Orit Arfa

Depends on the poll. Wait for real results.

That is a fair defense for some of the speakers, given the context of their other work. And even if a few speakers might deserve criticism, your basic point is vital: the problem is, and the focus must be, on the problem they described. The answer must be on fighting the problem, not indulging it not for Israel’s sake, but for America’s. Israeli society has begun a great change from the war and is on a right path. What worries me is the rest of the west. Europe is all but gone and if its future generations have any hope, it is in the wake already of great agony. America is not gone, but at the crossroads. If its youth continue to embrace the sentiments as described I believe accurately in the conference, and influential public figures tap into it or embrace it rather than recoil and rally to challenge, change it and follow a path akin to Israel’s next generations, America’s future as a great power is questionable. The magnitude of the calamity of reduced American greatness must be understood. Yes, the Jews will suffer, not only because of antisemitism but because the fate of the Jewish people has been inextricable linked, as the historic record bears out, with the advance of human freedom. Jews suffer most in the most repressive regimes and eras and thrive most in freer societies and thrive in freer eras. But it ultimately isn’t about Jews. The lifestyle we Americans enjoy is held up by our greatness and power. The incredible wealth, safety and peace Americans enjoy and which leads to such societal confidence, innovation and enterprise, was delivered to us by generations of Americans who fought for it and understood their personal role and responsibility to sacrifice to secure, protect and nourish their freedom. When a generation arises in the U.S. that feels it is entitled to the benefits of that greatness but exempt for sharing the burden of the cost of maintaining or even growing that burden, then the it all can very rapidly be lost. The debate over Israel has become, as the Jewish question in societies often has before, a sort of medium for the internal debate in a society. The debate over support for Israel is a vehicle for debating about ourselves. The problem is that as a conservative, if Israel has become an emotive symbol of the internal debate over the nature of conservatism, then the positive aspects of Israel should be tapped by conservatives as a model and rallying point to guide and motivate ourselves. If Israeli youth have found valor, cultural vitality, self-reliance and faith and other forms of what we once saw as “Cincinnatan Virtues,” then we can use our alliance, affinity and interactions with the Jewish state as adrenaline to trigger a revival in American youth of the same virtues. But there are those in the conservative camp, however, who instead use Israel and Jews as a negative rallying point to attack American culture and portray America as evil and even go back and take the most decisive and exemplary moments of American greatness, such as World War II, and portray us as the evil problem, which is sadly becoming a more pervasive view in our youth. They are, I believe, still as rather small minority in the camp, but their views are far more current among the young generations. But that cannot be accepted. The use of Israel as a negative rallying cry, which has rotted already evil leftist thought, has descended in its parallel on the right into antisemitism. And that antisemitism will, as it did on the left, rot the brain. It always does. This is cancerous to America’s health even more than Israel’s. Because American society, as Israel’s, can really only be defeated from within. And Israel is already turning itself around. As such, the purveyors of this sort of thinking in the conservative cause must be defeated, not indulged as resolutely as we must defeat the left. Their continued currency as purported conservatives is incompatible with an effort to secure and grow American greatness.