Portside

An amazing turn for a major leader of the American Jewish mainstream - David Gordis rethinking view of Israel. He writes: Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal and the visionary. These values have been subordinated to a cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism, severe inequalities...and distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.

The idea of Israel has long been an integral part of Jewish-American identity. But with a generational change among American Jews and increasingly stark political differences with Israel's leadership, could this be the dawn of a new era?

1938-five years after Hitler came to power, after the beginning of the "Final Solution", Jewish refugees were denied entry into the United States. Then it was anti-Semitism and fear of European radicals and communists; today it is anti-Muslim hysteria. Then the U.S. closed its' eyes to the Holocaust; today GOP governors and congressmen are closing the borders while over 250,000 have died in Syria, there are over 3 million refugees and 6.5 million are internally displaced

As Jewish New Yorkers, we firmly believe that no community can ever be safe through the oppression of another. Your advocacy of broken windows policing while in Israel reinforces the Israeli government's ongoing policies of discrimination against Palestinians. The military occupation of Palestinian communities, political and economic exclusion ...and discriminatory and violent policing by the military and police do not increase the safety of the Jewish people.

More than three-fifths of American Jews who express an opinion support the Iran deal, compared with a bit more than half of Americans overall. But among the official “Jewish leaders,” this is hardly the case. Plainly, the idea that American Jews speak as a monolithic bloc needs early retirement. So does the idea that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads, or represents, the world’s Jews.

Thousands of Israeli Jews, many of them young and educated Tel Avivians, are casting their ballots with the country's perennial underdog...For the past 15 years I've been active in Hadash, but now, because the Joint List will be an even more powerful force in the Knesset, I feel more motivated than ever to vote,' says the 32-year-old doctoral student in anthropology. 'There is a real opportunity now to make a difference.'

The long-standing bipartisan support for Israel even as it continues to flout international law and undermine the possibility for peace has long been an anomaly in U.S. politics. That’s why those of us who have long advocated change in U.S. policy towards Israel see the growing backlash against the speech as a hopeful sign.

Today the U.S. government treats immigrants from Latin America the way liberated Jews were treated after World War II. Then a presidential aid reported: "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops." Our nation of immigrants treats modern immigrants with arrest and detention; and modern immigrant (concentration) camps.

Israel is not my birthright writes a U.S. Jewish author, raised to think the country was ours by divine right. But this horror in Gaza has challenged even my deepest beliefs. The Haaretz' Gaza reporter, daughter of Holocaust survivors, writes, 'If victory is measured by the success at causing lifelong trauma to 1.8 million people (and not for the first time) waiting to be executed any moment - then the victory is yours.'

What excites me most about the Jews and Arabs Refuse to Be Enemies campaign is that I’ve been retweeted by people I know don’t share my politics; whom I’d ordinarily be getting into online bitch-fights with. But despite our differences, they saw something in that message they could connect with, and it gives me hope.