Jewish Americans may be increasingly disenchanted with Netanyahu. But their priorities lie elsewhere

In Israel, public discourse is moving right. You can see it in the rise of Israel Hayom, the free, pro-Likud newspaper that has eclipsed Israel's more traditional, centrist press. You can see it in the rise of Naftali Bennett, the settler leader whose party could come in third in the elections due later this month. You can see it the election campaign as a whole, in which the two-state solution is a virtual afterthought.

In Jewish America, by contrast, public discourse about Israel is moving left. You can see it in the increasingly harsh criticism of Binyamin Netanyahu's government by mainstream Jewish commentators such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and New Yorker editor David Remnick. You can see it in the inability of rightwing Jewish figures such as former Bush administration official Elliot Abrams and Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens to derail Chuck Hagel's nomination as secretary of defence by calling him (absurdly) an antisemite. And you can see it in the rise of the liberal lobby group J Street, which after some initial stumbles has developed strong relationships with influential Jewish Democrats such as California senator Dianne Feinstein.

So are the world's two largest Jewish communities headed for a clash? Not necessarily, because public discourse only matters so much. The dirty little secret of Jewish America is how disconnected most American Jews are from the Jewish state, a country most have never visited and know little about. That's especially true for younger American Jews, only 58% of whom, according to a recent J Street survey, could even identify who Netanyahu is. Are many of these liberal, relatively secular Jews, especially in the younger generation, uncomfortable with Israel's current drift? Yes. Is this discomfort increasingly felt even by prominent Jewish writers such as Friedman and Remnick? Yes. Does this discomfort drive the organised American Jewish community? No, because the Jews most uncomfortable with Israeli policy have the least contact with the organised American Jewish community. To the extent that they're politically active, it's on American domestic issues such as abortion, gun control, gay rights and healthcare. For the most part, liberal Jews leave Israel to their richer, older, more religious and more tribal co-religionists who populate groups like the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). And it's Aipac, and organisations like it, which wield the most influence in Washington, thus helping prevent the Obama administration from challenging Netanyahu's pro-settlement policies.

It's a bit like gun control. A majority of Americans think letting lunatics get automatic weapons is, well, lunatic. But a majority of Americans involved in gun-related lobbying groups don't.

So is Netanyahu free to do whatever he pleases without worrying about the American Jewish response? On the Palestinians, maybe. But on Iran, no. That's because war with Iran, a war in which the US could easily become engulfed even if we don't drop the first bomb, is a much higher priority than the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (or lack thereof). It's a higher priority for Americans, for liberal American Jews, and for America's president. It's an issue on which Obama, as evidenced by the Hagel nomination, is not prepared to defer to Aipac. And it's an issue that could, if America goes to war, mobilise those liberal American Jews who would not mobilise politically on the peace process but did mobilise against the war in Iraq.

The key things about the 70% of US Jews who voted for Obama is that, politically, they're more focused on America than Israel and more focused on being liberal than being Jewish. Whether or not Netanyahu understands that will help determine relations between the world's two largest Jewish communities in 2013.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/12/netanyahu-young-american-jewish-liberals