Don’t Do It, Bibi. Please.

Here is a great Hebrew term to use around your Thanksgiving table, and it is bound to impress everyone who is there. Well, maybe some people. 

It's shlilat ha-golah — literally, the negation of the Diaspora. It is a common theme in Zionist history and thought — the idea that the re-institution of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel would, of necessity, mean the withering away of the Diaspora. It shows up from time to time in both elegant and not-so-elegant ways — most notably, in Hillel Halkin's magisterial and recently re-issued Letters To An American Jewish Friend.

I am not about to accuse the Netanyahu government of trafficing in shlilat ha-golah. But there have been times when I have wondered aloud whether this government actually cares all that much about what is going on in the Diaspora. To put it bluntly: I wonder, at times, whether the government of the state of Israel understands the meaning of the Israel-Diaspora partnership. We like to say that when our people hurt in Tel Aviv, we feel it in Tallahasse. This is true — but there is another dimension as well. Whatever the state of Israel does has serious ramifications in the Diaspora. 

I do not mean that Israel should always and in every situation take the complex feelings of American Jews into consideration. Neither do I believe that Israel exists for the maintenance of American Jewish fantasies and dreams, a kind of Jewish Disneyworld. Israel is a real state with real issues and with its own security situation to consider, and it must do so, unfettered by the failed sense of “what will the goyim say?”

And yet, when the government of Israel engages in what can only be called a PR Masada move, it behooves Diaspora Jews to speak out. 

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