Rael Jean Isaac, a social scientist, author, editor and Israel activist, died in New York City on June 26. She was 93 years old.
Together with her late husband, Erich Isaac, and their colleague, Edward Alexander, Isaac was a central figure in a group of intellectual activists who were at the forefront of pro-Israel advocacy for many decades, with much of this work being done through Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI), of which she was a founder.
Isaac was a graduate of Barnard College and Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1972 with a dissertation on grassroots Israeli political movements.
While she was completing her doctorate, Isaac and her husband, together with former Israeli Knesset member Shmuel Katz, established AFSI to defend Israel’s historic Jewish rights to the Land of Israel and to challenge Israel’s increasingly aggressive intellectual enemies. AFSI was established in 1970, and Isaac, along with its other founders, was determined to build a new kind of pro-Israel movement—one that would vigorously defend Jewish rights to the Land of Israel and forcefully counteract Israel’s critics.
To that end, she served as editor of AFSI’s “Outpost” newsletter for more than 25 years.
Her op-eds and letters to the editor soon began appearing regularly throughout the general and Jewish press.
Her first book, Israel Divided: Ideological Politics in the Jewish State, was published in 1976. It explored the divisions in Israeli society that shape politics in the Jewish state to this day. Isaac’s landmark investigative reporting revealed the extremism of the left-wing American Jewish organization “Breira” and brought about the downfall of that group.
Two years later, a similar exposé by Isaac documented the anti-Israel activities of another far-left group, New Jewish Agenda. Like Breira, NJA collapsed under the weight of the public learning about its work. AFSI published Isaac’s booklets about NJA and Breira.
Isaac’s careful research on the beliefs and activities of extremist groups continued to make its mark in the years to follow, particularly her revelations about the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, which were published in The American Spectator. Her 1984 book, The Coercive Utopians, co-authored with her husband, exposed far-left activists and groups that were undermining American democracy in the name of universalist ideals.
A 1986 essay the two penned in Commentary magazine titled “Whose Palestine?” is widely regarded as the definitive analysis of the controversy surrounding the book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters. Isaac’s expertise and intellectual interests were wide-ranging.
Over the years, she published essays concerning adoption, race relations and mental-health issues. Her 1990 book, Madness in the Streets, co-authored with Virginia Armat, criticized radical psychiatrist theories that led to the mass release of patients from American mental institutions.
Her last book, Roosters of the Apocalypse, focused on the global warming controversy.
Isaac is survived by four sons, Gamaliel, Gideon, Raphael and David; five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
