"We felt like the Ramallah lynch." ....... the feeling of helplessness of a poor lonely victim, confronting the rage of a lynch mob and frantically realizing that these are his last moments, accurately reflect the current psychosis of the majority of the Israeli public........ a feeling of a society with a shared responsibility and destiny, but we have lost any other perspectives and are incapable of realizing that it is only we Israelis who feel this. We have hunkered down deep inside our collective bunker and have lost sight of any suffering or loss on the other side.
I don't want to use this column to discuss the shortcomings of Israeli hasbara, as the implications of this event go well beyond public relations in their significance. But one thing that was very clear to me on Monday, as I watched the Israeli media strategy unfold before the television cameras at the Ashdod port, was how all the professional spokespersons swiftly fell back on the same comforting tropes that appeal only to the Israeli public and a shrinking group of die-hard supporters overseas. Even the experienced professionals, who should know better, could do no more than to convince the already convinced......
If only we had some real friends, friends we could trust implicitly, who could point out the error of our ways. This could be the shining moment of the Jewish Diaspora. They love us, but they also see things from another perspective. We need a strong, unified voice from the Jewish leadership in the United States and Europe telling Israelis enough is enough, you are hurtling down the slippery slope of pariahdom and causing untold damage to yourselves and us. Lift your heads above the ramparts and see that the world has moved on.
Instead, we find the establishment of the Jewish world crouching with us in the bunker.
In his breathtaking analysis of the decline of secular Zionism in America, "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," which appeared in the New York Review of Books last month, Peter Beinart describes how the leaders of America's major Jewish organizations have succeeded in estranging an entire generation of young Jews from Israel "by defending virtually anything any Israeli government does." In doing so "they make themselves intellectual bodyguards for Israeli leaders who threaten the very liberal values they profess to admire." Beinart persuasively explains how this has convinced many young Jews that they have noting in common with a country whose policies contradict so much of what they have been brought up to believe in. But there is another damaging aspect to this cheerleading. Every Israeli cabinet minister who is greeted by cheering audiences during visits abroad fails to see all those who, disgusted, prefer to stay at home.
They return to Israel convinced that at least the Jewish people are still behind us and that our opponents are simply anti-Semitic. Other voices, such as the new lobbies JStreet and JCall, are ostracized by the establishment instead of being treated as what they really are, authentic voices for many concerned Jews.
When the history of the Jewish people in the early 21st century is written, the conclusion will be unavoidable. In its hour of need Israel was let down by the Diaspora."
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