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A Coordinated Attack on America's Jews and Israel
(Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Dr. Steven Windmueller - Over these last 150 years, both the collective and personal achievements of Jews have been without precedent, as Western societies have exhibited a more open tolerance, allowing for a Jewish renaissance of power and influence. Yet the advent of the internet and the presence of social media platforms have been the staging areas for much of the adverse messaging now being directed against Israel and global Jewry. We are now living in a political culture in which public debate is being reduced to a base level of distrust, where alternative viewpoints are often labeled and minimized, and where one's opponents are marginalized. The Gen Z phenomenon involves a cohort whose educational orientation and socialization experience are fundamentally different from prior generations. Minimally exposed to classroom civics and American history, this age group has been far less connected to the traditions of the earlier periods of America's social and cultural evolution. Today's language of the street, with its distortions of Zionism, misrepresentations of Judaism, and its outright dismissal of the Jewish people, is attempting to rewrite the Jewish narrative concerning who we are and what we represent. These activists seek to deny both our presence and our historic connection in the Land of Israel and call for our genocide. The dismembering of the American Jewish political story is designed to weaken U.S. support for Israel and undo the influence and status of Jewish Americans. This displacement is well underway. The writer, Emeritus Professor of Jewish Communal Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, is a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.