Americans can’t seem to have a real conversation about Israel. Who can teach them? Illustration by Forward Illustrations
Contributing Columnist
Sruli Fruchter
December 19, 2024
When it comes to American discourse on Israel, the Jewish state is usually either demonized — detractors claim everything it does is evil — or deified, with supporters saying everything it does is good. Both approaches are wrongheaded and dangerous.
Those pushing them could learn something from how Israelis themselves talk about Israel.
Over the last five months, as I have interviewed more than 20 Israeli thinkers across the religious and political spectrum for the podcast I host, 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers, I have seen them demonstrate how a nuanced perception of their homeland shapes the diverse cadre of Israel’s leading voices — and how sorely such nuance is lacking in the United States.
That disparity struck me with particular intensity several weeks ago, after a distressed listener emailed me with a painful question.
“I am at a loss as to how Israel can claim to truly be a democracy while denying West Bank Palestinians the right to vote,” the listener wrote. He cherished Israel’s Jewish and democratic nature, but was unsure how to reconcile that with non-citizen Palestinians’ limited rights. “I have not been able to shake this from my thoughts.”
I brought up that same dilemma two weeks later in my interview with Uri Zaki, a left-wing political thinker and activist. Zaki is a staunch Zionist and defender of Israel as a liberal democracy. Still, he had no issue decrying what he viewed as Israel’s “regime in Judea and Samaria” as the country’s “biggest moral problem.”
The listener who wrote the email that led to that question thanked me when the episode dropped. Zaki’s approach — loving Israel without denying its shortfalls — resonated with him.
Both political camps are largely able to both defend and rebuke Israel, often in surprising ways. In my conversation with Efraim Inbar, the right-leaning president of the Jerusalem Institute of Security and Strategy, Inbar criticized the Israeli government’s delay and unwillingness to handle the Iranian threat during the early days of the war. Nechumi Yaffe, a leftist Haredi professor of public policy, justified the necessity of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza but spoke out against the death and destruction the strip’s innocent civilians face.
While outsiders might see Israelis as a uniform body, the people who live here are more likely to recognize and experience each other as complicated individuals with good intentions. This does not negate Israel’s political and religious extremism; instead, it recognizes that the vast majority of Israelis are not so one-dimensional.
Too many black-and-white conclusions
The cost of the American demonization-deification divide, on the other hand, is a culture that shuts down meaningful discussions about Israel.
By vilifying Israel, the Jewish state’s opponents can ostracize Zionists, downplay Hamas’ crimes of Oct. 7, and call for armed resistance against Israel because, in their eyes, they are fighting evil — and evil has no nuance.
This dismissive attitude is also a convenient way to sidestep conversations about Israel that do not lend themselves to black-and-white conclusions.
Among those is a conversation about the function of war. Many academics refuse to acknowledge, in their discussions of Israel’s military response to Oct. 7, that war is sometimes necessary, said Netta Barak-Corren, a law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“I think sociologically, there is this growing sentiment that just war is bad” — a view that Barak-Cohen said is primarily expressed as “zero tolerance for any sort of civilian damage in war.” That approach, she believes, is “just divorced from reality.”
“Fighting wars comes with damage to civilians, even if one is doing the best they can to avoid it,” Barak-Corren explained. “It’s a very uneasy truth, but one that we must really face, especially if we want to minimize this harm.”
In a framework that suggests any war that exacts a civilian toll is evil, truly meaningful criticism of Israel — including of the high civilian casualties it has inflicted during the war, or extremist right-wingers’ aims to resettle Gaza — becomes impossible to make.
The privilege of imperfection
The demonization of Israel in the U.S. is partly why, I believe, the pro-Israel camp tends to reactively treat Israel as infallible. I understand the instinct to match extreme opposition to Israel with extreme support. But there are serious consequences to that approach.
Giving Israel a de facto green light of support is not always in the country’s best interest. Take, for example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push for judicial reform, which would create an imbalance of power by making the Supreme Court effectively powerless against the Knesset. It would be impossible for those who care about a strong, democratic Israeli future to confront the risks that move poses if they cannot even disagree with it.
Aside from sacrificing any expectations for what Israel ought to be, deification can alienate Israel’s supporters who have genuine, meaningful questions about the country’s policies and actions — but are led to believe that voicing such concerns is a betrayal of their support for the Jewish state. It’s a litmus test that is designed to fail.
This is also relevant for securing bipartisan U.S. support for Israel. If U.S. representatives are politically pressured into always agreeing with Israel’s government, no matter the circumstances, we risk polarizing them altogether.
I have spoken with many friends — and heard from many listeners — who grappled with their relationship with Israel after discovering something about the country that they found problematic. Why, I often ask others, can’t Israel be afforded the same privilege as every other country — the ability to be imperfect?
Criticism as commitment
At the same time, Israelis face their own limitations when it comes to conversations about serious concerns over their country’s conduct — particularly amid its expanding wars.
It’s easier for some to openly criticize Israel than others. Yaakov Katz, former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, critiqued Israeli media for not broadcasting the destruction in Gaza. Even while saying Hamas is responsible for the war’s devastation, Katz said Israelis must confront the brutal consequences of the conflict for Palestinian civilians.
But the Bedouin social activist Khitam Abu Bader told me that she fears speaking out, because she worries that others would misconstrue her sympathies for Gazan civilians as support for Hamas.
Still, I have seen Israelis of all different demographics embody perspectives that seem like they are increasingly impossible to express in the U.S. They can defend the war while criticizing the lack of a plan for Gaza; they can vocally support Israel retaining a fundamental Jewish character while worrying about religious extremism; they can denounce Israeli leadership without delegitimizing the entire country.
It is possible to oppose Israel’s actions or direction without calling for the country’s annihilation; it is possible to commit oneself to the Jewish state — to commit oneself to its future — even while actively disagreeing with it. The ideal form of criticism, the religious Zionist interfaith activist Rabbi Yaakov Nagen told me, is delivered in a way that “will bring greater good to the world, light to the world, and not darkness to the world.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
