Given the undeniable disaster thus far known as Obama and company’s efforts to make peace in Israel and Palestine, it is meaningful that the balance of power is shifting globally. As good as the AJC may be at invoking real forms of anti-Jewish hatred  to shut decent people up about Israel, they won’t get the welcome reception they’ve had here in the US. Meanwhile, since it’s absolutely clear that Israel won’t give Palestinians the rights to which they are entitled without pressure, let’s rejoice that finally, the question may not have to be resolved in the halls of Congress after all.

MIDEAST:

Pro-Israel Lobbies Work on Europe

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Feb 2 (IPS) - Defenders of Israel’s aggressive stance have for many years been recognised as a powerful force shaping United States foreign policy. A less well-known fact is that the pro-Israel lobby has been making a concerted effort to strengthen its presence in Europe.

The lobby’s determination to make an impression on European Union policy-makers was exemplified by a new booklet published on Jan. 28.

Titled ‘Squaring the Circle?: EU-Israel Relations and the Peace Process in the Middle East’, the booklet advocates that EU should “rebalance its priorities” and pursue closer relations with Israel regardless of whether progress is made in resolving the conflict with the Palestinians.

Unlike the plethora of publications on EU affairs that quickly fade into obscurity, there are good reasons to believe that this one will not go unnoticed in the corridors of power.

First, it was published by the Centre of European Studies, the official think-tank for the network of Christian Democrat and conservative parties that dominate European governments.

Secondly, its author, Emanuele Ottolenghi, has already demonstrated his capability to catch the eyes of politicians by penning several pamphlets for Labour Friends of Israel, a group that boasts of the top figures in Britain’s ruling party among its members.

Ottolenghi is the director of the Transatlantic Institute. Also styling itself as a think-tank, this Brussels-based institute was set up by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in 2004.

“The AJC is the foreign policy wing of the Israel lobby,” says Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, a researcher in Scotland’s University of Strathclyde, who monitors the activities of hawkish pro-Israel groups for the website neoconeurope.eu “The two places that it has decided to focus on most are Latin America and Europe. This is because it has a sense that American power might be in decline.”

The AJC has been successful in convincing the EU that many criticisms of Israel can be considered as a general slur on Jews. In 2005, the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (which has been subsequently renamed the Fundamental Rights Agency) published a working definition on anti-Semitism, admitting that it had been drawn up in consultation with the AJC and the like-minded Anti-Defamation League.

According to this definition says that criticisms of Israel, which contend that the establishment of that state was a “racist endeavour” or which compare Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians to the behaviour of the Nazis during the Second World War, should be considered as anti-Semitism. Ottolenghi’s new booklet invokes that definition to call on the EU to declare campaigners critical of Israel ineligible for funding from those sections of Union’s budget dealing with the promotion of human rights and democracy. It is “curious,” he argued that EU financial support has gone to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) “whose work depicts Israel as a racist society and an apartheid regime.”

“In other words, EU Commission money is helping certain NGOs spread a message that, according to another EU agency, is considered to be anti-Semitic and thus against EU values,” he wrote.

Ottolenghi has been active, too, in urging the EU to adopt a tough line against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. His book ‘Under a Mushroom Cloud,’ which was published last year, posited the theory that Arab leaders are unconcerned by how Israel had developed nuclear weapons of its own decades before Iran started work on its nuclear programme.

“Arab leaders sleep soundly under the shadow of Israel’s nuclear umbrella; it is Iran’s nuclear quest which gives them nightmares,” Ottolenghi wrote. “They know - they have always known - that Israel’s military prowess serves its survival and does not seek to impose a political diktat on its neighbours. The same cannot be said of Iran, with its hegemonic ambitions, and its desire to refashion the region.”

Yet since the book was published Arab governments sponsored a resolution on Israel passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The resolution noted that Israel is the only state in the region that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a 1968 agreement designed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. This was the first such call directed at Israel approved by the IAEA, an official body of the United Nations, in 18 years.

Along with the AJC, several other pro-Israel lobby groups have opened new offices in Brussels over the past decade. These include the European Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith. Another group, the European Friends of Israel (EFI), has been formed as a cross-party alliance of members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

During Israel’s offensive against Gaza last year, the EFI circulated briefing papers that defended the killing of Palestinian civilians. According to the EFI, it was impossible for Israel to avoid civilian deaths because Hamas, a Palestinian resistance movement, had ordered its members “to discard uniforms and dress in regular clothes that made them indistinguishable from the civilian population”.

Michael Gahler, a German Christian Democrat MEP who describes himself as pro-Israel, said that such lobby groups have “always been very influential” in Europe. Gahler argued, though, that the groups should not ignore the widespread opposition in Europe to Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. “They should be here and listen,” he told IPS. “They should not only be a loudspeaker.”

Luisa Morgantini, a former vice-president of the European Parliament and a veteran Palestinian solidarity activist, said that all forms of racism and anti-Semitism must be opposed.

But Morgantini also suggests that pro-Israel groups are exploiting the history of Jewish suffering in Europe to dissuade its modern-day politicians from taking robust action against Israeli oppression in Palestine. “They are using the holocaust as blackmail,” she said. “It is time for us to stop this blackmail.”

-Cecilie Surasky

The banned poster below. This year’s divestment version of the same poster here.

The Only Democracy in the Middle East™ has struck again: the English editor for the independent Palestinian news agency Maan, American Jared Malsin, was detained along with his girlfriend at Ben Gurion airport on his return to Israel from a European vacation.  During the detention it became clear that the Shin Bet intended to expel him from Israel as a security risk.  It provided no justification whatsoever.  And when Malsin notified the U.S. embassy of his predicament and they called to inquire, security officials lied by claiming neither individual was in custody and that they were probably “enjoying a night on the town in Tel Aviv” and had simply forgotten to notify them.

Actually, the immigration department did have a justification, exactly the one you’d expect from….China or Iran: Malsin apparently wrote news stories that “criticized the State of Israel.”

Really. But my favorite part of this story, which evolves by the minute, is that Malsin, a Yale graduate, apparently first came to Israel through Birthright, the program that gives free plane tickets to Israel to young Diaspora Jews in an effort to win their everlasting love. In my book, becoming a journalist who accurately covers the assault on democracy is the perfect way to show your everlasting love. It’s the only way to make it better. But that’s just me. I wonder if Malsin knew he’d become the subject of his own story.

-Cecilie Surasky

A few weeks ago, Reut briefed the Israeli diplomatic corps about this new war of legitimacy in the realm of academia, culture, and politics, which Israel is not prepared for. I actually agree with Gidi Grinstein, Reut’s director, who suggests in Haaretz that without moral legitimacy, Israel is in existential danger. But of course, it’s Israel’s unaccountable status quo- of illegal occupation and legalized discrimination- which is at risk. It is repression and inequality, pure and simple, which thousands of people like me oppose-not Israel itself (which leads me to the conclusion that people like Grinstein actually believe, and this is the real issue that must be interrogated and challenged, that Israel literally cannot exist without occupation and discrimination encoded in its DNA. )

To be expected from someone in pathological denial, Grinstein attributes the global opprobrium over Israel’s human rights practices to a massive Iranian-Hezbollah-Hamas plot, sympathetically comparing Israel to a racist and a totalitarian regime:

Rather than seeking to conquer Israel, they would aim to bring about its implosion, as with South Africa or the Soviet Union, by attacking its political and economic values.

…Turning Israel into a pariah state is central to its adversaries’ efforts. Israel is a geopolitical island. Its survival and prosperity depend on its relations with the world in trade, science, arts and culture - all of which rely on its legitimacy. When the latter is compromised, the former may be severed, with harsh political, social and economic consequences.

The suggested response? (Thankfully, I spend my days safely in my “hub” and not in Israel-Palestine, so it doesn’t involve arbitrary detention or the confiscation of my computer.)

Israel’s delegitimacy is propagated in a few global metropolises - such as London, Madrid and the Bay Area - that are hubs of international NGOs, media outlets, academia and multinational corporations. Therefore, an extraordinary effort is required to respond to and isolate Israel’s delegitimizers. We must play offense and not just defense.

The most effective barrier to fundamental delegitimization is personal relationships. In every major country, Israel and its supporters must develop and sustain personal connections with the entire elite in business, politics, arts and culture, science and academia. This requires not only an overhaul of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and particularly of its larger embassies, by infusing them with significantly larger operating budgets, but also the mobilization of our civil elite in Israel and overseas for the task.

And this gets back to my new job title as general, and why this approach of befriending elites so they will act as ideological gatekeepers won’t work. The truth of the matter is that there are thousands and thousands of “generals” like me- from teenagers in Athens to Birthright graduates in Great Neck to church members in Ireland to grandmothers in Ramallah to college professors (and rabbinical school students) virtually everywhere.  We’re all generals and we all have an internet connection.

This is a force for change and accountability that cannot be “decapitated” through relationships with elites and exerting McCarthyite pressure. We’ve all bypassed the elites in the state/media/law/culture etc.. who have failed miserably to bring a just peace. The era of centralized power, and the associated power of the gatekeeper, is quickly ending. Today it is quick-moving, under-funded, decentralized, non-hierarchical, grassroots activism that is winning and unstoppable.

But still, the Israeli diplomatic corps simply cannot befriend enough of us, and give away enough free trips to Israel, to make a difference anymore. And now they know. Be prepared for a bumpy ride.
-Cecilie Surasky

Some weeks after the report’s release, a rabbi friend emailed me asking what I thought of it, promising me “confidentiality.” He knew how perilous it can be for a Jew to go public with an opinion that diverges from the “mainstream,” meaning the views expressed by “Jewish leaders” of “major Jewish organizations” and others who purport to speak for “the Jewish community.”

To understand the price for breaking ranks, just look at how mercilessly Judge Goldstone—a proud Jew and declared Zionist—was vilified, not by gentile anti-Semites or Arabist Israel-haters but by Jews in the Israel-right-or-wrong mafia who, rather than address the troubling issues raised in the report, resorted to character assassination to delegitimate its lead author.

Regarding Goldstone’s final report, she concludes:

I wish the document’s charges were being actively discussed and convincingly rebutted by an internal investigation, but debate has been effectively squelched. Smears and death threats have done little to erode Judge Goldstone’s prestige among those familiar with his lifelong commitment to truth and justice. But the ad hominen attacks have deeply wounded him, his wife, two daughters and four grandsons who must relate to their Jewish friends and colleagues under a cloud of McCarthyite slander.

Of course, on the surface, such a deliberate and calculated attempt by a significant portion of the Jewish and Israeli leadership to destroy the life of another Jew, who by all accounts is not just a great human being but a true friend to Israel, makes absolutely no sense. But as we see in this older but must-read Nation article, Israeli historian Idith Zertal shows in Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood that the builders of the state of Israel, like Ben-Gurion, long acted as though the interests of the Zionist project far outweighed the interests of individual Jews, whether Mizrachi Jews from Arab countries or traumatized Holocaust survivors. The stories are sadly numerous: From the tragic 4,500 Holocaust survivors on the famous Exodus ship, who through Ben-Gurion’s intervention were forced to stay on the boat for 7 months (Chaim Weizmann convinced the French Prime Minister to take them in as refugees, but Ben-Gurion thought they were more useful to him if they remained on the ship and helped build sympathy for a future Israel) — to the coerced “recruitment”  of exhausted Holocaust survivors into the Haganah, the Jewish underground militia that fought the war of ‘48.

Certainly anyone who has witnessed protests by elderly, poverty-stricken Israeli Holocaust survivors and their families against an Israeli government that failed to care for them would find this history believable. Or those aware of the cavalier attitudes towards Jewish life exemplified by the settlement project itself. And so on and so forth…

In that sense, Pogrebin’s piece is striking for what it doesn’t say explicitly but necessarily plants in the minds of Jewish readers: perhaps it’s long past time to assume the interests of most Jews are aligned with the interests of Israeli governments when it comes to valuing the lives of Jews, let alone our cousins, Palestinians. As a Jew essentially sacrificed at the altar of toxic nationalism, Goldstone sadly has plenty of good company.

-Cecilie Surasky
cecilie@jvp.org

One answer is that academic McCarthyite group CampusWatch is, unfortunately, still in business. In fact, they just published yet another hopefully meaningless attack on the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) and keynote speaker at their October conference, the preeminent Middle East scholar (and famously, former-friend-of-Obama) Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University’s Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies. Why do they want PARC to stop receiving funding from the Department of Education? Because in his speech at a conference on Palestine, Khalidi criticized Israel, and worse, criticized Campus Watch! Comical, yes. Imagine, one of the country’s most respected Middle East scholars having the audacity to criticize Israel and CampusWatch at a conference called “Palestine: What We Know.” CampusWatch’s Jonathan Schanzer smears Khalidi with a charge he denies, that he was ever an official spokesperson for the PLO, and insists:

While Khalidi undoubtedly has the right to express his opinion, the American public has as a right to know that they paid for it. PARC receives controversial Title VI funding from the U.S. State Department and the Department of Education for “Palestinian studies.” By inviting Khalidi, PARC spent fungible taxpayer money to bring a notorious former spokesman for a terrorist organization to Washington to rail against Israel and complain about a group that critiques him.

Meanwhile, Nora Barrows-Friedman’s new article in the Electronic Intifada about academic freedom suggests the answer to the question, is there more space on campus for debate on Israel/Palestine?, is both yes and no.

UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, says:

“There seems to be diverging trends in relation to academic freedom for those who express sharply critical views of Israel or Zionism,” Falk remarked. “On the one side there is growing sympathy for the Palestinian struggle, and this is exhibited by the spreading BDS campaign. On the other side, there are increased efforts by organized Zionist groups to exert covert and overt pressure on university administrations to punish those seen as critics of Israel. As a result, we can expect some inconsistent outcomes in this period.”

Caught up in that tension are professors like UC Santa Barbara’s William Robinson who called down the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League and others for criticizing Israel’s attack on Gaza: in June 2009, the university threw out charges of faculty misconduct. And Columbia’s Joseph Massad and Barnard’s Nadia Abu El Haj who both survived extensive campaigns to deny them tenure.

But Barrows-Friedman introduces us to two lesser-known stories about professors who are still fighting for tenure.

Margo Ramlal-Nankoe, former professor of Sociology at Ithaca College in New York, said that after she started addressing issues of human rights abuses in occupied Palestine — especially after the start of the second Palestinian intifada — she was warned by faculty members at the college that she was “risking” her career and “would suffer repercussions from the administration.” Ramlal-Nankoe told The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the verbal threats eventually led to alleged racist and sexist attacks, and an open death threat from a faculty member who protested Ramlal-Nankoe’s support of a department colleague whose husband was Palestinian. “He [made] a cut-throat gesture with his hand across his neck to me,” Ramlal-Nankoe said. She was later denied tenure in 2007.

This is just the beginning of her tale, and Ramlal-Nankoe appropriately filed suit, which is still in process. Also filing suit,  and also unresolved, is Terri Ginsburg:

Film studies professor Terri Ginsberg, similarly fired in 2008 by North Carolina State University (NCSU) in what she says was a punishment for her outspoken criticism of “Zionism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and US Middle East policy,” believes that institutionalized censorship on the Palestine-Israel issue in the academic realm is eerily reminiscent of the McCarthy era of the 1950s and ’60s. “So many of the dynamics and methods of discrimination perpetrated against today’s scholarly critics of Israel and US Middle East policy derive from and continue, in updated fashion, practices initiated and implemented during that shameful period,” she says.

As Falk says, my sense is that this is a transitional period and that the tide has already shifted on campuses, with defenders of Israel’s occupation already feeling desperately outnumbered. Hopefully the fact that the cases of Ginsburg and Ramlal-Nankoe started some time ago means that more and more administrators are refusing to succumb to such McCarthyite tactics.
-Cecilie Surasky

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a former bouncer who now merely plays on a larger stage, summoned Israeli ambassadors to the homeland to berate them for being too soft and for not defending Israel’s honor when criticized. They must stop “groveling”, as the BBC reported:

He told a shocked audience of some 150 envoys in Jerusalem to “stop turning the other cheek” whenever Israel was insulted, Israeli media report.

The envoys were reportedly given no right of reply at the conference.

“We received a monologue without being able to hold a discussion,” one unnamed ambassador told Ha’aretz newspaper.

AFP added that he said:

“The era of grovelling is over,” he concluded. “We must be on good terms and respect the host nations, but we will not tolerate insults and challenges.”

“We will not turn the other cheek. There will be a response to everything.”

Ha’aretz later editorialized against his “bullying” and suggested he get fired. If US Ambassador Michael Oren is an example of gloves off, one has to wonder what ‘gloves on’ means. If Lieberman was actualy respected by the Israeli diplomatic corps, I’d be worried.

The latest contretemps with Turkey gives us a clue regarding the Lieberman school of diplomacy. Christian Science Monitor reports in “Why Israel humiliated Turkey in response to a TV show,” Turkey’s ambassador was summoned to a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry to address , among other things, “a TV show that portrayed Israeli intelligence agents holding a woman and her baby hostage.”

Breaking with diplomatic protocol, Israeli officials failed to include the customary Turkish flag on the table between them and the Turkish ambassador, whom they seated on a low couch. To rub it in, they instructed the press members in attendance to note that they were sitting in higher chairs and the usual diplomatic niceties were conspicuously absent.

Gloves off indeed.

-Cecilie Surasky

Besser points to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper which recently editorialized what to much of the world seems obvious, that Operation Cast Lead has been completely ineffective in achieving greater security for Israel. “The time has come,” said Ha’aretz, “to rethink Israeli strategy in Gaza.” Citing its ineffectiveness, they then call for open crossings between Israel and Gaza.

After quoting Ha’aretz, Besser says:

What I’m wondering: wouldn’t any American Jewish group making such an argument be tarred as a violator of the pro-Israel orthodoxy, shunned, called “dangerous” to the Jewish state?

I’m not saying Israel’s Gaza policy is wrong.

From my safe perch in  Washington, I honestly don’t know what the best solution is to the Gaza-West Bank split, the tightening grip of Hamas on the strip and the fact the terrorist group doesn’t show any sign of moving beyond its goal of wiping Israel out.

I am saying there’s something disturbing about the growing determination to stifle debate in an American Jewish community with a multiplicity of pro-Israel views. Israelis engage in vigorous debate about these issues all the time, but apparently our own leaders believe that support for Israel is so shaky here that we can’t raise issues like whether or not the Gaza blockade is in Israel’s long-term security interests.

I also find it peculiar that when Jewish leaders here talk about Gaza, the only question they address is whether or not Israel is justified in taking harsh measures (their answer: of course, and I don’t disagree).

Lost in the  debate: is there any evidence these policies are working?  Does history suggest they are likely to work in the long term, or just the opposite?  Justifiable policies that produce negative results don’t strike me as a great idea, but perish the thought that we actually talk about that.

This isn’t tangential or a concern pertinent only to Gaza. His point about the refusal to allow debate about the effectiveness of these polices is the heart of the matter, because (aside from the fact that the massive attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure was also grotesquely immoral), if we did, we might have to confront the likelihood that Israel’s military leadership and successive governments, along with the right-wing settler infiltration of those institutions, are actually working entirely at cross-purposes with the majority of American Jews and Israelis who really do just want peace, presumably with a modicum of fairness. What if, by most of American Jewry’s standards, these repressive measures are a massive failure wherever they are deployed, but by their standards, the ongoing chaos and misery, and absence of any peace negotiations, is a huge success?
-cecilie surasky

While Israelis and Palestinians struggle over land, water and basic human rights in the Middle
East, a proxy battle is being waged here in the United States. Instead of Qassam rockets and
F-16s, the weapons are words, images and the internet. Instead of orchards and city streets, the battlefield is academia, journalism, politics, arts and publishing. And instead of calling it what it is–a struggle between those who unconditionally support often disastrous US-Israeli policies, and those who do not– the debate is framed as being about national security, the war on terror, and the clash of civilizations.

This battle is actually global, though the stakes in the US are obvious- unconditional diplomatic and financial support for Israel while it pursues its dream of a Greater Israel. But either way, it is framed as a battle between those who care about Israel/Jews, democracy and Western values, and those who threaten them. This framing benefits right wing Israel advocacy groups by erasing any legitimate Palestinian claims, collapsing all forms of resistance, including nonviolent civil society, under the banner of ‘terrorism.” Further, it means that Israel’s human rights record, and the US support which makes it possible, is removed from consideration

Recently, the Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute, has come up with its own version of this analysis which it is presenting to Israeli diplomats. Their frame is that this is a grassroots battle over the legitimacy of Israel (whatever that means), thus delegitimizing virtually any resistance to human rights violations and systemic inequality.

Substitute “Enemy Command HQ” for “Hubs of Delegitimacy.” Instead of “enemy armor outflanking our infantry,” use “resistance networks outflanking the IDF to attack Israel’s very legitimacy.” Instead of bombing Israeli embassies - picketing Israeli stores and taking Israeli products off supermarket shelves.

Pair Iran’s nuclear program, an existential threat to Israel, with the simultaneous creation of an existential political threat, and you are talking in a new type of language, and a new type of warfare in which the IDF is not equipped to engage in, and perhaps shouldn’t be engaging in.

A new report by the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based national security and socioeconomic policy think tank, maps out the “new battlefield” in which Israel finds the legitimacy of its very existence attacked by a wide array of organizations and individuals in global centers like London, Toronto, Brussels, Madrid and Berkeley.

What are the recommended weapons to attack this decentralized “guerilla war”? Not equality. Not ending the occupation. Rather:

Reut’s report distinguishes between “soft critics” of Israel and “hard-core delegitimizers,” and posits that the hard-core group, made up of anti-Zionists, anti-Semites and radical Islamists, is always trying to coopt the “soft critic” group into a more radical position. Their goal is to blur the difference between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and Israel’s basic legitimacy. Reut’s team suggests an effort should be made by Israel’s defenders to drive a wedge between the soft and hard core critics of Israel in London. The soft critics are human rights groups like Oxfam that are critics of Israeli policy but not necessarily of its legitimacy.

According to Calev Ben-Dor, a member of the Reut mission to London, the perceived lack of options for those opposed to Israeli policy and wanting to “do something” to help Palestinians creates an “option vacuum” which often leads “soft critics” (those unhappy with specific Israeli policies) to adopt the positions of “hard delegitimizers” (who seek to undermine Israel’s existence). A successful fight against delegitimization will have to include suggestions for how to drive a wedge between these two groups, Ben-Dor says.

Other recommendations presented by Reut to counter the hubs of delegitimacy are to break the “all-or-nothing” dynamic of criticism of Israel, place more Israeli diplomats in the hubs, be wary of “strange bedfellows” such as right-wing and evangelical organizations, brand Israel away from its image as purely a place of conflict, support anti-boycott campaigns (buy Israeli products), establish a “price tag” for attacking Israel and punish boycotters, promote Israel Studies Departments at universities, increase visits to Israel, and even persuade the Histadrut labor federation to get more involved with foreign trade unions.

What does delegitimize actually mean in this context? Why on earth would wanting equality mean delegitimizing Israel, if in fact that’s what they are referring to? Grassroots activism is the reason the US is in a constant process of becoming its promise, a land where all people can pursue life, liberty and justice. And just as I would like to see the United States become the country of full rights as described in the constitution, I’d like to see Israel become the country of its founding documents which promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”.

While of course there are genuine anti-semites who have insinuated themselves into the movement for Palestinian rights- and they should be stopped and expelled, which I have seen Palestinian advocates do with my own eyes on repeated occasions– most people simply seek basic equality and an end to occupation. That’s not deligitimizing Israel, it’s using global activism to raise the overall level of humanity for all of us-including Israelis.

In the meantime, I note with amusement, that Reut’s prescription includes yet more Brand Israel projects and “establish[ing] a “price tag” for attacking Israel.” I think they can check that one off the list. At the very least, maybe it will cause Israeli ambassador Michael Oren to stop attacking Israeli “soft critics” J Street and Hannah Rosenthal, and work instead to drive a wedge between them and everyone to their left.

-Cecilie Surasky

First, in response to a firestorm of criticism and vilification, Atlanta resident and iconic film star Jane Fonda issued a mea culpa about the wording of a petition she signed protesting the Toronto International Film Festival’s celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. She said she signed it, “without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue”. To her credit, Fonda did not remove her signature. But it was still an extraordinary move that reflected the intense pressure she was under. (This level-headed group of Atlanta Jewish leaders rose to her defense.)

And now, Jimmy Carter, reportedly in an effort to ease his grandson’s political path to a Georgia state Senate seat, has written an open letter of apology to, well, the entire Jewish people.

An open letter to the Jewish community at the season of Chanukah from former President Jimmy Carter:

The time of Chanukah and the Christian holidays presents an occasion for reflection on the past and for looking to the future. In that vein, I wish to share some thoughts with you about the State of Israel and the Middle East.

I have the hope and a prayer that the State of Israel will flourish as a Jewish state within secure and recognized borders in peaceful co-existence with its neighbors and with all the Moslem States, and that this peaceful co-existence will bring security, prosperity and happiness to the people of Israel and to the people of the Middle East of all faiths.

I have the hope and a prayer that the bloodshed and hatred will change to mutual respect and cooperation, fulfilling the prophetic aspiration that the lion shall lie down with the lamb in harmony and peace. I likewise hope that violent attacks against all civilians will end, which will help set a better framework for commencing negotiations. I further hope that peace negotiations can soon commence, with all issues on the negotiating table.

I have the hope and a prayer that just as Chanukah is the Festival of Lights, the State of Israel will fulfill its destiny as a light unto the nations.

We must recognize Israel’s achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel. As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.

May we work and pray for that better day.

Hag Semach and Happy Chanukah.

Few people anywhere have endured more vicious demonization regarding the Israel issue than Nobel-prize-winning former US president Jimmy Carter. It is a sad statement that the man who did more for peace for the Israelis than any other U.S. president, is now vilified as an anti-Semite in Jewish communities across the land, most notably for titling his book Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid. In fact, Carter is one of Israel’s few true friends who remains impressively committed to doing whatever he can to bring about some kind of resolution, rather than taking the easy road by giving the self-destructive government more of what it wants- arms and money to occupy more land.

And now, forced to do this?

The crux of Carter’s open-letter apology is this: “.. we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel.”

Frankly, I’m of two minds about the issue of Israel’s stigmatization. On the one hand, it actually gives me great personal pain to see how much Israel is hated all over the world. Despite the obvious, the massive unnecessary death and suffering that has caused the hate, I am deeply sad because I picture my now dead grandparents and everything they imagined Israel might be–the best Jewish values embodied in a state- compared to what is. It’s scary because we Jews are undoubtedly less safe when the world hates Israel, and it’s heartbreaking to see anyone hate an entire country so much, no longer able to even see the many remarkable Jewish Israelis, including those who would give their lives for the most basic principles of fairness and equality.

On the other hand, what has become absolutely apparent is that stigmatization might be the only thing Israel does respond to, since no other form of pressure seems to have made a dent in the government’s strategy of working in collaboration with settlers to appropriate land, slowly ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes, and so much more. Israel and its unconditional supporters have left us with no choice. And they see that they, not those of us trying to set Israel on a course of justice, are the ones who have stigmatized Israel.

That said, of course this apology from one of the world’s greatest peacemakers is a capitulation.  And the whole business of speaking to the “Jewish community” is so corrupt, I wish Carter hadn’t engaged in such a game. Who gets to judge Carter’s apology on behalf of we Jews? Not you or me.

Of course, the New York Times has determined it’s Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, (the people who want to build a Museum of Tolerance on top of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem);  Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (the group that fought Congressional recognition of the Armenian genocide because it might be bad for Turkish-Israeli relations); CAMERA (the folks who claim credit for stopping $1 million in donations to a Boston-based NPR affiliate for reporting not deemed sufficiently pro-Israel) and most shocking of all? The hate-filled crazies at the ironically named Shalom International, where they proudly called Muslims “Nazis” in regular dispatches, and sport a lovely picture of members with a sign that says “Islam is not a religion.”

How sad indeed. These are our moral arbiters? And Carter has decided to play their game, which he must know by now you can never win. With judges like these, the deck is stacked.

But to Carter’s credit, he shows no signs of shutting up, which is, after all, the only way he could ever earn full acceptance from the Hier/Foxman crowd.

–Cecilie Surasky