By Bill Simons

For American Jews, this is the season of our discontent. Israeli brethren are locked in war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and Iran. In the American Diaspora, antisemitism is ascendant and support for Israel diminished. Several readers of this column were asked: “Have your feelings about Israel, your Jewish American identity and the status of Jews in the U.S. changed since October 7, 2023: if so, how and why?” Their divergent responses are instructive.
In some quarters, Jewish American support for Israel has become more vocal, even defiant. Academic and author, Susan Puretz, former chair of the Department of Health, Physical Education, Athletics, Recreation and Dance at SUNY New Paltz, reports, “If anything, my feelings about being Jewish have intensified… Those ‘progressive’ Jews don’t realize the amount of hate and animosity toward the Jews of Israel by the Palestinians and Moslem nations surrounding them… (nor) why, after the Nazi slaughter, Israel is so important to Jews.” Dr. Puretz rejects Jewish elitists: “If they were in Israel during… the October 7, 2023. attack by Hamas and… would say to the terrorists – ‘don’t harm me, I support your cause’ – they would be brutalized as other Jews… were.” 
Alan Levine, possessed of a software/test engineer background encompassing work on the control panel of a multi-mode radar system for the Israeli Air Force, also remains a strong Zionist: “Most Jews around here (Newton, MA) are proudly Jewish, proudly American and proudly pro-Zionist… I worry about the world-wide antisemitism and the way Israel is portrayed in the media. There have always been two states in the former Palestine – Israel and Jordan. Any attack on Arabs by Jewish settlers is covered in the newspapers but never attacks by Arabs on settlers… Israel has been the Jewish homeland for thousands of years, while ‘Palestinians’ were only invented as a distinct people in the 1960s.”
My son Joseph Simons, attorney, former synagogue president and father of five, also protests anti-Israel canards: “I don’t think my feelings about Israel or identity have changed, but I have been surprised and disappointed by an increase in antisemitism over the past few years. There are growing segments of both major political parties that stand against Israel, and Jewish people generally. Celebrities make comments in support of terrorists without any meaningful backlash; in fact, they are celebrated… it is acceptable in mainstream society to declare support for ‘Free Palestine,’ while public support of Israel is booed at best.”
David Lonborg, veteran of nearly a quarter century teaching social studies in New York City public schools, finds too many “corrupt and extreme individuals” in current Israeli leadership positions. But he cautions, “At the same time, considering the truly evil opponents like Hamas and their backers in Iran and Qatar, we have a very difficult decision to make that essentially becomes one of life and death.” Despite its fragmentation and extremist elements, Israel, according to Lonborg, is still fundamentally a “complex and diverse society… remaining true to its democracy and openness.” Lonborg’s “own Jewish identity… has been further strengthened as a I watched after October 7 my former allies and peers on the left flock to the pro-Palestine camp and, either deliberately or inadvertently dust off old antisemitic tropes.” 
While affirming their Jewishness, several correspondents were more pointed in their criticisms of Israeli policies. Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics Emeritus and founding chair, Urban and Environmental Policy Department, Occidental College, affirms, “Nothing’s changed for me. I was and remain a proud Jew… supportive of Jewish self-determination” However, he strongly rejects the current course set by Israeli and U.S. leaders: “The fact that a majority of Americans now think that the U.S. should not provide military aid to Israel, and are highly critical of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, is a good thing, in my view. The biggest threats to Jews these days are Trump and Netanyahu. Trump has promoted and exploited antisemitic hate groups. Bibi’s policies have made Israel a pariah nation and provided excuses and justifications for antisemitism around the world.”
Eric Russell, SUNY Downstate biomedical engineer, makes “a clear discrimination between the Israeli people and their government,” but his rebuke of Netanyahu policies is visceral: “I strongly disapprove of the settler movement and the fact that Bibi’s government is overtly supporting them in their efforts to displace and disenfranchise the resident Palestinians. I worry… about the demoralization of the IDF, especially in Gaza. Turning the region into a free fire zone is unwise in many respects, as it causes PTSD in the IDF as well as giving fuel to anti-Israel activists.”
Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca T. Alpert, professor of religion emeritus at Temple University, advocates centering Jewish American identity on our ethnical imperatives: “My feelings about Israel, American Jewry and my own Jewish identity have been reinforced since October 7. I have long believed that American Judaism has been too reliant on Israel to make us safe, when it is actually the source of danger and destruction for Israelis and Palestinians. American Jews need a liberatory Judaism based on Jewish values: the pursuit of justice, the belief that all life is sacred, and respect for the dignity of all.”   
Jeff Katz, former mayor of Cooperstown, expresses a disappointment in Israel that goes beyond its leadership: “On October 7, everyone sympathized with Israel and was horrified. Since then, it’s all changed. It’s impossible for me to be pro-Israel. It’s not just Netanyahu. When you see interviews with settlers saying that one Jewish life is worth thousands of other lives, it’s disgusting. There’s no way to support that. My own Jewish-American identity hasn’t undergone any changes, but Trump, Netanyahu and Israel are doing more to hurt Jewish-Americans than anyone in recent memory. And that’s before the ill-conceived attack on Iran. Now that Trump was duped by Netanyahu to bomb Iran, most Americans see our military, our economy and our politics as negatively over influenced by Jews. There’s a reason AIPAC money is losing influence, fast.”
Dr. Michael Orenstein, a retired gastroenterologist, also articulates rebuke. “I am almost ashamed to identity as one who sympathizes with anything having to do with Israel since our association with Israel has accelerated the demise of American democracy,” he writes. “The Jews have been torn apart and duped by the conspiracy theorists who are now mainstream in the Republican party. The worst of Trumps’ enablers are Jews, I am ashamed to say. The Iran war blunder is the worst in American history and Israel enabled it.” 
Stephen Lisman, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, SUNY Binghamton, leavens disillusionment with sadness and regret: “The first thing I realized after the attacks of October 7 was that we Jews – specifically Israel – are hated even more than I recognized. It’s always hard for me to not see the world as a psychologist, so I found myself considering just how easily I had overlooked the degree of despair of the people who slaughtered the Israelis. I always felt that the refusal of Israel to find ways to resolve the Palestinian problem was a source of sadness… But the massacre of innocents seemed almost like the logical outcome of years of feeling oppressed and worse. Yet I felt that I had better keep these views to myself in the wake of the horror and the hostages. I feared that I would sound almost like a self-hating Jew; you know, ‘we brought it on ourselves’… But… how can we avoid recognizing that we played a part in leading up to that day?... it left me ashamed of Israel.”
A retired family physician, who requested withholding his name, also expresses profound disillusionment: “I have long had feelings of disappointment about Israel in its treatment of West Bank Palestinians. This includes sanctioning construction and personal attacks. With the slaughter going on in Gaza, I have become not only disgusted with Israel but also ashamed by the hypocrisy of what appears to be the purposeful annihilation of a people. 
Jo Ann Simons, CEO of Northeast Arc (Massachusetts), voices concern about intensification of internal divisions amongst American Jews. Traditionally, Jews are contentious: two Jews, three opinions. But over the past three years, polarization has created fissures in our civil discourse, eroding Jewish American consensus on core principles. My sister responds forcefully to this fragmentation: “What alarms me most is that the increase in antisemitism…seems to lack a unified Jewish response. … competing priorities of Jewish organizations have their own institutional interests guiding them while the unified response of our enemies has been better organized.”
For this column, I yield to diverse and deeply felt words of the preceding respondents. I will offer my own views in a subsequent column: count on it. For now, I will continue to contribute to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services systems, and will remain politically active through the Indivisible movement and my labor union (UUP). May the October Israeli and November U.S. elections reboot the policies of both nations.