Ross:

Benjamin Netanyahu and Abe Foxman may have accelerated the process, but it’s hard to imagine that the more secular, more assimilated sections of the Jewish-American population wouldn’t have eventually drifted away from an intense connection with Israel anyway, in much the same way and for many of the same reasons that Italian-Americans are less attached to both Italy and Catholicism than they were in 1940 or so, or that Irish-American are far less interested in the politics of Eire and Northern Ireland than they used to be[bold mine-DL].

My impression is that ethnic groups in diasporan communities retain strong connections with their respective nation-states overseas in direct proportion to the intensity of political upheaval and controversy in those states and in inverse proportion to the relative power of the nation-state in question. The Armenian diaspora has been very involved in funneling funds to the Republic and to Karabakh ever since independence and the war, and it is partly because of the relative political and economic isolation Armenia experienced during the last twenty years because of the Karabakh war that Diasporan support has been forthcoming and also very important. This has happened at the same time as successful Armenian assimilation in the U.S. and in other countries around the world, and indeed it is thanks to that successful assimilation that Diasporan Armenians can provide as much aid as they do. In the event that Karabakh’s status could be normalized or some negotiated settlement with Azerbaijan and Turkey could be reached, we would probably see a gradual weakening of attachments as Armenia comes under less pressure economically and politically.

The Irish case seems similar. It was not all that long ago that a U.S. administration strongly influenced by Irish-Americans in the Democratic Party was very actively pushing the British to reach a settlement with the IRA and Sinn Fein. After the Good Friday agreement, the armed conflict that was a significant driver of Irish-American sympathy for the republican cause more or less came to a close. Sinn Fein won some political concessions in the process, and all of the rhetoric of struggle and violent resistance faded into the background. Disarmament and the power-sharing agreement in Belfast made previous American sympathy for Irish republicans in Ulster increasingly redundant, and whatever pro-republican sentiments still exist are not being exploited for any particular political issue. Most Irish-Americans in the 1990s were at least third-, fourth- or fifth-generation Americans, but what kept sympathy for the republican cause strong and politically significant was the continuation of the conflict in Ulster.

What seems different in the case of American Jewish attachment to Israel is that the relevant conflicts and controversies have only intensified and deepened during the same period, but the American Jewish attachment has weakened, or at least the nature of the attachment has changed significantly. What may explain this may not be secularization and assimilation so much as it is the very different position of Israel vis-a-vis its neighbors and subjects compared to the positions of Armenia and Irish republicans. By all accounts, Israel has a relatively flourishing economy. Following the financial crisis, its market was one of the best-performing in the world, and its tech sector has been very successful. Militarily, it enjoys superiority over all of its enemies and potential rivals, and enjoys the patronage and support of a superpower. Even though Israel is probably more diplomatically isolated in the world than it has been in decades, Israel is secure and more than capable of defending itself. At least partly for that reason, rhetoric that emphasizes that Israel faces an “existential threat” or “second Holocaust” seems absurdly alarmist, and the urgency and uncritical solidarity that once characterized the attachment to Israel make sense to fewer and fewer people. So the attachment to Israel grows weaker as Israel becomes stronger and wealthier and ceases to resemble the much more vulnerable state of earlier decades.