https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/21/u-s-jews-have-widely-differing-views-on-israel/

MAY 21, 2021

U.S. Jews have widely differing views on Israel

BY JUSTIN NORTEY

The Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. (Nick Brundle Photography/Getty Images)

Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority country, is a subject of special concern to many Jews in the United States. Caring about Israel is “essential” to what being Jewish means to 45% of U.S. Jewish adults, and an additional 37% say it is “important, but not essential,” according to a new Pew Research Center survey that was fielded from Nov. 19, 2019, to June 3, 2020 – well before the latest surge of violence in the region. Just 16% of U.S. Jewish adults say that caring about Israel is “not important” to their Jewish identity.

However, the survey found that Jewish Americans – much like the U.S. public overall – also hold widely differing views on Israel and its political leadership

Most Jewish Americans identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, and more than half gave negative ratings at the time of the survey both to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to then-President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. policy toward Israel. But Orthodox Jews – 75% of whom are Republican or lean Republican – generally rated both Netanyahu and Trump positively.

Orthodox Jews were also more likely than Jews in other denominations to say that the Israeli government was making a sincere effort to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people. By contrast, most Jewish Americans said they did not think that either the Israeli government or Palestinian leaders were sincerely seeking peace. And most Jewish adults took the position that God “did not literally give” the land of Israel to the Jewish people (42%) or said they do not believe in God or a higher power at all (24%).

This analysis looks at the size of the gaps among U.S. Jews on a range of questions about Israel depending on differences in Jewish denomination, political party and age.

More than half of all U.S. Jews belong to the two long-dominant branches of American Judaism: 37% identify as Reform and 17% as Conservative. Roughly one-in-ten (9%) describe themselves as Orthodox. Other branches, such as the Reconstructionist movement and Humanistic Judaism, total about 4%, and due to small sample sizes cannot be analyzed separately. One-third of Jewish adults (32%) do not identify with any particular stream or institutional branch of Judaism.

Among U.S. Jews overall, 58% say they are very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel, a sentiment held by majorities in all of the three largest U.S. Jewish denominations. However, Orthodox (82%) and Conservative (78%) Jewish adults are more likely than those who identify as Reform (58%) to feel this way. Conversely, among U.S. Jews who do not belong to any particular branch, a majority say that they feel not too or not at all attached to Israel.

And while 60% of Jews overall say they have a lot or some in common with Jews in Israel, Orthodox Jews (91%) are more likely than Conservative Jews (77%), Reform Jews (61%) or those who don’t identify with any branch (39%) to express this feeling.

On some political and theological questions in the survey, the differences across denominations are starker. There is an especially large gap on whether God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people. The vast majority of Orthodox Jews (87%) say they believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people, compared with 46% of Conservative Jews, about a quarter of Reform Jews and about one-in-five of those who don’t affiliate with any branch of American Judaism.

Party affiliation is another clear dividing line in Jewish Americans’ views on Israel. About seven-in-ten Jewish Republicans and independents who lean Republican (72%) say they are very or somewhat attached to Israel, compared with about half of Democratic and Democratic-leaning Jews (52%). There are similar gaps across the political aisle in the percentages of Jews who closely follow news about Israel and feel they have at least some things in common with Jews in Israel.

It’s important to keep in mind that the survey was conducted during the final 14 months of Trump’s term, after the administration moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but before it announced agreements for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel. At that time, eight-in-ten Republican U.S. Jews rated Netanyahu’s leadership as excellent (42%) or good (40%), compared with just a quarter of Jewish Democrats. A solid majority of Jewish Democrats gave Netanyahu “only fair” (32%) or poor (38%) marks.

Similarly, Jewish Republicans were roughly four times as likely as Jewish Democrats to rate Trump’s handling of U.S. policy toward Israel as excellent or good (89% vs. 21%). And Jewish Republicans were much more likely than Jewish Democrats to say they had heard of the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement, and that they strongly oppose it.

Another way of examining differences among Jewish Americans is to look at age gaps. While Orthodox Jews tend to be relatively young and feel a strong attachment to Israel, younger Jews – as a whole – are less attached to Israel than their older counterparts. Two-thirds of Jews ages 65 and older say that they are very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel, compared with 48% of those ages 18 to 29.

In addition, Jewish Americans 65 and older are more likely than the youngest adults to say that caring about Israel is essential to what being Jewish means to them, to follow news about Israel at least somewhat closely, and to know about and strongly oppose BDS.

And when it comes to assessments of Netanyahu’s leadership and of Trump’s handling of U.S. policy toward Israel, U.S. Jews ages 65 and older were more likely than those under 30 to have rated the performance of both men positively.

Tensions Among Democrats Grow Over Israel as the Left Defends Palestinians

Tensions Among Democrats Grow Over Israel as the Left Defends Palestinians

Lisa Lerer and Jennifer Medina, New York Times, May 15, 2021 

 In 1988, when James Zogby, the founder of the Arab American Institute, pushed Democrats to include a mention of Palestinian sovereignty in their platform, party leaders responded with a clear warning, he recalled: “If the P-word is even in the platform, all hell will break loose.” Eager to stave off an angry confrontation at the convention, the issue was shelved without a vote. 

 Now, with violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories forcing the issue back to the forefront of American politics, divisions between the leadership of the Democratic Party and the activist wing have burst into public view. While the Biden administration is handling the growing conflict as a highly sensitive diplomatic challenge involving a longstanding ally, the ascendant left views it as a searing racial justice issue that is deeply intertwined with the politics of the United States. 

 For those activists, Palestinian rights and the decades-long conflict over land in the Middle East are linked to causes like police brutality and conditions for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Party activists who fight for racial justice now post messages against the “colonization of Palestine” with the hashtag #PalestinianLivesMatter. With President Biden in the White House, traditional U.S. support for Israel is hardly in question from a policy perspective; he has made his support for the country clear throughout his nearly 50 years in public life. 

Still, the terms of the debate are shifting in Democratic circles. On Thursday, a group of leading progressive members of Congress offered a rare break from party unity, giving fiery speeches on the House floor that accused Mr. Biden of ignoring the plight of Palestinians and “taking the side of the occupation.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York directly challenged the president, who had asserted that Israel had a right to defend itself. “Do Palestinians have a right to survive?” she asked in an impassioned address. “Do we believe that? And if so, we have a responsibility to that as well.” 

 Less than 24 hours later, on Friday, nearly 150 prominent liberal advocacy organizations issued a joint statement calling for “solidarity with the Palestinian residents” and condemning “Israeli state violence” and “supremacy” in Jerusalem. The statement was signed not just by groups focused on Middle Eastern and Jewish issues but by groups dedicated to causes like climate change, immigration, feminism and racial justice — a sign that for the party’s liberal faction, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has moved far beyond the realm of foreign policy. “The base of the party is moving in a very different direction than where the party establishment is,” Mr. Zogby said. “If you support Black Lives Matter, it was not a difficult leap to saying Palestinian lives matter, too.” 

 {snip} 

 For decades, both parties offered almost unquestioning support for Israel, with words like “occupation” and “Palestine” considered far outside the acceptable debate in official Washington. But left-wing Democrats no longer shy away from such terms. “We oppose our money going to fund militarized policing, occupation and systems of violent oppression and trauma,” Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, a Black Lives Matter activist now in her first term in Congress, said in her own floor speech on Thursday. “Until all our children are safe, we will continue to fight for our rights in Palestine and in Ferguson.” Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian-American from Detroit, referred to herself as “a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist, that we are human,” before condemning “Israel’s apartheid government” from the House floor. 

 The debate within the Democratic Party reflects a longstanding divide among American Jews, a mostly Democratic and secular group, who are enmeshed in their own tussle over how to view the Israeli-Palestinian tensions. An older generation sees Israel as an essential lifeline amid growing global anti-Semitism, while young voters struggle to reconcile the right-wing policies of the Israeli government with their own liberal values. A survey released in the past week by the Pew Research Center* found that two-thirds of American Jews 65 and older described themselves as emotionally attached to Israel, compared with 48 percent of Jewish adults under 30. “The rise of identity politics made this almost inevitable,” said Daniel Gordis, senior vice president at the Shalem College in Jerusalem. “It looks like weak against the strong, the disenfranchised against the enfranchised, the stateless against the state.”

 {snip} 

 As many as a quarter of Jews in the United States vote Republican, the survey showed, a marked increase in the last several years. {snip} The Pew survey showed that among Republican Jews, nearly three-quarters said they felt a strong attachment to Israel, while only 52 percent of Jewish Democrats expressed the same belief. Jewish Democrats are also much more likely to say that the United States is too supportive of Israel.

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* https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/21/u-s-jews-have-widely-differing-views-on-israel/