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SCHUMER SPOKE FOR DIASPORA JEWS  
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Harold Meyerson
March 19, 2024
The American Prospect
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_ Schumer was giving voice to what most Democratic officeholders
believed but were afraid to say, and he clearly had the blessing of
President Biden to go ahead and make that speech. It also showed the
divide between Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews. _

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer departs the U.S. Capitol, March
14, 2024, the day of his speech denouncing Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu., (Francis Chung/Politico Via AP Images // The American
Prospect)

 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s speech last week excoriating
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for his conduct of the Gaza war and
calling for him to step down (and not incidentally, raising the
specter of conditioning America’s hitherto unconditional aid to
Israel) has brought forth a host of assessments: Schumer was giving
voice to what most other Democratic officeholders believed but were
afraid to say; he was also giving voice to the sentiments of most
rank-and-file Democrats and most American Jews; and he clearly had the
blessing of President Biden to go ahead and make that speech.

All those assessments are true, but there’s one more that needs to
be made: Schumer’s speech also illuminated in dramatic fashion the
fundamental differences between Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews.

For reasons of self-preservation, diaspora Jews are strong proponents
of minority rights—and not just minority rights for themselves. When
they’ve been confronted with Hillel’s second question—_If I am
only for myself, what am I?_—the answer they’ve come up with has
usually been: _politically very weak_. Hence, they’ve tended to
become strong proponents of minority rights across the board, joining
campaigns for equal rights for Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, gays and
lesbians, and so on. That’s long positioned them on the left side of
the political spectrum, so much so that, in a reciprocal causal
relationship impossible to disentangle, being on the left side has
kept them as defenders of minority rights.

Israel, of course, is the one nation where Jews constitute the
majority. The structural imperatives that lead most diaspora Jews to
staunchly defend minority rights no longer pertain when Jews are an
empowered majority, most particularly when they view their nation’s
(or territory’s) minority population as a latent or very real force
contesting for power—and, perhaps, with the possibility of becoming
the majority themselves. Most liberal Israeli Jews accept the idea of
co-existence, but their number was dwindling even before October 7th.

But wasn’t Israel initially a democratic socialist state,
establishing communal institutions for its Jews that were the envy of
their leftist diaspora co-religionists? Doesn’t that dispel the
notion of an inherent gulf between diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews?

I don’t think it does. For one thing, the Ashkenazi Jews who
formulated the Labor Zionism that characterized Israel in its early
decades had chiefly become socialists while still in Eastern and
Central Europe, where they were a hated and threatened minority. Like
those who migrated to Palestine, those who migrated to America were
also disproportionately socialist when they arrived at Ellis Island,
building institutions and unions here along socialist lines until the
New Deal opened a way for them to become a welcomed minority within a
powerful majority that had state power. In both Israel and America,
that Ashkenazi strain of socialism faded after three or four decades,
but the minority status of American Jews persisted, as did their
strong inclination to champion minority rights. Despite the prominence
and power that American Jews have attained, however provisionally, the
muscle memory of minority status and the liberal social democratic
tendencies that came with it have anchored most of them on the left
side of American politics.

Having a nation of one’s own can tend to erode such politics.
That’s not a condition peculiar to Israeli Jews; it’s a condition
common to most peoples and nations. In Israel, it’s exacerbated by
Palestinians’ claim to land and power, and greatly exacerbated by
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, as occupations invariably
brutalize not just the occupied but the occupiers, too.

Which returns us to Schumer’s speech, and the events that compelled
him to make it. While a longtime champion of Israel, Schumer voiced
the revulsion and horror common to most diaspora Jews (AIPAC
notwithstanding) at Israel’s war on Palestinian civilians and the
ethnic cleansing that Bibi’s government is violently undertaking,
whether by bombardment or starvation. He also voiced the exasperation
of diaspora Jews at Bibi’s obdurate opposition to a two-state
solution.

There are American Jews, of course, who fully support Bibi’s war,
just as there are Israeli Jews who’ve long called for a two-state
solution. And, to be sure, the kind of rift that’s now opened up
between the Israelis and the diasporans, to which Schumer’s speech
has given a kind of official imprimatur, hasn’t always or invariably
been so acute, or even that visible. But it’s always been there,
like a geologic fault that, under sufficient pressure, yields an
earthquake.

We’re feeling that earthquake now.

_[HAROLD MEYERSON is editor at large of The American Prospect
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_Read the original article at Prospect.org
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_Used with the permission. © The American Prospect
[[link removed]], Prospect.org, 2024 [[link removed]].
All rights reserved. _

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