Scouts near Tiberias marching to the tomb of Jethro (2006)
David Hazony: Allies What the Jews can learn from the Druze
First appeared in the Sapir Journal
Few events should be as uncontroversial in today’s Jewish world as a major international conference on antisemitism in Jerusalem. Such a gathering was held this past March, hosted by Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli and featuring speakers such as President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The conference’s aim was to bring together leading thinkers and policymakers from around the world to address the gravest crisis in Jewish life since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Before the conference, however, it emerged that among the dozens of high-profile speakers on the roster, several were far-right politicians from Europe — most notably Jordan Bardella, successor to Marine Le Pen as leader of France’s National Rally party.
Major Jewish speakers pulled out, including the French thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy, the renowned British antisemitism scholar David Hirsh, and the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Ephraim Mirvis. Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, canceled as well, after the organization’s legendary former chief, Abe Foxman, blasted the conference for legitimizing “authoritarian neo-fascist political parties.” Other major figures skipped the main event and instead spoke at a smaller, invitation-only event at the President’s Residence the night before.
How did this happen? The obvious problem was that conference organizers failed to consult key Diaspora figures, especially in Europe, before adding the controversial politicians. An event meant to show unity was conspicuously bungled.
Beyond the drama, something more profound was revealed: There is, it turns out, a fundamental divide over how Jews should build alliances in a post–October 7 world.
On one side are those who believe that Jews should partner with people who share our political and social values — liberal-democratic pillars such as equality, rights, and freedom — to ensure that long-term battles for the strength of democracy are not sacrificed for short-term gain in fighting progressive and Islamist antisemites.
On the other are those who look for allies wherever we may find them. Anyone who joins the current fight against antisemites is welcome, regardless of the person’s positions on immigration, nationalism, or democracy.
David Hirsh’s public statement explaining his cancellation offers a sense of how profound this divide really is:
There are too many far-right speakers on the agenda who associate themselves with anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian movements. . . . It is clear to me that anti-democratic thinking is fertile ground for antisemitism and that the best way to undermine antisemitism is to support democratic thinking, movements and states. . . .
In an increasingly hostile world, the State of Israel is hungry for allies, but it must be disciplined in keeping some distance from those who do not share its values. Israel could listen more attentively to the advice of local Jewish communities and it should not offer the populist right, which has fascistic antisemitism in its heritage and amongst its support, an official Jewish stamp of approval.
I’ve met David Hirsh. He is one of the most important scholars of antisemitism alive, committed in his bones to fighting the good fight, and a mensch to boot. But here I am forced to disagree.
As for the conference, I cannot say whether these speakers should have been invited. I certainly do not dismiss the reactions of esteemed European Jews like Hirsh and Lévy — both of whom I admire. If I were minister of Diaspora affairs, I would have spoken with them well in advance of the conference to solicit genuine counsel. Perhaps a compromise could have been reached.
But with respect to the deeper divide, I would suggest that the approach reflected in Hirsh’s statement may no longer be viable, while that of the conference organizers — regardless of how they handled it in practice — is not just legitimate but an existential necessity.
As it happens, the same fault line appeared among American Jews at around the same time, over the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the Hamas-supporting student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Khalil had his green card revoked for his involvement in the campus protests and, as of this writing, awaits legal resolution in a detention center in Louisiana. While many Jews celebrated, others wrote op-eds and social-media posts to the effect that while Khalil was clearly an antisemitic scumbag, Jews should not rejoice at the ease with which America was deporting him, citing the potentially ill effects of such actions on free speech, a pillar of both American freedom and Jewish survival.
In the wake of October 7, when Jews around the world find themselves in the thick of an existential battle, arguments of this type no longer seem to make sense. True, we should never partner with outright antisemites, Left or Right. But we should no longer impose broader litmus tests on allyship. We should no longer, to use Hirsh’s formulation, “keep some distance from those who do not share our values.” We have tried this. It has failed us.
Instead, we should ally with whoever helps us win.
The patterns of Jewish alliance-building in the United States were forged more than a century ago. Progressive American Jews, backed by the majority of the Jewish community, led the charge in building alliances to bring about a less chauvinistic America. Jews were at the forefront when the equal rights of minorities, women, and gay people were enshrined in law.
And indeed, Jews benefited. America became a less tolerant place for antisemites just as it did for racists, sexists, and homophobes. The Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s directly affected Jews, offering them almost limitless equality of opportunity for the first time. Gone were signs saying “No Jews Allowed” or legally sanctioned exclusion from elite spaces. Only then did the engines of Jewish-American prosperity really fire up.
This last point is crucial, for the entire project of American-Jewish liberalism made sense only because it also helped Jews. The almost complete overlap between our fight for universal equality and the interests of Jewish survival was central to Jewish political action.
Over time, however, American Jews increasingly came to believe that the altruistic, universalistic purpose was the only genuinely Jewish basis of the fight. To speak of “Jewish interests” (or to use the expression “good for the Jews”) became unseemly and antiquated. It went out of style and took some truth with it.
But to keep something quiet for too long is to risk forgetting it entirely — which is exactly what happened when, more than a decade ago, progressive causes began excluding Jews from the benefits that Jews were fighting for. As Anthony Berteaux wrote in a prescient 2016 essay called “In the Safe Spaces on American Campuses, No Jews Allowed,” Jews in the most progressive colleges found themselves left out:
Little has been said about how the idea of “intersectionality” — the idea that all struggles are connected and must be combatted by allies — has created a dubious bond between the progressive movement and pro-Palestinian activists who often engage in the same racist and discriminatory discourse they claim to fight. As a result of this alliance, progressive Jewish students are often subjected to a double standard not applied to their peers — an Israel litmus test to prove their loyalties to social justice.
The problem grew more acute as progressivism continued to evolve. When equality gave way to “equity” and prejudice gave way to “privilege” in the progressive vocabulary, that’s when Jews became “oppressors” rather than just another minority. Equal opportunity was abandoned in favor of retribution (“justice”) against structures of power and the groups that, in the progressive view, benefited from them.
As a result, the progressive alliance no longer included a fight against antisemitism. Jews were suddenly, categorically, among those who caused injustice.
For many Jews, cognitive dissonance took hold. They fell back on multigenerational certainties: that the “real” enemies were right-wing antisemites and anyone who gave them oxygen; that the true battle lines for American Jews were pro- vs. anti-democratic forces, which is to say Left vs. Right; that progressive antisemitism was really just “opposing Israeli policies,” the same way that many American Jews also opposed them; that “from the river to the sea” was a slogan of hope rather than a genocidal chant.
It took October 7 and its aftermath for more American Jews to realize that a great many of their allies were actually enemies — or, at best, fair-weather friends. Suddenly the network of alliances Jews had built with immense investment over generations — feminists, African Americans, LGBT, labor unions — evaporated at precisely the moment Jews needed it most.
Everyone now knows that these alliances failed. But I’m arguing something else: It was also the very idea of allyship that had animated Jewish public life for a century that had failed. It must now be reconsidered.
For nations, allyship grounded in shared values rather than cold interests is, at best, a peacetime luxury. Countries separated greatly from war by time and geography often feel free to choose their allies according to taste. But for those facing military threats on their doorstep, passing up on powerful allies because they don’t share your values can be a form of suicide.
In an essay called “The War Against the Jews,” which appeared in these pages soon after October 7, I argued that a global war against the Jewish people had been launched, and that the Diaspora would need to move to a war footing. This meant a more sober approach to survival, dictated by neither fear nor rage, but rather by borrowing from the vocabulary of wartime generals — objectives, tactics, resources, communications, deterrence, and so on.
What has happened since then on campuses, on urban streets, and in American politics has, I fear, only made this argument more urgent. Nowhere is it needed more than in rethinking allyship.
It is true that radical political movements will often hide their real aims behind a curtain of friendly-sounding words. We no longer can team up with people who deny the crimes of October 7 or downplay antisemitic violence just because they wave the banner of progress — just as we shouldn’t work with antisemitic conspiracy theorists who fight the progressive-Islamist alliance.
At the same time, we should no longer reflexively distance ourselves from powerful potential allies on the other side, just because they disagree with us on policies we identify as democratic.
I wish for the democratic dream to prevail. But our people lived for many centuries before democracy, and we will, if it ever comes to that, continue living for many centuries after it. We have certainly thrived under liberal-democratic rule and must support it wherever doing so is practicable. But we also exist outside of it, beyond it; our existential interests transcend it. Especially now.
We have long grown used to the realpolitik of nations. We may find it distasteful, for example, that the United States shares a bed with the likes of Saudi Arabia. But Americans on both sides of the political aisle have learned to accept and benefit from it.
Israel, too, has long worked with questionable regimes. The Abraham Accords were essentially a kind of alliance with anti-democracies. Israel allies with Azerbaijan — a Shia Muslim–majority nation not known for its democratic guardrails — because of a common interest in combating Iran. Israel allied with Iran under the shah, and with Turkey in its more secular authoritarian phase.
The most extreme example in modern history, perhaps, is the World War II alliance between the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the USSR under Josef Stalin — an alliance that defeated the Nazis and created the postwar order.
Roosevelt and Stalin, of course, shared no values at all.
We generally do not look back at that alliance as a colossal moral failure on Roosevelt’s part. Germany and Japan posed an existential threat to America. When, after the war, the conditions that precipitated the alliance no longer existed, both sides moved on — and the Cold War began.
At the geopolitical level, wartime allyship, it turns out, isn’t friendship. It’s not about two nations embarking on a journey of transcendent value. It’s more like business. Alliances are built to meet the challenge of the day and to secure victory.
The greatest challenge facing the Jews today is a vast antisemitic enemy emerging from the Islamist Middle East, with its missiles and suicidal killers, and spreading across oceans and continents into deeply funded NGOs, international bodies, university faculty, media, protests, and political movements. Our mission today is to build alliances that maximize our ability to fight this war.
When our threat landscape shifts, we will shift our alliances accordingly. In war, you do what you have to.
How are the Jews — who will always be a tiny minority in the Diaspora — to apply this approach? One model worth looking at is that of the Druze.
The Druze are an Arabic-speaking, monotheistic sect that spun off from Islam. They live today in towns across Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. They are both religiously and culturally alien to the Jews of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Their values are not our values. Yet like the Jewish Diaspora, they are a small minority in every country.
The Druze approach to allyship is simple: They will partner with whatever regime defends their villages. Protecting their land and religion is the only thing that matters. And they know how to fight. Over generations, Israeli Druze have built a stable, mutually beneficial relationship with the Jewish state. They proudly serve in the IDF and hoist Israel’s flag.
It didn’t matter that their cousins, the Druze of Syria, hoisted the Syrian flag — and until recently, supported the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The moment IDF forces entered Syria after Assad’s fall last December and then provided a protective umbrella to the Druze community, the Syrian Druze became our friends.
This didn’t make them unreliable in Israeli eyes; on the contrary, it was fully consistent with their well-known principles. Neither did it create a sense of intractable division among the Druze themselves. Israeli Druze welcomed a delegation of Syrian Druze religious leaders to Israel this March with open arms.
What makes it work is this: Their principles are clear and on the table. The Druze will support whoever protects their interests. They do not confuse allyship with the essence of their mission.
Jews in the Diaspora should offer potential allies a similar bargain: We will fight, fiercely and loyally, alongside whoever protects our people. We will not judge their religious, political, or social views. We will not “keep some distance” from those who do not “share our values.”
Just as we should not paint the entire American or European Left as antisemitic just because there are antisemites in their midst, neither should we do so with the American or European Right. I do not believe that President Trump, for all his flaws, is an antisemite, and I think his support for Israel, expulsion of antisemitic activists, and punishing of colleges that enable antisemitism, should be sufficient proof. For American Jews to refuse to work with any party that, as Hirsh put it, has “antisemitism in its heritage and amongst its supporters” is to cut ourselves off from not only Republicans but also Democrats.
Instead of abandoning the field, we should join the internal battles within political camps to keep them onside. If Republicans find themselves in league electorally with right-wing antisemites in order to defeat the Democrats, we should be there to show why we’re more valuable than Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. And the same is true on the Left: Rather than ditch the Democratic Party because of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, we should work with our allies in it, such as Ritchie Torres and John Fetterman, to demonstrate our greater value to their own cause.
Like the Druze, we could do worse than being known as a people who will fight ferociously for our interests and join with anyone who will defend them.
As Jews, we will never give up our universal values. They are part of the Jewish mission on earth.
But we should not allow them to obscure our existential interest, either. Our true enemies will always be the antisemites, whether Left or Right. We should ally with those who side with us against them, with little regard for their reasons or ultimate goals. Because “ultimate goals” are a faraway thing, and the antisemites are here now.
Many Jews will defend their adherence to a pre–October 7, values-based approach by suggesting that the longer-term battle against anti-democratic forces must be fought today, even at the expense of defeating the progressive-Islamist alliance.
This is a mistake. By fighting tomorrow’s war at the expense of today’s, we don’t just undermine our power to win today’s. We also risk losing a great deal of what we will need to fight tomorrow’s. This may seem counterintuitive, so I will explain it through analogy, again, to Israel’s wars.
In the past year, Israel has dramatically weakened Iran by decimating its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, triggering the collapse of Assad in Syria, and destroying Iran’s own air defenses. But Iran is not defeated. If Israel takes its eyes off the Iranian ball (today’s war) because of worry, for example, about rising Turkish influence in the region (potentially tomorrow’s war), it risks failing to defeat Tehran and allowing it to come roaring back. Iran can tomorrow break out to a nuclear weapon, wait for a more favorable administration in Washington, and once again menace Israel on its borders, but this time with a nuclear umbrella.
The result of this would not just be a rejuvenated enemy to the east; it would also mean a significant loss of deterrence against Turkey or any other “enemies of tomorrow.” Israel would be perceived as lacking the will or ability to win, and its enemies would be emboldened and multiply. Victory and defeat, it turns out, affect the calculations not just of the current enemy but of all future enemies.
Similarly, if Diaspora Jewry successfully defeats its enemies today by maximizing alliances with pro-Israel and anti-antisemitic forces on both Left and Right, and the result is the evisceration of progressive antisemitism from elite universities, the media, and legitimate politics, then Jews will not simply enjoy the fruits of equal access to institutions and the ability to attend Columbia or stroll through London without fear. They will have become a stronger force in the world, both in perception and reality — and therefore in a much better position, in terms of resources, willing allies, and deterrence, to battle antisemites on the Right tomorrow.
If we lose this battle, however, by refusing to join with those who could have helped us just because they didn’t “share our values,” we will have fewer friends on the Right willing to help us in tomorrow’s war, while those on the Left will view us as a less useful ally. Across the spectrum, people will see comparably more benefit in opposing us than joining us.
All of this is obvious to anyone who studies geopolitics, but it has yet to be taken seriously in the strategic thinking of the organized Jewish Diaspora. Like Israelis before October 7, American Jews have not faced an existential threat in a long time.
For too long, we have lived under the belief that the best allies are those who share our social and political beliefs. We have confused our universal values with our interests as a people. We see someone who has objectionable views, say, on immigration or Ukraine or gun control or climate change, and, mentally, we put them into a box called “bad for the Jews” — even if they have never said an ill word about Jews or even if they hang an Israeli flag out their window.
The century-long American-Jewish alliance with progressive causes made sense so long as it served the interests of the American Jewish community. Today, however, America is undergoing rapid, dramatic changes. We do not know what it will look like even a decade from now. The betrayal by our allies after October 7 should have taught us more than just “we had no idea our friends were secretly pro-Hamas.” It should have taught us that our whole approach to allyship needs to change.
Instead of focusing on values, today our alliances should be made exclusively with those who a) reject antisemitism in all its forms, b) share our enemies in today’s war, and c) are sufficiently reliable and powerful to make a difference on the battlefield. To be effective and desirable allies, we should make clear that our alliance is interest-based and can be easily revoked if our allies fail to meet the basic test of fighting Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred. And we should not undermine today’s war against progressive-Islamist antisemitism for tomorrow’s, because the outcome of today’s will have a big impact on tomorrow’s.
Unraveling century-long habits of value-based alliances will be difficult, but not impossible. The first step is to put our collective survival above our wishes for humanity, and to internalize realpolitik in our approach to allyship. Only then will we be in the best position to defeat antisemitism today, and to prepare for the next battle tomorrow.
DAVID HAZONY is editor of Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People, published in October 2023.
