The Israeli government proceeds as if none of this matters. Its preoccupation, naturally enough, is with its domestic constituency — the voters of the upper Galilee and not the donors of the Upper West Side. Not only don’t American Jews vote in Israel, but as Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely dismissively put it, they don’t serve in the army, either. Just as important, the vast majority of American Jews are not Orthodox, and they resent the hold that the very religious have over Israeli political life. As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.
For moderate or liberal Jews — in other words, for the 76 percent who did not vote for Donald Trump — Israel has become like a relative who always has to be explained. While religious restrictions matter a great deal, the overriding issue is the future of the West Bank — whether, along with the Gaza Strip, it will comprise a future Palestinian state or whether Israel will simply swallow it. This is usually called a one-state or a two-state solution. Another way of putting it is whether Israel will remain a Jewish democracy or will need to repress a Palestinian majority far into the future. [...]
But he is also somewhat typical. He is one of many retired generals or intelligence chiefs who favor a two-state solution. These are men who would not trifle with Israel’s security, and so when Netanyahu argues, as he has, that a Palestinian state would become a terrorist enclave, Barak and others insist otherwise. They can handle the situation.
In the meantime, Israel is increasingly criticized. On American campuses, it is routinely accused of being a racist and colonial power. Not so. But American Jews on those very campuses find it harder and harder to mount a defense. The continuing occupation of the West Bank and the Trumpian persona of Netanyahu leave them mute. Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the liberal pro-Israel group J Street and a frequent campus speaker, finds that many college students feel a contradiction between what they believe are Jewish values and the policies of the Netanyahu government.
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