Word: Netanyahu and American Jews

Abba Solomon - Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reckless plan for an address to American Jews highlights the Israeli government’s obsession with Jewish identity that has proved historically dangerous to gentile residents of Palestine, and is alien to the American ideal of shared citizenship regardless of race or creed.

Together with his March address to the U.S. Congress on an unprecedented mission to destroy President Obama’s Iran negotiations, Netanyahu is forcing re-examination by American Jews of the sympathy they’ve maintained for Israel because Israeli Jews are co-religionists.

Netanyahu’s behavior, the 48-year military occupation ruling over non-Israelis, and increasingly reported instances of Jewish extremist violence, are bringing the majority of American Jews — if not major Jewish institutions yet — to a wary relationship with the volatile, nuclear-armed State of Israel.