With Trump in the White House, where will it leave liberal Jews?

I’ve written previously about the inherent contradiction between liberalism and Zionism. I have argued that liberal Zionism is an oxymoron: while the former champions human rights, social justice and respect for international law, it is thus at complete odds with the latter’s colonisation, occupation and system of privilege and exclusion based on religion and ethnicity.

Liberal Jews who pledge abiding loyalty to Israel, I believe, are guilty of compromising their universal liberal values for the narrow self-interest of an occupying power. They legitimise Israel’s oppressive policies by cloaking it as a progressive state and seeking to reconcile what many regard as irreconcilable: the aforementioned liberalism and Zionism.

While I believe that Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election as Israeli prime minister in 2015 made the odious notion of “liberal Zionism” untenable, the conflict, tension and contradictions presented by a Trump presidency in the US may tip the balance and break the bond between Israel and liberal Jews. If so, it will hasten the inevitable divorce between liberalism and Zionism. I concur with the view of those who now believe that their idyllic political scenario — Barack Obama in the White House and the two-state solution hovering in the background — is about to come crashing down.

In President Barack Obama they have had someone who was more or less in tune with their Jewish and liberal values. “Obama was the realisation of the American Jewish vision of a multicultural society, a dream come true for a generation of civil rights activists,” wrote Chemi Shalev in Haaretz. “He promoted and embodied the liberal ideals that American Jews are more attached to than any other religious group in America”.

Trump on the other hand is the complete opposite. He may ultimately divide Israeli and American Jews, argued Shmuel Rosner in the New York Times. The US president-elect’s core message — reactionary, nativist, chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant and mainly anti-Muslim — is one that he fears is shared by too many Israelis and embraced by the ruling right-wing coalition government in Tel Aviv. America and Israel have enjoyed a very peculiar relationship; at the very least, the election of Trump has the ability to transform this unholy alliance into a toxic marriage of the far-right. It’s a scenario that should ring alarm bells for every genuinely liberal Jew everywhere.

You don’t have to dig very deep to find that most American Jews hold very different attitudes to those on the US and Israeli right. Liberal Jews tend to sympathise more with the less fortunate as well as minorities. As this article points out, despite the problems between Israel and Palestine, and the Muslim terrorism narrative peddled by many in politics and the media, 72 per cent of Jews believe that Muslims in America are discriminated against; the figure for the wider public is just 47 per cent. Promisingly, while 69 per cent of Jews feel an attachment to Israel, only 43 per cent believe that caring about Israel is an essential part of being Jewish.

It’s no secret that the neo-liberal consensus, reviled by the new politics of Trump, is shared by liberal Jews. The world view that Trump represents is at complete odds with the vast majority of Jews. This poses serious problems for those of a liberal persuasion. How will they feel when Trump and “little Trumps in Israel” form the strongest bond ever seen between the two countries? While Obama and previous Democratic presidents were great friends of Israel, the far-right Netanyahu and Trump are natural allies; a Republican president on steroids is Netanyahu’s dream come true. “In Donald Trump,” writes one disgruntled commentator, “the Israeli prime minister gets a US partner who’s vulgar, brutal and a bully – the perfect solution for burying the two-state solution.” This is a major concern for liberal Jews, for obvious reasons.

For years they have found a palliative in the two–state solution to the Israel-Palestine problem. It calmed an anxiety fuelled mainly by the obvious contradiction in supporting a country regressing into an apartheid state whilst also professing strongly held convictions about human rights, equality and international law. The solution they pinned their hopes on was rubber-stamped by the global neo-liberal consensus, to which the new right-wing in America and Israel are opposed.

Having Donald Trump in the White House will be the biggest spoiler in history, threatening the longstanding consensus. His political and social views — including his position on Israel-Palestine — must surely make it impossible for any bona fide liberal to support him. Although he did what all US politicians do when they address the main pro-Israel Lobby group AIPAC — declare their undying servitude towards Israel — he went one step further by insisting that he will remove the UN from the Israel-Palestine equation. For example, he will copy what all US presidents have done and veto every single UN resolution critical of Israel; in doing so he will be the first to denounce the United Nations and international law so openly. At the AIPAC convention he received the most applause by promising to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem, Israel’s annexation of which is not only illegal but also not recognised by any other country. Such a move would surely kill the two-state solution once and for all.

If there were ever any doubts about whether such comments were just campaign rhetoric or serious statements of intent, his staff appointments make it clear that Trump means business. Giving senior position to neo-conservatives who were regarded as extreme even while George W Bush was president, and white supremacists with more support amongst the Ku Klux Klan than right-wing Republican politicians, is an indication of where he is heading.

An article in Haaretz provides some clues as to what Trump’s top adviser on Israel, David Friedman, will be like. Freidman is seemingly positioned on the far-right of the Israeli political map and if the former columnist for two right-wing English-language media outlets has the kind of influence that many fear he will, it would signal a major break with longstanding US policy in the Middle East. The man who is said to be more hard-line than Netanyahu has promised that “a Trump administration will never pressure Israel into a two-state solution or any other solution that is against the will of the Israeli people” because “they know what’s best for themselves.”

So where does this leave liberal Jews? Confronted with a president who attacks their cherished liberal values, and finds a natural ideological ally on the Israeli right, they have no option but to jump ship, if they are indeed true to their values. If nothing else, writes Rosner, “Liberal Jews will come to realise that the warm relations between Trump and Israel highlight the gap between Israeli values and US Jewry values.” We must wait to see what happens. Many Jews will feel uneasy about Trump and Israel; many will surely doubt Israel’s values and morality; and ultimately this may alienate them from Israel. Paradoxically, therefore, it might not just be liberal Jews who are concerned about prospects under President Trump. Israel depends on the broad support of all American Jews; if that falls away, those on the Israeli right might well have cause to be worried as well.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.