After Israel's creation, the organized Jewish community embraced it and made it "central" to Jewish identity. Israeli flags were displayed in synagogues, lobbying groups were created to promote Israel's interests, making it the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. The Palestinians were displaced and, in 1967, their land was occupied. In reality, the Palestinians have become the last victims of the Holocaust, for which they bear no responsibility whatever.
What we have witnessed since 1948 can only be considered a form of idolatry, making the State of Israel, not God and the Jewish moral and ethical tradition, "central" to Jewish identity. This is reminiscent of the story of the Golden Calf in the Bible.
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Where the future will lead is impossible to predict. One hopeful possibility is that the movement toward universalism and the rejection of nationalism which proceeded dramatically in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - and was interrupted by the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine - will once again move forward in the future. There is now every indication that this will be the case. The current divisions in American Judaism certainly point in this direction.
~ Allan C. Brownfeld, American Council for Judaism, introduction to Coming to Palestine, pp. vii-viii
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