There is a narrative about the trajectory of the American Jewish relationship with Israel that pervades all corners of the organized Jewish community today. “For millions of secular-minded American Jews, Israel was the glue. Israel was the cause,” declared conservative commentator Bret Stephens at the American Jewish Committee’s 2022 Global Forum. “Zionism was an effective and powerful and emotionally satisfying substitute for religious observance,” he continued, bemoaning that in contrast, “at the height of last year’s war [the 2021 Gaza crisis], so many young American Jews were eagerly signing letters denouncing Israeli behavior.”
While young American Jewish letter-signers may not appreciate Stephens’ tone, they probably would not dispute the gist of his historical observation, which is considered common knowledge both in Jewish political commentary and in scholarly works. For decades, American Jews had rallied around the Jewish state, with Israel uniting American Jewry in a way that nothing else could, including religion. But then at some point, according to this telling, young left-wing Jews began criticizing Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians, breaking with past generations to shatter this once-sacred consensus and imperil any semblance of Jewish unity.
Despite its ubiquity, this narrative is flawed in its basic assumptions. Ever since an estimated 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes amidst Israel’s birth in 1948, there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule. These critics of old consisted not only of a few stray rabbis like Morris Lazaron, but in fact extended well into the American Jewish establishment—including leaders and staff members of the AJC. The collective amnesia with regard to this history has been complete: None of the over 1,000 AJC members in Stephens’ audience likely had any idea that in 1957 their organization’s president confronted Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, urging him to liberalize Israel’s policies toward its Arab citizens. The audience would not have known that at an AJC gala 66 years before their own, the Jewish advocacy organization announced a plan to aid Palestinian refugees that it ultimately shelved in response to Israeli pressure. And unless they had sifted through faded yellow papers in their archives, they could not have known that the first Middle East expert on the AJC’s staff, Don Peretz, lost his job because Israeli diplomats did not like his research on the Palestinian refugee issue.