David Isaac

It’s strange to observe the mainstream Jewish reaction to the Qassaming of Sderot. It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they do.

There are rallies and fundraisers. Rabbis who talk about Carl Jung now talk about red lines. Lefty editors of Jewish papers sound like Menachem Begin, with remarks like, “No other country in the world would countenance even a single missile.”

On Purim, Hadassah organized a Web event, streaming videos of seven rallies on four continents featuring international notables in support of Sderot. A month before, Los Angeles saw “Live for Sderot!”—a star-studded concert featuring Ninette, winner of the Israeli version of “American Idol”—and sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa showed up. Sylvester Stallone made an appearance.

You say to yourself, “Either I’m crazy or the world’s gone sane.” You can relax. You’re not crazy. Mainstream Jews in America as elsewhere haven’t seen the light. They’re doing what they always do—toe the line. In the case of Sderot, the Israeli government’s official position is that bombing a Jewish city is outrageous, so, OK, it’s outrageous.

When it was Gush Katif on the receiving end of Qassams, that was different. Only 12 miles from Sderot, the settlement bloc razed by Israeli bulldozers in 2005 included some 8,000 residents and suffered 6,000 rockets in a four year period. Where was the outpouring of support from the major Jewish organizations? If anything, they deserved the support more. They didn’t turn tail and run as have the Jews of Sderot, not that we, for a second, blame them.

The only difference, no surprise, is that the Gaza communities were on one side of the Green Line and Sderot is on the other. So Jews in “Israel proper” get the fundraisers and Jews outside it get to watch their houses demolished. The Green Line acts as a sharp, clear, easily understandable—even for American Jews—divide between who gets our support and who doesn’t.

Lucky for Israel, American Jews can be counted on not to think through an issue every time. This leads Israel’s leaders to hold us in the same contempt they hold, well, Sderot. For all their crocodile tears, militarily speaking, they’ve done as much for Sderot as they did for Gush Katif. The latter got hit with 6,000 rockets, the former with 7,000. That’s a lot of rockets not to stop. You almost have to work at not stopping that many rockets.

If American Jews were to start thinking a) there would be a lot of smoke b) they would realize that demolishing Gush Katif led to the bombing of Sderot. The problem exists because of the destruction of Gush Katif. The Jews didn’t occupy the Gaza Strip so much as they kept the terrorists occupied. Now that there are no more Jews within the Strip, the terrorists can turn their attention outward, so they bomb towns like Sderot.

This brings the American Jew, if his cerebral cortex hasn’t exploded yet, to c) If the people who said we shouldn’t leave Gaza because that would lead to the bombing of Sderot were right, while the people who said we should leave Gaza because everything would be hunky-dory were wrong, and the people who were right are now saying we shouldn’t leave Judea and Samaria because that would lead to the bombing of Tel Aviv, and the people who were wrong are now saying we should leave Judea and Samaria because everything would be hunky-dory again, then that might mean that… that…

At this point, the American Jew’s cerebral cortex did, in fact, explode.

After it exploded, he got on a plane to Atlanta in February and voted for the establishment of a Palestinian State at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), an umbrella group of mainstream Jewish organizations. The group called for a two-state solution, “the Jewish state of Israel and a state of Palestine—living side-by-side in peace and security." It’s more likely suicide bombers meet up with 70 virgins than that this vision comes to pass.

It’s worth taking a look at the JCPA’s Web site at www.jewishpublicaffairs.org. Images representing the group’s various causes follow one after the other. Second on the list, after a request for aid to Darfur, is a call for support for JCPA’s global warming campaign with the question: “How many Jews does it take to change a light bulb?”

My answer: More than it takes blondes.

A better question would have been, “How many rocket factories can Israel turn off in the Gaza Strip?” The answer: “All of them—from the Israeli Electric Company in Ashkelon.”

An added benefit is that such a course of action would dovetail nicely with the JCPA’s global warming strategy by cutting down on carbon emissions from the Gaza Strip.

David Isaac is a freelance writer living in California.