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Source: https://www.hudson.org/religious-freedom/jews-are-proxy-far-bigger-political-fight-michael-doran
The "Jews" Are a Proxy for a Bigger Political Fight over the American Future
(Hudson Institute) Michael Doran - Since Oct. 7, 2023, American Jews have found themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the political left and the political right, between progressive internationalists and extreme isolationists. On the left, antisemitism takes the form of anti-Zionism. Universities that style themselves champions of diversity now host chants for Israel's eradication. Encampments celebrating Hamas set the moral tone. When mobs target Jewish students, administrators avert their eyes and invoke "free speech." Yet the same administrators spring into action when non-Jewish groups suffer even a "microaggression." On the right, Tucker Carlson has updated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the 21st century. He elevated the podcaster Darryl Cooper to "the best and most honest popular historian in the U.S." Cooper trivializes the Holocaust as a bureaucratic mishap and depicts Winston Churchill as the agent of rich Jews. World War II becomes the first in a series of misguided American interventions abroad - engineered, ultimately, by Jews. Israel has always carried a special symbolic weight in America. From the beginning, Americans cast their self-understanding in Israel's image. The Puritans saw themselves as Israelites crossing the Red Sea. When Americans talk about Israel, they are often talking about themselves. Evangelicals still see in Israel a covenantal twin. Progressives give more attention to Israel than to any other foreign nation, casting Israelis as "white colonizers" and Palestinians as "oppressed people." Yet Israel is not a "white" society. Its Jewish population includes, among others, Yemenite and Ethiopian communities - unmistakably people of color. Their very presence highlights the absurdity of the racial binary on which the progressive coalition depends. Israel is the archetypal nation-state: God, people, land. Covenant and borders. Israel's miraculous rebirth, and its power and flourishing - despite the destruction of European Jewry, and its multiple wars for survival - stir American nationalism. The very existence of the Jewish state and the excitement it provokes in America shatters the dream of a post-national, multicultural world run by a global managerial elite. Carlson and progressives are firing at the same target: the bond between America and Israel. To sever it is to rewrite the American story. Arguments about Israel are, at bottom, arguments about America. To be for or against Israel is to choose among competing visions of the American future. When Trump embraces Netanyahu while waving off Carlson, he is not just setting Middle East policy - he is declaring who America is. The writer is a senior fellow and Director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute.