American Jews Are More Ambivalent About Israel Than Ever

American-Jewish groups, institutions, outlets, and individuals have, with varying degrees of fanfare, marked 75 years since the establishment of the State of Israel over the last month. There have been numerous concerts and movie screenings. There have been podcast episodes and op-eds. And there have been public meetings, convenings, and panel discussions.

This year, though, the events have commenced at a tumultuous time in Israel, when citizens have been protesting en masse against their government’s proposed plans to gut judicial independence and push through a series of religious and nationalist policies. As hundreds of thousands of Israelis mobilized into a self-described “democracy” movement, American-Jewish groups tried to thread the needle between commemoration, festivity, and sober observation of Israel’s reality today.