The findings are highly disconcerting. Only 54% of the under-35 category was "comfortable" with the concept of a Jewish state, in contrast to 81% of those over 65. More disturbingly, over half of those under 35 would not even be inclined to regard the destruction of Israel as a "personal tragedy." The findings demonstrate that non-Orthodox American Jews under the age of 35 are moving from indifference to outright alienation with respect to their attitude toward the Jewish state. The report challenges the viability of sustaining any meaningful long term Israel- Diaspora relationship.

The New Israel Fund which raises over $25 million from American Jews has the gall to describe itself as a "Zionist" organization which "loves Israel." Yet the JTA reports that it recently hosted an Israeli Arab who stated publicly that the 60th anniversary of Israel represented a "Nakba" (disaster) and expressed regret that Israeli Arabs had "not fought the occupation seriously."

THE EXTENT of the degradation of Zionist values was exemplified in controversies which recently raged on American campuses over whether it was appropriate for Hillel and other Jewish bodies to provide platforms for Israeli draft-dodgers to address American students in order to justify defiance of IDF orders to serve in the territories. Jews against Zion are hardly a new phenomenon in Jewish history. They follow in the tradition of Jewish apostates who turned against their own people in the Middle Ages, of self- hating Jews such as Karl Marx, and more recently Jewish communists who applauded Stalin's crimes against the Jewish people and defended Soviet anti- Semitism. The difference is that in the past such people were marginalized from Jewish life and no reputable Jewish organization would conceivably have provided them with platforms in order to demonize their own people.