I’m a non-Orthodox Jew. I’m also a political conservative and although I respect stuff about Progressive Judaism such as egalitarianism and the need to look at the Torah with modern eyes and understand that there is not one but many voices that make up the Torah, I find myself increasingly at odds with the politics of Progressive Judaism. Yes, of course I disagree with the sort of Rabbonim who are so far Left that you half expect them to start selling copies of Socialist Worker from the Bimah and I will just roll my eyes and moan when I experience this sort of stuff. However what is getting to me, like a gnawing difficult to ignore guts ache, is the naivety of too many Progressive Jews.

It’s a potentially lethal naivety that causes its followers to follow cults like Tikkun Olamism which sometimes gets whole congregations promoting many of the ‘social justice’ causes that have turned out to be at best laughable and at worst divisive and dangerous. It’s also a naivety that causes the grandchildren of genuine refugees who fled from murderous Tsars, Bolsheviks and a Uni-testicled Austrian Corporal, to treat chancers from cultures that have Jew hatred baked into them, as people worthy of being given sanctuary. This naivety in addition causes some Progressive Jews to disregard the Biblical instruction to ‘not put too much trust in Princes’ by believing that Jew hatred and other hatreds can be cured by civil law speech codes, an idea that failed dismally in the Weimar Republic where ‘hate speech’ laws had the unintended consequence of assisting the Nazis.

However there is a massive and overarching naive current in Progressive Judaism and that is regarding Israel and its many sworn enemies. I find that there’s too much badly thought out stuff going on with regards to this subject within Progressive Judaism. There is the assumption among some that if only Israel gave up land or withdrew troops from this or that area then the result would be peace. There are progressive Jews with, in my view, idiotic beliefs who treat the words claiming that they desire peace that come from Islamic terror groups who have attacked Israel in the past as if they are true and meaningful when the truth is they are not. Nothing that comes out of the mouths of such terror groups or their supporters or their excusers should ever be treated as truth. Groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah or any of those similar, are not interested in peace with Israel and their words are often lies. What upsets me is that these naive progressive Jews are good people doing a very wrong thing, which is being naive about things that they really should be much more cynical about. The undoubted energy and commitment to faith in action that exists in Progressive Judaism could be put to so much more better use both in Britain and across the world, instead of being expended wastefully on causes that are either worthless or which might eventually be dangerous to ourselves and our allies.

There are others who have found that their progressive Jewish faith in peace processes or the ability of enemies to become friends, has hit the wall of reality and has broken into irreparable pieces. One such person is Ilan Benjamin, a Progressive Jew, writing in The Free Press who has finally had enough of wanting and working for peace with those who want Jews dead. Mr Benjamin is a cousin of the murdered Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl who was killed in Pakistan by jihadists in 2002. Mr Benjamin, even after his cousin’s murder, prayed, argued and campaigned for peace with the ‘Palestinians’. But the recent atrocity in Israel carried out by the same ‘Palestinians’ whom Mr Benjamin wanted peace with has caused him to abandon this cause.

Mr Benjamin said:

In March 2003, I turned 13 and celebrated my bar mitzvah in Walnut Creek, California. By Jewish tradition, I became a man. But the ceremony felt redundant; I had already grown up. Only one year earlier, my older cousin, Daniel Pearl, an investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamist jihadis while on assignment in Pakistan.

His killers, like the Hamas killers of last weekend, proudly released a video documenting Danny’s murder. Among Danny’s last words were, “My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” At first, I was in shock—how had my own cousin become a player in such a large international nightmare? Why did people get murdered simply for being who they are? In this case, for being Jewish?

Danny’s parents did not call for revenge. Instead they set up The Daniel Pearl Foundation that offers fellowships, sponsors cross-cultural music events (Danny was a gifted musician), and brings people together to improve the world. Even after what my family had been through, their work encouraged me to be idealistic and believe that the Jewish people could make peace with our neighbors. I became a fierce advocate for peace.

Mr Benjamin then went on to speak of his decision to travel to Israel and join the Israeli Defence Forces where he served in a combat unit near to the Gaza border. As is the case with many young Jews who travel to Israel in order to serve in its armed forces, Mr Benjamin was considered as a ‘lone soldier’ and was allocated a family with which to stay. This family was in one of the Kibbutzim that were brutally attacked by the Islamic savages of Hamas.

Mr Benjamin continued:

I watched the news in horror as terrorists massacred over 100 people at Kibbutz Be’eri. Women. Children. I frantically messaged my host family and heard nothing back. Like my cousin Danny years ago, my family was being held hostage. The good news: unlike Danny, my host family at Kibbutz Be’eri was saved. They are physically okay. But how can they really be okay, after watching their friends and neighbors being slaughtered? 

There was a time when these types of events couldn’t shake my ideals. I used to argue relentlessly for a two-state solution. I fought bitterly with Israeli friends about the decency of the Palestinian people. Even though radical Islamists had murdered my cousin, even though civilians had been blown up in buses daily during the Second Intifada, I refused to give in to nihilism. 

It was not nihilism that hit Mr Benjamin, it was the cold hard touch of reality. The realisation that there is no partner for peace with Israel. He naively trusted the ‘Palestinians’ to act with decency and to reciprocate his criticisms of Israel, the Israeli Right and the Settlements. How wrong he was.

Mr Benjamin added:

I agreed that the settlements were unlawful, that Gaza was a humanitarian crisis, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuahu was a dictator. I assumed—if I cared enough, if I mourned for the Palestinian dead, if I put nuance above all else—our neighbors and their allies would give us the same decency.

How wrong I was. This past week, as over 1,300 Jews were slaughtered, the most murderous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, I saw the true face of Palestinians and their allies. All around the world, they celebrate. They gloat. They mock our tears. They do not protest against Hamas. They embrace pure evil. 

There are thousands of Progressive Jews in the West and especially in the United Kingdom and the United States who have got on the criticism of Israel train or like Mr Benjamin have made loud disapproving noises about the Israeli Right when it’s in government or decried Israeli military actions or have truly believed that the ‘Palestinians’ seek peace. Such progressive Jews need to wake up and smell the coffee, these ‘Palestinians’ also want Progressive Jews dead and no amount of thinking otherwise can change that.

The naivety of Progressive Jews in a whole host of areas needs to stop. The more I compare the real world with the world as Progressive Jews would like it to be, the more convinced I become that Progressive Judaism is heading for a disaster of some sort because of the aforementioned naivety. Personally I’d like to see Progressive Judaism be more realistic about the world as it is, instead of suddenly finding reality hitting Progressive Jews without warning and with no way to escape the consequences of naivety.