The recent fighting between Israel and Hamas once again forced American Jews to pick sides: Israel versus their universal ideals, which they see as incompatible with the Zionist enterprise. A case in point: a group of American rabbinical students enrolled in non-Orthodox institutions issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for its alleged "violent suppression of human rights."

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In many ways, these rabbinical students are a microcosm of young American Jews, who see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the American prism of race compounded by the formula of diversity, equity and inclusion that is dominant in American society today. It also coincides with today's quasi-religious practice of being seen performing acts of "justice" rather than participating in worship or prayer.

The rabbis-to-be state in their letter, "Our institutions have been reflecting and asking, 'How are we complicit with racial violence? … And yet, so many of those same institutions are silent when abuse of power and racist violence erupts in Israel and Palestine."

This begs the question – do these caring individuals understand what Hamas is and what it stands for?

An offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as it proudly pronounces in its Charter, Hamas has always been very clear about its goals and methods. A glance at the Hamas Charter makes them explicit: the Islamic Resistance Movement "strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine," "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it," and "Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement."

Lest any of that fail to clarify the group's mission, the Charter makes the following unequivocal statement:

"[T]he Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.'"

Hamas Political Bureau member and former Interior Minister Fathi Hammad recently called on the "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there [at the back of the neck], and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels. With those five shekels, you will humiliate the Jewish state."

The future American rabbis embody apathy, religious ignorance and the deliberate substitution of "social justice" for traditional Jewish liturgy. This accounts for their decline in engagement with Israel. These liberal and American instincts highlight the danger of placing antipathy toward the Jewish state of Israel at the center of religious belief. The growth of disdain and guilt regarding Israel within American Jewry is particularly acute on the cultural left, which is trying to grapple with what Zionism means to them, their children and their grandchildren in the absence of any strong feelings about Judaism or fellow Jews.

The misplaced sense of guilt is deliberately amplified by statements emanating from members of the pro-Hamas "squad," such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who stated: "Too many are silent or dismissive as our U.S. tax dollars continue to be used for this kind of inhumanity. I am tired of people functioning from a place of fear rather than doing what's right because of the bullying by pro-Israel lobbyists. This is apartheid, plain and simple."

She later stated at a rally in front of the U.S. State Department, during which she accused Israel of engaging in "ethnic cleansing," that "what they are doing to the Palestinians is what they are doing to our black brothers and sisters here. As you all are marching for the freedom of Palestine, please know that you must be marching for everybody's freedom. It's all interconnected."

Young American Jews, in particular, wrestle with Zionism, which in the 21st century has become a source of debate, controversy, embarrassment and guilt as they try to come to terms with the activities of the Jewish state and its elected officials. Consequently, many seek to detach themselves from what used to embody the core of modern Jewish identity.

Historically, from the pre-state era through the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, there was an appreciation of Israel – not only as the fulfillment of the ancient longing for return, but also as a safe haven. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the threat of annihilation was understood to be real. Zionism was viewed as part and parcel of American Jewish identity, especially in the years leading up to 1967. There was no contradiction between being a liberal American and a Jew.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis expressed this well: "Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism … There is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry. The Jewish spirit, the product of our religion and experiences, is essentially modern and essentially American … Indeed, loyalty to America demands rather that each American Jew become a Zionist. For only through the ennobling effect of its striving can we develop the best that is in us and give to this country the full benefit of our great inheritance."

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Today, in contrast to Brandeis, the ideology of liberal groups is more Marxist than democratic, aiming for "equity" rather than equality. So in Marx's footsteps, they create social revolutions through identity politics and do their best to undermine the American value structure. So far, this effort has been unsuccessful, given that the United States is still grounded in nationalistic anchors that are absent in Europe.

But sturdier Zionist anchors are needed within the Jewish community to overcome self-reproach over Israel's existence. Collective historical memory is lacking from today's discourse on Zionism, especially in America. While there are Zionists on the left and right who still appreciate Jewish history and believe in Jewish destiny, Zionist renewal outside Zion is needed.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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Leo Strauss describes in his classic work Natural Right and History how the Left came to espouse intolerance as a value: "When liberals became impatient of the absolute limits to diversity or individuality that are imposed even by the most liberal version of natural right, they had to make a choice between natural right and the uninhibited cultivation of individuality. They chose the latter.

"Once this step was taken, tolerance appeared as one value or ideal among many, and not intrinsically superior to its opposite. In other words, intolerance appeared as a value equal in dignity to tolerance."

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Strauss goes on to observe that "[l]iberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance."

Historically, American politics has long been drawn toward the center, but identity politics, overreaction to Donald Trump and the rise of American Socialists may have short-circuited that corrective impulse. To many Democrats, nationalism – and indeed, the very concept of nationhood – is increasingly anathema. The idea of a people with sovereignty defies the fluid, borderless world they wish to see. Antipathy towards traditional religion is similarly expressed, including among American Jewry.

Generally speaking, American Jews have long viewed their political and religious diversity as a source of both strength and weakness. It is now a source of intolerance. Consequently, the Jewish community is filled with ignorance and apathy regarding Israel and subject to class-based pressure to be seen as "woke." This has prompted moves that directly contradict broader communal self-interest.

As we saw during the 2020 election, many American Jews vocally supported Joe Biden and the Democratic Party despite the antipathy towards Israel expressed by many of the party's candidates and the empowering effects on left-wing anti-Semitism. Biden was to be preferred simply because he was not Trump.

Journalists like Peter Beinart have been name-calling and "outing" anyone to the right of them. This includes just about all of Israeli society, which Beinart believes is "more and more racist"; and the American Jewish community, which in his view rudely "inhabits an insular cocoon" with no compassion for the Palestinians. In June 2017, groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) launched the "Deadly Exchange" campaign, which aims to "end police exchange programs between the US and Israel." JVP claims that American Jewish organizations and programs are to blame for police violence against minorities in the United States.

While it is true that no group is monolithic in its politics, American Jews, by and large, have proven willing to put their theological belief system aside in the name of a perceived pluralism that generates intolerance.

Even Herbert Marcuse, celebrated in the media as the "father of the New Left," identified what he called "repressive tolerance":

"[T]he practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strengthening the oppressed against the oppressed. Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled.

"As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side,' I maintain that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition. To tolerate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy."

Throughout the US presidential campaign and in the weeks following the election, Biden continued to repeat that he would be a president for all Americans and not just his constituents. Democrats and leftist Jews are breathing a sigh of relief that he was elected, but we are still far from the center.

Far-left icon Noam Chomsky has called Biden "an empty vessel."

"I don't think he has any firm principles. He's up against the DNC [Democratic National Committee], which runs the party and is basically the Wall Street wing. And if he tries anything progressive, the Supreme Court is there to block it. Trump and [Kentucky Sen. Mitch] McConnell are responsible for staffing the entire judiciary, bottom to top, with far-right justices who can block almost anything progressive that comes along."

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America's civic nationalism is rarely defended or articulated, even by its advocates, against such selective and cynical rejection of the very idea of the nation as expressed by Women's March co-organizer Tamika Mallory in her answer to the question of whether Jews are "natives" to their land and whether Israel "has a right to exist." "I just don't feel that everyone has a right to exist at the disposal of another group," she said. Malapropism aside, while "no human being is illegal," Jews are to be stateless. A telling statement about how tolerated Jews really are.

Strauss's observation about intolerance appearing as a "value equal in dignity to tolerance" is exactly what we are observing in the American Jewish community today.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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In his 1974 book Palestinians and Israel, the late Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote that following the 1967 Six-Day War: "The collision with the Palestinians is presented as the essence of the conflict, for this is allegedly a struggle for national liberation. Arabs explain, especially to foreigners, that the antagonism is not that of large Arab states versus a small state like Israel but of an oppressed people against a strong, colonialist oppressive state. … The focus of the conflict has shifted. It is not between states but between a government and a people struggling for its liberation, which by definition is a just war that deserves support."

Over the years, the struggle became not only just but even divine.

A binary understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict has dominated thinking for decades. The conflict is presumed to be unsolvable as it is caught between demands for Israel's total destruction and the inevitability of Arab-Palestinian exile and political oblivion.

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But the paradigm may have shifted following the Abraham Accords and Israel's normalization with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. Even the Saudis have noticed the change, as illustrated by a recent statement by the former director-general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud. He openly criticized Palestinian leaders with these words:

"The Palestinian cause is a just cause but its advocates are failures, and the Israeli cause is unjust but its advocates have proven to be successful. There is something that successive Palestinian leadership historically share in common: they always bet on the losing side, and that comes at a price."

This damning statement from a traditional Palestinian ally raises the question of the Palestinian endgame and, more importantly, the centrality of – and fatigue with – the Palestinian struggle in the Arab world.

Historically, the Palestinian cause was the glue that kept that Arab world united in animus towards the Zionist entity and its presumed threat. Throughout his career, Yasser Arafat's ultimate goal was to make the Palestinian issue the flagship cause of the Arab world, which, he argued, should not rest until the Palestinians received the justice they are divinely owed.

Arafat was largely successful in this regard – though not necessarily to the benefit of the Palestinian people, who were used by many Arab regimes and Islamist groups as a tool with which to galvanize support for their own causes. Arafat was the walking symbol of the Palestinian cause, but since his death, the Palestinian leadership has struggled to keep the cause front and center.

So long as the glue was sticking across the Arab world, the PLO's 1974 Phased Plan remained intact: Through the "armed struggle" (i.e., terrorism) to establish an "independent combatant national authority" over any territory that is "liberated" from Israeli rule (Article 2);  to continue the struggle against Israel, using the territory of the national authority as a base of operations (Article 4); and to provoke an all-out war in which Israel's Arab neighbors destroy it entirely ("liberate all Palestinian territory") (Article 8).

The plan was feasible only as long as all roads to peace went through Ramallah. It allowed Israelis to be convinced that peace was at hand, and allowed Arafat and then his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, to sell the "struggle for peace" to the Palestinian people knowing full well that they believed the end result would be a one-state solution. As always, self-delusion and deception go hand in hand.

But what happens when the Palestinian cause loses its grip on the Arab street?

Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari correctly observed that a "concept which was destroyed by the intifada is what is called in Arabic 'istiqlaliyat al-Qarar al-falastini,'" which means the complete and total independence of Palestinian decision-making on issues relating to Palestine. A companion Palestinian slogan was "no Arab wisayah," which translates to "no Arab patronage, sponsorship, interference, or intervention."

When Arafat began his political career in the 1950s, he ran on these catchphrases, denouncing the Arab world for betraying the Palestinians in 1948. This became the core of the Fatah movement.

The PLO's basic strategy was in line with Abu Iyad's (Salah Mesbah Khalaf, PLO deputy chief and head of intelligence under Arafat) 1971 statement that it had "no right" to negotiate a settlement but must keep struggling, "even if they cannot liberate a single inch," to preserve the option to regain all of Palestine someday. In 1984, he still thought so: "Our steadfastness and our adherence to our land is our only card. … We would rather be frozen for 10 more years than move toward treason."

Abu Iyad further believed that a PLO victory would bring a revolution and transformation to the Palestinians, saying, "The struggle itself was transforming Palestinians from 'poor helpless refugees' into heroic combatants."

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In short, the struggle is the endgame.

Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz summed up armed struggle this way:

"If one side cannot completely disarm the other, the desire for peace on either side will rise and fall with the probability of further successes and the amount of effort these would require. If such incentives were of equal strength on both sides, the two would resolve their political disputes by meeting halfway. If the incentive grows on one side, it should diminish on the other. Peace will result so long as their sum total is sufficient – though the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain."

Clausewitz's last point is the key. While each party must feel equally rewarded by peace, in the Palestinian case it will be a zero-sum game for as long as the struggle remains more attractive than the alternative.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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More perverse are the uses of Jewishness to make passionate pleas for the Palestinian cause and the assertion that Jewishness is somehow based on pro-Palestinian beliefs as a "progressive" value. For American Jews on the far-left, as for Arab Palestinians, the events of 1948 are the evergreen ancestral sin.

Consequently, the bipartisan consensus on Israel has eroded considerably.

True, we have heard articulate strong support for Israel's security; even the liberals within the Democratic Party stood up to the progressives and managed to squash some of the harsh language against Israel. The new normalized relations with the UAE – in lieu of applying sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, and the Jordan Valley – is a game-changer for Israeli-Arab relations.

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So while Israel failed to get the Trump administration's support for sovereignty, establishing normal relations with the UAE and other pragmatic Arab states is something the Democrats cannot avoid, which irks them given the results it produces in terms of larger regional stability, proving that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not drive Middle East diplomacy.

While it is also true that the Trump plan adheres to the main principle upon which Democrats base their own policy on (the "two-state solution"), there are considerable gaps between the practicalities of this principle between the two parties and the understandings of Israel's security requirements. There are also concerns regarding Iran (including the 2015 Iran nuclear deal) and the conflict between the pragmatists, who are supported by the Republicans, and the sophisticated radicals (Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood), who are supported by parts of the Democratic Party. These disagreements represent deep ideological different worldviews.

If elected, the Biden administration will likely try to resurface the two most litigious issues seen during the Obama years in its relations with Israel – namely, centering the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the so-called "occupation" and reviving the nuclear deal, both of which stand in stark contrast to regional reality. The ultimate question is to what extent does the normalization with the UAE highlight the gap, and is it enough to deter pursuing these policies given their pervasiveness on North American college campuses and in left-wing American circles.

A motto to consider is long live the status quo – both in terms of the language of the platforms and the accompanying policies.

Of course, Palestinian activists continue to express their displeasure with the language regarding Israel in the plank of the 2020 Democratic National Committee platform, which could be seen during a webinar hosted by the Arab American Institute (AAI). In his remarks, James Zogby, AAI's president, did underscore that this year's process was more welcoming to the Palestinian narrative and their supporters than in prior election cycles, but still expressed frustration that the 2020 platform did not reference the so-called "occupation," condemning the settlement enterprise or advocating for conditioning US aid to Israel.

Zogby argued that the leaders of the party caved to pressure from the pro-Israel community for political reasons. "It's not about policy, ever. It's really about politics. And it's sort of a power pull. It's a question of who can make who jump through hoops. … We were always on the downside of that debate. In this case, they did it again; they wouldn't let those words in the platform just to show who's boss."

To his credit, Zogby has always been on message pontificating on Jordanian TV back in 1990, how a powerful Arab lobby could conquer the campuses and media by allying the Palestinians with the American left – 1960s' radicals who are now tenured professors, African-American student groups, and, above all, Jewish progressives. Clearly, he and colleagues in the American progressive left have followed their playbook to a tee.

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It's no surprise that many of these groups have been attracted to the BDS movement, which did get an encouraging boost in the verbiage used, saying that the party opposes "any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, while protecting the constitutional right of our citizens to free speech." Zogby saw the second article as essentially annulling the previous anti-BDS language as a rejection of the state-level anti-BDS legislation that has been supported and adopted by more than 30 states.

The Trump presidency has brought clarity on many domestic and foreign-policy issues. Yet the knee-jerk automated Democratic reaction to the president, which includes anything he says or does, must be opposed in hysterical terms. Some of the reactions represent a real bursting forth of tensions that have lingered for decades. And opposition to Israel is one of them.

The Democratic generation gap is palpable. Old-timers like Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and until late, Eliot Engel (D-NY)are genuinely pro-Israel, while the young guard – exemplified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) – is not. Indeed, they may exemplify the new Democratic Party more than anything, where far-left identity politics meets demographic shifts, Socialist economics and an obsessive hatred of Israel. Tlaib and Omar also espouse a conspiratorial mindset and a willingness to consort with Islamists who support Hamas and Hezbollah.

But the debate over Israel also reveals something about America itself. The very fact there is a debate – with progressive Democrats at the firing line and older Democrats perplexing what hit them, and the Republicans competing to see who can defend Israel more with laws opposing BDS and endorsing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights – all reflect the significant place that Israel has in American political and cultural life. Not only oversized but emblematic, not the result of 'Jewish power,' or the 'third rail of American politics,' but something genuinely rooted in the American experience.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser led the Research and Assessment Division of Israeli Military Intelligence. He is currently a senior project director at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Asaf Romirowsky is executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a senior non-resident fellow at the BESA Center and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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In Blue and White leader Benny Gantz's first campaign speech, he attempted to take shots at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the process, he provided telling clues about his attitude toward American Jews: "In a month and a half, we will all choose between a ruler who has English from Boston, heavy makeup and luxury suits – and an Israeli leadership that is real, caring, authentic and not phony."

Gantz attacked Netanyahu for the education he received at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the time he spent in the United States representing Israel at the United Nations and elsewhere:

"When I lay in muddy foxholes with my soldiers on frozen winter nights, you, Benjamin Netanyahu, left Israel to improve your English and practice it at luxurious cocktail parties. … On the days when I commanded the Shaldag combat unit in life-threatening operations on enemy soil, you, Benjamin Netanyahu, worked your way bravely and determinedly between makeup sessions in television studios. While I trained generations of commanders and fighters, you took acting lessons in a New York studio."

Netanyahu grew up in Philadelphia and did not need to improve his English. He has just as much Israeli pedigree as does Gantz, including combat service in the Israel Defense Forces. The dig was nevertheless clear and direct: American Jews, or those behave like them, cannot be seen as full-fledged Israelis.

Notwithstanding this attitude, Gantz attended the recent AIPAC 2019 conference in Washington, D.C. There, he addressed tens of thousands of pro-Israel Americans, vowing to strengthen the strategic alliance with the United States in the political arena, as well as in the battle against terror. In so doing, he signaled that he needs the American Jewish community, albeit on his own terms.

But why should the Israeli melting pot be selective?

While Israelis have embraced American pop culture and like to build economic and cultural bridges, American history and politics are lost on most, especially when it comes to understanding political trends. For example, during the last presidential election, few Israelis had heard of Donald Trump but they recognized Clinton's name as a result of the Oslo years. As such, they assumed Hilary would be better for Israel.

This gap goes back to the early days after the establishment of the state when David Ben-Gurion himself got into a battle with Jacob Blaustein, a past president of the American Jewish Committee. Ben-Gurion stated that American Jews needed to move to Israel, which generated a series of exchanges between the two as to the character and nature of the young state. Blaustein argued that if Israelis wanted the support of American Jews, it behooved the state to be democratic.

It is ironic and sad that most Israelis still do not fully appreciate the American side of the Zionist enterprise, going back to the days of Col. David Daniel "Mickey" Marcus and Eddie Jacobson, whose contributions are still visible in Israel today.

Israel's most prolific diplomat, British-born Abba Eban, was also the most unappreciated in Israeli circles. When Eban died, the most poignant tribute to him and his legacy came from then-Chief Rabbi of Israel Yisrael Meir Lau. "When I heard on the phone that Abba Eban had died," he said, "I had to say sorry. We never appreciated him as much as we should have.'"

Eban is still considered to be the gold standard of Israeli diplomacy. While Israel has evolved over time, diplomacy and tact are still needed but not always found – an unfortunate reality we are seeing now during the campaign leading up to Israel's upcoming elections on April 9.

Israeli statesmen have represented the Jewish state to the global community, highlighting the quandaries in which civil servants often find themselves. Israeli ambassadors to the United States, for example, are required to negotiate with the Washington Beltway, in addition to the American Jewish community, as representatives of the State of Israel, not as commanders or even policymakers.

Yitzhak Rabin, for example, was revered as IDF chief of staff and later as the prime minister who dared embark on the Oslo peace process. But although Rabin understood the need to make a case for Israel in America, as ambassador to the United States in 1968, he was not savvy enough to know what methods might backfire. In the eyes of polished diplomats like Eban, Rabin did not seem suited to the role. Eban often complained to Menachem Begin and other members of the Israeli parliament about Rabin's vocal support for Richard Nixon, jumping into what Eban argued should be a nonissue in U.S.-Israeli relations.

By 1992, when Rabin was elected premier for the second time, he had learned from his mistakes. Managing to find just the right combination of toughness and flexibility, he charmed Washington, especially President Bill Clinton, who considered him a seasoned diplomat and warrior.

Similar confrontations have emerged in recent years, including during the term of former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren – an American-born, Princeton University-trained Middle East historian who understood the ins and outs of Washington and American Jewry. Oren clashed with his boss, then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a brash, Russian-born politician who at times acted in a manner more befitting of a cast member in "The Sopranos" than the head of Israel's diplomatic corps.

Historically, Golda Meir stands apart. Her American immigrant story resonated both within and without Israel and was useful to the furthering of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Today, long after Eban and Meir, American Jews and Israelis are called upon to exhibit "moral fiber" by using their very Jewish identity as a vehicle to question Israel and its legitimacy. More perverse are the uses of Jewishness to passionately make pleas for the Palestinian cause and the assertion that Jewishness is somehow based on pro-Palestinian beliefs as a "progressive" value. For American Jews on the far Left, as for Arab Palestinians, the events of 1948 are the "original sin."

Israel does not exist in a vacuum. A deeper understanding is required of what Jews face outside of Israel. Because right now, the Jewish state faces many challenges regarding American bipartisan support for Israel.

Whatever happens after April 9, Washington and Jerusalem need to find common ground to deal with the Zionism of 2019 and highlight the shared values that are part of the broader fabric of Jewish identity. Lau was right in his assessment of Eban: We should not repeat past mistakes as we look for common ground.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies via JNS.org.

The post Israeli attitudes toward American Jews appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Twenty-five years after the Oslo peace accords, the progressive Left, which now loudly dominates the Democratic Party, is walking around "with dead eyes, following orders" when it comes to the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Upstart Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried the "occupation of Palestine" during a television interview but was at a loss when pressed to explain what she actually meant.

Even a moderate Democrat like Cory Booker, previously close to the Jewish community, saw it fit to pose with BDS representatives as a means of flaunting his progressive credentials. In general, the progressive view sees Jews not only as "white" but as racists and victimizers because of their presumed power. All this exemplifies the slow erosion of Israel's status in American culture.

But the disconnect runs even deeper. Like Cortez, the children of the Oslo era don't remember the negotiations in the 1990s, or then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat for that matter, and have grown up on slogans with buzzwords like "occupation" and "intifada." On the other hand, this generation, both in the Middle East and outside it, is extremely active online. In fact, 63% of Palestinian kids have access to the internet on a computer and 51% report they own a smartphone. The internet is already playing a significant role in their lives and what they are seeing is the Palestinian "resistance" against Israel, not Palestinian society suffering under Hamas or Palestinian Authority oppression.

The most ostentatious confrontations take place on Twitter and Facebook, where Palestinians sow allegations of destroyed villages and war crimes, going as far as claiming that Tel Aviv was founded on the ruins of invented villages. Instant gratification, yes. Honesty, not so much.

The same trends are evident in higher education, where there has been a notable increase in online classes. In such a setting, there is less opportunity for debate and discussion.

Our growing collective dependence on technology and social media is undeniable, but these trends – and the general tone of politics – reduce complex issues into sound bites and thereby drive polarization.

One of the major themes of Oslo was to generate trust through confidence-building measures. New mechanisms were put into place to ensure equal rights in employment and policing, and militia weapons were decommissioned under international supervision.  The hope was to build a high level of trust through face-to-face interaction. Today's social media-driven politics achieves the exact opposite of those confidence-building steps. We are left only with the option of parsing online discussions and debates in order to understand the general attitudes. The hard work of building trust is gone and in its place we are left with zombies, following slogans blindly.

When Arafat rejected the Camp David II accord back in 2000, it devastated the liberal left-wing camp. They couldn't understand how Arafat could reject the prospect of a real Palestinian state.  Today's progressive Left, led by Bernie Sanders and others like him, is further removed from the facts than the Democratic Party was under Clinton. They don't understand that Palestinian nationalism never saw the conflict as one between two national groups with legitimate claims and aspirations. They fail to recognize that Arafat and his successors professed support for a two-state solution as a means of appeasing the West.

All of this has led to a steady normalization of anti-Semitism in American society particularly in progressive circles. One of the most pernicious effects of this normalization relates to the discourse on Israel.  A relentless misrepresentation of human rights violations, slanderous talk of Israeli "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" and bitter attacks on Israelis, their international supporters, and the peace process itself have taken a massive toll on American civil discourse.

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