The Israeli journal Azure has emerged as the best center-right English-language Israeli journal out there. Its mission is to provide the intellectual and ideological underpinnings for the revival of Zionism as an active force in Israeli life. (It also carries some religious commentary, tending towards the modern Orthodox)
In the current number, Michael Oren examines the complex relationship between Israeli Jews and American Jews. In one paragraph, he describes the transformative effects of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War:
The victory also accorded American Jewry immense clout in domestic politics, primarily via Congress, which ratified ever-expanding aid packages for Israel. Indeed, though established in 1953, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee--AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby--emerged as an influential force in American foreign policymaking only in the mid-1970s, after Israel became the world's foremost recipient of American largesse. Contrary to the often asserted anti-Zionist charge that Israel owes its strength to American Jewish power, in fact, American Jewish power was forged by Israel.
While Oren overstates the Jewish clout in American poitics (the gigantic aid packages are but a miniscule fraction of the federal budget), this rings true to me. Americans can and do respect those who fight for themselves, especially those who do so successfully. That American Jews would both absorb and benefit from that attitude after 1967 is unsurprising.
It also suggests that in the face of military reverses, Israel's stature, that of American Jews, and the effectiveness of the "Israel Lobby" could all suffer seriously. Likewise, the effectiveness of the Arab Lobby and the arabists in our foreign policy apparatus would increase substantially.
The fact that liberal American Jews don't believe this order of cause-and-effect has both explanatory and predictive power. It goes a long way to explaining why they continue to vote overwhelmingly Democrat in national elections: we don't feel as though we're in exile, therefore don't need Israel to rescue us. We can plausibly deny the link between Israel's fate and our own, and can also persuade ourselves that nothing catastrophic can really happen to Israel, and that should catastrophe appear imminent, we can persuade the US government to prevent it.
That those on the left, such as J-Street, don't understand their own countrymen well enough to understand that, by and large, Americans will only help those who help themselves, is pathetic. That they seek to influence US policy so as to pressure Israel into making concessions that would make catastrophe all but inevitable is suicidal.
