Powerful demographic, cultural, and strategic currents in Israel and the United States are driving the two countries apart. In America, the once-solid pro-Israel consensus is being corroded by partisan rancor: a deepening divide between conservative Jews who fervently support the Jewish state and the more liberal, more ambivalent, Jewish majority. In Israel, surveys of young Jewish citizens reveal a preference for right-of-center parties, a disdain for democracy, and, in some cases, a readiness to curb the civil liberties of non-Jews. Prospects for preserving a liberal Zionism against the pressures for “Greater Israel” are dimming as hopes for a two-state solution fade.
The tensions between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been symptoms, not causes, of the deeper crisis. In the coming years, the alliance risks devolving into nothing more than a transactional partnership — a far cry from the moral, emotional, and largely intangible bonds that have long tied the two countries together. Now, unless this partnership can restore the shared vision that created it, it will become a vessel adrift.
Nonfiction
Our Separate Ways
- From the Publisher
May 3, 2016
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