European Jews deserve better
a stark picture of a Jewish state whose residents simply were not interested in many aspects of their co-religionists’ lives in the diaspora.
“The reality is that your average Israeli does not think much about diaspora Jews,” he claimed.
This grim assessment was seconded by Zvika Klein of Israeli daily, Well known for walking through Paris wearing a kippah and filming the resultant harassment with a hidden camera, Klein is the only full-time diaspora reporter working for the Hebrew language press.
“For a human interest story, it is difficult to convince my editors, but for antisemitism it’s very easy,” he said. “It’s annoying for me. There is not enough of that sense of peoplehood.”
Like mine, Klein’s articles have also become magnets for criticism by readers who believe that victims of antisemitism “deserve it” and have no one but themselves to blame.
“From the perspective of the average Israeli who is informed by the Israeli media, [countries like] France [are] war zone[s] just as Israel is [portrayed] if you live anywhere else in the world,” Klein continued.
As for diaspora affairs unconnected to antisemitism and BDS, there seems to be very little interest, a phenomenon he attributed to the dominant Zionist ethos of Israel.
Like Klein, I believe that this indifference stems from the belief that Israel was founded to “negate” the diaspora and stands as the ultimate solution to antisemitism. Israelis do not believe that there is any justification for living elsewhere, especially in a post-Holocaust Europe.
Jewish journalists from around the world have also expressed frustration at what they believe is a lack of in-depth coverage of their communities in the American Jewish press.
“It’s understandable because the United States is the biggest [diaspora] community but there is an overemphasis on US Jewish themes and stories at the expense of very important things happening in Europe, South America and other countries,” Michael Kuttner, a journalist with Australia’s told me at the conference.
A lack of resources preventing Jewish papers from covering European Jewry on the ground accounts for part of this trend, but there is also a “lack of interest,” he said.
American Jews are “interested in Israel but not about Jewish communities in other countries except as it reinforces our own stereotypes about other countries,” added Sue Fishkoff of a California paper. “As American Jewish journalists it behoves us to run more stories and interviews with Jewish communities about their daily life.”
While the consensus about the United States tended to be rather pessimistic, not everyone was convinced that American Jews are as apathetic as all that.
According to Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor in chief of the online readers are “fascinated by stories of Jewish life in Europe, [especially] more personal stories of revival and Jewish cultural phenomena.”
However, a look inside any random American Jewish newspaper tends to show that such stories probably aren’t gaining the traction one would wish. European Jews deserve better.
Average Israelis don’t think much about diaspora Jews
Samuel Sokol is a freelance journalist living in Israel. He is currently writing a book on Ukrainian Jewish refugees.