Jerusalem confab eyes ‘Israelophobia’ in USA

Amid growing concern over the increasing hostility towards the Jewish state that’s crept into mainstream talk, a meeting at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) considered the findings of a new book published by the center,  “Israelophobia and the West: The Hijacking of Civil Discourse on Israel and How to Rescue It.”

The book’s editor, Dan Diker, director of the Project on BDS and Political Warfare at the JCPA, said the term “Israelophobia” was coined decades ago by JCPA fellow Fiamma Nirenstein (whose column appears in The Jewish Star).

Acceptance of radical language condemning Israel and the mainstreaming of delegitimization of Israel by major universities, institutions such as the United Nations and by some members of Congress, is a national security issue, with the potential to destabilize the U.S.-Israel relationship, Diker said.

“There is no possibility for reasoned debate in the United States,” Professor Alan Dershowitz, who contributed a chapter to the book, told the conference. “In my lifetime, we’re going to have to live with increasing anti-Semitism.”

Dershowitz insisted that right-wing anti-Semitism is ““not a significant issue.”

“No Jew can become a right-wing anti-Semite,” he said. “What’s eating us is coming from within.”

Dershowitz said what many in the U.S. and Israel have put forth: that the BDS movement has been misunderstood by Jewish leaders.

The goal was never to actually boycott or divest from Israeli companies, but rather “to propagandize future leaders of America. It’s an attempt to change the reality of how young people see Israel.” BDS, he added, has nothing to do with the so-called occupation of territories or a two-state solution.

It’s also more a tactic than a movement, argued Dershowitz, “an extraordinarily successful” one at that. “It’s a tactic based on deception and lies, designed to destroy the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

For Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini, BDS is not the most pressing problem.

On his speaking tours of American campuses, Yemini said, he encounters abject ignorance about Israel among Jewish students and faculty. It is this ignorance, he said, that renders them so susceptible to anti-Israel messages.

Former Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky said the only way to build bridges between American Jews, who are overwhelmingly liberal, and Israelis, whose main interest is to defend the Jewish state, is through focusing on human rights.

According to Sharansky, the Israeli government must “show there’s no difference between anti-Semitism on the left and the right.” He called on the government to fight against all those who abuse human rights and to ask the United States to do the same.

In his concluding remarks, Dershowitz had a grim message for Israel.

“Do not count on the U.S. Count on yourselves. Make sure you have the most powerful army. We have to show our strength. Make alliances but be self-interested. Don’t ever compromise security on the basis of getting good PR.”

Other contributors to the book include  Palestinian affairs analyst Khaled Abu Toameh; JCPA president and former ambassador Dore Gold; Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Professor Asa Kasher, author of the IDF Code of Conduct; Daniel Gordis, senior vice president at Shalem College; Yossi Kuperwasser, former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs; and Luba Mayekiso, co-founder of the Africa for Israel Christian Coalition.