Unsafe haven: How Oct 7 changed the lives of US Jews
The upheaval experienced by the Jews in the US since October 7 has been felt not only in the shock at the betrayal by the liberal Left and the move away from the Democratic Party – it is also permeating deeply into family and social relationships, their feeling of identity and the greater understanding that America is no longer the place they had gotten used to.
Nadav Haetzni
Israel Hayom
Jun 17, 2024
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally outside the White House on June 8, 2024 to protest against Israel's actions in Gaza.
Last Shabbat in the Washington periphery was an extremely pleasant one. The crowds thronged the National Mall lined with its many museums, extending from the Capitol grounds to the Washington Monument, while downtown Washington DC was the scene of a vibrant, multi-colored Gay Pride march that snaked its way across the hub of the capital city, in an exuberant atmosphere of joyous celebration and fun. But at the same time, opposite the obelisk in memory of the first president, George Washington, a completely different march was slowly crawling along – a march of hatred, ignorance and evil. Thousands of protesters in red costumes, kaffiyehs and PLO flags proceeded along the heavily protected sidewalk, making it patently clear why they had come here from all over the US: "No to a two-state solution – we want 1948," "From the River Jordan to the Sea," "Free – Free Palestine," "Intifada – Revolution."
The majority of those demonstrating were extremely young, most of them non-Arab Americans. The meticulous organization of the event was clearly apparent – in each group, the chanting of slogans was led by a different young girl, screaming out uniform messages from her iPhone. I walked amongst them for some time, and although the passersby did not tend to stop and express their identification with the protesters, the overall scene was an extremely depressing and worrying sight.
At the same time, not far away from there, at the enormous Marriott Hotel, preparations were well underway to begin the annual conference of the AJC, the American Jewish Committee, the large and senior representative organization of US Jewry, which has assumed an even broader function as the "global advocacy organization for the Jewish people". More than 2,000 representatives gathered here, fueled by a profound sense of crisis and emergency, if not a genuine 'seismic disruption'. The war in Israel has become intertwined with the genuine sense of battle for their own home, which could not have been more poignantly, or aptly manifested in the hate demonstration that marched a mere stone's throw away from there.
The stage, the discussions and the audience as a whole were replete with experiences similar to those we have become accustomed to seeing on the news on a daily basis. Most of those attending the AJC Forum were Jewish Americans, staunch supporters of Israel of the classic variety – not orthodox Jews, but those Jews, who for more than 100 years, until last October, firmly believed that there strong connection with the liberals in the US would guarantee both their rights as Jews and their lives. It is for this reason that they worked to promote the rights of Afro-Americans, the Hispanic population the LGBT community and even whales, and now – something deep down inside them was undermined following October 7. Although the opinion polls in the US show that support for Israel remains widespread and unflagging, many of them have experienced traumas that have undercut their sense of personal security, alongside their confidence in all that they had believed in regarding their existence in their land. Paradoxically, it is precisely the ties of many of the participants with the liberals that was the cause of them being struck such a heavy blow – they have been thoroughly shaken up by the extent of the betrayal by the American left and the resulting horrifying outburst of antisemitism.
No longer remains in the family
The situation in the universities – the demonstrations, the hatred, the treachery of many lecturers and all the rest of the associated issues that you have heard in recent months took center stage at the conference. Two inspirational female Jewish student leaders, one from the 'front line' at Columbia University in New York and one from Germany, were given an award for their determined stand against the violent protesters. But nobody made any attempt to sugarcoat the situation, on the contrary – it was quite evident that we have gone back 100 years in time, to a time of frightening antisemitism, and the question posed was how we can take an effective position to stand up to this monster.
In a survey conducted by the organization among Jews in the US that was published earlier this week, 64% of those questioned testified that the events since October have had an impact on their relationship with their fellow Americans. At the same time, worrying statistics were revealed regarding the impact of these events on their daily conduct. Many Jews avoid engaging strangers in a conversation broaching issues that are connected to events on the news, there are those who actively conceal their Jewish identity, while many testified to an underlying sense of a lack of security.
In addition, the random personal, one-on-one meetings provided plenty of disturbing stories. Two elderly Jewish women from Los Angeles told me over dinner that they had severed relationships with a number of friends and acquaintances, due to their accusations against Israel. One of them told me of her son – a liberal attorney with a routine left-leaning agenda – and how his friends had stopped speaking to him because of the accusations against Israel. The other lady no longer speaks with her 22-year-old grandson, after he provoked her by saying that the very existence of the State of Israel is what led to the establishment and existence of Hamas. And alongside these stories, I also heard the opposite – one female representative attending the conference told me of one of her daughters who was a pro-Palestinian activist and following the October 7 massacre decided to do an about-face in favor of Israel, and another daughter who has become an active advocate for Jews and for Israel.
A former Israeli woman who now lives in Jersey City, shared with me the profound sense of shock that has taken hold of her in recent months. Among others, after she discovered that a teacher at her 10-year-old daughter's school, handed out to the students a Palestinian book that completely erases the existence of the State of Israel, while another boy in her class was parroting pro-Palestinian messages.
Double shock
A key figure who is well connected to the heart of the issue is Dr. Alexandra Herzog, the niece of both Israel's President Herzog and Israel's Ambassador to the US, Michael (Mike) Herzog. She lives in Boston and serves as the AJC's National Deputy Director for Contemporary Jewish Life. Herzog monitors the educational materials at schools and universities in the US and has been seeing the anti-Israel-Zionist connection develop for years.
"The largest problem in the universities," she says, "is that many of the heads of the universities do not assume responsibility and fail to enforce their own rules for protecting the students against antisemitism. But this has gone way beyond protests and demonstrations – there are numerous places where they have not allowed Jewish students to join the student organizations." This sounds all too reminiscent of Vienna and Berlin in the pre-Second World War era. "This modern incarnation of antisemitism is new to many American Jews," says Alexandra, "the US is a country of idealism, and the Jews thought that they would be completely safe here. Now, all of a sudden, they understand that they are not as safe as they were." This is a double shock – it encompasses the threat against Israel, which was always perceived as a potential safe haven, and of course the feeling that the US itself is no longer as safe as they thought it was.
Part of the collapse of this perspective is now being manifested in the profound disappointment from the classic view of the liberal American Jews, that if they encourage education towards pluralism and forge ties with the open democratic circles, and that if in addition they can have an impact on Israel and make it more liberal, and then portray it as such, this would help the Jews in the US and around the world too. As part of this trend, about a year ago the organization sent a delegation to Ramallah, to become acquainted and connect with the Palestinian Authority. It didn't exactly work out, as is known, and as is clear to my interlocutor.
The very same disappointment was also the result of the efforts to forge ties with the large Hispanic community in the US, which encompasses more than 60 million Americans. The person in charge of this effort on behalf of the AJC, is Dina Siegel Vann, a native of Mexico City herself, who now resides in Washington and serves as the Director of the AJC's Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs. Dina invested considerable efforts in linking up with the Hispanic organizations, and even brought a delegation of Hispanic American leaders to visit Israel a year ago, among others, visiting the Gaza border communities. However, all of them disappeared following October 7 – not a single one of them stood beside Israel and the Jews, and their silence is deafening.
"We have changed since October 7," says Dina, "Our expectations have changed. We here at the AJC have always believed in the struggle for all the ethnic minorities, as indirectly this is something that should work for us too, but in hindsight, it now appears that this effort has not really worked at all. We are now shifting gears and revisiting our approach."
Daniel Schwammenthal, the Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute (TAI), the AJC's EU office in Brussels, is no stranger to antisemitism. As regards antisemitism, Daniel has the following to say: "The problem is that a new threat has emerged that goes beyond social media and terrorist threats, against which your government protects you, despite the severity that it entails. Now, as a Jew, you are threatened on the streets, on campus and at work, and antisemitism is being thrust in your face. Then add to this the fact that a number of governments, like the government in Belgium, are engaged in efforts to demonize the Jewish state, thus fanning the flames of antisemitism – and now the whole situation is simply intolerable."
An opening for hope
Born in Germany and now resident in Belgium, Daniel closely monitors the social and political trends in Europe with a sober perspective. He talks of the positive change that has occurred in recent years in Israels relationship with Europe, a marked improvement that simply collapsed several months after the outbreak of war, with a growing negative trend sweeping across European governments and the decisions of the prosecutor and the ICJ (International Court of Justice) in The Hague. In that context, the assessment is that the decline in support for Israel in Europe is the result of the Biden administration's disaffection and positively hostile relations with Israel in recent months. Since the White House began to accuse us of the indiscriminate bombing and killing of the innocent, some of our friends and allies in Europe have fallen in line with it.
However, Daniel believes that overall, the public in Europe is not against us, a claim that has gained support from the results of the elections to the European Parliament held last week, and the ensuing impressive rise in power of the right-wing parties in Europe. That rise in power is a positive sign for the Jews and for Israel, not to mention the reversal of concepts it entails, in which the global left has morphed into our antisemitic enemy, while the right, for the most part, has become the absolute opposite.
This paradox has been clearly reflected, for example, in the staunchly pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli state of Florida, where I flew immediately after the conference in Washington. In that spirit, a female Jewish student from Miami whom I met at the conference in Washington, testified that she has come across nothing in Florida of what has been threatening the majority of Jews in most other locations across the US. This is hardly surprising – as in those states with a palpably dominant support for the Republican Party, especially where strong Republican governors exist, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, or Greg Abbott in Texas, the situation is completely different.
DeSantis – a sworn supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, crushed the initial appearance of the antisemitic demonstrations at USF (University of South Florida) in the city of Tampa with police officers firing rubber bullets and detaining 130 protesters. Abbott declared the demonstrators at UT-Austin (University of Texas) to be supporters of terrorism and in breach of the law, and he then sent the police to detain them and choke this nefarious protest the moment it began.
How unfortunate it is that precisely the classic approach that the majority of US Jews had opted for historically, with a view to establishing their rights as a minority, the approach of linking up with the democratic left wing, produced the opposite results. How uplifting it is to see that those people who have decided to stand by the Jews and Israel and have now become its champions, the defenders of the values of the enlightened world as a whole, are actually the conservative Republicans.
That dissonance and confusion are all too apparent among many of the people I spoke to; though, the contempt for and fear of Donald Trump in person, makes it difficult to arrive at any conclusions as to the impact on internal-US politics. A poll published by the AJC last week shows that still 61% of the Jews questioned intend to vote for President Joe Biden. This is a considerably lower percentage than those who voted for him in the previous US presidential elections – when 85% of the Jews in the US voted for him, and it is also important to point out that the poll was conducted in March-April, prior to the recent blunt manifestations of duplicity. But it is clear that the penny has yet to drop for many Jews.
There does actually appear to be a considerable degree of openness when it comes to Israel itself. I took part in a panel of Israeli journalists, in which I was the only one who issued a call to stop telling ourselves fairy tales about Palestinian partners and American magic solutions. I explained that the Palestinian national movement, including Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies, seeks to replace us and not stand by our side. The responses from the audience, which for years has been incited by the fake visions of Oslo and the Disengagement Plan, were actually quite supportive. A leader of a flourishing conservative community in Florida who took part in the conference, stopped me and avidly declared: "I agreed with every word you said, we really do need to adopt a different approach and to rethink it."
The new hope
On the way to the flight to the US, I came across a Jewish attorney from New York, who had just returned from a week of volunteer work in the Gaza border communities, and he had just come from a hard day's work painting houses that had been damaged. I met him once again at the conference in Washington and he was completely fired up to play his part in the Jewish-Israeli struggle. At breakfast, I spoke with a young female volunteer from the Bronx, New York, who was actively engaged in pro-Jewish activity, while her brother had just joined up to serve in the IDF that week, aspiring to serve in as elite combat unit as possible. On the conference's main stage, the senior speakers stressed and reiterated: "Now of all times, we are especially proud to be Jews," expressing their unwavering support for the State of Israel and standing by it.
In this spirit, the poll conducted by the organization has established the trend: 57% of the Jews questioned in the poll said that they feel more connected to Israel and their own Jewish identity, 17% said that they had begun to attend synagogue services since the Hamas attack. Just as has been the case in many periods throughout our long history, and one that has constantly been fraught with hardship, it is actually the rise in antisemitism and persecution that has sparked great determination to stand up to it – to reconnect with Jewish roots and the State of Israel.
Avital Leibovich, the Director of the AJC Israel office in Jerusalem, aptly summed up the situation: "There can be no doubts as to the strong desire of the Diaspora Jews for unity, with October 7 marking a new era for them, an era of proximity to the State of Israel coupled with a greatly enhanced sense of their Jewish identity, each individual acting in his or her own way." While the American actor, Michael Rapaport, who also appeared on the central stage, managed to sum up the basic message to all our enemies in a nutshell, with only two words: "Fuck them," duly earning rapturous applause from the crowd.
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