It is clear there are serious cracks in the relations between American Jews and Israel, and among the American Jewish community.

This is creating new factions—anti-Israel Jews, anti-Zionist Jews, questions about how to fight antisemitism, settle the Palestinian issue, and Jewish-American political affiliations—that are all fueled by extremists pushing their own agendas in Israel and the US.

Historians can debate this, but to the average American Jew following these developments, it is clear that the established national Jewish institutions focused on fighting antisemitism are following an outmoded way of “solving” this problem that is financially wasteful and has failed to reduce the incidents of antisemitic attacks despite decades of programs costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Since October 7, the spike in antisemitic attacks in the US has been a direct result of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war. While these military tactics are necessary, social media forms public opinion instantly, just as TV cameras did during the Vietnam War. In a difficult urban guerrilla war involving high explosives, civilian casualties are inevitable, yet they create a bigger long-term threat to global public opinion than the military objective of killing terrorists. Social media can make a military victory a PR nightmare. This is inevitable in modern warfare.

One result is that the protracted Gaza war has created divisions among American Jews that are wider than ever. These have separated Democrats from Republicans, Orthodox from Conservatives, the wealthy from the middle-class, and pro-Israel from anti-Zionists. The........

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