America’s Fight Over Israel: Where Did It Come From? Where is it Going?

American views and especially American Jewish views of Israel are in a period of transformation. This has happened before. The Zionist movement founded by Theodore Herzl was initially opposed by most American Jews but supported by many Christians. This changed in the 1920s and was completely transformed by the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It changed again in 1967 when Israel became the focal point of American Jewish identity and a key issue in US politics. As Israel became an occupying power, and most recently with its battles with the Palestinians in the West Bank and especially Gaza, the intensity of the fight over Israel has increased, especially on America’s campuses. This lecture will give historical context for the arguments we have over Israel and offer some tentative suggestions about where they may go in the future.

Eric Alterman is Distinguished Professor of English, Brooklyn College, CUNY. He has served as a senior fellow of the Center for American Progress, the World Policy Institute, and The Nation Institute, and a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a Schusterman Foundation Fellow at Brandeis University, and a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. A regular columnist and contributor to the most prominent media outlets, Alterman is the author of twelve books, including We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel (Basic Books, 2022).

Cosponsors: Department of English, Institute for Global Studies, Department of History, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology