In Defense of Nadav Tamir

Israel's consul-general in New England, Nadav Tamir, has been is serious hot water over the last few weeks for a memo he authored that criticized the current Netanyahu led government’s confrontational stance towards the Obama administration (see FM fumes over Boston Consul's remarks).

He warned that "The atmosphere of confrontation between the Israeli government and the Obama administration puts the American-Jewish community, which is so important to us, in a difficult position. Many of them are distancing themselves from the State of Israel because of this conflict."

Having spent a fair amount of time recently in the United States, I think sadly Tamir is dead right. It is time Israel and the rest of the Jewish world wakes up to the fragile nature of American Jewish support, particularly among the youth.

In general meeting young American Jews, particularly the non-Orthodox variety, has been a profoundly disturbing experience for me. For many, being Jewish is as significant as being left handed or having brown hair and perhaps eating Gefilte fish. Their knowledge of and connection to the Jewish people, its traditions and culture is pathetic. So often I get the question, “are there really Jews in South Africa”? And this is from tertiary educated people.

They do not feel anti-Semitism and threats to Jewish identify in the same way many other Diaspora Jews do. There are no guards outside synagogues. When one explains that many communities are forced to establish security organizations to protect themselves and their institutions they seem shocked at the thought. This lack of any real anti-Semitism coupled with their poor Jewish identity leads many to question the need for a Jewish state. One person recently put it to me that it would have been far better if all the Jewish refugees that have found safe haven in Israel over the decades had just come to America. When I tried to explain the desire for national self determination and the benefits of being a free people in your own land like having Jewish holidays as national holidays, I got a strange look. If you know how many young Americans Jews go to university on Yom Kippur, you would understand how out of touch my example was.

Support for the Democratic Party, and particularly for Obama, is for many equivalent to Judaism. I sometimes have to pinch myself when people speak of enshrining their Jewish values through their work in pro-choice, anti-gun, pro affirmative action or anti-climate change activism. And if one looks closely at the history of Reform and Conservative Judaism in America this makes a lot of sense. The laws and traditions were quite literally rewritten and recreated to comply with modern Liberal thinking. They owe much more allegiance to these principals than some piece of land thousands of miles away.

Nadav Tamir gets this. I have had the good fortune to hear him speak to a large group of young Jews in Boston and was thoroughly impressed. His message is not the rah rah type of Zionism that we in the rest of the Jewish world may be used to. He understands his audience and connects with them and connects them to Israel through their ‘Jewish values’.

Rather than scold Nadav, the new government in Israel should listen to his warnings. The old style blanket American Jewish support for Israel will not continue indefinitely. As more and more of the next generation take on roles in the Jewish community and the broader American society, Israel will have to change its message and its actions if it wishes to maintain its special relationship with American Jewry. People like Nadav are key to bridging this potential and dangerous divide.

Comments

[TC]

So Israel should give away more land to genocidal fanatics... so that US Jews who don't care about Israel will be happy?

Now that's shrewd politics.

[Lawrence]

yeah TC is right. One wonders what Mike would have Israel do exactly to please indifferent American "Jews" and an anti-Israel US administration. The problem here lies with American "Jews" who are indifferent and supremely ignorant about the realities of the Middle-East and who are Jewish in name only, and an Obama administration that is hostile to Israel. Mike is basically saying that Israel must capitulate to the demands of the naive Obama administration and their policy of appeasement to the Arab and Muslim world, with Israel as expendable bait, because you know that's the US policy. Maybe we should just applaud when Obama awards the Presidential medal of freedom to the anti-Semite Mary Robinson, with all that that implies.

Mike contradicts himself somewhat, on another thread recently, "Rethinking the Israel-US relationship" he said Israel should consider cooling its putative alliance with the US considering the current US administration's unprecedented criticism of Israel and other factors, and that Israel should consider forging closer ties with other world powers.

Now Mike says the Israeli govt should bend over to accomodate the hostility directed our way from the Obama camp!

We are not going to humiliate ourselves to please Obama and his 'ghost of Chamberlain' policies, and nor are most of us willing to commit suicide to please the court Jews in the US.

People like Nadav (and Mike) want to build bridges with anti-Semites and ignoramuses, well good luck with that. Talk about naive.

You should have entitled your post, "In defence of a Court Jew" Mike.

[Shaun]

Tamir sees the situation correctly, but his approach and solution are abhorrently wrong. Mike by your own admission, and to Tamir's credit, it is painfully obvious that, US Jewry is withering away and Obama is almost at the point of open hostility toward Israel. Tamir should be sacked, not for pointing out the situation, but for leaking a significant internal memo to the press. As a professional Israeli diplomat he should know better than to do something as stupid as, using the media to bypass internal channels.
Mike, I really don’t get your approach, in 1993 Israel agreed to negotiate with the Palestinians, we gave them a Palestine Authority, their own schooling system, guns and plenty of training. When this wasn’t enough we began halting Jewish settlement. All of these concessions literally blew up in our faces. Now you agree with Tamir that we should do this all over gain?

[Sun]

Lawrence, well said. If Mike doesn't agree with Bibi he is also an antisemite! Booger booger!

[Marc]

If Nadav Tamir was merely bringing this deeply insightful message to his employers in the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry maybe his behaviour would be defensible. But this is not what happened. He spread this so-called confidential memo far and wide. Either he was intending to make a grandstanding ideological point (and maybe curry favour with the reigning powers in DC with a mind to a future post-Consulate career) or he was negligent to the point of utter recklessness. Either way to paint him the hero of the story is an absurd conclusion to reach.

[Gary]

It is a well know principle that G-D interacts MIDA KENEGED MIDA. As a person acts towards his fellow man, so to speak, G-D acts towards him. If the Jews in the Galut act with such indifference or, even worse, with hostility towards the dangers faced by Jews in Israel, how do they expect G-D to treat them when they will be endangered?

It is popular in leftwing Jewish circles to repeat that , as Jews, with a history of suffering and persecution , we must have 'compassion' for the 'Palestinians'.
What about compassion for the thousands of Jewish men , women and children who have died , or been maimed , widowed or orphaned as a result of relentless Arab terror.
What about the 25% of Jewish children in Israel who do not have enough food to eat , because of the Oslo War, and the boycotts and sanctions initiated by the international left?

What about the Jews of YESHA who are being transfered from their homes ,seeing all they built and lived for destroyed before their very eyes.

Comapssion means more than just backing politically correct causes.
Compassion starts with your own people!

These diaspora Jews who say they do not care if Israel is destroyed should not be rescued by Israel if there are ever attacks on Jews in the USA or elsewhere.

[Gary]

So these liberal humanistic American Jews are very concerned with human rights but are indifferent to the possibility of 5 million Jews, including over a million children, being murdered, as will happen if Israel is destroyed.
It seems leftists believe Israelis do not count when it comes to human rights.
The leftist 'progressive' diaspora Jews are so concerned with human rights that they care nothing about five million Jews dying.
This is so typical of the hypocrisy of the left today.
The very reason why the Left evokes such hostility among decent people.

[mike]

Wow I wasn't expecting such a response.

I thought I made it very clear that I was not defending US Jews. I am very distressed about the state of their community. This is one of the reasons I think Israel needs new friends. But the current reality is that Israel needs American and American Jewish support at least for the foreseeable future. Whether Israelis like it or not American Jewry are an important constituency that need to be kept on board.

Now on the way Nadav send out the memo. He did not leak it. He sent it to 12 people in the foreign ministry. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps he should have only sent it to 1 or 2. He has apologized for that oversight. But I really believe that he wrote it and sent it out of concern for the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

[Empress Trudy]

As someone with 30 years involvement in Jewish community affairs and Jewish education as well as membership in, over the years, 3 conservative shuls and one Orthodox shul, I can say that at best 50% of non Orthodox American Jews who even identify as Jews think much of anything good or bad about Israel. Oh they all want their kids to get the free Birthright trip but in America today, you're just as likely to be harangued to support some protest on Darfur or animal rights as you are to support Israel. Perhaps moreso on the Darfur issue.

This runs quite a bit deeper than support simply for Israel though. Do you know who make up the largest group of Buddhists in the US? Jews do. Whatever it is about Judaism, Jews don't really want it. Except the Orthodox. And Reform and Masorti scorn them.

So the issue really is, what good is real or imagined US Jewish support in the first place?

[Sam]

Am I to understand that some people here are suggesting we write off American Jewry as supporters of Israel? The comments offered above are a profound misreading of US Jewish support for Israel. Yes, there is much assimilation - we know that. But there is a deep support for Israel at all levels of Jewish society, which is not revealed by lazily looking for fault lines between Orthodox and Reform shul attendance. Why not instead try to curry support for Israel in China, someone recently suggested. Please. US Jews have been and continue to be Israel's best friends. The nature of this relationship is experiencing a shift, but to throw out the baby with the bathwater on this one is just dumb.

[Russell]

Don't misread the situation here in the United States. While there are some people who support J-Street and the like, they are by far in the minority. Support for Israel is strong. American Jews are concerned with current American policy. Tamir must be speaking with a limited number of liberal academic and illectual Jews in a Harvard ivory tower. Outside of his bubble, support is strong.

Russell from Miami, FL