THE TEMPTATION OF BUNKER MENTALITY POLITICS:

World Jewry is finding it increasingly difficult to support Israel due to its ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, leading many communities to shun discussing the Jewish state altogether, a new major study has found.

The trend is eroding the Diaspora's support for the Jewish state, warns the report by the Jewish People Policy Institute think tank, to be formally published next week. [...]

"Many Jews doubt that Israel truly wishes to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians, and few believe it is making the necessary effort to achieve one," according to the study's author, Shmuel Rosner.

"A sense of crisis has emerged in many Jewish communities regarding their relationships with Israel, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to discuss Israel because of the bitter political disputes these discussions spark," writes Rosner, a journalist and senior fellow at the JPPI.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, accusing him of suffering from "Tisha B'Av syndrome," and saying that Israel needs someone to lead, not instill fear.

Referencing a report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Netanyahu had rebuked Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon for placing too many contracted workers in direct employment, Zionist Union chair Herzog called the prime minister a manipulator of people's fears.

"This is the precise opposite of what leadership should do," he wrote on Facebook. "Its role is to safeguard the country's diplomatic, social and security strength; a nation cannot function this way nor can a government. There has never been an Israeli leader who has invested so much effort in intimidation and threats, no one who has made his primary political tool the 'Tisha B'Av syndrome', the same old threat of destruction and extinction, as Netanyahu has."

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