We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind

[Little Tich]

1. The American Jews Who've Exchanged Their Utopian Myths About Israel for Demonic Ones

Source: Haaretz, by Jonathan Sarna, Aug 01, 2016

They reject the 'naïve delusion' and 'propaganda' they were taught about Israel and Zionism. But Hasia Diner and Marjorie Feld have adopted just as facile arguments and incendiary claims against Zionism.

In an opinion piece recently published in Haaretz,  two American Jewish historians, Hasia Diner and Marjorie Feld, bemoan the loss of an Israel that they once held dear. Diner describes her past love as a “naïve delusion.” Feld describes hers as the product of “propaganda.”

Others have ably refuted the facile arguments that Diner and Feld put forth. It is disappointing to see tired slogans about “colonialism,” “racism” “imperialism,” and “ethnic cleansing,” repeated by respected scholars, without any reference to the well-known literature that challenges and nuances these incendiary claims. 

Perhaps that is what happens when American Jewish historians venture far from their area of expertise.   

Where Diner and Feld do reflect larger currents is in their admission that they grew up loving Israel more than they actually understood it. Indeed, as I argued back in 1988 as part of a symposium in Commentary Magazine, “The Israel of American Jews -- the Israel that they imagined in their minds, dreamed about, and wrote about -- was for well over a century a mythical Israel, an Israel that revealed more about American Jewish ideals than about Israeli realities.”

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.734804

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