Jeffrey Sachs On Jewish American Opinion

Jeffrey Sachs has a wide ranging article out today. I want to briefly focus on a brief part of it, one that I’ve wondered about. We’re all aware of the charges of anti-semitism that are bandied about with wild abandon against anyone who opposes what is going on in Palestine. What I’ve wondered about, without searching for data, is how all this plays with the fairly diverse Jewish American demographic. The related question is, How will this play out in the 2024 election? We know that certain demographics that have traditionally formed part of the Dem base are strongly opposed to the Israeli war on Palestinians, and this opposition has been raised to the level of a possible election redline by events in Gaza. Jewish Americans are generally regarded as a supremely important part of the Dem base—not just for their numbers but even more so for their political campaign contributions—but I can’t remember when the issue of Israeli genocide has been in front of the public eye in an election year.

Another related issue is that of war with Iran—and even war more generally, but especially now in the Middle East. Of course Iran is the ultimate Zionist boogeyman, and we’re being treated to all sorts of heated rhetoric calling for war on Iran—as if the US military wasn’t already overstretched. Continued backing for the war on Russia, through funding to Ukraine, is looking ever more tenuous. On the other hand, support for Israel in Congress is, for the time being, strong. Will that hold up if matters come to war? A war that the US is really not prepared for? Any additional outbreak of conflict in the region—be it in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere—stands a good chance of developing into a full blown regional conflict. Where will the American public—including the Jewish American component—stand with that. My impression is that Americans generally are fed up with wars, no matter where their sympathies may lie. Sympathy for any given country is easy to express, but when the rubber hits the road? Objectively speaking, a major conflict in the Middle East is simply not in America’s interest, especially given the many other complications we face in foreign affairs. And yet, it appears beyond doubt that Israel is seeking to do exactly that—to draw the US into a major and active role—beyond that of munitions supplier of last resort—in Israel’s much larger war aims. Are Americans really ready for that? This won’t be another Desert Storm.

So, with those issues in mind I’ll excerpt a brief part of Sachs’ article:

Saving Israel by Ending Its War in Gaza

Netanyahu’s government aims to repeat the nakba in the Gaza war by forcing Gazans to flee to neighboring Egypt or other parts of the Arab Middle East. However, unlike in 1947-8, the world is watching in real-time, and is expressing outrage at Israel’s blatant attempt at ethnic cleansing. Egypt told Israel and the US in no uncertain terms that it would not be a party to Israel’s ethnic cleansing, and would not accept a flood of Gazan refugees.

The quest for Greater Israel is doomed to fail

Israel’s attempt to violently create a “Greater Israel” will fail. The Israeli Defense Forces are suffering massive losses in the brutal urban warfare in Gaza. While Israel has killed more than 20,000 Gazans, mostly women and children, it has not destroyed Hamas’s capacity to resist Israel’s invasion. IDF leaders say that the battle against Hamas will require many more months, but well before then, global opposition will likely become insurmountable.

In desperation, Israeli leaders such as Defense Minister Benny Gantz want to expand the war to Lebanon and probably to Iran. US hardliners such as Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have dutifully and predictably chimed in, urging a US war with Iran. This Israeli gambit too will likely fail. The US is in no position to fight a wider Middle East war, after having drawn down its stockpile of munitions in Ukraine and Gaza. The American people too strongly oppose another US war, and their opposition will be heard in an election year, even by a Congress in the pocket of the military-industrial complex.

Israel’s diplomatic setbacks, unless reversed, will prove devastating. Israel has hemorrhaged political support worldwide. In a recent UN General Assembly vote, 174 countries, with 94% of the world population, voted in favor of Palestinian political self-determination, while just 4 countries with 4% of the world population – Israel, the United States, Micronesia and Nauru – voted against (another 15 countries abstained or did not vote). Israel’s hardline militarism has united the world against it.

Israel counts entirely now on its one remaining supporter, the United States, but US support is also waning. By a huge margin, 59% for and 19% opposed, Americans support a cease fire. Americans support Israel’s security but not its extremism. Of course, America has its own Christian and Jewish zealots who base their politics on biblical literalism/orthodoxy, but they are a minority of public opinion. American support for Israel depends on the two-state solution. Biden knows it and has reiterated US support for the two-state solution, even as the US supplies munitions for Israel’s war on Gaza.

While American Jews generally support Israel, they do not support Israel’s religious messianism. In a 2020 Pew Survey only 30% of American Jews believed that “God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people.” 63% believed in the feasibility of peace between Israel and Palestine through the two-state solution. Only 33% believed as of 2020 that the Israeli government was making sincere efforts towards peace with the Palestinians.

Even Orthodox US Jews are divided on the question of Greater Israel. Some orthodox Jewish communities such as the Chabad are believers in the biblically motivated Greater Israel, while others such as the Satmar community (also known as Naturei Karta) are anti-Zionists and outspoken critics of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people stating that Judaism is a religion not a nation concept. The Satmar community believes that the revival of the Jewish homeland must follow God’s timeline, and not a Zionist timeline.

Granted, the Pew survey is at least three years old and was taken at a time of seeming peace—or, a time when the plight of Palestinians wasn’t before the eyes of most Americans. The wide disparity between the views of the general public and the views of Jewish Americans—a notable feature of the poll—is, in my view, probably to be explained by Jewish Americans being usually better informed about events in Palestine. The finding that only a third of American Jews believed that “the Israeli government was making sincere efforts towards peace with the Palestinians” is particularly notable, in light of the heavy drumbeat of Israeli hasbara claiming that “it’s all them, it’s all their fault.”

Even in a Western democracy, in which politicians normally get away with supporting what they get paid to support, war can be an exception. The American Empire has had the luxury of being able to beat up on relatively hapless opponents for decades. That situation has changed, both in terms of the quality of the opposition as well as the quality of our own preparedness. A major difference is in the disproportion in what is required to adequately respond to threats that, previously, seemed to most to be manageable. The obvious example today is the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea. That blockade is easily accomplished by the Houthis and at relatively little expense. Not so our response, which is problematic enough that we have yet to truly respond—at least not in a way that would effectively end the blockade. Launching a large number of cruise missiles is unlikely to be a permanent position, but it would draw down our stock at a time when other major powers (Russia, China) have almost unlimited supplies of the same weapons. Moreover, it could put extremely expensive naval assets at risk.

So far we’ve had to listen to the loud attempts to silence voices that counsel reason and moderation. However, I have to believe that all the issues above are being debated among Jewish Americans as well as the American public as a whole. We may not have the luxury of waiting for things to sort out. War, added to the laundry list of major issues facing the nation, will make for a parlous election year.