Television icon and comedian Jay Leno talked about his avid support for Israel and the Jewish people during the StandWithUs “Festival of Lights” virtual gala on Sunday night.“My dad said you always want to be proud of who you are, and that’s why I like Jews. They’re proud of who they are,” the former host of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” told Jewish comedian Elon Gold in a pre-recorded message that aired during the live Hanukkah event.“Here they are, this little country surrounded by people who literally hate them, and the fact that [these] people are proud of who they are and they stick together—that’s what I like. I like seeing people who are proud of who they are because if you don’t have pride in yourself, you’re not gonna get anywhere,” he added. “So, for me, I like that sort of Jewish pride.”
That is the key difference between Zionists and anti-Zionists.
Leno doesn't even distinguish between Israel and the Jewish people because he knows that they are interchangeable. Of course Jews are proud of Israel, of course Israelis are proud to be part of the Jewish people and the center of Jewish life. It goes without saying. Every accomplishment done by Israel - whether in medicine, literature, science, high-tech, diplomacy or business - causes Jews to kvell.
All Jews, that is, except for the noisy fringe who hate Israel so much that they do not feel that pride - instead, they feel shame. That shame is not based on anything Israel does, but on how much they hate their own people. Waze or Intel microprocessors or Sodastream causes them to recoil rather than smile. And then they feel they must justify their hate by finding imagined crimes that literally every Israeli Jewish-owned company supposedly does.
It is this minority that doesn't have any real Jewish pride. But their Jewishness is still central to them because their Jewishness is what makes their hate newsworthy. So they have to create a parallel faux Judaism to create a tiny, anti-Israel community they can pretend is Jewish.
So they create new holidays with the same names as the old ones but that have nothing to do with Judaism and everything to do with showing their hate for most Jews and Israel. They make up a mitzvah they call "tikkun olam" that happens to coincide with whatever cause they support. They try to create an entire brand new ecosystem to replace the one that their grandparents belonged to, the one that most Jews still belong to, consciously or not.
These fakers don't feel pride for Israel or real Judaism. They only feel scorn and shame and embarrassment when they think about the successful, liberal, diverse, modern Jewish state that literally rose from the ashes.
Normal Jews are as proud of Israel as they are proud of Einstein or Sandy Koufax or Jonas Salk. This is obvious even to a non-Jew like Jay Leno.
The Jews who feel they must exert so much effort into not only hating Israel but in trying to convince everyone else to hate Israel don't have pride in being part of the Jewish people. They deliberately separate themselves from the community.
Which means that they, like the wicked son, are not part of the community at all.