Is Israel the Stepchild of American Jews?
It is a shocking story. It is certainly the epitome of the state of the new American Jewish attitude toward Israel. It also expresses the extreme diversity of the American Jewish community. This story took place in October 1999, when the United Jewish Communities (UJA), the Council of Jewish Federation, and the United Israel Appeal tried to award the murderer, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the P.L.O., its prestigious Isaiah Award! Today there are a million people who would like to take back the Nobel Prize for Peace from this enemy, which is the irony of history. It is no secret that, in the last twenty years, the Israel-America Jewish ‘love affair’ or ‘honeymoon’ is dead. It is a sort of ‘paradise lost.’ Israel lost its state of centrality and Jews here changed their posture from ‘defense’ to ‘offense.’ Many historical taboos are dead today. Israel was pushed to the margin of this ‘superman’ community. We have to face a process of ‘erosion’, an intensive process of de-Israelization. Je
