Larry Gellman currently serves on the national boards of
Americans for Peace Now, J Street, and CLAL. Over the last 40 years he served as a founding member of the
AIPAC board in Tucson and was a national leader and honoree of Israel Bonds, a founder of the Milwaukee Jewish
Day School, and named Jewish Man of the Year in both Milwaukee and Tucson after chairing Federation annual
campaigns in both cities. He spent his career as a widely recognized financial advisor and won awards as a
television news reporter in Ohio and Wisconsin.
This has been a very challenging year for American and Israeli Jews. One where we have faced a number of violent and even deadly challenges from those who hate us.
But, as has been the case for many years in both countries, the truly EXISTENTIAL challenges that threaten our ability to survive as a united Jewish community here and the ability of Israel to survive as a Jewish democratic state have ALL been internal. They are related to the horrific slaughter carried out by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Envelope almost a year ago which killed more than 1,000 Jews and to the rise in incidents of Jew hatred on college campuses and some urban settings here in the U.S. As horrible and challenging as those indefensible events were, neither of them comes close to providing a credible threat to the existence of Israel or our Jewish community here.
The existential threats--which are quite real and do exist--are due to choices that are being made on a daily basis by the criminals and bigots and Proud Boys who run the Israeli government and the Settler leaders who work hand in glove with the IDF to persecute and steal the land of Palestinians in the West Bank while never being accused much less punished for their crimes and by the leaders of American Jewish legacy organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL and the national Federation who have chosen to take millions from Jewish Republican billionaires who fund those groups and demonize fellow Jews who cling to Jewish and American values and the politicians who are overwhelmingly supported by most American Jews and refuse to drink the "pro-Israel" Kool Aid.
Understand that these views are coming from a founding member of my local AIPAC board and a Federation campaign chair in two different cities.
No one wishes they weren't valid more than I do. No one wishes more that those legacy organizations had chosen to provide a venue where honest conversations about complex issues could take place among caring Jews who disagree about how to best support Israel.
But sadly, APN and J Street are the only venues where lovers of Israel can have those conversations without being called the nastiest of names and thrown out of the room. Thank God those venues exist.
Just look at the way the issue of antisemitism and Jewish victimhood have been weaponized in the most dishonest and self-serving ways by groups whose agenda is far different from the vast majority of Jews whom they purport to speak for and represent.
Jeffery Goldberg first wrote about this phenomenon sixteen years ago in a prescient article about Israel's American Problem in which he stated clearly that:
"What Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the
existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the
existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state —
publicly, continuously and vociferously — to create conditions on the West Bank that would allow for the
birth of a moderate Palestinian state."
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/
Then, eleven years ago I wrote a blog in which I coined the term "Israelism"--long before the movie was made--to describe what had become the true religion of many former Jews who had abandoned Jewish values and wisdom traditions and exchanged them for the absolute and total worship of the state of Israel and its government:
https://larrygellman.blogspot.
Six years ago I focused on the way the issue of "antisemitism" was
being used and manipulated in a misleading and dishonest way in a blog entitled "Anti Semistim is Dead--but
Jew Hatred is Not." https://blogs.timesofisrael.
That was more than a decade ago. Fast forward to today and most of the facts on the ground are much the same.
I am not an idiot. The murderous rampage conducted by Hamas was an act of pure
Jew hatred. There were many dramatic and ugly incidents targeting Jews verbally and occasionally
physically on a number of college campuses here.
But our society and cultural norms and government leaders spoke with a single voice to make it clear that such behavior was completely unacceptable in America. Several prestigious college presidents were fired for creating an environment where those kinds of things could happen. Almost every single local and state and government official spoke loudly and often to make it clear that no one could behave like that in our country without facing consequences.
Contrast that to as recently as 50 years ago when Jews were systematically denied
employment opportunities and freedom to go the schools they wanted and marry the people they wanted and work
in the places they wanted because they were Jewish. And, unlike today, that bigotry qualified as
antisemitism because it was accepted as the norm by broader society and until recently no one who was guilty
of it ever paid a price. Today, Jews can live wherever we want, work we ever we want, fully participate
in all aspects of American life, marry whomever we want, and no one is getting a nose job or changing their
names to sound or look less Jewish.
But not only do legacy Jewish organizations fail to acknowledge how much better things are today for virtually all Jews here, they don't provide a venue where the complicating factors can even be discussed. Instead they have pursued an agenda in partnership with the Republicans to pressure government leaders to pass the clearly unconstitutional IHRA definition of antisemitism as the ONE AND ONLY legitimate definition and move to make it the law of the land. Even though SEVEN of its eleven bullet points given as examples-- not a definition-- of antisemitism mention Israel.
Most noticeably, it defines anyone who suggests that individual Jews are more loyal to and care more about the State of Israel than they do about the U.S. If that becomes law then most of the Jews I know over the age of 65 are proud antisemites.
So in summary, to paraphrase Pogo, when it comes to existential threats to Israel and the Jewish community, "we have met the enemy and he is us." It is OUR behavior as Jews and Americans and parents and leaders that is making it impossible for our children and grandchildren to embrace the State of Israel and the legacy American Jewish community in the way we did. Not Muslims and progressives and the other villains of choice of the mainstream leaders.
Thank God for APN and J Street and other groups where we can go to have honest conversations and not be smeared as self-hating Jews and Israel bashers who want Israel's enemies to win. The only people who are smearing us in that way are our fellow Jews. THAT is the existential threat.