Pushback Activism among Jews concerning Israel in the US, France, and Canada

• In Event: Why Citizens Engage in Protest and Activism

Abstract

Why are Jewish advocacy and activist organizations which are critical of the Israeli government’s rightward, hawkish, and illiberal drift and several of its policies and actions related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict significantly more popular among Jews in the US as compared to Jews in Canada by several measures, and are even less popular among Jews in France, broadly speaking? Examples are JStreet, Americans for Peace Now, IfNotNow, New Israel Fund (US and Canada), JCall-France, La paix maintenant, JSpaceCanada, and others. I call these pushback organizations because they represent a political ‘pushback’ against mainstream and establishment Israel-advocacy organizations in each country. They argue that AIPAC, the ADL, Hillel and comparable organizations in each country defend Israeli-government policies and actions unconditionally and that this has meant supporting hawkish, illiberal policies which deter negotiation with Palestinian leadership, do not reflect human-rights values, and are not in the best interests of the US, France, or Canada. Rather, pushback organizations advocate that their respective governments pressure Israel to end the occupation and pursue a two-state solution, and to condition support for Israel on it approaching those goals. While US-based pushback organizations enjoy considerable backing from American Jews, comparable organizations in Canada receive significantly less support from Jews, and those in France even less.

The different outcomes in political mobilization among Jews concerning Israel is puzzling because in all three cases Jews have historically held politically and socially liberal, and all three countries share important structural similarities. The puzzle is an important one because while successive Israeli governments move further rightward and nationalist, and a growing portion of Jews in the US, France, and Canada object to this and to specific Israeli policies and actions related to the conflict, the terrain of political mobilization among Jews in Canada and France does not reflect these views as it does in the US (Pew 2013, 2021; Environics 2019).

This paper offers an ontological security-based response, using mainly qualitative analysis of 50+ interviews and existing surveys. This approach is particularly exciting as ontological-security scholars have expanded the field’s scope in recent years from its initial focus on states to produce a growing oeuvre on the political behavior of ethnic, immigrant, and diaspora groups (Mitzen 2018; Mitzen & Kinnvall 2020; Krickel-Choi 2022).

The argument is that for a significant share of American Jews, Israeli-government policies and actions and support for them from establishment Jewish organizations engenders a sense of ontological insecurity. This is because these policies and actions conflict with a large share of American Jews’ ontological sense of self and biographical narrative as a historically progressive and liberal community concerned with minority rights. The idea of a perceived historical self as a source of ontological insecurity is drawn from Bachleitner (2021), Narozhna (2020), and Eberle and Handl (2020). In contrast, I argue that a perceived sense of physical insecurity is widespread among Jews in France due to an increase in antisemitic violence there since 2000. I posit this has led to increased nationalism, conservatism, and protectiveness of Israel among French Jews, as predicted in work on ethnic nationalism by Loizides (2015), Saideman & Jenne (2009), and Kauffman (2015). I posit that this sense of physical insecurity among French Jews broadly overshadows any sense of moral conflict regarding the Israeli government. In Canada, interviews and existing surveys indicate that a sense of insecurity is comparatively less prevalent among Jews, but that it is primarily a physical and not ontological one.

The paper argues that each type of security threat causes a different security-seeking strategy from Jewish-community leaders and members. It links a widespread sense of ontological insecurity among American Jews to widespread support for (pushback) organizations which they perceive as more in line with their ontological sense of self, and, in contrast, the paper shows how a widespread sense of physical insecurity among French Jews disincentivizes support for (pushback) organizations which many see as unreasonably critical of Israel.

In sum, the paper generates and tests a theory that where a sense of ontological insecurity related to Israel is widespread among Jews, pushback organizations like JStreet, Americans for Peace Now and others are likely to flourish and enjoy support from a considerable share of the Jewish population, as opposed to in countries where a sense of physical insecurity is comparatively more prevalent. The paper concludes with ideas how the findings may ‘travel’ to other ethnic or diaspora groups divided along political lines or on issues related to a country-of-origin or putative ancestral homeland.

Author

• Elizabeth Stein, University of California, Los Angeles