A few days ago Israel broadcast a few ads in American TV with the message that the children of Israelis in America should come to Israel. There is nothing special in the campaign, yet it was badly received. Ireland is also trying to attract Irish descendantsa do all Eastern European countries. Hungary will extend Hungarian citizenship to my Israeli born children and it has extended Hungarian citizenship to all Hungarian speaking people living in foreign countries.
One Israeli ad depicted a New York couple, an Israeli woman identified as "Dafna" and her apparently American Jewish hipster boyfriend; he's oblivious that she is in mourning because it's Yom Hazicaron, Israel's day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. The voice-over at the end says "They'll always stay Israelis. Their spouses won't always understand what it means. Help them come back to Israel."The reaction of American Jewish Organizations was nothing but seismic: "Outrageous and insulting message". The campaign was immediately pulled. Yet the message, a most watered down version of Zionism, is not directed to rooted American Jews but to recent Israeli emigrants, and does not mention the word Zionism or any heavy idea behind. It shows nostalgy, sentiment, grandmothers fretting. Zionism, with its view that the Galuth is unsustainable in the long term, is tabu for American Jews. Even in a diluted, soft version. They are not ready yet to face Zionism or - in my opinion - reality.
20 comments:
Unfortunately, Israel and Zionsim may be unsustainable in the long term as well. Such smugness directed towards expatriates and American Jews from the nation that is and likely will always be in the frying pan, so to speak, is almost comical.
One of the first surprises that serious students of Jewry discover is that deeply ambiguous feelings over Israel are much more common in Western Jews than one might have thought.
Also, these feelings are not confined to "hipster Jews" (actually a rather uncommon type in the circles in which I mix), but are also frequent in people who have no problem identifying as Jews, who are thoughtful, but whose highly liberal and internationalist instincts are appalled by the unanashamedly robust ethnostate character of Israel. Furthermore, these people tend to be pacifist in orientation, and the daily violence required for survival in the Middle East both frightens them, and upsets their philosophical equilibria.
Anon.
"Is that you, John Wayne?"
Of course eunuchs hate nothing more than their intact brothers (I'm not talking about the majority of American Jews here, but then the majority really don't care about some Israeli commercial.)
It is not smugness, it is certainty in our way.
You don't think it's gonna work out for us here in America? What's the endgame? I have to agree with the first poster that from where I sit the Zionist project looks a lot more tenuous, although of course diaspora Jews like myself have been wrong about that before.
America is about to go pear-shaped due to diversity, retarded economic policies and a broken reality feedback loop between the government and its actual environment. Large swaths of America were unlivable when the economy was doing good-what do you think is gonna happen now? Plus there's assimilation. Most American Jews are slowly being pulled to either a shtetl mentality or absorption into the upper middle class.
The objection to the Israeli campaign was not to its mundane particulars (though some of those were poorly chosen) but to its underlying message, which was that in the long run Jewish life in the Galut cannot be sustained. This may be taken as a given in Israel (and may even be true in the long run) but it is not a message that people whose livelihoods and sense of self depend on the continued existence of an identifiable Jewish community want to hear - Rabbis, leaders of Jewish organizations, etc. And keep in mind that these same people are among the biggest political and financial backers of Israel, so this amounted (in their minds at least) as biting the hand that feeds you. Also it is factually untrue - maybe in 100 years the US Jewish community will consist only of Hasidim (given their birthrates, maybe more of them then there are Jews now - the Jewish community in Poland grew explosively in the 19th century - 5 or 6 generations of having 10 or 12 children leads to exponential growth in numbers), with all other Jews having assimilated into nothingness but for the time being there is still a very vibrant community, thank you very much.
I realize that when Israelis (like you J) tell those of us in goles to make aliyah before it's too late or even ask those who are already Israelis to come home), you say it with the best of intentions but the message that the life that you have chosen is really a poor choice is not a message that most people receive warmly.
K
Given how popular you are in the Middle East, and the increasing ease with which WMD can be manufactured,and delivered, the only strategy that makes any sense is to disperse.
Anon.
The diaspora has existed in one form or another for well over 2000 years. The current state of Israel has existed for 63 years. It's a bit early to declare that history has ended and Israel has won. Remember that some of the Crusader states lasted over 100 years, but they are long vanished from the Middle East. Anon.'s point that the political upheaval in the Middle East combined with the ease of manufacturing WMD should not be dismissed.
Israelis would do better to be a bit less arrogant in their relations with their co-ethnoreligionists who inhabit the only major ally the state of Israel can claim.
We in Israel must be very alienated from American Jewish mentality because no one imagined such a reaction to a campaign to bring back Israelis living in the USA. They are so sensitive to the Zionist message that see it even where there is not there.
I think the few who were annoyed by the ad are just overly noisy.
ram
J, I think it is a fair estimate that only a minority of Jews in the USA would actually want to go to Israel to live.
This in itself is an argument against the notion that all, or even most, Jews are Zionists; an 'accusation' often thrown at world Jewry by anti-Semitic extremists.
I was expecting those who had made Alliyah to be more on the fanatic end of the spectrum, but I have been surprised to see that most are mild-mannered.
Anon.
They have the mannerisms of American middle class but they must have firm convictions to leave the cauldrons of steaming beef and onions of America and come to build their homes in savage Indian territory.
Except this "savage Indian territory" has no enormous, natural resource-rich frontier to settle.
Yes, but it has plenty of armed Indians.
In a comment he left recently on one of Steve Sailer's blogposts about "The Good Fence," J states that up to 2 million Africans are heading towards Israel seeking refugee status. Maybe this is one more reason Israel wants its expats back, to bolster the Jewish population. But it's one more reason an American Jew might not want to move there. Israel doesn't have much space to flee the refugees'(numerous) misbehaving children in the future.
No, we want our expats and every other Jew in the Diaspora to move to Israel. It has nothing to do with current events, it has been the basic aspiration and goal of the Zionist movement from its inception 120 years ago. I have confidence that we shall solve the African infiltration issue as we did with more difficult problems in the past.
Well, most diaspora Jews aren't interested in moving to Israel. We'll all see how well Israel handles the African infiltration issue, but I doubt that will be the last existential crisis Israel faces.
"I was expecting those who had made Alliyah to be more on the fanatic end of the spectrum"
This view, typical today due to media and demonization, and expressed above with the most innocent purposes, seems so bizarre to me.
Zionism: Wanting to survive (and hopefully even live with no fear), despite the unique situation* of being a Jew.
*i.e., nightmare
This is the desire of a "fanatic."
ram
It was, in fact, a North American Jew who described his son (who had gone to live in or near Ramallah), as a "fanatic Zionist"; and another old friend in South Africa who described his younger brother, who also tried it out in Israel, in similar terms.
I would not say we are getting these messages mainly from the media.
I think people who make Alliyah are not making an easy choice, and therefore have to be driven by something other than money. In the West, anyone who is driven by something other than money is, by definition, a "fanatic".
My view now is that those who go to Israel to take on the risks,hold the line, and abandon the security of their former lives in the US, South Africa, etc, are driven by a quiet sort of determination.
But they have to be driven by something.
Anon.
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