Israeli Liberals’ Advice to Diaspora Jewish Counterparts: Grow Up

[Mosby]

Carlo Strenger, an Israeli psychology professor, regular Haaretz columnist, and dedicated leftist, offered some useful advice yesterday to all the Diaspora Jewish liberals now bemoaning the end of their love affair with Israel: Grow up. Or as he put it, “only adolescents demand ideal objects for their loves.”

“Jewish liberals … need to realize that the time has come to stop mourning Israel’s idealized image,” Strenger wrote. “Israel is an impressive achievement in many ways, but it was never an ideal society.” Rather, it’s a real country with real problems, just like any other country, and deserves to be treated that way.

American Jewish liberals, for instance, didn’t stop loving America because they loathed George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, “So how come we Jews have such problems with the fact that in Israel we have our own Limbaughs, Palins and Cheneys?” Nor did they stop loving America because it has yet to achieve perfect racial harmony (as witness the recent police shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri), so “How come we cannot accept that Israel is a multiethnic society that still hasn’t worked out a modus vivendi” among its numerous religious and ethnic subgroups?

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/08/28/israeli-liberals-advice-to-diaspora-jewish-counterparts-grow-up/

[Behind the Aegis]

1. This was a very good article.

Thanks for posting it!

So much of what was said is spot on and can be said of many places, but no country more so than Israel. I see so man "Jews" (wink, wink) at liberal sites who have "had it" with Israel, though one has never seen the poster/author make a single positive comment about Israel.

Of course, I find it interesting we in the Diaspora are, yet again, getting chastised. If it is not one thing, it is another....almost like Israel. **snort**