For many people in Israel, ties with American Jewry are a very personal matter. We met those same Jews years ago when they were young. They – and we – aren't young anymore. Back then, a thousand years ago on the kibbutz, they were volunteers of students of Hebrew who got up early to harvest melon. Or to work in the cowshed. They learned to love the landscape, the fields, the pool, and the dining hall. There was virtually no argument about Israel in and of itself.
Despite everything, including the friendship that has survived for decades, I can remember tough questions that I heard one woman ask back in about 1974. Why did the nearby Arab village look the way it did? Why was the quality of life and level of development there so poor, compared to – yes – our community's. What seems obvious to you can look bad to Americans. Today, the quality of life has in a sense been equalized, and at least that little village with its mud huts has grown a lot more than the kibbutz. But that doesn't matter, because a considerable number of the volunteers from the late 1960s and early 1970s are furious with Israel. Back then, they experienced the country for themselves. They saw what a country looked like after a war. Today, they are experiencing Israel via infusions from the left-leaning media.
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