As Genesis records the incident in its Chapter 22, our forefather Abraham was tested. A test to the extreme. He was instructed to bind his only son, Isaac, and to prepare to sacrifice him when a heavenly voice told him, “Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now, I know that you fear God.”
Abraham proved his allegiance, but it would appear to most, if not all of us, that there was no need for his commitment to serving God to be carried in such a soul-wrenching manner as sacrificing his own child.
Isaac lived to originate the Hebrew people’s genealogy until this day, a people proscribed, as we read in Leviticus 18 and 20, from “giving children to Moloch,” the practice of child sacrifice.
In a contemporary setting, a new generation of Jews seems to have forgotten or is ignoring that lesson by being willing to participate in an activity that would harm fellow Jews.
They appear to be willing to participate in a new form of sacrificial idolatry. Not only do they lend support to those of Israel’s enemies who intend to kill our children and infants in the name of “Free Palestine,” but they further extend their backing to a terror group, Hamas, which does not mind sacrificing its own children, callously furthering that goal to achieve their political goals.
Prizker's message
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish, endorsed a US Senate push to block arms sales to Israel in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on August 10. He termed it “the right kind of message” to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding his starving Gazans. The limitations of those arms sales were introduced by Jewish Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, home of the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, who boycott Israel – or attempted to do so.
As Yoram Blachar, a pediatrician and the past president of the World Medical Association who is deeply involved in medical ethics, published in the August 16 issue of The Lancet, Hamas plays a negative active role in the situation of Gaza’s health crisis. By seizing the humanitarian aid supplies, resorting to violence against the embattled enclave’s residents in doing so, and then selling the goods at black market prices, the terrorist group is brutally contributing to that crisis.
Although Jewish anti-Zionism has been with us since the mid-19th century, among Jews from Reform to the ultra-Orthodox, as well as Communists and Bundists, the current shift, in its essence and form, most probably took shape following the publication of a 2010 essay by Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” published in The New York Review of Books.
His perception of a failure of the American Jewish establishment included his charge that they practice an “uncritical Zionism.” They “check their liberalism at Zionism’s door,” and what is held up to be “liberal democratic Zionism” has actually “been drained of meaning.”
Einstein, Arendt, and others
As an example of the leadership he desires, Beinart pines for the 1948 letter from Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others to The New York Times, “protesting right-wing Zionist leader Menachem Begin’s visit to the United States after his party’s militias massacred Arab civilians in the village of Deir Yassin.”
Since then, Beinart has wandered off along the path of an increasing rejection of Israeli government actions until eventually, in June 2020, he published an op-ed in The New York Times where he expressed himself as no longer believing in a Jewish state.
By that time, his true-believers were gathered in various groups, from Jewish Voice for Peace to IfNotNow to the New Jewish Narrative and now Smol Emuni ("Religious Left") US, a new religious-Zionist group, among others deeply embedded in the camp of the angry-if-ignorant Jewish youth seeking solace in the woke progressive movement.
While not a mass movement, they were the “leaven in the dough.” They provided cover and justification not only for radical leftists to oppose Israel, but for Arabs to do so as well.
They are recreating the popular, united front phenomenon of the 1930s and 1940s when self-defeating alliances allowed Jew haters to flourish politically.
Even worse, in Milan Kundera’s phrase, historical amnesia has been allowed to set in.
J Street says it blames Netanyahu
While not an anti-Zionist organization, J Street exhibits the effect of this destructive wave. On August 15, the liberal Zionist advocacy and lobby group mailed out a “resource” bemoaning that its “community is facing a painful moment of moral reckoning – one made even harder by the spin, deflections, and calculated distractions churned out daily by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.” The resource’s contents promise to facilitate “tough conversations” and will help “meet those conversations with clarity and conviction.”
One subject covered is the claim that “Egypt could open the border to aid at any moment” and alleviate aid problems in Gaza. This is rejected as “misleading.”
Why? “Israel maintains effective control of the Gaza-Egypt crossing,” and “even if Egypt fully opened Rafah, trucks can’t cross without Israeli clearance.”
What about the non-distribution of the aid by the NGOs even when it crosses into Gaza?
As for the claim that “There is no starvation in Gaza,” they counter that there is an impact of an earlier blocking by “Netanyahu’s government [of] all humanitarian aid – including food and medicine and baby formula and childhood vaccinations.”
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert is then quoted as saying “a violation of international law” is apparent and, in any case, “we cannot trust the spin on [sic] a government which has said it has the right to block humanitarian aid” and that “Netanyahu’s government is not credible.” And on it goes.
J Street is an important organization for two reasons. It asserts that it is “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace.” Moreover, it is deeply connected to Democratic members of Congress as well as members of those politicians’ staff. I myself have participated in their briefing sessions.
Nevertheless, by a priori rejecting the facts in the counter-arguments of Israel’s government and not just disagreeing with that government’s policies, its approach is a form of pro-Palestinian idolatry, of preferring their cause over the Jewish one.
As a people, we are coming close to a breaking point. We’re already sliding down the slope of sacrificing our brethren and children to our enemies, even if the effort is well-intended. That point must not be reached.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.