Why British Jewry Isn’t “Drifting Away” from Israel

A few years ago, in an essay titled “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” the American Jewish journalist Peter Beinart chastised the organized community for being out of touch with the critical view of Israel increasingly held by young American Jews. “For several decades,” wrote Beinart, “the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door. Now, to [its] horror, it is finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.”

Israel’s sin, according to Beinart, was its continuing occupation of Palestinian territories; only by terminating this heinous practice could the Jewish state hope to recover the affections of the next generation of American Jews. The job of Jews alarmed by the situation was to do everything in their power to save Israel from itself.

Although the views expressed by Beinart were not new—they had been circulating on the liberal left since the 1980s, if not since the late 1960s—he managed to capture the mood of that (Obama-influenced) moment in American Jewish life. And in one respect his analysis has been vindicated: it is now widely believed that large portions of U.S. Jewry, especially but not only the young, are indeed drifting away from Israel.