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The long-standing tension between the Jewish diaspora in the US and the Israeli government came to light this month, when Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich. and some right-wing Israeli lawmakers participated in the annual Israel Day Parade in New York City.
Like Smotrich, who He is said to be wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).joined a pro-Israel march down Fifth Avenue, encountered a band of “shame” and “war criminals” from the critics.
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Israel Day on Friday, as the event is known, has been opposed by many of the Jewish diaspora, who want to separate themselves from Israel. With the ongoing attack on Gaza and some of its builders on the parade, the June event has become the most controversial this year.
Smotrich was not surprised by calls from progressive Jewish activists in New York and linked the future of the community to Israel, a common term in Israeli and American politics.
“This is a great celebration – a great connection that unites the entire Jewish community around the world, bringing together Jews in Israel and Jews in the United States. This shared future has grown tremendously over the past three years,” he said. “The State of Israel is the home of all Jewish people. The security of Jews around the world depends on the strength and security of the State of Israel. There is no better place to live than in Israel.”
New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani fulfilled his election promise by leaps and bounds, which was welcomed by American Jewish organizations that oppose right-wing influence in Israeli politics.
“The Israel Day Parade, which features Israeli politicians who not only rejoice in killing Palestinians, but are part of a government that is committing genocide, is not a Jewish celebration or pride. @NYCMayor knows this. We are grateful that they are not attending,” said Israelis for Peace and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ).
Jewish activists in Europe and the US say they are frustrated by politicians like Smotrich using them and their religion to justify the killing of people in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.
They included groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States and Na’amod in the UK. They say that the oppression of Palestine is not compatible with the modern democratic principles that Israel claims to accept and oppose the idea that Israel, as a state, should be a definitive principle.
Against the contract
Emily Hilton, co-founder of Na’amod, says her anti-Israel sentiments were formed after the 2014 war in Gaza, particularly the killing of soldiers. four Palestinian children while playing football on the beach.
“I began to question the acceptability of the Zionist idea from university onwards,” Hilton told Al Jazeera. “I met liberal Zionists who would question Israeli politics, but it wasn’t until I went to University College London that I started meeting Jews and Palestinians who oppose Israel and what that means.”
Hilton also joined Jewish activists in the UK holding Jewish prayers for the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israel during the Great March of Return on the Gaza border in 2018. Later, he joined the eyes after the attack led by Hamas on October 7.
Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza has killed more than 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza and changed attitudes among the Jewish community around the world about their connection to the land.
“More and more people are realizing that we are right, Israel has lost the moral argument,” Hilton said. “Everything that used to be said is gone. Now, the only thing that remains is that it represents a well-known Jewish community, and even that seems to be small.”
The main political threat to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and opposition leader Yair Lapid, only disagree on the level at which discrimination and genocide should be implemented, said Hilton, and do not offer a better future for the Palestinian people.
“The claim that they are acting in my name is, frankly, disgusting.” “It doesn’t matter whether it’s the respectable racism that Lapid and Bennett promote or the violence and destruction that the government promotes, the problem is the system,” Hilton added.
“We must imagine a life beyond Zionism, one based on justice and equality.” The Israeli government is putting the Jewish people at risk by saying that we are somehow its foot soldiers.
Change of mind
Polls from the US and Europe show mixed feelings among Jews living outside of Israel. When others in the US and UK have said so feel a strong connection to Israel following international condemnation of the war in Gaza, many are leaving a country they see as waging violence in their name.
“For too long, American Jewish organizations have supported the actions of the Israeli government and acknowledged that their actions were for the sake of Jews everywhere,” Sonya Meyerson-Knox, Communications Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said. Al Jazeera.
“In doing so, they have not only supported the Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide of Palestinians, but they have also imprisoned and isolated Jews who oppose this, or try to hold the Israeli government accountable for their war crimes.”
The majority of American Jewish organizations continue to support Israel, Meyerson-Knox says, despite a “sea change” among the American Jewish community as a whole.
Support for Israel’s existence has long been a common thread among many Jews around the world, experts told Al Jazeera. But three years of Israeli attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Iraq – killing tens of thousands of people – have forced many to question that view.
“For many years, the issue of Israel has been a point of contact between Jews in the UK and the US. This is becoming less and less,” Keith Kahn-Harris, a sociologist and fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research told Al Jazeera. “(It) has revealed how many of the policies Israel had decades ago were not worth doing.”
He said that even though the unity between Israel is decreasing, and anti-Zionism is growing among the youth, we have not reached the point where many Jews doubt the future of Israel as a country. “They are there, but they have a long way to go,” he added.
