancestral homeland. In fact, the idea that we as American Jews hold dual loyalty represents an antisemitic trope as old as time. I have not visited Israel in nearly eight years, and I cannot vouch for whether the policies Netanyahu perceives as serving the interests of his country actually do. Like in any functioning democracy, citizens will engage in healthy debate around issues fundamental to daily life. Often, the end result requires all sides – left, right, and center – to compromise for the collective good. This is the reality and the bedrock of our democratic institutions, norms, and traditions in not only a pluralistic United States but also in Israel.

While we should stress objectivity in our facts and data, we shouldn't kid ourselves into pretending that our biases do not shape how we contort those facts and data into our beliefs. No geopolitical conflict in the world embodies such polarity in how each side views its version of objectivity than Israel-Palestine. What I do believe to be a matter of objective fact, though, is that an ongoing divergence between Israel and American Jewry cannot be good for either.

As always, if you have made it this far, thank you for reading. There are perhaps no issues more emotionally charged within the Jewish community than Israel-Palestine, and expressing the evolution of my relationship with Israel in a time of such sadness and tragedy was by no means easy; however, doing so did feel necessary. I do sincerely hope it is evident that my words come from a place of love for the notion of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people and a place of reverence and awe for what Israel has achieved despite monumental headwinds throughout its history.

Please stay safe out there.

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