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American Jews

As we observed during the US presidential election of 2020, the presumption that tolerance and pluralism connote openness and acceptance is false. American Jews in particular have once again been forced to choose between their “pluralistic” tolerance and their Jewish identity.   
President Trump is exceptionally unpopular among secular American Jews, despite his groundbreaking approach to Middle East peace and active efforts on Israel’s behalf. Many American Jews have simply stopped caring about both Israel and Judaism, a point that has not escaped the notice of the American elites. If Jews stop caring about themselves, nobody else will.
The necessity of a Jewish nation state was a foundational premise for the founding fathers of Zionism, no matter what their political persuasion. That understanding was once shared by most American Jews, particularly in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Today, however, the idea of Jewish statehood is no longer a unifying principle but a wedge issue for American Jews.
Jewish anti-Zionism emerged in central Europe in the early nineteenth century as a response to anti-Semitic claims that Jews were unfit for many civic rights because they constituted a separate nation. Central European Jewish immigrants to the United States later in the century brought their anti-Zionism with them and made it a staple of Reform Judaism in America. The influx of pro-Zionist eastern European Jews, together with the Shoah and the founding of Israel, resulted in a dramatic rise in pro-Zionist opinion among American Jews, including within the Reform movement. But the persistent predilection to appease anti-Jewish opinion by seeking to accommodate anti-Jewish indictments has always had some negative impact on support for Israel among American Jews. In recent decades, as groups within the wider society with whom many American Jews identify have become increasingly critical of and even hostile towards Israel, major segments of the Jewish community have chosen cultivation of their links with those groups over the defense of the well-being of the Jewish state.

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