Bobby Kennedy Jr's entanglement with Israel and "Israelism"

It's been widely reported that the IDF recently opened fire on starving Palestinians who swarmed aid trucks from Egypt. What will it take for Kennedy to change his tune?

“Israelism” Trailer

Last month Kennedy explained why he continues to believe the IDF is justified in their efforts to eradicate Hamas on Dave Smith’s “Part of the Problem” podcast. Unlike other interviews where Kennedy’s grasp of relevant history far exceeds that of anyone in the building, he and Smith are evenly-matched, making for an enlightening exchange, no matter what your position happens to be.

In the end, the two do not disagree about the what, where, who or when. They disagree about the why.

I think of knowledge as knowing where are all the dots are. Wisdom is understanding how to connect them. But Kennedy is, in my opinion, very wise. Why is he hooking up the dots differently than Dave Smith, I and many others in his base? Is he biased by personal experiences? Am I?

The movie “Isrealism”, released in 2023, powerfully examines bias through the eyes of some Jewish-American youth who are questioning what they have been taught in their formative years about the plight of the Jewish people and that of Palestinians.

In this article I will offer my thoughts on the movie, the Kennedy/Smith conversation and an important race for a Congressional seat in Florida’s 25th district currently held by Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

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Against all odds, the Kennedy campaign continues to make strides towards upending the two-party system. Mainstream media outlets demonize him as an “antivaxxer” while his tried and true supporters struggle with defending his pro-Israel position. According to Kennedy campaign insiders whom I know, the former life-long Democrat admitted that he was “hemorrhaging” support from his base after reaffirming his support of Israel after the events of October 7. Why then, after over 150 days of merciless slaughter of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces has he not tempered his position?

Those who put their hearts and wallets behind the man who has challenged and beaten environmental polluters, who openly calls out the dark forces of our government that were clearly responsible for the murder of his uncle and father and who promises to expose the hidden war machine that runs our government are understandably mystified with his stance that Israel has the right to defend itself no matter what.

Why would the founder of Childrens Health Defense not decry the deaths of over 10,000 innocent Palestinian children in the last five months?

Why are you breaking our hearts Bobby? Are you a puppet of the military industrial complex that you vow to expose? Does the IDF have some dirt on you? Please help us to understand where you are coming from…

Kennedy on the “Part of the Problem” Podcast

Last month Kennedy tried to do just that. Comedian and podcast host, Dave Smith, interviewed Bobby Kennedy on his podcast, “Part of the Problem”. The episode has since garnered over 100 thousand views.

Smith is Jewish and a Libertarian. He is also supportive of every plank in Kennedy’s platform except for his position on the Israel/Hamas conflict. This was the central topic of their conversation. I highly recommend watching it in its entirety:

The conversation was congenial but spirited; both men have a deep respect for each other which was immediately apparent. Unlike other podcast hosts and content creators, Smith has an understanding of the history of the Jewish state that equals his guest’s. While offering kudos to Kennedy for his courage in confronting powerful interests, he wasted few words in expressing his utter frustration around Kennedy’s support of Israel in lieu of events over the last five months.

Though I may disagree with him on this issue, I have learned that whenever Bobby Kennedy opens his mouth I learn something new.

Kennedy began by contextualizing his position. Here are points and some of his direct quotes which may come as some surprise to those who are quick to label him as a pro-Israel absolutist:

• “I’m not a fan of BB (Benjamin) Netanyahu. I’m a long time critic”

• “What happens in the Middle East and everywhere is that the zealots on both sides and militarists on both sides feed on each other, and they have a symbiotic relationship with each other. Everything they do to escalate the violence and hatred actually empowers their partner on the other side.”

• Kennedy acknowledges that Netanyahu is in such a perverse relationship with Hamas

• “I oppose the settlements in the West Bank. They are illegal under Israel Law. They are illegal under International Law”

• “I support the Palestinians. I support a two-state solution which Netanyahu does not.”

• To defend his support of the Palestinian people Kennedy reminded the audience that Sirhan-Sirhan was Palestinian and was charged with the murder of his father, yet Kennedy knows that the bullets fired from his weapon did not kill him: “I have worked hard for the last ten years to get Sirhan-Sirhan out of prison…”

• Kennedy admits that the situation in Gaza is precarious and that Israel’s response may very well lead to much more loss of life on a much bigger stage.

• “I am opposed to unjust wars. Very few of the wars we have fought in the last century have been just wars.”

• Kennedy believes that there are times when harmful ideologies have to be crushed to have a just world, and this will result the loss of civilian lives (referring to Germans and Japanese during WWII)

• Kennedy wants the Palestinians to live lives of prosperity, happiness and dignity, and that cannot happen if Hamas is in charge. Kennedy draws parallels between Hamas and the Nazi party, both of which must be eradicated.

This was the prologue to a dynamic conversation between the two, Smith beginning his criticism by pointing out that a Nazi/Hamas comparison is completely inappropriate as the Nazi’s domain, at the peak of their power, was immense while Hamas doesn’t even control the Gaza Strip.

Both had an admirable command of history and were able to defend their respective opinions, but in the end the two reached an impasse.

Smith voiced the concerns of Kennedy critics. Generally, the Palestinian people have suffered immensely under Israeli occupation of the West Bank and incursions into Gaza for a very long time. Hamas’ attack on October 7 is the product of decades of subjugation of the Palestinian people. Shouldn’t we expect that this sort of prolonged assault will result, sooner or later, in a militant, radical response, in this case in the form of an organization like Hamas?

Doesn’t it make more sense that empowering the Palestinians, providing them with the means and safety to live prosperous and meaningful lives will automatically obviate the need for Hamas while an all out assault on the people of Gaza may temporarily thwart their attacks on Israel but in the end will empower the terrorist organization even more?

But Kennedy countered with a reasonable question: What would you expect the IDF to do as thousands of rockets were being fired into Israel with the intent to kill innocent people? Negotiate? Or put a stop to the offensive first?

The two clearly share similar views about many controversial topics. With regard to this one, neither has a superior grasp of history than the other, yet they have come to completely different conclusions about how we have gotten here and what should be done next.

Why?

It’s not about history. It’s about one’s interpretation of it. Kennedy seems to have a soft spot in his heart for the only Democracy in the region. While he often argues that all people living in Israel, Arab, Jewish or otherwise, enjoy the rights of a free society, those rights don’t exist in occupied Palestinian land—places from where rockets are launched at the occupiers. Moreover, our founding fathers prior to the Revolutionary War had far more in common with the Palestinians right now.

“Israelism”

“Israelism” (directed by Erin Axelman,  Sam Eilertsen) was a movie released in 2023 (prior to the events of October 7). From the film’s website:

“When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.”

The film was brought to my attention by a close friend of our family, a highly energetic young Jewish woman who is passionate about social justice. It seems like only yesterday when we attended her Bat-Mitzvah.

Until very recently she proudly regarded herself as a “zionist”. Her views began to shift after the events of October 7. Now she finds commonalities with the main character in “Israelism”, Simone Zimmerman, something she may not have been able to imagine a few years ago.

Zimmerman was raised in Los Angeles. Her grandfather’s family escaped to Israel during the Holocaust. As a young Jewish girl raised in America she learned Hebrew, celebrated all the Jewish holidays and was training to be an advocate for Israel, to defend it against the lies that are being told about it.

She admits that she had no conception of what it is like to be Palestinian. In all her education about the Jewish people and Israel, she never had any understanding of the Palestinians plight, only that they were people who wanted to kill Jews.

Zimmerman had never heard of things like “occupation”, “illegal settlements” or “apartheid” with regard to the West Bank or Gaza. Shocked that having done everything right while growing up, she couldn’t answer simple questions around these issues.

“I wanted to know answers from within my own community, and nobody could answer those questions for me.”

The directors of the movie use Zimmerman’s story to weave together multiple perspectives to highlight the indoctrination of Jewish-Americans in Jewish schools, summer camps and college student groups.

Filmmakers Axelman and Eilertson use interviews from a number of people on both sides.

Jacqui Shulefand is a Former Jewish Day School Teacher and now Director of Engagement, UCONN Hillel who says, “Israel is my greatest passion; I cannot separate Israel and Judaism.”

Rabbi Bennett Miller: National Chair, Association of Reform Zionists of America. Miller admits that he is teaching kids to be zionists and that they don’t know that is what they are being taught. “It’s part of my madness, so to speak”

Abe Foxman, Director Emeritus, Antidefamation league. Foxman was born in Poland in 1940: “Israel is the insurance policy for Jews in case things get rough…”

Baha Hilo, Palestinian Guide. From a family of “victims of an ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Israelis”.

Sami Awad, Palestinian and Executive Director, Holy Land Trust and American Citizen.

Hilo and Awad both recount stories of being terrorized by IDF soldiers at a young age.

Awad asks in protest of Israeli military law which is applied to Palestinians but not Jews in the West Bank, “why would a foreigner think it is okay to have superior rights to the rights of the indigenous population?”

He answers his own question: “Because somebody told them it’s home.”

To counter, Yishai Fleischer, a Hebron Settlement Spokesperson who lived in America and returned at age 17 to serve in the Israeli army explains,

“There are elements, what I would call Jihadist elements, that don’t accept our presence here, but it’s just tough for them…It’s a great vision coming to fruition in our time. And there’s nothing gonna to stop us.”

Beyond the interviews the movie also uses live footage to tell a powerful story including scenes where:

• Joe Biden tells a large, pro-Israeli crowd that he learned long ago that “you can’t say no to Abe (Foxman)”.

• Young Jewish-American students are taking notes from “A Case for Israel”, by Alan Dershowitz.

• IDF soldiers are shown harassing young, frightened Palestinian boys and blocking a youth from returning to his home.

Filmmakers were also able to capture an exchange between a Jewish West Bank settler who kicks a Palestinian woman out of her own house:

Palestinian woman: “You are stealing my home!”

Jewish settler: “If I don’t steal it, someone else is going to steal it.”

Is the movie fairly depicting injustice at the hands of the US-backed Israeli government? Or is it anti-Israeli propaganda created by “self-hating Jews”?

It is clear that the filmmakers chose to exclude any reference to harm borne by innocent Israeli citizens at the hands of Hamas or any other regime intent on destroying the Jewish state. It was by no means a balanced depiction.

On the other hand, if scenes of innocent Israelis harmed by Hamas attacks were also offered, where would that leave us? In the end, innocent people are being tormented by terrorist organizations AND governments. There is no denying this.

In any case, the point of the movie was not to establish that Israel is unjustified in their actions in the West Bank and Gaza, it is to demonstrate how many American Jews have only a limited understanding of a very complicated situation which involves the fate of their people and that of the Palestinians. It is also plausible that this deficiency is by design.

Last week as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 30,000 it was reported that IDF soldiers opened fire on “a crowd of Palestinians who were hoping to get food from aid trucks in Gaza City”. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that 112 were killed while Israeli officials disputed that number.

What could be running through the minds of an IDF soldier firing bullets into an unarmed crowd desperate for the food in aid trucks? “Israelism” may give us some clues.

Filmmakers interviewed a man going by the name of “Eitan”, a product of conservative Jewish upbringing in Atlanta. He recounted “military games” being played at Jewish summer camp.

In school he was taught that Israel was an empty wasteland when the Jews arrived and that Palestinans were treating the land poorly. He and his classmates were told that “They want to kill us all and want us to leave the land”.

Jaffa, Palestine, circa 1900

As a young man he joined the IDF and trained in machine gunnery. After 7 months of training, he was deployed to West Bank. He recalls walking the streets, standing atop buildings so that they would be seen.

“We wanted to let them know we were watching. That was the goal of the mission. We manned check points to check IDs, to keep them on their toes—they being Palestinians.”

Eitan remembers that while stationed in the West Bank he had to bring a “detainee” from a check point to a detention center on the military base. He dropped the young man off, blindfolded, and watched a dozen soldiers throw him to the ground and beat him outside the fence of the center while a guard watched, smoking a cigarette. Only after the brutal assault on this defenseless person was he brought into the center. Eitan was ashamed for abetting in an assault and not protesting.

This was only one of many experiences he had while stationed in the West Bank— experiences which led him to leave the IDF.

Avner Gvaryahu, Israeli born, Executive Director, Breaking the Silence also served in the IDF. He states:

“I was never in a Palestinian house until, as a soldier, I barged into one in the middle of the night. A common mission was to take over a Palestinian family’s home and use that house as a military point. No warrant, you don’t call in advance; it’s a military occupation.”

“We can detain any Palestinian just because he looked at us in the wrong way. That’s a system that’s based on violence.”

Gvaryahu’s account would naturally offend all people, especially we Americans who have a Constitution with a third Amendment that forbids such actions by our government. “Israelism” offers us some insight into how this is playing out. There are undoubtedly IDF soldiers who have serious misgivings about their role once they understand that they are not fighting a just war but are in fact, picking a fight. How common is this sentiment and these kinds of experiences amongst IDF soldiers?

Is RFK Jr. Antisemitic?!

“Israelism” brings light to a very real phenomenon in the United States. This year Jen Perelman is challenging incumbent Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) in Florida’s 25th district. Wasserman-Schultz was the recipient of the second biggest contribution from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in 2023.

In this interview with Kim Iversen, Perelman wastes few words in describing how as a young Jew in America she was indoctrinated with pro-zionist ideology from her community. She and Simone Zimmerman from “Israelism” tell very similar stories:

Readers may recall that in July of last year Rep. Wasserman-Schultz viciously attempted to prevent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from appearing in front of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, citing Kennedy’s repeated statements which spread “dangerous antisemitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories amid increased violence targeting both groups”. The former DNC chairperson wanted to censor Kennedy from testifying in an open session about censorship, ironically.

Is Kennedy spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories? It’s a big accusation—wouldn’t that make him an anti-Semite?

Wasserman-Schultz was alluding to a statement the Presidential hopeful made at a fundraising event where he mentioned research that indicated that the SARS-COV2 virus binds ACE-II receptors with varying affinity based on a person’s race. According to at least one published study, Ashkenazi Jews are among ethnicities with lower binding affinity.

According to Wasserman-Schultz, citing certain scientific evidence is apparently antisemitic. Luckily Kennedy has some heavy hitters on his side. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach according to Wikipedia:

Jacob Shmuel Boteach (born November 19, 1966), commonly known as Shmuley Boteach (/ˈʃmuːliboʊˈteɪ.ək/ SHMOO-lee boh-TAY-ək), is an American rabbi, author, television host, and radio host. He is the author of 31 books, including the best-seller Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy (1999) and Kosher Jesus (2012). For two seasons, he hosted the prime-time reality television series Shalom in the Home, which was one of the highest-rated shows on TLC.

Shmuley Boteach's outspokenness has earned him both praise and criticism; he has been described as one of the most influential Jews in the United States and the world. The Washington Post referred to him as "the most famous rabbi in America", Newsweek named him one of the 10 most influential rabbis in the United States, and The Jerusalem Post named him one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach came to Bobby’s defense in this passionate introduction, turning the tables on his accusers. Boteach lets the audience know that he fights antisemitism as fiercely as he fights unjust accusations of antisemitism:

As “one of the most influential Jews in the United States” with connections to Las Vegas casino magnate billionaire Sam Adelson’s family and Israeli PM Netanyahu, Rabbi Schmuley’s opinion carries some serious weight. The Rabbi has no problem calling out antisemites when he sees them.

His commitment to protecting the Jewish people against antisemitism cannot be questioned:

If he says Bobby isn’t antisemitic, Bobby isn’t. That’s how it works.

Although Wasserman-Schultz’s accusation was baseless, Kennedy knows that he could and would be vulnerable to such attacks if it weren’t for the support of Rabbi Schmuley, the man pictured above. The man who believes “It is time for Jews to be feared rather than loved. Only then will the antisemites recede..”

Yes. Fear knocks the negative bias right out of people’s minds. Works every time.

Rabbi Schmuley wouldn’t be very pleased with Kennedy if he withdrew his support of Israel’s actions right now, would he?

Is Kennedy overly influenced by this person and/or others like him? It’s an important question one must answer for oneself.

Final Thoughts

I hope Kennedy arrived at his position himself without being coerced, controlled or subconsciously manipulated. This would leave the door more open for him to change his mind.

What kind of evidence might make him reconsider?

At the very beginning of his interview with Dave Smith, Kennedy stated that “the zealots on both sides and militarists on both sides feed on each other, and they have a symbiotic relationship with each other. Everything they do to escalate the violence and hatred actually empowers their partner on the other side.”

He also acknowledged that PM Netanyahu is in such a perverse relationship with Hamas. How perverse exactly? Could IDF higher-ups have known about the impending attack on October 7 and let it happen on purpose (i.e. a LIHOP event)? Are we to believe that Hamas was able organize an attack that involved thousands of coordinated rocket launches with ground incursions without the knowledge of Israeli intelligence?

Kennedy, a history buff, would know such a ploy is nothing new. The sinking of the Lusitania, the event that drew public support for entering WWI was clearly a LIHOP event. The Gulf of Tonkin attack which led to a rapidly escalated and prolonged US involvement in Vietnam was purely fabricated by military Warhawks.

LIHOPs are an extremely effective tactic to justify an all out assault on countries and territories. Bobby has written about how his uncle, President Kennedy, was constantly opposing such diabolical plans proposed by his Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba during his shortened presidency. On what grounds can we say that October 7 wasn’t a LIHOP event?

There seems to be ample evidence of this as I explain in depth here:

Israel's 9/11

You have my vote in 2024, Bobby. But you haven’t convinced me that you will be on the right side of history on this matter. If you are willing to support BB’s campaign to eradicate Hamas at any cost to the Palestinians, would you also be willing to evict the 450,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, 60,000 of whom are American who are violating International Law? What if they refuse to leave? Would force be justified in that case?

Here’s a two minute trailer from “Israelism”:

Please consider watching and supporting this important film. And please leave your comments.