Tony Karon, writing in Rootless Cosmopolitan, challenges the delusions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief American stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg:
Netanyahu, and Goldberg, are products of an apocalyptic Jewish nationalism whose toxic effects are brilliantly critiqued by Avraham Burg who calls it “a fearful Judaism, a paranoid Zionism”. Burg makes clear in his book that evoking a constant fear of recurrent Holocausts has been an organizing principle of modern Israel, maintaining cohesion and support from Jewish communities abroad by making the specter of annihilation its daily bread. But as the majority of the world’s Jews live in relative safety (outside of Israel, and even within), that starts to become increasingly absurd. Young American Jews don’t feel that their gentile peers are about to turn on them and build a new Auschwitz, which is why identification with Israel is on the wane among young American Jews. Because survival-in-the-face-of-annihilation is the only narrative on offer from the Zionists, and as Burg asks, for what moral purpose have we survived? That’s not a question the likes of Netanyahu and Goldberg can answer.