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Has America's Jewish Establishment Failed?

Culture Clash

More young people rejecting Zionism.

Young American Jews are feeling less connected to Israel according to new studies—and they may have good reason to, writes The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books. With peace as a top priority, the "only kind of Zionism [those surveyed] found attractive was the kind that the American Jewish establishment has been working against for most of their lives,” Beinhart writes. As a result, studies imply that if young, liberal Jews are forced to choose between liberalism and Zionism, liberalism tends to win. This could mean an unexpected conservative shift in the Zionist movement, with support coming primarily from the Orthodox community. And this could leave the future of support for Israel uncertain, and create what Beinart describes as an “American Zionist movement that does not even feign concern for Palestinian dignity and a broader American Jewish population that does not even feign concern for Israel.”

Read it at New York Review of Books