By Jeffrey Weiser , , Redmond
It isn’t easy to be a Jewish liberal these days. You agree with all your non-Jewish liberal friends on everything: Government control of health care, turning the world green, the mainstreaming of homosexuality, silencing Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, banishing religion from the public square, obliterating gender roles, and most importantly eating only organic food.
But one pesky little issue separates you from them and invites their scorn and ostracism: Israel. They hate Israel. They see Israel as the new South Africa, an oppressive little island of Western greed and exploitation in a vast peaceful sea of Third World authenticity and virtue. To liberals Israel is “an historical error” as Bertrand Russell used to say. It deserves no support.
But you cannot bring yourself to hate Israel. For one thing, making negative comments about Israel annoys your parents who remember 1967 and 1973 and maybe even 1948 when Israel’s life hung by a thread. And thinking about Israel awakens deep down in your soul a feeling of Jewish pride. Plucky little Israel, surrounded on all sides by rich, resourceful, implacable Arab enemies 50 times her size, knowing nothing but siege, terror, and war for 60 years, but by some miracle still there, still standing, still existing as a Jewish state, still gathering in all the Jews of the world who want to come, still showing the world that murdering another 6 million of us will not be as easy as the first time.
No, my liberal Jewish friend, you cannot bring yourself to hate Israel. But how do you get back in good standing with your non-Jewish liberal comrades? Have no fear, J Street is here. Yes, J Street (“First Stop: Seattle,” Aug. 21), the new liberal-oriented “pro-peace” Jewish lobbying organization that will lobby the American government to stop supporting Israel unless the Israeli government makes more concessions to the Arabs and pursues “peace” more aggressively. So there you are. At the next meeting of your liberal friends just show them your J Street membership card. You’ll be in like Flynn.