The Israel Lobby is Melting Away Before Our Eyes
Last month, a top aide to the Jewish organization J Street, who had worked for Obama and Harris, explained that Congress’s tradition of supporting Israel “no matter what” was dictated by a “well-funded group of … Jews.”
“A small, organized, and well-funded group of American Jews viewed this issue as a crucial electoral question, and most candidates decided it wasn’t worth antagonizing them,” wrote Ilan Goldenberg.
Not long ago, such attacks on the Israel lobby (including my own) were dismissed as antisemitic conspiracy theories. Now, a prominent Jewish organization is publishing them, writes Philip Weiss .
That’s because the American Jewish community is currently in a public crisis over its historical support for Israel. Prominent Jews are finally attacking the lobby, a political structure established 60 years ago by prominent Jewish groups to ensure there would be no difference between the Israeli and American governments.
The crisis was triggered by the rebellious victory of the newly elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who broke a rule of American politics: you can’t be anti-Zionist and be taken seriously in American politics.
The Israeli lobby, led by Bill Ackman and Mike Bloomberg, spent tens of millions to defeat Mamdani, but Mamdani still defeated Andrew Cuomo twice . After last month’s general election, the Jewish establishment spoke with fearful force. Mamdani’s election was “grim” and “ominous,” the Conference of Presidents said .
“The appointment of Zohran Mamdani to Gracie Mansion reminds us that antisemitism remains a clear and present danger.”
The ADL announced a “Mamdani tracker” based on the idea that Mamdani will encourage antisemitic violence—a claim based on Mamdani’s criticism of Israel. “Mamdani has promoted antisemitic narratives… and shown intense hostility toward the Jewish state, which is contrary to the views of the vast majority of Jewish New Yorkers.”
If the lobby thought they could take Mamdani down, they didn’t. Two weeks after the election, Mamdani went to the White House and spoke of Israeli “genocide,” and Trump did nothing to contradict him. It was time we heard that word in the White House.
Mamdani’s courage has sparked a new, critical discussion about Israel, but this has been made possible by a broader social movement. Young Americans are turning against Israel because of its anti-Palestinian policies of genocide and apartheid.
Last month, Rahm Emanuel delivered the sad news to the largest Jewish organization, the Jewish Federations. Emanuel, who is running for president, noted that Obama visited Israel before announcing his presidential campaign in 2007, and said that in 2028, no Democratic candidate will dare follow the traditional playbook.
“No one leaves America to travel to Jerusalem. That’s the policy.”
And not just Democrats. Emanuel said that all young people, left and right, are turning against Israel.
“Look at how Israel fares in America among people under 30,” he said. “Forget the party. Taking a pro-Israel position these days is a political risk. Israel is extremely unpopular—I want to make this point clear to anyone who supports a Jewish state—today, Israel will be as defining for a generation under 30, the last two years, as the Six-Day War was for a generation before. But we have to be honest about the task we have here.”
The Israeli lobby is melting away before our eyes. At the same conference, Eric Fingerhut, a former congressman who leads the Federations, said that Israel’s poor image was the result of an international conspiracy:
We’ve witnessed a planned and coordinated attack on Israel’s position in North America and on the Jewish community that supports Israel. Fueled by billions of dollars of dark money… [coming from] Iran and Qatar and China and Russia and more. Disseminated through the most sophisticated communications ever invented…
The conference was dedicated to restoring Israel’s good standing in American discourse – “a major, long-term reshaping of the narrative of what Israel means.”
But that backfired spectacularly. The event’s coverage focused on another breakdown – author Sarah Hurwitz, a former Obama speechwriter, lamenting that talking to young people about Israel today means trying to break through a “wall of dead children.”
The dead children even affect American Jews, Hurwitz said:
You have TikTok, which constantly pollutes the minds of our young people with videos of massacres in Gaza. That’s why so many of us can’t have a normal conversation with younger Jews, because everything we try to say to them is heard through this wall of carnage. I want to provide data, information, and facts, but they hear it through this wall of carnage.
Hurwitz said that Holocaust education had failed young Jews. It caused them to view heavily armed Israelis as Nazis and their emaciated Palestinian targets as objects of compassion.
Hurwitz was fiercely criticized on social media for these remarks. But to the official Jewish community, she is a hero for insisting that those who deny the right of Jews to a Jewish state are anti-Semites.
Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East is inherent in the Jewish religion, says Hurwitz, and Israel’s military might is the necessary response to a 2,000-year history of Jew-hatred. By denying these truths, anti-Zionists demonstrate their hatred of Jews.
These ideas are wrong and dangerous. The reason young Americans hate Israel is that for two years it has indiscriminately killed Palestinian civilians and destroyed their livelihoods in Gaza, with the support of the US government and the Israel lobby.
Children’s media star Ms. Rachel captured the moral dimensions of Gaza in November when she welcomed a traumatized girl named Qamar to New York:
“I am so sorry for Qamar that the world stood idly by as her camp was bombed, she was denied medical care for 20 days, her leg had to be amputated and she was forced to live in a torn, flooded, cold tent.”
It is no wonder that Rachel has emerged as a leader in the discourse on Palestine solidarity in the US, thanks to her clarity, simplicity and sense of responsibility.
The mainstream media is doing everything it can to deny this movement today. They deny that the stance on Palestine had anything to do with Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 election. They deny that they were a significant factor in Mamdani’s victory in New York.
Even as insurgent anti-Israel candidates emerge in Democratic primaries across the country.
This political upheaval is now a Jewish crisis, as it should be. The Jewish community is divided over its official support for genocide.
Jews who condemn Israel’s actions were crucial to Mamdani’s coalition. Some were liberal Zionists. But liberal Zionism itself is in turmoil, abandoning old dogmas—such as the notion that BDS is antisemitic—to connect with young Jews.
While Sarah Hurwitz, Eric Fingerhut, and Jonathan Greenblatt are leading the Jewish establishment to a marginal position, Hurwitz’s ultimate argument is exceptionalist. Jews have a special role to play in the world—and that’s why people hate us.
She’s part of a long tradition: the lobby has propagated one lie after another in our political discourse. The refugees have no right to return to their homes. It’s perfectly fine to relocate 700,000 settlers to occupied territory. There is no apartheid. There is no genocide.
Israel’s wars against its neighbors are in US interests.
These lies are failing now. Whatever ideals Zionism embraced at its inception as a European liberation movement, it hardened into intolerance in the face of Palestinian resistance. The official Jewish community fostered that intolerance.
The lies of the Israeli lobby were once a taboo subject in America. Today, the crisis is bringing that discussion into the public domain.
https://www.frontnieuws.com/de-israelische-lobby-smelt-voor-onze-ogen-weg