Israel Is Not What Will Keep the Jews Safe

Biden reminds us of an old and no longer relevant justification for Zionism.

Official White House photo by Adam Schultz

Joe Biden is sometimes derided as a man of the past, prone to viewing the present through a lens shaped by long-ago events that may or may not be relevant any longer. You can certainly see that tendency in the way he talks about Israel, a country with which he clearly feels an emotional bond. For years, he has been telling the story of the time he met Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on his first overseas trip as a U.S. senator just before the Yom Kippur War in 1973. (Israeli notes from the meeting describe the young Biden as very respectful toward Meir, “and yet while speaking [he] displayed a fervor and made comments that signaled his lack of diplomatic experience.” Sounds about right.) He is firmly within the longtime bipartisan consensus in Washington that Israel is not only a vital strategic ally in the Middle East but the only country there with which America shares a cultural affinity.

Keep that history in mind for a moment as we consider what he said at a Hanukkah celebration at the White House on December 11: 

“Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe,” he said. 

There were a variety of reactions to his statement, some that critiqued it and some that celebrated it (“It’s the most Zionist thing I’ve ever heard a US president say,” said former Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman). But what’s most interesting to me is what has happened to the idea it represents, an idea rooted in Zionism’s earliest foundations and the function the state was supposed to serve in the wake of the Holocaust. 

Let’s take a brief historical tour before we return to the present. From Zionism’s origins at the turn of the 20th century, this extremely pragmatic concern was the core argument for the establishment of the State of Israel: The entirety of Jewish history is one of oppression and displacement, and in order for Jews to survive as a people, they needed their own sovereign state. While every Jew in the world might not get up and move, Israel would be there if — or more likely, when — they needed to flee the countries where they lived.

Theodor Herzl

In Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), the 1896 pamphlet that served as the founding text of Zionism, Theodor Herzl presented antisemitism as an inexorable fact of life in the diaspora. Wherever they go, Jews will be hated and oppressed:

We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. This is the case in every country, and will remain so, even in those highly civilized—for instance, France—until the Jewish question finds a solution on a political basis. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.

No matter how much Jews assimilated, or felt and expressed patriotism for the countries in which they lived, Herzl wrote, they would never be accepted and would always be vulnerable. “My happier co-religionists will not believe me till Jew-baiting teaches them the truth; for the longer Anti-Semitism lies in abeyance the more fiercely will it break out.”

That problem would be solved by the establishment of a Jewish state, after which, Herzl thought, antisemitism would disappear. Herzl died just a few years later; in the wake of the Holocaust, the Zionist case became irresistible.

This conception of Israel as a safe haven for Jews not only takes antisemitism for granted, it takes genocidal antisemitism for granted. The fate of Europe’s Jews seemed to prove Herzl right: The Jews of Germany in particular were, if not quite blamed for their fate, at least judged for being too complacent. They thought they were successful, accepted, integrated into German society — but they forgot the history of their people, that sooner or later the goyim would turn on them. They forgot what it meant to be Jews. 

Now let’s return to America. As the decades after the war passed and generations grew up for whom the Holocaust was an episode out of history, antisemitism became less threatening — real, certainly, but nothing to get all that worked up about. Let’s consider this episode of “Seinfeld” from 1996, which highlights a generational divide on antisemitism: 

The creators of the show, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, were both born in the decade after World War II. While Jewish humor’s treatment of trauma and suffering is a topic entire books have been written about, my take on this is that prior generations always joked about antisemitism, but antisemitism itself was no joke. But the humor in this “Seinfeld” bit derives from the idea that the foolish Uncle Leo sees phantoms of antisemitism everywhere, while the younger and savvier Jerry sees it as not particularly worrisome. Antisemitism is not really a threat, and certainly not a genocidal one. 

That’s what many of us grew up believing, but that belief is shakier now than it was a few years ago. Antisemitic incidents increased in frequency after Donald Trump’s election brought a whole new generation of white supremacists out of the woodwork, and the number kept climbing, with the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh only the most visible manifestation prior to this year. But how many American Jews are thinking right now that Israel is the answer to antisemitism, the thing that will keep Jews safe?

It was particularly jarring for Biden to posit Israel as the guarantor of safety for the world’s Jews right after 1,200 Jews in Israel were slaughtered — whole families killed in their homes, women raped, people of all ages taken hostage — an event that seemed to demonstrate that whatever Israel is, it is not a safe room into which the diaspora can rush at a moment of danger, close the door behind them, and breathe easy. 

There’s a poignant line in Der Judenstaat where Herzl writes that once the State of Israel is established, “We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.” If only. 

Today Israel is ruled by the far right, which doesn’t bother to promise anything like that tranquil vision. Instead, it holds that Jews can achieve at most a temporary peace, but only with hardened hearts, a venomous tribalism that rejects any notion that Palestinians are human beings worthy of dignity and human rights, and the regular use of brutal violence against Palestinian civilians. 

There are plenty of Israelis who will tell you that the state is still an insurance policy for Jews, that for all its troubles it provides the only real safety because Jews can never rely on majority-Christian or -Muslim societies to protect them. Many would point to the reaction of the international left to the events since October 7 — which has featured a disturbing amount of justification of Hamas’ horrific crimes, and more than a little outright antisemitism — as proof.

Where does this leave liberal diaspora Jews? Speaking for myself, I refuse to rely on the likes of the repugnant Trump lickspittle Elise Stefanik to defend me. The fact that the American right are the loudest opponents of antisemitism (for now) makes me squirm, especially since I know it’s utterly insincere and mostly a tool they use cynically for their long culture war against the academy and against the left, as well as to justify their own anti-Muslim bigotry.  

So that may mean that the ultimate safety for Jews can only be found in liberal democracy, in societies that protect freedom and equality. We certainly won’t be protected by the increasingly authoritarian right in our own country, no matter how much affection they claim to have for us. But Israel is not keeping us safe today either, and a world where it’s the only place we have a hope of living securely — especially if Israel’s government continues to violate every Jewish value we hold dear — is one without any safety at all.