The Young Jews Shunning Israel and Building Radical New Communities

[Purveyor]

Growing up with the knowledge that you have a homeland, a country that was fought for in your name, to be a place of safety should you ever face persecution for your culture and your faith, is a comforting thought. This is what that the state of Israel promises the eight million Jews living in diaspora communities around the world.

The Israeli Government is mounting the pressure for us to make the move there, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling on Jews to relocate to the state: "I would like to tell all European Jews, and all Jews wherever they are: 'Israel is the home of every Jew... Israel is waiting for you with open arms,'" he said last year.

The problem is, for many young Jews right now, the modern state of Israel feels far from a home. A recent poll found that 47 percent of the UK's Jewish population believe that the Israeli government is "constantly creating obstacles to avoid engaging in the peace process." Three quarters said that the expansion of settlements on the West Bank is a "major obstacle to peace." Just under a third even said they wouldn't demand that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Annie Cohen is a London-based student and member of Jewdas, a new non-Zionist Jewish organization based in London, which uses the tagline "radical voices for the alternative diaspora." The group's aim—according to its website—is to harness the "great radicalism of Jewish tradition, a tradition of dreamers, subversives, cosmopolitans, and counter-culturalists" by "putting loyalty to ideas of international justice over tribalism and parochialism." The group is populated mostly by under-30s, and meets regularly, hosting cultural events and organizing political campaigns such as the refugee fundraiser "Beigels not Borders."

Organized communities in the diaspora seem unwilling to reflect this change in attitudes. The list of active, major Jewish youth movements in the UK are Zionist in their entirety, offering "unparalleled opportunities to meet other young Jewish people and to have fun whilst exploring personal connections to both Judaism and Israel."

more...

http://www.vice.com/read/meet-the-young-jews-shunning-israel-and-building-new-radical-communities

[COLGATE4]

1. The naivete of these young Jews is understandable,

although seriously misguided. They assume that Jews worldwide live in societies which are as tolerant and open to Jews as the U.K. (or the U.S.). Hopefully their learning process will be an academic rather than a practical one.

[Ken Burch]

2. There would be two horrible outcomes to every Jewish person moving to Israel.1

1)It would give make the rest of the world voluntarily Judenrein, which would be an unspeakable tragedy. Why give Hitler a posthumous victory?

2)It would force all of those who did move there to live under a government which will be right wing for the rest eternity. The truth is, if the West Bank settlers control Israeli politics now, they will never NOT control it. And no government controlled by the settlers can ever have progressive and humane values.

Why shouldn't those young people try to make communities where they actually live that reflect their values? Why, instead of that, should they spend time defending a state they have good reason to believe will NEVER represent the things they happen to stand for?