Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of the New York Jewish Week, has written here about the debate among US Jews about why young American Jews are becoming less connected to Israel. It makes for interesting reading -- and it should scare the socks off the Israel-firsters, in the US, here and in Israel.

Steven Bayme, the AJC’s national director of contemporary Jewish life, noted the effort to have younger people represented in the discussion; more than one-third of the participants were in their 20s and 30s. But several of the younger people noted that the “gray haired” participants gave the main presentations, and wondered if the younger attendees had been invited as “window dressing.”
Some of the observations that resonated with me, include:
* “Israel education has been hijacked by Israel advocacy programs”;
* “We as a community have made the Holocaust the central narrative while Israel has nowhere near that status”;
* “The problem of indifference to Israel is much more troubling than hostility among younger people, which at least shows passion”;
* “Our community has been a total failure in teaching Modern Israel, and we are paying the price”;
* “If you invite young people to the table, you have to give them a say in the decision making, too – and that’s a risk”;
* “A way to engage young people on Israel is to focus on social justice issues rather than the political conflict.”
* “The topic of this program should have been ‘How Young American Jews Are Distancing Themselves From Idiocy’ because we don’t even have the language for talking about Israel.”