'Partners for Progressive Israel' Blog

Israel vs. Iran: Who is threatening whom?

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Cover story, Jan. 29, 2012.

As you should know by now, I'm very much against an Israeli attack on Iran to forestall its nuclear development; and I agree with Prof. Shibley Telhami that moving toward regional nuclear disarmament may facilitate a solution. But I take Iran's nuclear program seriously as a security threat to the region. I fervently hope that a diplomatic resolution is found, but (speaking only for myself) because of the gravity of this threat, I support cyber warfare and covert sabotage as alternatives to an all-out attack.

The crisis would be considerably alleviated if Iran formally proclaimed its recognition of Israel's legitimacy, rather than not even mentioning Israel by name. It's always referred to as the "Zionist regime" or some such. And I'd similarly favor Israel and the US stating their peaceful intentions toward the Islamic Republic.

Aside from inviting a catastrophic war, an Israeli attack would not deter Iran. Part of the problem is the hardened and dispersed nature of Iran's nuclear facilities; another part is Israel's limited capacity as a military power. Back in August 2006, I blogged about the myth that Israel is a military superpower, beginning as follows:

An ongoing tragedy of Israel is that so small a country... must remain a major military power in order to survive. It pays a high price to do so, with most Israeli men spending three years of their youth as regular conscripts and then one month of each year until the age of 50 in active reserve units and subject to unlimited emergency call-up.

Anti-Israel critics like to minimize Israel’s urgent security needs by referring to it, rather abstractly and without real analysis, as the 'fourth' greatest military power in the world. ...

According to Wikipedia, Israel's armed forces rank 34th in the world in relative size. Still, Israel is
surely more powerful than many countries with larger forces; this is especially true because its air force is strong--less due to its rather modest size, than to its quality. It's hard to say how to rank Israel as a military power over all; rather than either 4th or 34th, it is probably somewhere in the range of 10th to 15th. But its very small area and population are tremendous disadvantages against potential enemies in the Middle East, which are far larger and could (as in the past) attack Israel in a coalition.

Also according to Wikipedia, Israel is 97th in population in the world (about 7.8 million) and 151st in area; as compared with Iran, which is 17th in population and 18th in area. In other words, Israel has about 1/10 the population of Iran and a little over one percent of Iran's land mass.

Some years ago, Akbar Hashem Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran and still a leading figure now associated with reformist elements in the Islamic Republic, chillingly reasoned that since Iran is so much larger than Israel, it could destroy the Jewish state in a nuclear war and survive. This reinforced Israeli concerns that some Shi'ite religious fanatics in the Iranian leadership may believe in a theological doomsday scenario, which would invite a horribly destructive war with "infidels." The threat that Israelis sense from Iran is realistic--augmented further by Iranian allies inhabiting three of Israel's borders (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Assad in Syria), together concentrating over 50,000 rockets and missiles on Israel's cities and towns.

This is what I've gleaned from Wikipedia on the size of the Israel Defense Force (IDF):
"Active personnel 187,000 (ranked 34th); Reserve personnel 565,000." By comparison, this is an estimate of Iran's armed forces: "Active Military: 545,000 [2011]; Active Reserve: 650,000 [2011]."

Excluding Ireland (not significant as a military power), here are comparative stats (from Wikipedia) of the armed strength of all of the "I" countries--plus Russia, China and the USA:

State              Active          Reserve     Paramilitary      Total
India           1,325,000     2,142,821    1,300,586       4,768,407
Indonesia       302,000       400,000        280,000          982,000
Iran                523,000     1,800,000    1,510,000       3,833,000
Iraq                191,957            0              386,312          578,269
Israel              176,500         565,000          8,050           749,550
Italy               293,202           41,867      142,933           478,002
Russia         1,027,000    20,000,000      449,000     21,476,000
China          2,285,000         800,000   1,500,000       4,585,000
USA            1,468,364      1,458,500        11,035       2,937,899

Storm over Obama 'hit' idea & Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:31:00 +0000

In his column a few days ago, the owner-publiser of the Atlanta Jewish Times, a Jewish weekly newspaper independent of the local Jewish community federation, spun out the "option" (one of three posed) of Mossad agents killing Pres. Obama to get Vice Pres. Biden in office as a replacement more inclined to move militarily to forestall an Iranian nuclear bomb. He laid out this as a possibility:

Third, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies. Yes, you read “three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?

This became a national story in the media, with a mandatory Secret Servicer investigation and a prompt apology & retraction by the publisher, Andrew Adler. This story has also been predictably distorted by hate-mongerers in the blogosphere, such as this site which claims:

The Atlanta Jewish Times, a newspaper representing the Jewish people in the Atlanta area, is taking donations for a fund to finance the murder of President Barak Obama on behalf of the Israeli government.

The Jewish community responded quickly, with indignant condemnations of Mr. Adler, including such stalwart defenders of Israel as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. The Jerusalem Post blog by David Harris, the executive director of the American
Jewish Committee, is entitled "Dear Atlanta Jewish Times Publisher Andrew Adler: How Revolting!" The more consistently dovish and liberal Israel Policy Forum dubbed its statement, "We will not stand for this."

There's not likely to be an actual Jewish conspiracy to assassinate the President, nor did Adler appear to write his column as a call for such a horrible deed, but he surely sullied the good name of both Israel and the Jewish community with this irresponsible flight of speculation. And clearly, it could inspire extremists and mishugenas to think in these terms.

The Inevitable Question of Iran

This episode also reminds us how unnerving the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb is to so many Jews (myself included). I hope and pray that a peaceful solution will be found to this problem.

My heart is with Roger Cohen, as expressed in his NY Times column, "Don't Do It, Bibi." I also found the recent op-ed co-authored by Shibley Telhami, "Preventing a Nuclear Iran Peacefully" somewhat promising. Telhami is a University of Maryland professor and highly-respected pollster of opinion in Middle Eastern countries.

I've met him twice: at a meeting a number of years ago of the Meretz USA board and at last year's J Street conference. An Arab-American (interestingly, we resemble each other physically), he grew up in Israel and is a moderate on Mideast issues.

He plausibly suggests that if Israel were to open its nuclear facilities to international inspection, in concert with Iran doing the same, this would be a "game-changer." He and his co-author Steven Kull contend:

... a nuclear-free zone may be hard for Iran to refuse. Iranian diplomats have said they would be open to an intrusive role for the United Nations if it accepted Iran’s right to enrich uranium for energy production — not to the higher levels necessary for weapons.

Wisely, Telhami does not suggest that a nuclear-free Middle East would immediately be in the offing. Many observers, including myself, see Israel's actual nuclear disarmament as only possible following a general regional establishment of peace with the Jewish state (because Israel's nuclear arsenal is a hedge against the overwhelming numerical superiority of its potential enemies). Even then, it may take years or decades for Israel to be confident enough to take this plunge. But it would be good for the journey to begin.

Jewish labor leader chastises Netanyahu

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:13:00 +0000

Stuart Appelbaum, JLC pres.

The Jewish Labor Committee is an organization in which a number of our activists have played a leading role for many years. While being known as liberal and dovish, the JLC has until now tended to focus its attention on Israel-Arab issues by mostly defending Israel against one-sided condemnations and the international boycott movement.

This dovish pro-Israel perspective has not changed, but the JLC's rhetoric did, last Thursday night, at its annual Human Rights Award dinner. A NY Jewish Week news article by Doug Chandler tells the tale, focusing upon the speech by JLC president Stuart Appelbaum (a member of the J St. and Ameinu boards) chastising Prime Minister Netanyahu, and prompting a walk-out by Israel's deputy consul-general:

"Israeli Official Leaves JLC Dinner After Criticism of Netanyahu"
Labor Committee’s president calls Israel’s current government a ‘curse,’ but couples his criticism with condemnations of the BDS movement and Hamas.

.... Appelbaum condemned what he called “new expressions of contempt for Israel within the Arab world,” a reference to the movement to delegitimize Israel. That contempt, he said, is at least partly rooted “in the conviction that Israel will never accept the right of the Palestinians to an independent state.”

But Appelbaum added that Israel was “cursed with a right-wing coalition government that’s regularly giving credence” to that point of view. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “talks a good game about a two-state solution,” he said, his administration “shamelessly” promotes “the construction of illegal settlements on the West Bank” — a policy that “severely impedes negotiations.” It’s a situation that Appelbaum likened to the employer “who comes to the bargaining table, telling us he wants a contract that’s a win-win for both sides, while, at the same time,” instructing his lawyers to work on petitions that would decertify the union.

.... Appelbaum told The Jewish Week after his speech that he’s always considered himself a keen supporter of Israel and “its right to exist as a Jewish state within secure borders. Nothing has changed. But I’m concerned, as many people are, about Netanyahu’s policies on building new settlements,” which he believes are obstacles to the peace process.

Neither has anything changed at the JLC, which has supported a two-state solution for decades and has voiced criticism of Israeli actions in the past, he said. “The difference is not in our position,” he added, “but in how loudly we’ve articulated it” — at an annual dinner, rather than just in press releases and written statements. Appelbaum said he believes that Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders of the Palestinian Authority also deserve blame for the failure of peace talks — not just Israel alone — and that he’s criticized them, as well, “perhaps in stronger terms.”...

E. Jerusalem national park is a 'farce'

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:11:00 +0000

"According to many planners and urban development experts there is no special ecological interest in these areas, which are located in the middle of two Palestinian villages. Indeed, according to a [Meretz] member of Jerusalem’s city council, Meir Margalit, “This national park is a farce. There’s nothing there but rocks and thorns, certainly nothing to justify a national park. The only reason for such a plan is to seize lands and hold them as a reserve for a future settlement, while suffocating the Palestinian neighborhoods.”

Read this post at the +972 Blog:
‘National Parks’ in East Jerusalem: New tool in occupation...

"The establishment of national parks in East Jerusalem may sound like a nice idea that fosters the preservation of natural reserves – but in reality, it is a crafty method the Israeli government and its institutions have found to keep East Jerusalem under Israeli control and prohibit Palestinian territorial contiguity, rights and independence. ..."

Holocaust scholar interviewed on Al-Jazeera

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Yehuda Bauer (photo at Wikipedia.org)

I was made aware of this television discussion with Yehuda Bauer, a distinguished Israeli Holocaust historian, by our friend in Canada, Prof. Stephen Scheinberg (also a historian). Bauer is a veteran member of the Meretz party and its socialist-Zionist predecessor, Mapam; he was interviewed by Al-Jazeera television for 25 minutes. He did a good job of providing a progressive Zionist perspective, but the historian could have made some additional points.

For one thing, he could have made a stronger critique of Prof. Shlomo Sand, when his work disputing the existence of a historic Jewish people was brought up. Sand is polemical and tendentious more than scholarly (if you enter Sand's name in this blog's search window, you'll find a number of posts on his work). Although Bauer is correct that he's not entirely wrong, there are areas where he's stretching for ideological reasons; for example, there's no significant basis for Sand's contention that Ashkenazi Jews are largely of Khazar-Turkic origin.

And when asked about the connection between Israel and the Holocaust, Dr. Bauer says (correctly) that it's a "negative" one, because the Holocaust murdered many people who might have become Israelis, and might have wiped out the Jewish people entirely if the Nazis had won the war or been able to keep on killing for a few more years. But he neglects to indicate that Zionism was a response to antisemitism that predates the Holocaust; he also might have made the point that American and other Diaspora Jewish communities were won over to Zionism or to being pro-Zionist by the Holocaust, because most Jews came to believe that a Jewish state was necessary to defend Jewish lives and rights. Yet I don't blame him for not thinking of everything under the pressure of a television conversation with an interviewer who--although polite and respectful--was neither particularly knowledgeable of, nor sympathetic to, Israel and Zionism.

I disagree somewhat with Bauer's response on Prime Minister Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." While I fully agree that Israelis don't need to be told that Israel is a Jewish state--to retain its majority culture, religion and identity--I don't believe that Netanyahu is making this demand because he's somehow insecure in his Jewishness. Although Netanyahu may be unhelpful in adding this as a condition for peace, it would be reassuring to Jews, and therefore all to the good, if the Palestinian Authority acknowledges that Israel is the Jewish-majority state which the UN called for in its 1947 General Assembly resolution for the partition of the Palestine Mandate into Jewish and Arab states. In fact, because the PA has used that resolution as a basis for its recent effort to be recognized as a state at the UN, this should not be as much of a problem for the Palestinians as they are making it into.

I know that I'm departing from dovish orthodoxy by suggesting this, but the peace process would be facilitated if the Palestinians were to remove this as an issue by simply acknowledging the obvious about Israel's Jewish nature. This should not be considered an abandonment of Arab citizens of Israel to unequal treatment, nor disallowing Jews from one day living as full citizens in a majority Palestinian-Arab state.

Check out Al-Jazeera's website for the interview with Yehuda Bauer and the points that Al-Jazeera chooses to emphasize:

Yehuda Bauer: Israel's genocidal nationalists
As tensions grow between ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Israeli state, the scholar discusses Jewish identity and extremism.

What remains of Israel's months of protest?

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:37:00 +0000

Faces of Daphni Leef & Stav Shafrir, protest leaders, held aloft

Allow me to review what I've learned in recent months about Israel's new movement for social justice, and project forward. As of this moment, street protests continue, including a clash in recent days with police over the removal of protest tents; but these current activists are in the hundreds rather than the tens and hundreds of thousands who rallied peaceably during the summer. Still, the structure I reported on for In These Times magazine, continues to operate, with the movement attempting "to carry itself beyond the streets.":

.... Alongside "general assembly" meetings in parks, neighborhood committees have been formed around the country, as well as advisory committees comprised of prominent personalities from Israel's diverse ethnic and religious communities.

By any estimation, Israel's summer of protest was an impressive display of progressive social activism, rallying nearly half a million protesters (out of Israel's seven million population) into the streets at its high-water mark on September 3rd. More than one hundred tent encampments for social justice dotted the entire country. It united (rhetorically at least) Arabs in Jaffa with traditional working class Likud and Shas supporters in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikva. (See the great liberal Orthodox activist, Leah Shakdiel, speaking with this unifying theme at the Yerucham protest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVbW3ARsHLk.)

The following is from a Dec. 25 news article in the Jerusalem Post:

Leaders of the summer's "J14" [July 14] protest movement for social justice announced Sunday what they called the formation of a political movement based on the protests that swept the country over the summer.
Daphni Leef, the 26-year-old Tel Avivian who started the nationwide tent city protests against housing costs this July with a post on Facebook, said the movement "will forge an extra-parliamentary means to protest the cost of living, fight for Israeli democratic and cultural values and serve all branches of the protest that started this past summer."

One likely result of the movement is that it has helped catapult the Labor Party over Kadima as the number one opposition voice within the Knesset. In the national election to occur within the next year or so, Labor's new female leader, Shelly Yachimovich, will probably displace Kadima's Tzipi Livni as leader of the opposition. Yachimovich emphasizes a traditional Labor-Zionist social democratic agenda, whereas Livni remains an economic conservative.

But the conflict with the Palestinians and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem remain a gaping wound that the social protest movement does not address. Progressives who embrace the movement hope that average Israelis will eventually connect the dots and come to agree that funding West Bank settlements has been at their expense; but so far, the movement as a whole has tried to soft-pedal this central political issue as too divisive.

This is but one of a number of contradictions confronting Israeli society. For one thing, Israel's economy is stronger than that of most other countries. Since its banks are not especially tied to international banks, it has avoided the mortgage crisis that has rocked most of the West, and its level of unemployment is not high. Still, as reported in a front-page article in the New York Times in August, Israel has undergone a high concentration of wealth with a consolidation of economic power in a handful of family-owned conglomerates. This is ascribed to the fire sale of state-owned assets to politically-connected "cronies" in the 1980s and '90s, as occurred later in Russia and other socialistic economies that were privatized.

The housing crisis that sparked Daphni Leef's initial tent protest was caused by a rush of apartment purchases in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by Jews from abroad who still live most of the year in France, the US or elsewhere in the West. This problem could be remedied by restricting foreign investment in the housing market within central Israel. Yet this would do little or nothing for the very different housing issue that confronts Israeli Arabs.

Arab citizens of Israel mostly face a land problem: their towns and cities are unable to expand to meet their housing needs. While numerous new towns and cities have been built with Jewish Israelis in mind, hardly any such development has occurred for Palestinian Israelis.

In his latest column for Jewish Currents magazine, Ron Skolnik tries to explain puzzling polling results which consistently show a majority of Israelis optimistic about their lives and satisfied with the direction of the country, despite their massive support for the social protests. The most reasonable answer he can find (borrowed from Yediot and Ynet columnist Yehuda Nuriel) is that the protests have revived a "familial sense of national solidarity" -- primarily among Jews.

Hopefully, this old Zionist tradition of Jewish solidarity can include their Arab fellow citizens as well, yet this will not be easy. It would mean reversing the anti-Arab reactions of the last few years, fueled by Jewish frustrations at Arab attacks from beyond Israel's pre-'67 borders, despite several withdrawals since the 1990s from parts of the West Bank, all of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and two failed attempts at negotiating a final peace.

As CUNY professor Dov Waxman pointed out at a Manhattan JCC panel discussion in October, Israeli "fatigue and fatalism" on the peace issue drove Israelis' focus inward into a personal and depoliticized direction. The protests have reignited political and socially conscious passions, but not necessarily in a coherent way. In the end, Waxman concluded, the usual over-arching political concerns of the Arab-Israeli conflict and security may still trump social justice. One must hope that these objectives are somehow reconciled to allow the pursuit of social justice to facilitate the quest for peace (and vice versa), but this would be a new departure for Israeli society.

Urgent Zionist Need to Break Ultra-Orthodox Power

noreply@blogger.com (Lilly Rivlin) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:37:00 +0000

The article I am recommending below, came to me via the father & father-in-law of the couple who wrote it, Ariel and Erin Beery, who moved to Israel last year. They are expecting a daughter. Asked what I thought of it, this is what I wrote:

I agree with its sentiments 100%, however, I've always been ambivalent about Diaspora Jewry's right to influence Israeli politics in spite of the fact they have been called upon to make contributions to Israeli social and health institutions, at the very least, if not more. I think Ariel and Erin are so right on. The fact that this piece has been published in Tablet is absolutely necessary. This is a leading edge magazine for young Jews, who, according to the most recent polls, are less involved in Israel. I think an article like this might activate them.

Lilly Rivlin
www.gracepaleythefilm.com
Distributor: www.jewishfilm.org

The following is the central passage of this article, which can be read in its entirety online:

.... Due to Israel’s coalition-based government system, where coalition partners are given control over ministries in return for voting as a bloc, governments from David Ben-Gurion’s to Benjamin Netanyahu’s have preferred to add an ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist party to their coalition rather than create a coalition without parties such as United Torah Judaism. Such a non-ultra-Orthodox coalition could, in one vote, break the rabbinate’s power. But the major parties are stuck in a kind of prisoner’s dilemma: Each party fears that if it votes against Orthodox control, while the other does not, the Orthodox would ally with the opposition to crush it. So, the status quo persists.

Young Maccabee girls in their camp in Zikhron Ya’akov, 1939. (Library of Congress)

In this context, our daughter will not be considered Jewish by the state. That’s because Erin’s mother had Conservative Jewish conversion in Canada before Erin was born, and because we decided it was insulting to ask Erin, who lived her whole life as a Jew, to “convert” just because a state-employed rabbi decided she is not Jewish enough.

We could not be married in Israel because of Erin’s official lack of Jewishness, despite the fact that we are observant Jews who keep Shabbat and a kosher home. (Our marriage certificate is from the state of Illinois.) Likewise, our daughter could in the future be legally barred from marrying the person she loves in Israel. If the laws continue as they are, the two of us will not be able to be buried in the same state-run cemetery, and our daughter would be excluded from burial in a Jewish cemetery when her life is spent. She’ll be a citizen, just as we are, and she’ll serve in the army, just as Ariel did. But if the status quo persists, she will go from cradle to grave knowing that in the eyes of the government of the state of Israel she is not a Jew.

For us, nothing is more painful. Our grandparents devoted their lives to supporting the state and its establishment, and we’ve devoted ours to building Israeli organizations that have connected thousands to Israel. But all of that is irrelevant in the eyes of the bearded men who have power over critical aspects of the lives of this country’s 6 million Jews.

This is not what the pioneers who founded this state worked toward, and it isn’t what generations of Diaspora Jews fought for.

It is time that the world Jewish community knew about this systemic bias in Israel—and time for Diaspora Jewry to act. ...

This schism between who is a Jew in the Diaspora and who is considered a Jew by the state of Israel will only grow, considering that more than a quarter of Jewish students entering the first grade in Israel this year are ultra-Orthodox, as Dan Ben-David, director of the Taub Center in Jerusalem, has noted. This means that if we want Israel to be a Jewish state for all the Jewish people, as well as a democratic state that respects the individual rights of its citizens, we have a small window to break the Orthodox monopoly on Israel’s core institutions. ...

My response to liberal-Zionist critic of J St.

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:16:00 +0000

Speaking only for myself, I e-mailed someone I know who is progressive and a Zionist but concerned that J Street is not adequately addressing Israel's needs. The following is a somewhat modified version of how I responded to his concerns:

I understand your distrust of J St., but I have decided to be active within it. First of all, I think their position on Iran is not well understood; according to this statement online, it favors sanctions against Iran and diplomacy, but not an attack. I share this view, although I'm not sure that stating in advance that military action is completely "off the table" is the way to go; I would also favor a secret campaign of sabotage against their nuclear program, such as is probably now being pursued by Israel and/or the US.

But J St. is correct that an overt and massive attack would be hugely destabilizing and dangerous for Israel and the US -- only to be contemplated as a last resort. And I don't believe that Israel alone is capable of launching an effective attack. I'd also suggest that the US reassure the Iranians that it is not seeking regime change, but only measures which guarantee that its nuclear development is for peaceful purposes.

This is part of J St.'s position on settlements, which I fully endorse:

.... Certain agreed modifications to the 1967 lines are possible – allowing some settlements to be incorporated within Israel’s final and agreed borders in the context of reciprocal land swaps. Those settlements (perhaps accounting for as many as three-quarters of all settlers) will then become part of Israeli recognized sovereign territory and construction there will be able to continue according to the laws and zoning ordinances of those localities. [*It is important to note that J Street supports the concept of a security barrier as an important element of Israel’s defense, but believes that the barrier must be located along an internationally recognized border. Its present route has confiscated land and separated Palestinians from their jobs, health care and family. It will have to be relocated in many sections as part of a final status agreement.]

The way in which the current Israeli government has pursued settlement expansion in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem is pernicious and sabotages a two-state solution. Extremist settler activity in Jerusalem is especially disheartening and destructive to Israel's interests and needs.

Where I would differ somewhat with J St. would be to cite the ways in which both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been subverting negotiations. Both have engaged in provocations, in different ways: Israel through settlement expansion and through incendiary rhetoric, laws and proposed laws which threaten the rights of Israeli Arabs and of progressive NGOs. The PA through refusing to officially recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" and demanding a settlement freeze as a precondition for negotiations; but Abbas is more moderate than many give him credit for (read this).

I would also press the point that a Fatah coalition with Hamas only makes sense, from the point of view of progress toward peace, if Hamas explains to Israel's satisfaction that it is now prepared to accept previous agreements with Israel, to renounce violence and to live in peace with Israel.

As for the PA initiative at the UN, J Street officially opposed it, even supporting a US veto. My position on this would actually be more hopeful and conciliatory, urging that a UN resolution endorses a Palestinian state as part of the eventual solution, in which the borders of Israel and Palestine are peacefully negotiated, including a significant exchange of territories.

Frightening Video of 'Hilltop Youth'

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:10:00 +0000

The following is from Stephen Scheinberg, a veteran leader of Canadian Friends of Peace Now:

An enlightening video of the militant settler youth. Recall, as you watch, how many times we are told that "they (the Palestinians) teach their children to hate." Who are the parents and supporters of these Israeli children?

Click below:
WATCH Hilltop youth: “Burn down Al-Aqsa Mosque? Of course!”

H. Schenker: 'Don't...shut down discussion'

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Hillel Schenker

Sadly, the lack of progress toward a two-state solution is creating a backlash among some Palestinians who are now turning against dialogue and cooperation with dovish Israelis. An article in Haaretz by our Israeli colleague, Hillel Schenker, "Don't let them shut down discussion,"published on Dec. 30, tells the tale; here are highlights:

.... Last week the Palestine-Israel Journal, the quarterly I co-edit, was obliged to postpone a public conference we were organizing at an East Jerusalem hotel about the impact of the so-called Arab Spring on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, due to pressure on Palestinian speakers and threats against the hotel owner. ...
A news item ... earlier in the week stated that the Fatah leadership had decided to halt all unofficial Palestinian-Israeli meetings due to ... Prime Minister's Netanyahu's insistence on continuing settlement expansion. Unnamed Palestinian officials were quoted claiming that Israel exploits such meetings in order to tell the world that a dialogue is taking place between the two peoples, and that it is only the Palestinian Authority that refuses to sit down at the negotiating table.
This seems like a parallel to the familiar criticism of such meetings by right-wing Israelis, who accuse Israeli participants of being concerned only about Palestinian rights, as opposed to Israeli security needs. Suffice it to recall recent campaigns by NGO Monitor, Im Tirzu and others against Israeli peace, human rights and civil liberties NGOs....
What was so threatening about a conference at which Israelis and Palestinians were going to discuss the potential impact of the Arab world's uprising, whose speakers were to include Ron Pundak, co-chair of the Palestinian-Israeli Peace NGO Forum, and Khalil Shikaki, the renowned Palestinian public-opinion specialist?
Some Palestinians claim that such meetings constitute "normalization," which has the effect of legitimizing a continuation of the occupation. On the contrary, one of the primary goals of such meetings is education, to shed light on the nature of the occupation that most Israelis and members of the international community are unaware of, and to produce initiatives that can help bring about an end to the occupation and a peaceful resolution of the conflict. ...
.... However, it should be noted that senior Fatah spokespeople like former Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath have stated that there was no Fatah decision against the meeting, and they continue to support joint Israeli-Palestinian activity that's meaningful. The worsening situation in East Jerusalem was vividly described by my colleague and Palestine-Israel Journal co-editor Ziad AbuZayyad in a column in Al-Quds last Sunday. He wrote that young Palestinians in East Jerusalem feel "a sense of asphyxiation in the city due to the settlement surge in Silwan, Ras al Amud and Sheikh Jarrah." One young man told him that he is "forced every day at sunset to bring his children inside the house, out of fear that they would be beaten, attacked and spit on by settlers." They also "fear that their homes will be demolished." AbuZayyad asked rhetorically whether it's wise to boycott or protest against Israelis ... who are dedicating their lives to fighting the very same situation....
Hillel Schenker is co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal.

Again, the entire article can be read online by clicking here.

Widening concern for Israeli democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Lilly Rivlin) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:42:00 +0000

Two very different articles pointing to the same problems: one by Yossi Sarid, former Minister of Education and former Meretz party leader, writing about how Israelis have gotten used to the deterioration of morality, especially public morality, to the encroachment of church and state in the form of more and more limits on women -- "get thee to the back of the bus," voices of women "polluting" the poor ears of religious men, etc. This links to his article online at the Haaretz website.

The other article is by Daniel Gordis-- hardly my favorite columnist, but he too writes about the deterioration of Israeli democracy-- also focusing on the medieval laws coming down and limiting women's rights. I don't know if anyone is paying attention; I think that Israelis who don't like what is going on are no longer watching or hearing what happens in the public sphere. They have turned off. Sorry to depress you in these dark times. Last night I made an attempt, during Chanuka, to seek a sliver of light.

Yet wasn't it Prime Minister Netanyahu (whom Gordis likely supports) who not very long ago warned of this being 1938 all over again, regarding the nuclear threat from Iran? The Gordis article can be read in its entirety at the Jerusalem Post website, but here's its core:

... Close to home and far away, real dangers lurk. But there is also danger to the danger. Utterly convinced that the world is aligned against us, it's too easy to conclude that we have no choice but to man the barricades and to fire away until we're out of ammo. ...

But while that sort of Armageddon thinking may make for gripping Hollywood scenes, it does nothing to promote wisdom. When Michele Bachmann addresses an American Jewish conference proclaiming "not one inch" and thousands of Jews leap to their feet with calls of "Bachmann for President," we're in hysteria-land.

Ariel Sharon did not say "not one inch." Binyamin Netanyahu does not say "not one inch." Even Avigdor Lieberman, toiling tirelessly to create a state in which few of us would want to live, does not say "not one inch." But people love a rallying cry, especially in the face of danger. Bumper stickers, after all, are so much more appealing than thinking. ...

Once you know the world is one big danger, you just batten down the hatches and toss thinking to the wind. European governments fund left-leaning organizations that rightly worry us? Let's create convoluted laws to tax the funding into insignificance.

Let's tamper with the Supreme Court (one of Israel's few well-functioning governmental bodies...) while we're at it. It doesn't matter that the government's recent slew of legislative innovations has horrified both centrist Israelis and Zionist American Jews, or that it has elicited warnings from world leaders. After all, these are dire times.

Who can afford the luxury of worrying about Israel's fragile democracy (how many Israeli immigrants came from countries where democracy was well-established? - very few, of course) and how easily the enterprise could topple. ...

.... Despite all the similarities to 1938, let's not lose sight of the overwhelming differences. American Jews of 2011 are nothing like the timid, intentionally invisible Jews of 1938. ... Congressional support is solid. The Jews are no longer landless and homeless, but sovereign. Much of the West is even awakening (though admittedly too slowly) to the dangers of Iran and radical Islam.

To be sure, we have enemies. ... But we're not the forgotten, powerless, ignored masses that we were 70 years ago.

Is this the moment to abandon any semblance of moderation, to risk becoming our own worst enemies by destroying from within what our foes would destroy from without? ...

Lilly Rivlin

www.lillyrivlin.com

www.gracepaleythefilm.com

Distributor: www.jewishfilm.org

What Are Israelis So Happy About?

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:43:00 +0000

Partners for Progressive Israel executive director Ron Skolnik, in his latest column for Jewish Currents magazine, tries to explain puzzling polling results which consistently show a majority of Israelis optimistic about their lives and satisfied with the direction of the country, despite their massive support for last summer's social protest movement. The following are selected passages of Ron's article:

If things in Israel are so bad, how can they be so good? That’s the paradoxical question that formulated in my brain as I perused the surprising results of a string of public opinion polls commissioned and published by Israel’s newspapers on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. They found that the vast majority of Israelis are happy with their lot and generally pleased with the national situation. ...

In March of last year, I had written for my organization’s on-line publication that “Israel’s part-fence, part-wall barrier has not only added security . . . Psychologically, it has severed the average Israeli’s sense of responsibility for what goes on under the Occupation on the other side: Out of sight, out of mind, as it were — except when spasms of violence temporarily upset the general equilibrium.” The Rosh Hashanah poll results substantiated this analysis — that with terrorism down over the past years, thanks in large part to the improved security cooperation of the Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank, Israelis are happy to push the difficult question of war and peace to the back burner. Pessimism about peace prospects therefore does not translate to pessimism overall because Israelis have essentially tuned out the “Palestinian problem” as a day-to-day concern. ...

Israel polls obsessively to gauge support for the various political parties. These polls, too, have recently made it clear that pessimism about peace is doing little to dampen Israeli optimism. To the contrary, Israel’s two main opposition parties were experiencing a reversal of fortune that was very much the result of the public’s inward focus. Labor’s star was rising with a new party chief, MK Shelly Yachimovich, who is closely identified with Israelis’ bread-and-butter concerns, while Kadima continued to sink under the leadership of Tzipi Livni, who has branded herself as a sober alternative to Netanyahu in the diplomatic arena but has failed to stake a claim as a populist
economic leader. (No surprise here: As director-general of the Government Corporations Authority between 1996 and ’99, Livni helped to propel the much-reviled policy of privatization during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s first term.) ...

What, then, should we make of conflicting data about the domestic scene, which showed wall-to-wall support for social-justice protests alongside an equal amount of sanguinity and well-being? Scouring the polls for statistical clues about this, I found little that would reconcile the seeming contradiction — until an otherwise unremarkable editorial on the Israeli YNet News website offered a promising new perspective. Writing over the summer in support of the nascent protest movement, columnist Yehuda Nuriel suggested that it was as much about reviving Israel’s familial sense of national solidarity as it was about the principles of social democracy. “[H]ere is the Zionism we almost lost,” Nuriel gushed, explaining that the protest encampments had allowed “Israelis from all walks of life [to] meet . . . each other, like relatives who had never met.”

Interesting! The idea that the masses of Israelis who had supported the social-justice protests had been less motivated by a sense of fairness and equality than by a more tribal need to reconnect with “kinfolk” in a spirit of self-defense rang a bell for me. During the days of the yishuv, Zionists had endured the difficult struggle for statehood by invoking such principles as arvut hadadit (mutual responsibility), derived from the old Talmudic injunction, “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh b’zeh,” “All Jews are responsible for each other.” Throughout the decades, Jewish Israelis have prided themselves on their ability to overcome their differences and come together as a nation during time of war.

I recalled the words of a leading Israeli peace activist, who analyzed the wave of orchestrated incitement against the country’s human-rights organizations that ratcheted up significantly after the 2009 election of Netanyahu. Israel’s right-wing government, she argued, was well aware that it was directing the country towards a confrontation with the rest of the world. With the Jewish state again facing pariah status, the right knew that Israel could get by only if it felt united in purpose and resolve, and the way to achieve this, the activist reasoned, was to scapegoat a small minority of citizens by branding them as agents of foreign governments and inimical to Israel’s security interests. ...

Ron Skolnik's entire article can be read online at the Jewish Currents website.

Hannukah & history: the pride & the pity

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:19:00 +0000

This is a reprise and slight update of past postings about Hannukah. It comes every year, after all, and its bottom-line lesson for us has not changed:

History is of necessity an interpretive process, and these interpretations often spawn self-serving myths. National myths are not usually complete fabrications, but they tend to romanticize and sanitize real events.

The traditional Hanukkah story is a source of pride for the Jewish people. We are taught that a small army of freedom fighters, the Maccabees, led by the heroic priestly family of Mattathias and his seven sons, successfully resisted the cruel pagan tyranny of the ancient Greco-Syrian Seleucid dynasty. This is not untrue, but it's only part of the story.

We are usually not taught the far more complex reality that the Maccabean war of liberation was also a civil war between rural “fundamentalist” religious adherents of the old order and the more educated and cosmopolitan Hellenized Jews of the city, who voluntarily and eagerly embraced

the Greek culture of the Syrian empire. The Maccabees surely killed many of these “liberal” Jews in their struggle.

It is ironic that the Hasmonean family— the Maccabees’ ruling dynasty— within one generation of their victory for Jewish values over Hellenism, was taking Greek names, speaking Greek and transforming Judea into a Jewish Hellenistic kingdom. These rulers alienated the masses of the Jewish people by extreme acts of cruelty and debauchery. Their military prowess ultimately undermined their rule, as conquered peoples were converted to Judaism by the sword; Herod emerged from one such Judaized people to marry his way into the Hasmonean clan and murder them into extinction. Herod’s disastrously bloody reign led to Judea’s disintegration as an independent state and its domination by Rome.

Nevertheless, the Maccabees were brave and valiant warriors who did in fact win great victories over a powerful and authoritarian foreign enemy. But to take this snapshot in time as the whole picture is to accept a one-dimensional myth. For some of the reasons mentioned, Rabbinic Judaism accorded Hanukkah a minor religious status. (For example, although obligated to light the Menorah for eight nights, there is no requirement for religious Jews to refrain from work.)

When considered within its historic context of bloody Jewish civil wars and despotic rule, both embedded within the Hanukkah story and in the eventual downfall of Judea within its wake, Hanukkah provides a cautionary tale. Sixteen years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, we should be warned against the dangers of fratricidal hatred, of demonizing our political foes, and of failing to understand the need at times for compromise and accommodation. Many of us have not yet learned this lesson. Khag Sameakh!

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011): 'Jewish' gadfly

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:48:00 +0000

I last saw him at the New York Public Library in June 2010, days before he learned of his illness. There, in the NYPL's magnificent main building, he spoke about his recent autobiography ("Hitch-22"), making a point of saying that he wanted to write it at a not-yet-advanced age, because you never know when you'll breathe your last. He was about three weeks older than I.

I frequently read his articles and essays with great interest, and I was amused by his brilliant exposé of Mother Teresa. I disagreed about as often as I agreed with his positions. In particular, I did not agree with his stubborn defense of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and of George W. Bush, even though I fully appreciated the human rights considerations which motivated his support for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. (Full disclosure: I initially supported the run-up to the invasion, until the US lost the vote in the UN Security Council and insisted on unilateral military action; I rejoiced at Saddam's overthrow for humanitarian reasons, but also came to know that the terribly ill-advised decisions of US "proconsul" Paul Bremer-- to fire Saddam's military and to bar even lowly Bathist Party members from government jobs-- made Iraq's sectarian civil war inevitable.)

The JTA's obit article on Hitchens is particularly interesting to me, as it focuses upon his long and complicated track record regarding Jews, Judaism and Israel:

.... Regarding Israel, he allied himself in the 1970s and 1980s with Palestinian nationalists and called himself an anti-Zionist.
As an atheist, he engaged with Judaism as he did with other faiths – with disdain for what he saw as a corrupting, malign irrationalism.
Yet in later years ....He developed a grudging appreciation for a democracy in a region he saw burgeoning with radical theocrats.
He also detected among some of his fellow Israel critics a tendency toward anti-Semitism....
.... Hitchens was 38 when his maternal grandmother revealed to his younger brother Peter that she was Jewish.
He told The Observer in 2002 that the revelation “thrilled” him – living in Washington, he had acquired a passel of Jewish friends. Moreover, he had had a dream of being on the deck of a ship and being asked to join a minyan.
Despite his rejection of religious precepts, Hitchens would make a point of telling interviewers that according to halacha, he was Jewish.
Hitchens’ proclivity, his insistence on pleasing no one but himself, was evident this summer when his target was a small group of pro-Palestinian activists aiming to breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip on the anniversary of the Israeli raid on another flotilla that claimed the lives of nine Turks and earned Israel international opprobrium.
He could not resist tweaking Israel for a tendency to blunder into confrontation. “Since Israel adopts a posture that almost guarantees a reaction of some sort in the not-too-distant future, and since there was such a frisson of violence the last time the little fleet set sail, there’s no reason for it not to become a regular seasonal favorite,” he wrote in Slate.
But then he went on to note the activists['] ties or sympathies with the Hamas-led government in Gaza, also noting Hamas’ embrace of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. “This disgusting fabrication is a key foundational document of 20th-century racism and totalitarianism, indelibly linked to the Hitler regime in theory and practice,” he wrote. “It seems extraordinary to me that any ‘activist’ claiming allegiance to human rights could cooperate at any level with the propagation of such evil material.”
He continued: “The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn’t seem too adorable.”

Israel alarmist tackles post-Holocaust thought

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:22:00 +0000

Alvin Rosenfeld, the Indiana University professor of English and Jewish Studies engaged in dialogue at the NY Museum of Jewish Heritage, Dec. 14, with David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee, on his new book, The End of the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2011). Prof. Rosenfeld had achieved a measure of notoriety with an essay published by the AJC in 2006, “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Antisemitism.” The controversy that followed is admirably summarized in this Wikipedia article.

You might wish to read “Shotgun Blast,” an analysis of the essay in The American Prospect magazine by Gershom Gorenberg. He praised Rosenfeld's idea, but criticized his "sloppiness":

.... While attacking vituperative opponents of Israel who call themselves "progressive," he identifies their views with all who call themselves progressives – rather like letting James Dobson define what "Christian" means. He fires the shotgun of his criticism at such a wide flock of writers that his reader can wonder where he is aiming. Does The Washington Post's pro-Israel columnist Richard Cohen really belong to the same ideological species as those who accuse Israel of genocide? [Cohen apparently went overboard in one column, cited by Rosenfeld, when he characterized Israel’s creation as a “mistake”; in another column published not long after Rosenfeld’s essay came out, Cohen complains (in much the same way that Rosenfeld would) about the left’s outsized focus upon Israel, while often giving far worse human rights offenders (like China, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Iran) a bye.--R. Seliger]
The blurriness is a shame, because Rosenfeld has a legitimate argument. ... his intended target is those Jews who reject the very existence of a Jewish state, and who express their opposition in shrieks that rise to equating Israel with the Nazis.

Another excellent critique was written by Andrew Sillow-Carroll, editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, in an editorial that I reproduced on this blog. Since I share Rosenfeld’s concern for the more outlandish and unfair arguments against Israel that characterize so much of the left, and occasionally seep into mainstream liberal discourse, my response was rather mild.

Yet, as in the AJC essay, Rosenfeld (judging from this public appearance) engages in overkill in
his new book. He’s terribly pessimistic, to the point of being alarmist, that the Holocaust is not generally understood and even that the Jewish people face the possibility of a second Holocaust in Israel. But during the Q & A, when I challenged his initial statement bemoaning a trend he cites for Holocaust museums and study centers to include “genocide and human rights” in their mission, he admitted that it’s not wrong for Holocaust institutions to also deal with these issues; we readily agreed that it should not be a requirement that they do so, nor their primary focus. He’s concerned with the “equivalence” question -- overly so, in my view.

Alvin Rosenfeld

Yes, the Holocaust was the largest and most sustained project of mass murder in modern times. This is less because of the number of victims-- which are nearly duplicated, or even surpassed-- in some other recent outrages, than in its systematic nature. The politically-induced famine produced by Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” in the late 1950s may have actually cost many more lives. The under-reported chaotic war in the eastern provinces of the former Zaire, now the ludicrously named Democratic Republic of Congo, is estimated at causing five million deaths and still counting (mostly due to starvation and disease). But what marked the Holocaust was its scope and intensity: operating throughout Nazi-occupied Europe and even into North Africa, with a single-minded focus to hunt-down and annihilate a single people, concentrating the political and technological resources of a modern state in an unprecedented way.

It’s good for this story to be understood. The Holocaust was not-- as described by a frequent email interlocutor of mine, the veteran pacifist and socialist leader David McReynolds-- the slaughter of 11 million European non-combatants under Nazi occupation (including the six million Jews). Other civilian victims of the Nazis were not categorically marked for death-- with the exception of some Roma (“Gypsy”) groups-- nor with such maniacal energy.

Still, there sometimes is an unseemly self-centeredness among Jews in their vigilance against “moral equivalence” arguments in invoking the primacy of the Holocaust as compared with other mass crimes or instances of gross injustice. And I can see where this would trouble a non-Jewish progressive like McReynolds. Yet complications abound; for example, even if one criticizes Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, they are in no way “genocidal,” and the Gaza Strip-- even on its worst days-- has never been like the Warsaw Ghetto (a massive holding pen for doomed prisoners).

In the conclusion of Rosenfeld’s discussion with Harris, he spoke about the four Holocaust writers who have most influenced him: Italy’s Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz; Imre Kertész of Hungary (now residing more comfortably in Germany because of the disturbingly antisemitic environment of present-day Hungary), the Nobel Prize winning author of Fateless or Fatelessness (apparently the same book, rendered with different titles in separate translations); the essayist Jean Améry, born Hanns Chaim Mayer; and the ever-familiar Elie Wiesel. Two are Nobel Laureates (Kertész & Wiesel) and two committed suicide (Levi & Améry).

Lawrence L. Langer’s review in The Forward, in June 2011, sums up Rosenfeld’s invocation of these four as follows:

Dispirited by the amnesia of the Germans about the crimes of their forebears, Améry could ask in 1977, a year before his suicide, “what is the good of my attempt to reflect on the conditio inhumana of the Third Reich? Isn’t it all outdated,” while Kertész could assert in 1997 with equal gloom that “There is an ‘Auschwitz mode of existence’…that continues to claim victims decades after the Nazi death camps themselves were destroyed.” Nevertheless, Wiesel and Kertész keep writing, and the voices of Améry and Levi were silenced only by their [self-inflicted] deaths.

My bottom-line sense of Rosenfeld's two works is that the author is out of his depth in both. As a scholar of literature rather than a journalist, historian or social scientist, I fear that his analysis is more acutely impressionistic than rigorously factual.

Republican contenders love Israel to death

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:34:00 +0000

With characteristic boldness (perhaps we should call it the "audacity of nope"), the GOP front-runner du jour, Newt Gingrich, asserts that the Palestinians are "an invented people." This was a telling moment at the pander fest that was the Republican Jewish Coalition's candidates' forum. Having carefully not invited Rep. Ron Paul, the RJC insured that it would be no less. From the little that I saw of it, only Jon Huntsman-- while being warm toward his audience-- seems not to have gone overboard in this mode.

Although Gingrich's comment, according to the JTA account, drew "rebukes" from some of his rivals, these were not anything like the points I'll raise here. First off, all nations are "invented" at the formative stage in their history. Whether due to geography, history, language, culture or religion, they obtain a level of self-consciousness as a distinct people and generally press their claim in some organized way. As the well-known Palestinian-American scholar Prof. Rashid Khalidi indicated in Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Columbia University Press, 1997), "National identity is constructed; it is not an essential, transcendent given...."

Arab-Palestinian identity was largely a reaction to the Zionist movement reestablishing Jewish nationhood in Palestine, the ancient birthplace of the Jewish people, as recorded in the Bible and remembered reverentially in the Jewish religion for two millennia. Just as Palestinian nationalism was born of the Arab struggle against the Jews in the early to mid 20th century, the Jewish national rebirth occurred in Palestine, with Jewish identity made over from what was primarily (but not only) a religious heritage -- because of the tragic experience of Jews as a frequently trod-upon minority in Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East.

Gingrich then went on to condemn the Obama administration for trying to "pressure the Israelis into a peace process." He continued, "These people [i.e., Palestinians] are terrorists, they teach terrorism in their schools." My understanding is that Palestinian Authority textbooks are an improvement over the Jordanian and Egyptian books that were in use during Israel’s jurisdiction over Palestinian education; they do not demonize Jews & Israel, but they tend to ignore Israel’s existence. Clearly, this needs to be remedied, but Gingrich completely omits the fact that the PA’s security cooperation with Israel against terrorism is highly prized by Israel’s defense establishment.

If the next President of the United States comes to office committed to condemning all Palestinians as "terrorists" and denying them their right to sovereignty, even if living at peace with the State of Israel, where would this leave Israel? Wouldn't this guarantee that Israel remain the occupying power over another people? And if this is so, how does tiny Israel retain its existence as a secure homeland and refuge (if necessary) for the Jews, a historically downtrodden people?

This is the serious aspect of what transpired at this forum. The comic relief was supplied by Rep. Michele Bachmann, who spoke of chutzpah by pronouncing a soft ch as in "church," rather than its properly guttural kh or the less good but still acceptable h sound. I was impressed that she had a stint working as a volunteer on a kibbutz, but I wonder if she realizes that even in its semi-privatized form today, let alone what it was like when she worked there years ago, it's a collectivist institution.

New film on WW 2 controversy of 'Bergson Group'

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:43:00 +0000

Bergson in 1940s & '70s (VarianFry.org)

The NY Jewish Week has posted my latest article, on a film and filmmaker dealing with the Holocaust-era controversy of the "Bergson Group" and whether American Jews were too passive. It begins with a discussion of the filmmaker's background and how pre-State Zionist divisions and the politics of that time and ours enter into the controversy, including a word from J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami on how this should not have been the case:

Pierre Sauvage ... owes his life to the good people of Le Chambon, France, who saved him as a child, along with many others, during the Holocaust. His 1989 film, Weapons of the Spirit, documents their story.
His new documentary, Not Idly By—Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust, is a searing indictment of the leadership of the American Jewish community during World War II as articulated by Hillel Kook, better known as Peter Bergson. Its 55 minutes interweave Bergson's statements from two sources, Laurence Jarvik’s Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die (1982) and outtakes from Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985). ...

Sauvage expressed surprise that a woman would come up to him after the debut screening last month at New York’s Center for Jewish History to praise him while simultaneously fulminating at “the traitors in J Street.” He “steers clear of the Mideast” conflict, having trouble “wrapping his head around” its complexities.
Nevertheless, the complexities of the Mideast do enter into this subject. Bergson came to the U.S. from Palestine in 1940. He and most of his closest colleagues were members of the Irgun, the “Revisionist” (right-wing) Zionist underground.

Among these was Jacob or Yitzhak Ben-Ami, the father of J Street’s founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami. In the recent posthumous publication of a memoir by Bergson’s colleague, Samuel Merlin (Millions of Jews to Rescue, published by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies), Jeremy Ben-Ami writes an afterword expressing pride in his father’s role in the Bergson Group. He argues that “All Jews from right to left should have been able to support [its rescue mission].” He also points out that most individuals recruited into the Bergson Group, such as Ben Hecht and Stella Adler, were liberals, augmented by varying degrees of support from such leftists as Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson. ...

The entire article can be read at the Jewish Week's website.

'Team Obama' excusing Arab anti-Semitism?

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:57:00 +0000

As Republican Presidential debaters vie for Jewish votes by professing infinite love for Israel (all except the uninvited Ron Paul, of course), there's that brouhaha on Obama administration figures who don't simply blame everything on the Arabs. J.J. Goldberg writes amusingly of this in his column in The Forward:

[Ambassador to Belgium Howard] Gutman is under fire for a speech he gave to a November 30 conference on European anti-Semitism, which his critics say amounted to rationalizing and excusing anti-Semitism. In his remarks Gutman claimed that attacks on European Jews by local Muslims stem from a hatred “largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East.” ...
Gutman said that educators and community leaders can help ease the fraught situation by “working to limit converting political and military tension in the Middle East into social problems in Europe.” But to make a real dent in European anti-Semitism, Israeli, Palestinian and neighboring Arab leaders have to sit down and talk peace.
Gutman’s most serious offense was to draw what most observers are calling a phony distinction between “classic” anti-Semitism and a supposedly new version spreading in Europe today. ... the first refers to 1,000 years of repeated efforts by ... Christian Europe to liquidate the Jewish people .... The second refers to a series of attacks and threats against European Jews over the past decade, including vandalism, verbal abuse and some violence, mostly by Muslim immigrant teenagers.

By the way, although it did not go viral, I was similarly criticized when I made much the same argument as Gutman in a May 2003 Forward op-ed, "Reconsidering Antisemitism":

.... Was not antisemitism on the wane until reignited by scenes of the intifada 32 months ago? We have forgotten ... how much of the Arab world established a level of relations with Israel during Oslo’s halcyon days. ...
If Oslo had succeeded, the odious convulsions seizing Europe and the Islamic world would not be happening. ... Since most of the anti-Jewish or anti-Israel occurrences we deplore are reactions to a changed political landscape [the violence of the Second Intifada and Israel's counterattacks], is it really best understood as antisemitism?

A contrasting view is expressed in this column by Benny Avni in the NY Post ("Team O: Blaming Israel -- Again"). I responded in a letter to the editor prompted by a J Street colleague (otherwise I wouldn't know or care what's written in the NY Post):

Benny Avni eventually gets to the point ... where he fully acknowledges the unprecedented military cooperation between Israel and the Obama administration, but he mostly raises dark concerns that this cooperation is not enough or not for real somehow.
Did the U.S. ambassador to Belgium "justify" Arab antisemitism, or did he ... say that recent outbursts of Arab antisemitism are triggered or exacerbated by some Israeli policies? ... Israel's Knesset has indeed passed, or is considering, a series of laws which downgrade the citizenship and free speech rights of Israeli Arabs, restrict press freedoms and discriminate against liberal non-governmental organizations. [BTW, there's now an indication that Prime Minister Netanyahu is holding back on the NGO bill.]
As to the breakdown in negotiations, everyone has stumbled: The Obama administration did indeed raise the bar too high in demanding a complete settlement freeze; and Abbas wasted a year in demanding exactly this when a partial freeze was enacted by Netanyahu; still, Netanyahu dug in his heels with a flat refusal to extend a partial freeze in order to keep negotiations going. Yet we wouldn't find an analysis of such complexities from Avni, who apparently just wants to score debating points against Obama.

NY Jewish Week's Israel correspondent Michele Chabin's straightforward analysis is entitled: "Israelis Stung By Official U.S. Criticism," focusing on the controversy related to three recent incidents:

.... Last week Defense Secretary Leon Panetta angered many right-wing and centrist Israelis by implying that Israel, not Arab intransigence, is the main impediment to peace. Speaking at the Saban Conference, an annual forum sponsored by entertainment mogul Chaim Saban and the Brookings Institution, Panetta urged Israelis to “reach out and mend fences” with Egypt, Turkey and others “who share an interest in regional stability.” He also said Israelis and Palestinians should “get to the damn table,” a reference to stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The next day, during a closed-door session at the same conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton... reportedly skewered bills now before the Knesset that, their critics say, would limit non-Israeli funding of Israeli NGOs; give the Knesset control over who can be named a High Court judge; and make it easier for subjects covered in the media to sue journalists.
.... The bill, whose right-wing supporters initially introduced it to limit foreign funding of pro-Palestinian NGOs, would impose a 45 percent tax on contributions received by all Israeli NGOs from foreign countries, according to Haaretz.
Making matters worse, U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman created yet another controversy last week in a speech in which he said, “A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned, and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Gutman, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, also said that the solution to most Muslim anti-Semitism “remains in the hands of government leaders in Israel and the Palestinian territories and Arab countries in the Middle East.” ....

This Jewish Week editorial is defensive on the same subject, "Cataloguing Palestinian Duplicity,"

ridiculing Panetta's "Just get to the damn table"out-of-context outburst. This is what the editorial goes
on to claim:

.... that administration after administration in Washington since the Oslo agreement of 1993 has ignored the essential stumbling block to real peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. That’s the refusal of the Palestinian leadership, including the “moderate” Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.
Just this week an important new book arrived that details in exhaustive fashion the duplicity of the PA, under President Mahmoud Abbas....
The book, “Deception: Betraying the Peace Process,” by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik of the Palestinian Media Watch, chronicles the statements and actions of the PA during the renewed peace talks of 2010 and through this year.
Citing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge to Congress in 2009 that the U.S. would only work with the PA after it commits to non-violence, recognition of Israel and ending incitement against Israel, the authors catalogue how none of those criteria has been met. And further, that violent acts against Israel are on hold only for tactical reasons. The book offers extensive proof that the Palestinian leadership endorses and promotes the belief that there is no room for a Jewish state in the region and that Jews, not just Israelis, are evil and must be eliminated. ....

I can't say that this is entirely wrong, but it seems to be an exaggeration. Some within the PA appear belligerent or even dishonest at times, but this editorial also ignores a recent Israeli television appearance by Mahmoud Abbas, as reported by Haaretz columnist Carlo Strenger. Still, I'd say that the PA needs to do a better job of reassuring Israel of its good will --- and vice versa, of course.

Meretz Secretary General in South America

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Dror Morag, the secretary general of Israel's Meretz Party (someone whom many of us knew as secretary general of the World Union of Meretz), reports on his November tour of South America:

During November, I participated in a series of conventions in Latin America. The
events took place in an important period in the Zionist calendar, with the Memorial
Day to Yitzhak Rabin and the 94th anniversary to the Balfour Declaration. I was sent
to the journey as a member of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors, to a special
convention in Buenos Aires, aimed at learning of the Jewish life in the region and
strengthening the local communities. On November 14th, we commemorated the
Balfur Declaration and held a ceremony in honor of the victims of the suicide bomb
attacks in the Israeli embassy (1992) and the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association
building (1994). The two aforementioned memorials remind us of the long and
sorrowful journey we are going through since the foundation of the State of Israel.
The two dates are linked together to our reality as a society and cultural group
aspiring for lasting peace and development, understanding that only regional peace
will lead the State of Israel and the Jewish People to lasting security and stability.

During my journey, I visited Jewish communities in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.
Visiting these countries, I also met left-wing politicians and local media and presented
the Party's and the Israeli Left's position to the general public.

In Uruguay, I met a small but well organized Jewish community. It is a mostly
secular community maintaining strong links with Israel. The local Meretz group

promotes Jewish humanistic thinking and activity from the 'Mordechay Anilevitch
House', the center of activities for liberal Jews in Uruguay. The house hosts Jewish
holiday ceremonies and banquets, inviting in families and individuals unable to
enjoy the holiday spirit due to meager economic situation of having no family to
share the dinner table with – some of them had not commemorated a holiday for
10 years. The local Ken [branch] of Hashomer Hatza'ir is very active and creates important
Jewish educational framework for youngsters who do not affiliate with the official
community institutions. The most remarkable phenomena I encountered in Uruguay
is the special efforts conducted by Hashomer Hatza'ir guides [scouts] and the bogrim [youth]: Some of the young members live as far as an hour's drive outside the capital, and away
from the Ken, and yet, the guides and the bogrim make a remarkable efforts to drive
them to and from their houses and the Ken. These youth has no other connection to
Judaism or to Zionism. Encountering a secular humanistic Jewish stream makes feel
comfortable with their Jewish Identity.

The flight to Argentina was postponed by 6 hours due to a strike. The workers
of Aerolíneas Argentinas, the national flight company are going through a long
struggle protesting their poop wages and conditions. In the Socialist spirit, I waited
patiently for takeoff. During the first two days in Argentina I participated in a
Meretz-Hashomer Hatza'ir continental Seminar with representatives from Argentina,
Uruguay and Chile. Together we analyzed the situation of the Latin-American left and
discussed possible ways to expand our activity. We agreed upon strengthening the
ties between our movements in countries around the region and stronger connections
between Hasomer bogrim and Meretz. I was deeply impressed by the quality and
character of the bogrim and their commitment to shaping the youth which lives
outside of the official community institutions. During the Seminar we held two panels
about the Middle East and the social Protest in Israel with more than 200 participants.
The keynote speakers were Rany Trainin and I.

The Tzavta house in Buenos Aires is an impressive institution which holds a
variety of activities all week long. The 'Crown Jewel' is a newspaper, 'Nueva Sion',
widely published all across Latin America and presenting left-wing Zionist views.
The main event, JAFI Board of Governors, lasted three days in which the BOG
members learned of JAFI activity and various groups and organizations working in
the framework of the Jewish community, and offered their help. During this visit
I received the chance to present Meretz agenda to the local media and agree upon
cooperation with Argentinean left-wing parties.

My flight to Chile was also postponed by 6 hours, a result of the same strike. I hope
for an improvement of the wages and conditions of the workers; until it is done, I do
not recommend flying with Aerolíneas Argentinas.

In Chile I met an impressive group of Meretz members. Leading them is an
enthusiastic woman who speaks fluent Hebrew and gathered around her a significant
activist group. During my visit Meretz activists had organized a large demonstration
with vast media coverage against an event honoring one of the formers heads of the
Pinochet regime. The group holds large events all year long and aspires for dialogue
with the countries Palestinian community. Hashomer Hatza'ir Ken is located at a
remote neighborhood, but is a historical landmark, hosting an underground newspaper
printing during the dictatorship period. The dozens of youth active in the Ken
conducts impressive educational activity and hold a lot of programs in Israel. A group
of strongly committed Bogrim is leading the Ken and inspires everybody with their
vivid energy.

During my visit to Chile I participated in a students' demonstration, a part of a large
protest movement very similar to the protest movement here in Israel. The Chilean
government understands the importance of this movement and holds a dialogue with
the students' leaders. I believe that their fundamental demand for equal education and
lowering book prices (average of $50 per book) will succeed, in light of the citizens'
commitment to march in the streets and make a stand.

The Chilean left is strongly critical towards Israel, sometimes delegitimizing the State
of Israel. Some streams in the extreme left ridiculously claims that Hamas attacks were
orchestrated by Bibi Netanyahu in order to get elected. As a Zionist Left movement, we face an almost impossible task in promoting our agenda. In a variety of media interviews I put forward our stand, differentiating legitimate criticism against a bad and racist government from de-legitimating Israel as a Zionist-Democratic state. We must sharpen these differences which enable Israel to preserve its position among other nations and are the best answer to Anti-Semitism. Although the difficult stances, I found here socialist partners in the Chilean Parliament, members of the Socialist
International and sharing common values.

Concluding my journey, it is clear that our stands offer an ideological alternative to
the Israeli right, and enable us to receive wide support abroad, thus sending a clear
message to the current Israeli government. Our strength lies in dedicated groups of
activists of Meretz and Hashomer, and increases in light of their moral and ideological
depth. We must remember that many Jews and non-Jews around the world count on
us to work towards a more just and moral Israel; an Israel which will be embraced by
the international community.

Sincerely,
Dror Morag,
Secretary General of Meretz and Member of the Zionist Executive Board

News from World Union of Meretz

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:18:00 +0000

Partners for Progressive Israel remains as it was when we were Meretz USA, affiliated with the World Union of Meretz, a constituent of the World Zionist Organization. The following is the latest report from Amichay Findling, coordinator of the World Union of Meretz:

Dear friends and partners,

Democracy in Israel

Israel is going through hectic times, ruled by a bad and racist government threatening the foundations of democracy - freedom of speech and Independence of the juridical system. Every week we face new disturbing law propositions limiting journalists and civil society organizations and trying to politicize the supreme court. Every week new incidents of political violence erupts, always by extreme right wing activists against Palestinians and Israeli left-wing leaders.

Meretz stands in the front of defending Israeli democracy. Meretz is always there - in the parliament and in the streets. We are in the front for such extent, that starting from this week, security services issued a bodyguard to Meretz MK Zehava Galon after receiving threats. (You may get the latest updates-- in Hebrew-- on the Meretz Party's Facebook page; you are also invited to follow the World Union of Meretz on Facebook, in English.)

And yet, everyday we are in the Knesset and every week in the streets, protesting and proposing better laws, building coalitions and working towards a better Israel.

The National Institutions [i.e., the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency For Israel]:

Our work in the National Institutions is bearing fruits, promoting various projects in Israel and the diaspora.

Attached is a summary by Dror Morag of his experiences during the JAFI board of Governors on Buenos Aires and further activities we conducted this month in Latin America: a continental seminar and meetings in Mexico City, Montevideo (Uruguay) and Santiago de Chile.

World-Wide Activity

Fundraising for Nueva Sion - our most important means of action in Latin America:

Nueva Sion is the institutional journal of Meretz-Hashomer Hatzair in Argentina. It has become the most important journal in the argentinean jewish community due to its original articles and depth of its look, to the poiny of having reached 63 years of circulation and close to a thousand uninterrumpted issues.

Nueva Sion is not just a community journal, it is a representation of the Jewish community towards general society, available for sale in local stands and often quoted by national press in topics related to Israel, the Jewish people and Argentinean Jewish community.

Nueva Sion is a political project mantained almost exclusively through volunteer work from journalists and intellectuals, and the monetary collaboration of many.

However, the constant search for funds is a reality for a newspaper that is both commited and reflexive as Nueva Sion. That is why we address you to ask for help to mantain and expand our focus of commited and responsible identification towards the State of Israel and the Jewish community, for your help to become not just the most glorious journal in Jewish-Argentinean history, but also to be part of building a more just and committed society.

We need several thousands of dollars for maintaining the activity of this important newspaper. We will be glad to allow benefactors to publish their views on Zionist activity and Jewish life in the nearest issues. For more details regarding possibilities for donation: please contact Afro Remenik, afroremenik@gmail.com .

Letter to Jewish Week: 'Buy Israel Week' Misleading

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Skolnik) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:46:00 +0000

The first ever "Buy Israel Week" in the US kicked off earlier this week, on November 28, and will run until this Sunday, December 4. The campaign, supported by a large number of Jewish media outlets and organizations, including the right-wing Stand With Us, aims to increase consumer support for Israel at a time when fears of a general boycott of the country are growing. There's only one problem: 'Buy Israel' includes the settlements.

Here's my published response to an editorial in the NY Jewish Week, one of the partners in the Buy Israel Week effort:

‘Buy Israel’ Misleading

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Jewish Week’s call to “buy Israel” in the framework of “Buy Israel Week” (Editorial, Nov.11) is well intentioned, but misleading. Specifically, the “Buy Israel Week” campaign makes absolutely no distinction between Israel and Israeli settlements in the West Bank. As a result, “Buy Israel Week” would have us buy from Tekoa, the settlement home of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, as quickly as we would buy from Tel Aviv.

Israel is legitimate and sovereign. So American Jews should certainly be encouraged to buy Israeli goods and services made within Israel proper — the land within the pre-war borders of June 1967. But Israel’s West Bank settlements, established in an area under occupation, enjoy no legitimacy, and they undermine both Israel’s security and its future as a democracy with a stable Jewish majority. So supporting the settlements through our purchasing power does damage to Israel.

Too many people also don’t know that when the label reads “Made in Israel,” the product could just as easily have come from Kiryat Arba, Elon Moreh, Yitzhar or any of the other 220 West Bank settlements and outposts.

Is this the kind of “Buy Israel” The Jewish Week had in mind? And shouldn’t American Jews have the right to know where their consumer dollars are flowing? At the very least, settlement products should be labeled as such so that American Jews can make an informed choice about how best to support the Israel we all love.

Ron Skolnik
Executive Director, Partners for Progressive Israel

T. Mitchell Reviews Gorenberg's New Book

noreply@blogger.com ("Partners" Blogmaster) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:18:00 +0000

The Americanization Project in Israel

By Thomas Mitchell, Ph.D.

A review of The Unmaking of Israel By Gershom Gorenberg (HarperCollins, 2011 $26.00)

The Israeli Left has been divided, at times, over whether to emphasize the Palestinian problem or religious coercion. In his latest book, American-Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg, who is himself a practicing modern Orthodox Jew, links the two issues. His basic argument is that Israel is threatened by anachronistic elements in Zionism. This is an argument that has been made previously by Bernard Avishai in his first book, The Tragedy of Zionism. Both argue that Israel as an independent state should not behave like a national liberation movement. The settlement project in the West Bank is a state effort carried out as if it were still the late 1930s or the late 1940s and the religious settlers were setting the boundaries of the state as the Labor Zionists did in the tower and stockade period.

The core of Gorenberg’s book is about the settlement project on the West Bank and how it threatens Israeli democracy and survival. From there he goes to examining how the settlers have established a presence in the IDF and threaten it as the Etzel (a/k/a Irgun) threatened the newborn state in June 1948 with the Altalena incident (he skims over a similar perceived threat from the Palmakh). Gorenberg makes a good case that, as presently constituted, the IDF will be unable to carry out an order to evacuate settlers from West Bank settlements in the event of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Next he relates how the ultra-Orthodox sector conned the state into funding a parasitic lifestyle for its members that dooms them to a life of poverty but ensures their loyalty. He then ties this phenomenon to Israel’s dysfunctional electoral/party system and to the gentleman’s agreement among Zionist and religious parties to exclude the Arabs from government. He relates how Rabin was willing to have the Arabs as a publicly-acknowledged "mistress" in 1992 but was unwilling to "marry" them. Secular Jews could safeguard themselves from religious coercion if they were willing to cooperate with Arabs. But old habits die hard.

Gorenberg’s penultimate chapter is on the danger of making all of Israel into a battleground as settlers move back into Israel and carry on as if it were the West Bank. He makes a good case for Israel devolving over time into a pre-state Palestine of the 1936-48 period where there is strong intercommunal tension. In the final chapter, he rejects the one-state solution for this very reason. In that chapter, he rests the salvation of Israeli democracy upon a two-state solution.

But is a Western-style democracy as opposed to an ethnic democracy or ethnocracy enough of a priority among enough Israeli Jews to motivate them to make the necessary compromises to reach a two-state solution? And even if the answer to the previous question is yes, is there a similar critical mass of Palestinians willing to make similar compromises?

Gorenberg’s critique is basically an outsider’s look at Israeli democracy based on inside knowledge. Some ninety percent of Israeli Jews are either immigrants from or descendants of immigrants from countries that weren’t democratic at the time of emigration—Eastern Europe and the Muslim countries. The remainder are mostly from failed democracies such as Weimar Germany, 1920s Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the immediate postwar period. Those from successful democracies such as the U.S., Britain, and France are the exception. And many of those from the U.S. are settlers who support religious Zionism.

Gorenberg wants to Americanize Israel. But he forgets that for America to become the liberal democracy of today it had to start out with a base of English freedoms, and it still took two civil wars (the 18^th century Revolutionary War and the 19^th century Civil War) to achieve! Israel’s compromise with Orthodox Judaism (the “status quo agreement”) is its equivalent to America’s compromise with slavery. Ben-Gurion compromised with the religious establishment in order to win its blessing for statehood. The North compromised with the South in order to win the necessary critical mass to safeguard independence from Britain. It then took another ninety years and a second civil war to rid America of slavery and another century after that to win civil rights for blacks. As most American Jews know, Jewish standard time runs slower in the Middle East than in America.

Thomas Mitchell is an independent scholar and blogger on a number of subjects, including Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. He blogs at the Self-Hating Gentile.

Iran should NOT be attacked, but IT's the problem

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:45:00 +0000

It would be a very bad idea for either Israel or the US to attack Iran; today's NY Times op-ed article by Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, a Norwegian security expert, reinforces this conclusion. But an article in Salon by Gary Kamiya, "The Boys Who Cry 'Holocaust'," conveys a wrong-headed notion that the crisis about Iran's nuclear program is all Israel's fault. Yes, Netanyahu and the neocon hawks need to be countered, but not like this, in a way that removes the onus from Iran.

Jeffrey Goldberg (a liberal, not a neocon) is absolutely correct in that statement quoted by Kamiya only to dismiss it:

“The leaders of Iran are eliminationist anti-Semites; men who, for reasons of theology, view the state of the Jews as a ‘cancer.’ They have repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction and worked to hasten that end, mainly by providing material support and training to two organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, that specialize in the slaughter of innocent Jews. Iran’s leaders are men who deny the Holocaust while promising another.”

And Kamiya engages in a flight of fantasy when he states the following: "... if [Israel] abandons its self-defeating Holocaustology, it will be able to live in peace with its neighbors and join the world." He's also insensitive, if not insulting, in suggesting that there's something wrong in principle with Israel's annual Holocaust remembrance day. Why should peace with Iran (not to mention Hamas and others in the Middle East) depend upon Jews not mourning a tragedy of such historic dimensions, rather than others abandoning their pathological antisemitism?

Yes, our memory of the Holocaust feeds Jewish insecurities, sometimes to extremes, but shouldn't outside observers first suggest that the Iranian leadership and their friends in Hezbollah and Hamas stop engaging in Holocaust denial, propagating anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and making existential threats against Jews and/or "Zionism"?

G. Gorenberg on American-Jewish myopia

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:25:00 +0000

It's worth looking at snippets from Gershom Gorenberg's newest column at the American Prospect website, "Why Are They So Angry?"("An Israeli dove visiting Jewish North America can feel he's stumbled into a constricted, out-of-joint alternate universe"). It's based on his experience speaking at a modern Orthodox synagogue (he, himself, is religious):

..... The moderate Israeli left's argument that West Bank settlements undermine democracy and peace efforts is sometimes greeted in the U.S. as treasonous, sometimes as daringly unconventional. ...

... Jewish politics reflect general American politics, where conservatives hurl forged-in-Fox, counterfactual cannonballs rather than discuss ideas. And the minority of American Jews who are devoted to the single issue of defending Israeli policy, and who can dominate discussion within the Jewish community, inhabit an echo chamber that may be even better sealed than the conservative separate universe in domestic politics. [For example,] Golda Meir—remembered in Israel as the prime minister who failed to see signs of oncoming war in 1973—is still regarded as a hero in America. ...

Of course, there are many American Jews whose liberal views on domestic issues are matched by their support of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. [But] Some feel constrained in speaking as clearly as they'd like about Israel for fear of being identified with another rigidly ideological contingent: Diaspora Palestinians with their own overdone nationalism, and a small coterie of Jews who express their disappointment with Zionism through mirror-image anti-Zionism—as if denying Jewish rights to national self-determination were somehow more progressive than denying Palestinian rights. ...

And [there's] the place that Israel often fills in Jewish identity in America. An incident my son recounted after a visit to the United States as a teen alluded to the issue: He'd come to take part in an international interfaith camp, and one day the campers were brought to a nearby city to visit a church, synagogue, and mosque. At the synagogue, he was surprised to see an Israeli and an American flag in the sanctuary. He couldn't recall seeing an Israeli flag in an Israeli synagogue, and asked the executive director of the congregation why it was there. "The Holocaust is very present in our hearts," came the response.

At first glance, that's a non sequitur. Unpacked, the comment means that victimhood is part of the story that Jews tell about their past. In that story, a besieged, endangered Israel is the sequel to the Holocaust. Like most narratives, this one contains pieces of truth alongside distortions and anachronisms. The victimhood was very real. But for most Jews living today in America, ... out of sync with their current condition. And seeing Israel as the symbol of victimhood is discordant: Zionism was a rebellion against Jewish powerlessness, and present-day Israel testifies to the rebellion's success. ...

The above resonates with me in several ways. As a young pro-Israel Jew in the early 1970s, who followed the news passionately as Israel stumbled into the Yom Kippur War, it occurred to me that Golda Meir made a huge error in ignoring peace overtures from Anwar Sadat that, if taken seriously, would likely have brought peace rather than war in 1973. If at the same time she had successfully negotiated a peace agreement with King Hussein of Jordan (who had become Israel's secret ally after the IDF saved his throne from the PLO in 1970 and had offered a treaty with Israel in exchange for a return of the West Bank and East Jerusalem), the occupation would have ended and the Palestinian problem might have been resolved then and there.

I believe that minor border adjustments in Israel's favor with Jordan (e.g., within East Jerusalem) could have been arranged, especially by offering the Gaza Strip to Jordan in exchange. A three-way peace treaty involving Egypt (which did not want the Gaza Strip back anyway), would have done the trick. Then perhaps, King Hussein might have offered a federation or confederation status within his kingdom for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

But I am also glad that Gorenberg mentioned "Diaspora Palestinians with their own overdone nationalism, and a small coterie of Jews who express their disappointment with Zionism through mirror-image anti-Zionism...." I often feel that Israeli peaceniks do not appreciate enough the ferocity of anti-Israel forces within the U.S. and elsewhere in the Diaspora. I generally find myself fighting a two-front war for a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

And while he's generally correct that "seeing Israel as the symbol of victimhood is discordant [with the facts on the ground]," it is also very understandable. Israel is still vulnerable as a very small country in a hostile neighborhood, which faces a fanatical hatred that both reflects its historic and current misdeeds, and grossly exaggerates them.

T. Klug: 'Unitary state' is unfeasible & implausible

noreply@blogger.com (Ralph Seliger) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:48:00 +0000

Tony Klug is a British-Jewish researcher and writer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I've noticed that he often writes for Tikkun, a venue that I've also been contributing to of late. Sometimes I disagree with him on nuance or tone, but not with this article in "Open Democracy," based on a talk he gave at the Israel Society of the London School of Economics:

The two-state solution: where next?
... in my view, there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of [a one-state] proposal, for it is predicated on the notion that what, at root, is a historical clash of two national movements can, hey presto, be turned into a struggle for civil rights.
... [But] it is not possible to resolve this conflict without satisfying the common, minimum, irreducible aspirations of both peoples for self-determination in at least part of the land that each has regarded as its own. ... In other words, a unitary state is not just unfeasible but implausible. ...

So, if the one-unitary-state idea fails the plausibility test, how does the two-state idea fare with the feasibility test? I would say less-and-less well, day-by-day. The principal obstacle is that the state that already has its independence has for years been chiselling away at the territory of the putative other, bit-by-bit eroding the practicability of the only solution that has ever made sense. ...
When I first advocated two states in the early 1970s in a Young Fabian pamphlet, ‘A Tale of Two Peoples’, there were fewer than 5,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Today there are in excess of 500,000.... To paraphrase, this project must be one of the longest state-suicide notes in history. ...

Klug's conclusion:

... Israel now faces a stark choice: freeze all further settlement growth in preparation for swift and focused negotiations based on the pre-June 1967 boundaries with equitable land swaps, or prepare for permanent conflict and indefinite pariah status – not quite what its founders had in mind! I suspect their advice, at this point in time, would be to follow the biblical injunction to ‘seek peace and pursue it’.

This argument is fleshed out further online.