When I lived in the US for 30 years there was a slogan used by the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) that was “We are One.” This was intended to imply that the Jewish people living in the US and Israel are not only parts of the same people, but that they are united in their view of the world. As an a Anglo-American Zionist and someone who had lived in Israel for several years I was somewhat skeptical of that slogan. In fact the views of the two groups, Jewish Americans and Israeli Jews have been diverging for many years.
Over time American Jews have become more liberal in their views, partly in order to feel secure amongst their natural allies in the liberal-leftist movements in the US, including the Democratic Party that Jews overwhelmingly support. When I was a member of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington DC, I was struck many times by how leaders in the Jewish Community would put their adherence to liberal Jewish values before their support for Israel. It irked them that Israel would take military action, for example against Egypt or the PLO in Lebanon, rather than opt for a quiet life so that these leaders didn’t have to deal with these annoying problems. It also upset them that Israel would receive such strong support from the American evangelical Christians that they viewed as their domestic enemies. Over time their support for the “two-state-solution” became an automatic panacea for any conflict between Israel and the Arabs, and this is true of the Democratic Party and the current Administration of President Biden.
On the contrary, over time, opinion in Israel has moved to the right. The main reason for this is that the governing Labour Party (Mapai) and the left in Israel always had the idealistic view that the Palestinians would eventually make peace with Israel. It was for that reason that successive Labour governments did not annex the so-called West Bank when it had the opportunity to do so. Their arguments were that they needed to leave room for a Palestinian State so that Israel could make a deal with them and so that the Palestinian “demographic bomb” would not outnumber the Jews within Israel. Neither of these assumptions proved true, the Palestinians never had any intention of making peace with Israel and they have used the West Bank and Gaza as areas from which to launch attacks against Israel both using missiles and terrorists. Also, the population of Israel has blossomed to 9.5 million, while that of the Palestinians areas has in fact decreased to a total of ca. 4 million, as their birth rate has decreased. (The one million Israel Arabs are not included in the Palestinian number because many of them, especially the Druse, the Christians and the Beduin prefer to be in Israel than in a putative Palestinian Muslim majority State.)
The current outcome of this divergence is seen clearly in the election in Israel of the most right-wing government in its history, while the majority of liberal American Jewish organizations are refusing to even meet with members of the government coalition because they disagree with them vehemently. So I suggest to the UJA that henceforth they face reality and change the slogan to: We are Two.