With The Anticipated Prisoner Release, Let One Dumb Comment Be Buried

I write this from Jerusalem on the eve of Feast of Sukkot/Tabernacles -- and for the first time in years, I am hearing  good news -- that there will be a prisoner release between Hamas and the State of Israel

I cannot think of a better holiday gift for the families of the prisoners on both sides. Would that all prisoners be released as part of a general amnesty!

Unfortunately, I just heard on Israeli radio a repetition of the rather dumb comment, often heard in Israel, that Israelis value life more than "the Arabs" -- because Israel is willing to trade thousands of Arab prisoners for one Israeli, whereas "the Arabs" won't trade for less. "The Arabs" are willing to allow hundreds of Arab prisoners rot, rather than release them.

That's one way to look at it. Here's why a little thought shows it is wrong.

Say the shoe was on the other foot. Hamas held a thousand Israelis and Israel held one Arab prisoner. What would you think of Israel if it engineered a prisoner release that left five hundred Israelis in Hamas prison. And if the Israelies held out for all the Israeli prisoners they could get, would you say they valued life less that Hamas?

Here's a different way to look at it.  In order to get the maximum number of its people released, Hamas held out as long as it could -- and when it was clear it could not get them all, it reluctantly agreed to an exchange. Israel, on the other hand, preferred that its soldier spend years in Hamas captivity rather than lose face by releasing Palestinian prisoners. It valued its national pride over the life of one of its soldiers.

Which side valued life more?

The truth is that both sides behaved badly, Hamas kept its prisoner in an illegal captivity, denying him contact with the outside world. Israel took years before it acquiesced to Hamas' demands. And it turned out that the only thing that stood in the way of a prisoner exchange -- at least as far as we know now -- was the view of the former head of Shabak. New head, with different views on the security risk, and, voila -- prisoner exchange.

Oh, and one more thing. There is no equivalence. Only one side can seek out and arrest the other side with impunity. Only one side can swoop down in the middle of the night, break into a civilian house, arrest children, and keep them from their parents and legal counsel as material witnesses.. Gideon Shalit was kidnapped, and that was a violation of the laws of war. Hundreds of Palestinians have been likewise kidnapped by the IDF after being fingered by collaborators -- and that is a violation of their human rights.


Let's hope that there are no last minute glitches -- and that the prisoner release goes through.

Goldstone Redux -- How Abba Mazen Was Forced by the US and Israel to Throw the Palestinians Under the Bus Again

Last year, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that the three major threats to Israel were: Iran, rockets sent against Israeli citizens, and...Goldstone. I kid you not. Even for a former furniture salesman, the hyperbole seemed remarkable. I mean, how much had Israel really suffered as  result of the Goldstone report, which came down hard on Israel (and Hamas) for Operation Cast Lead. Lo naim, akh lo nora ('Not pleasant, but not awful') is how I would summarize the effects of the Goldstone Report on the Israel public. After all, only the most dedicated Goldstone Report watchers know that the report has been buried in Geneva.

And why? Well, the US put considerable pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to leave it there, since nothing made Israel madder than the Goldstone report. It will be recalled that Abbas, after an earlier display of US pressure had agreed to an "independents expert committee" (led by Judge McGowan Davis), and a delay of accountability. As Jared Malsin put it last October

Last month, under US and Israeli pressure, the Palestinian Authority (PA), once again delayed the process of accountability. This came at a September 29 vote at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, in which the PA backed a resolution to give Israel and Hamas officials in Gaza six more months to investigate crimes documented in Richard Goldstone's UN Fact Finding Missionreport. According to Palestinian and international human rights groups, the Palestinian Authority has decided that the Goldstone report must remain in Geneva, away from the relatively more powerful UN bodies in New York. This is a position identical to that of the US State Department, which wants to keep pressure off Israel during the newly re-launched political negotiations.

By adopting this position, rights groups say, the PA is placing itself in open conflict with the interests of its own people. "What's very clear now is that the PA wants the report to stay in Geneva," said Fred Abahams of Human Rights Watch. "We thought there was a lot of progress made in New York and this was a step backwards...with peace talks going, they don't want Goldstone anywhere near the agenda," Abrahams said on the phone from New York.

The PA has never been a fan of human rights. This it shares in common with Hamas and the Israeli government. So it's not surprising that the US, Israel, and the PA, can agree to ensure that Israeli war criminals won't be dragged before the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes. Such maneuvers are "distractions" from the "peace process". 


And now, according to some observers, Mahmoud Abbas has done it again. He took the statehood bid to the United Nations Security Council, not against the wishes of the US and Israel, but in accordance with them. For had he gone to the General Assembly, he would have received an immediate upgrade of the Palestinians' status -- enough of an upgrade to be able to drag Israel before the ICC and other international organizations. This he could not get from the Security Council, not because of a potential US veto, but because the US  continues to place intense  pressure on a handful of states serving now on the Security Council. My hunch is that there will be no need for the US veto. If the subject ever comes to a vote -- a very big if -- the US will have been able to get what it wants.


The Statehood bid, like the Goldstone report, will likely be buried under the bus. But that doesn't mean that Abbas was wrong to go to the UN. In so far as the process has served to reveal the US and Israel as the neighborhood bullies (again), that can only weaken their prestige in the world. Who likes a bully?


And in the meantime, sumud, sumud, sumud. 

Why Liberal Zionists Should Support the Palestinian Statehood Bid -- And Why Most Don't

With the notable exception of a few Israelis and Michael Lerner here, I have yet to see liberal Zionists give unqualified support to the Palestinian Authority's statehood bid at the United Nations.What I have seen is a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing at the Netanyahu government.

I hear things like,  "If only Netanyahu had been serious about peace," "If only he had not preferred Lieberman," "If only he was willing to freeze settlements....we wouldn't be in this mess." Or: "We Israelis deserve all this; we had the best partner in Abu Mazen imaginable, and we screwed up. Instead of a negotiated peace, we are now witnessing Palestinian unilateralism."

The closest position to support I have seen in a mainstream media publication is this article by Yossi Alpher in the International Herald Tribune. Alpher argues that by going to the UN, the PA is making concessions that it could never make with its own people. He views the statehood bid as a way to leverage progress towards a viable two-state solution.

Ideally, the Palestinian request for U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state can be leveraged into a two-state agreement that serves Israel’s vital needs, as well as those of the Palestinians.

If that doesn’t work, the primary international challenge of the months following the U.N. drama will be to forge a new post-Oslo state-to-state paradigm, then deliver it to the two parties.        

Americans for Peace Now have posted this on their website. To its credit, it does not oppose the statehood bid, as does the center left organization,  J Street (which is better named "O[bama] Street".) But I don't see an explicit endorsement either.

This strikes me as odd. After all, liberal Zionists have endorsed the principle of "two states for two peoples". Were they to regret  Zionist unilateralism in 1948 the way they regret Palestinian unilateralism in 2011, I would understand. In other words, had they said, "History has shown that unilateralism doesn't work; that the unilateral declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 was a tragic mistake for which generations have paid and continued to pay," their insistence on a settlement acceptable to both sides would be reasonable.

But the ones I have seen don't do this. Instead of cheerleading for the Palestinian two-state solution on at the UN, and writing editorials and op-eds that endorse the statehood bid (while questioning its efficacy in achieving true statehood), most see it as a counter-productive gesture that does not advance the peace process. The liberal Zionist New York Times opposes it. So does the liberal Zionist establishment in the US.

I think the reason is that all Zionists fear Palestinian empowerment. The Zionist left is willing to grant Palestinians enough unilateralism to move forward the Left's two-state solution through the UN, and nothing more. Alpher says that if the UN bid doesn't move the two-state solution forward:

....the primary international challenge of the months following the U.N. drama will be to forge a new post-Oslo state-to-state paradigm, then deliver it to the two parties

In other words, if Mahmoud Abbas can't move the two-state solution along through the UN, it should be "delivered" to ("imposed on"?) the two parties. And then what? Will their be sanctions on Israel and Palestine if they refuse the delivered solution? Will the Palestinian diaspora have a voice in the solution? Will those who support Hamas, whose military wing is comparable to the  Irgun and the Stern gang? And what of the Israeli public and the settlers?

I have my misgivings about Mr. Abbas's move simply because I do not think that he has the authority to negotiate in the name of the Palestinian people. He is not the elected representative of the Palestinians, either in the diaspora or in Palestine.  He is propped up by Western and Arab money.  He is, I fear, willing to forego the legitimate rights of the Palestinians for the sake of a negotiated settlement; and if he had Yossi Alpher for a negotiating partner, a peace agreement between them (without real peace) could be attained.

The liberal Zionist's first and foremost concern is not justice but peace and quiet for Israel. As I heard a young activist say, "Israelis want to be free of the Palestinians; they don't want the Palestinians to be free". I agree with Alpher that we have to move beyond Oslo. But the post-Oslo paradigm for peace should be to abandon seeking a two state solution, and to work instead towards an equitable division of power between Jews and Arabs in Palestine and outside it.

Let there be compromise, but let it not be a rotten one.

The Tikvah Fund's Transparency Problem

Professor Zachary Braiterman has picked up a theme that I wrote about last year, but at much greater length and in much greater detail. He demonstrates that the Tivkah Fund, which ostensibly supports Jewish literacy and encounter with Jewish culture from a neutral, academic standpoint, is really a neocon kiruv (outreach) outfit. This is no surprise, considering the people on the Tikvah board. But, argues Braiterman, unlike the Posen Foundation, which wears its commitment to Jewish secularism on its sleeve (one might say, like frontlets between its eyes), the Tikvah Foundation, which funds quasi-academic programs at NYU, Princeton, Oxford, appears to take no political stand. On the contrary it positions in the middle -- just like other self-described centrist organizations like the American Israel Cooperative Enterprise and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, who think that they if they sponsor some Zionist left scholars from Israel (AICE) or have a few old fashioned Zionist liberals (SPME), they are somehow in the middle. Braiterman does not appear to be against ideological foundations like Posen funding academic initiatives, because they are transparent where Tikvah isn't. I don't agree. The cognoscenti know what the Posen foundation stands for, but I doubt many faculty members take the trouble to explain to their students that the syllabus has the approbration of Felix Posen, who only pays if a course has enough secular Judaism in it. Anyway, transparency is important, but it is not the only consideration -- ideological meddling in the academy is another. If a college professor thinks that secular Judaism is worth teaching, he doesn't need -- and shouldn't take -- money from an ideological foundation with an axe-to-grind. It is true that universities more and more accept money with strings attached. That undermines the whole mission of the university. And faculty members don't have to accept money from these ideological foundations. But back to Tikvah and its lack of transparency. Braiterman decided to focus his sights on Tivkah, USA, and the Jewish Review of Books, with its clear right-of-center bias. It's a pity he didn't rip the mask off the most egregiously rightwing and opaque Tikvah Fund project, the Tikvah Israel Fellows program. Like Aish ha-Torah's "Jerusalem Fellowship," which appeals to unsuspecting college students without revealing its rightwing, orthodox agenda, the Tikvah Israel Fellows promises that "a select, international group of outstanding undergraduates, post-graduates and graduate students will gather in Israel for a transformative journey of intensive study, cultural exploration and mutual discovery." And where will that discovery take place?

The program will take place at the Ein Prat Academy for Leadership, located outside Jerusalem, and will be led by Dr. Micah Goodman, one of Israel’s most celebrated thinkers

It doesn't serve the Tikvah's fund purpose, which is neo-con "kiruv", to note that Ein Prat is in "Judea", a.k.a., occupied Palestinian territory, not recognized by anybody as annexable to Israel in a peace settlement. The line-up of speakers reads like a veritable who's who of Israeli neocon and to the right, with the occasional liberal hawk on board for decoration. (Look at the website if you don't believe me.) This is the Shalem Institute's dream-team of speakers, but everybody knows that the Shalem Institute is a neocon think-tank, with folks like Yoram Hazony, transferist Daniel Gordis, Natan Sharansky, Moseh Yaalon, etc. as directors or fellows. And that's their business. But the lack of transparency of the Tikvah Fund "Israel" Fellows, who are being housed on occupied Palestinian land outside of Israel, and taught by Israel's own "Commentary Crowd," is simply incredible. Just a small example: Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the man who has made a crusade of delegitimizing Israel human right groups by questioning their transparency, and by taking that crusade to the Knesset, appears here on the Tikvah website as "founder of Bar Ilan University’s Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation and teaches in the Department of Political Studies" -- without any mention that he is the Director of highly ideological NGO Monitor. And what will he be teaching the Israel Fellows about?NGOs, Human Rights, and the Arab-Israel Conflict." So much for transparency. Which just goes to show that the first law of kiruv is that you are not doing kiruv.

The Islamophobe Money Machine

Why has anti-Islamic hatred flourished in America? Well, of course, the root cause of all prejudice, as my father, of blessed memory would say, is ignorance. And when there was anti-Semitism in the US, and Jews suffered from it, it was born of ignorance. And fear of the other.

But when prejudice becomes widespread, as anti-Semitism did in the US in the 1930s, you cannot blame just ignorance. You need the machinery that distributes prejudice, the mass media, the prominent "experts," the publicists.

And, of course, you need money. Big Money. How big?

The Center for American Progress published today a 130-page report detailing how $42 million dollars from seven foundations has fueled over the past decade. the spread of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim feelings in this country. Read the full report here.

The foundations are:

The Donors Capital Fund, the Richard Scaife Foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Russel Berrie Foundation, the Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund, the Fairbook Foundation, and the Newton and Rochelle Becker.

The money has flowed into the hands of five key “experts” and “scholars” who comprise the central nervous system of anti-Muslim propaganda:

Frank Gafney, David Yerushalmi, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and Steven Emerson

These five “scholars” are assisted in their outreach efforts by Brigitte Gabriel (founder, ACT! for America), Pamela Geller (co-founder, Stop Islamization of America), and David Horowitz (supporter of Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch). As the report details, information is then disseminated through conservative organizations like the Eagle Forum, the religious right, Fox News, and politicians such as Allen West and Newt Gingrich.

So what is the big deal? Has there been any violation of laws? Don't we have freedom of speech in this country. After all, these are not hate crimes.

Yes we do. And funding hatred of Muslims is, in principal no worse than, say, funding hatred of other minority groups. (Although in practice, it is worse than, say anti-Semitism, because the Jews are a highly successful minority that has ample organizations and other means to defend themselves.)

But the Islamophobia that ends up in state legistlation, such as the one pushed by David Yerushalmi (he contrasts sharia with halahka here, but, as I hope to show elsewhere, he is a complete am-haaretz when it comes to halakha) and Frank Gaffney, or pushed on college campuses by loud-mouth ignoramuses like David Horowitz -- has no peer in America today. We are not talking about a few hate websites. We are talking about a well-orchestrated campaign funding "scholars" who, like the scholarly anti-Semites of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spew their poison in the American mainstream.

The fact that at least three of these scholars are Jewish, and one presents himself as an orthodox Jew, has to pain serious Jews everywhere. To think that only within several decades since the demise of organized anti-Semitism in this country, American Judaism has produced bigots of the sort mentioned above speaks volume about the success of the Jews in this country -- and, I may mention, the fact that the State of Israel is unnecessary for these folks. I mean, if you can be a well-paid Jewish bigot with impunity here, why bother to go to Israel?

Some Good News for Shabbat Nahamu

PCHR reported that the IDF was paying the Abu Hajja family approx. $147,000, in an out-of-court settlment, as reparations for for the killing of the mother Riyya and daughter Majda during Operation Cast Lead. Last year, the soldier who shot the two, who were waving white flags, was indicted by the IDF. As far as I know, the trial is ongoing.

To ensure reparation for the family, on 14 July 2010, PCHR filed a compensation claim before the Magistrate Court of Haifa demanding compensation for the family for the death of the two women by IOF. PCHR supported its claim by evidences confirming IOF’s responsibility for the two women’s death. Consequently, the Israeli prosecution sought to close the claim through a settlement, under which an amount of 500,000 NIS would be paid to al-Sawarka’s family in return for closing the claim. The court approved this settlement.

This is a judicial precedent, as it is the first time that PCHR is able to ensure compensation for victims of “Operation Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip. PCHR is following up hundreds of claims on behalf of victims of the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, known as “Operation Cast Lead.”

This was reported last week before Tisha B'Av, but I just read about it today, and it gives me a bit of comfort. Of course, the payment does not make up for the war crime. But we now have more confirmation of the Goldstone report, and more admission of guilt from the Israel military, who once again, blames the bad apples. According to the CNN blog,

In a statement to CNN the Israeli Ministry of Defense said the claim was settled out of court "because the Defense Ministry believes that it was exceptional (not reflecting at all on the norm) and justifies the granting of reparation."

Whatever...

You can expect the next Knesset will pass a bill denying reparation payments to victims of Cast Lead. It's happened before.

The Gabriel Schivone Affair

Update: 8/15. I'm removing this post, and I will replace it in the next few days with another, hopefully, better one. In the meantime, I want to apologize publicly for writing a post about a person without making the minimal effort to contact him for a response, and instead, relying on responses he had made in other venues. This was doubly insensitive when discussing sensitive matters like ethnic identity.

The Israeli Summer of 2011: When the Start Up Nation Became the Burned Out Nation

“The work of the righteous is done by others,” or so goes the Jewish saying. Well, I am certainly not righteous (though I have been accused of self-righteousness). There is no need for me to write about the social protests, since good pieces have been written in the last few days by Dimi Reider and Aziz Abu Sarah in the New York Times here and Noam Sheizaf in Middle East Project here (And check out the post by APN’s Lara Friedman here).

I have yet to get to Sderot Rothschild in Tel Aviv – I am planning a trip Sunday evening. On Saturday night I may check out the protest in Jerusalem; last Saturday I heard the chants from my window.

The protests have had high turnouts because they tap into a general feeling of economic malaise in this country, particularly among the secular – as Reider and Abu Sarah put it, the rent is too damn high. And it’s not just the rent. – housing prices are simply unaffordable for all but the rich and the subsidized (more on them later.) The cost of living is ridiculous here; I spend more money buying food in a supermarket in Jerusalem than I do in DC, and I buy there at Whole Foods. Israel has never had a tax revolt – the ethos here is not that of the greedy, selfish rich folks that make up the US Tea Party movement – and taxes are ridiculously high. The middle class is squeezed at the same time that certain sectors of the society – especially haredim and settlers – get huge government subsidies.

The “social justice” protest is about two fundamental economic inequities: the inequity between rich and poor (and rich and middle class), and the inequity between privileged and unprivileged sectors.

Around forty years ago, when I first came to Israel as a student, the major economic inequity was between Ashkenazim and Sefardim. But then, basic food stuffs and social services were available to all. There were significant government subsidies; housing was relatively modest and affordable. Few, except students, rented. This was an Eastern European socialist society, with all the pluses and the minuses. Privatization may have started in the late 1970s, with the ascent of the Likud, but it really went into high gear during the 1990s in a process described by Tom Segev in his Elvis in Jerusalem: Post Zionism and the Americanization of Israel. The Soviet Union had fallen, and so had Eastern European socialism; Rabin was the head of the Labour Party but was known for his American-orientation, and this continued under all subsequent prime ministers. Bibi is taking the heat for neo-liberalism and Thatcherism, and he sounds a lot like an American Republican. But these protests are not about Bibi, or they are not only about Bibi. They are in part a mourning for the passing of the Israeli socialist vision. When once asked about Israel’s greatest achievement, Martin Buber replied, “The Kibbutz.” The 1990s coincided with the privatization and industrialization of the kibbutz movement, now a shadow of its former self. So it is not surprising that a Labour Zionist dinosaur like Shlomo Avineri now lauds the protest movement as representing the true Zionism

But let’s not get carried away by nostalgia. Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of Israeli socialism, when proteksia, based on your party allegiance, was everything; when you had long waits for government service, strikes all the time, 400% inflation, etc., etc. That was followed by privatization, but the privatization was not competitive; proteksia went from party affiliation to family cartels and monopolies, and the inequity between rich and poor became enormous. In the 2011 OECD survey, “Society at a Glance”, Israel had the second highest income poverty rate in the OECD after Mexico; 39% of Israelis find it difficult or very difficult to live on their current income. And Israelis reported “the 6^th lowest positive experiences…in the OECD. At the same time israelis report the most negative experiences – pain, worry, sadness, stress and depression – in the OECD.”

So how does one explain the relative strong economy on the one hand with the social inequities on the other? The answer, I think, is that Israel retained a lot of its government regulation and oversight, smart fiscal policy, which favored the mega-rich and tycoons, and continued massive subsidies of some sectors at the expense of the others, mainly the settlers and the haredim.

This brings us to the second fundamental economic inequity: between sectors of the society. The haredim are a powerful political bloc, and their representatives are in the government coalition. There are massive subsidies to a sector with one of the largest fertility rates and highest unemployment rates in the world. As for the settlers, Lara Friedman’s piece cited above talks about subsidies on the West Bank. It is not just cheap housing; it is cheap everything. One of the reasons why the Gush Katif evacuation was a mess was that there was no way the state could provided the settlers with the standard of living they had been used to – living cheaply on stolen land just has no substitute.

The social justice protests have been, so far, about the first economic inequity not the second. And that is why they have been relatively successful. Everybody recognizes that cartels and monopolies are problems – the neoliberals because they discourage free trade, the socialists because they concentrate wealth in the hands of a few families. So Bibi has his solution; the socialist economists have theirs.

But the second economic inequity is, as Reider and Abu Sarah write, the elephant in the room. Attempts by some ultra-right wing movements to join the protests (“Hey, we need more building in Judea and Samaria”) have been met with scorn. I am surprised that Barukh Marzel knows where Tel Aviv is; he spends much of his time dissing it.

The social justice protests are not about the Occupation; well, they are not just about the Occupation – they are about Israel gaining a vibrant economy and losing its way socially.

And this is where the protests become interesting. For the last two weeks have seen greater delegitimization of Israel in the eyes of its supporters in the West than the last two years of the BDS movement. How will AIPAC and the Israel Campus Coalition spin this? That the protesters are not being shot at, like in Syria? But these are not protests that challenge the Israeli regime – these are protests that are asking for the government to do something.

Israel has been looked on by a lot of people as an economic success story. Look at how well the propaganda piece, Start-Up Nation sold in the US. (And look at the decisive refutation of the book’s hasbara thesis by Yagil Weinberg here). One of my friends challenged me two months ago with the question, “Which economy would you rather have? Israel’s or the US’s.” And he had a point. The housing madness in the US did not have its counterpart in Israel. In the US, people bought and defaulted; here, people can’t afford to buy in the first place. How would you rather die, by fire or by ice?

But my friend posed his question to me before hundreds of thousands took to the streets. Now, Israel will not even be seen as a place where most Jews prosper, much less Arabs. And this is happening when? You guessed it, right before September. Some secularists will blame the settlers and the haredim (and much of new haredi housing is built over the green line); some won’t see the connection, but this social economic malaise weakens Bibi at a critical point. He is no longer the prime minister of the start-up nation; he is the prime minister of the burnt-out nation.

And what is the Knesset doing through all this? Yesterday a bill was introduced in the Knesset that would define Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, not necessarily democratic, and would demote Arabic from an official to a non-official language. Now that's important, isn't it?

Needless to say, I hope the bill passes. More of that de facto discrimination has to become de jure in order to wake up people.

In short, the social justice protests by Israeli Jews are about social justice for the Israeli Jews. Most of Israel's supporters can care squat about the Arabs, either Palestinians living in Israel or in the Occupied Territories. But now that the narrative has been not peace, and not freedom, but social justice for Jews, those supporters will start looking into why.

More bad publicity. And effective bad publicity, at that.

The Old/New Clash of Civilizations

In the Norwegian massacres we saw the latest salvo in the clash of civilizations– not between a “Judaeo-Christian” West, and an Islamism bent on taking over the world, but between a totalitarian vision built on fear of the other and feelings of religio/ethnic/cultural superiority, and a liberal vision based on the value of diversity and the necessity to bridge religio/ethnic/cultural divides. This clash of civilizations has been with us for some time: in the twentieth century it reared its ugliest head in the temporary triumphs of Nazism and Stalinism. But it is much older than that; it is found anywhere where a totalitarian worldview is merged with racial, religious, and ethnic prejudice. Tertullian once asked, “What do Athens and Jerusalem have in common?” Well, one thing is tribalism, with its concomitant xenophobia and intolerance of the other.

The reactions on the right to the Norwegian massacre have ranged from the sanctimonious to the nauseating. First there was the assumption that al-Qaeda was involved, since, heck, it’s always the Muslims who poison the wells in their headlong rush towards Armageddon, oops, I mean the messianic world order, oops, I mean the Rapture, oops, I mean the World Khalifate. If you don’t believe me, you don’t know Hebrew/Arabic/Latin, because what they say in their texts and in their cabals is very revealing – I can produce for you any number of ex-Muslims/Jews/PLO-terrorists/Mormons – who will reveal to you the secrets of the order. And frankly, friend, you are in denial – you simply don’t want to know how those Jews/Islamists/Christians are making for world domination.

When the perpetrator turned out to be a rightwing Norwegian and not an Islamist, there was the rush in the rightwing blogosphere to do damage control, because, God forbid, this unfortunate incident could turn out to be a setback for the forces of Good (e.g., Jews, Christians, Old Europe, Zionists, Israelis -- I actually saw that line of thinking in the talk-backs .) So the tactics are to condemn the violence (as perfunctorily and as non-comittally as possible, e.g., talk about “undiluted evil”), to mitigate the act (“lone wolf,” “violent Christian fundamentalist,” “psycho”); not even to mention the ideological motivation; and – equally as important – to move on and not to come back to the story, even though it is one of the lead stories of the week.

For a shining example of a MSM blogger who employs these aforementioned tactics, see the two posts here and here of Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, who now has won my prize for the Dumbest Conservative Blogger of the Year, and, friends, that competition is no cakewalk.

Some social scientists like to distinguish between circles of support for ideologically-motivated violent crimes. At the center of the circle are the perpetrators, the so-called “lone wolves.” In the circle around them are the ideologues who preach violence, and those who do everything but preach violence. In the next circle are the ideologues who condemn the perpetrators in varying degrees, but who nonetheless support their ideological motives, and somehow mitigate the crime (strategies include appeals to “context,” distinctions between just and unjust grievances, injecting distractions such as, “Yeah, but what about suicide bombing?”)

There is usually no good reason to assign responsibility for an attack on innocents to the ideologues in the outer circle. There are many people who share the perpetrator’s ideology who do not condone the act, much less contemplate doing it themselves. I know rightwing ideologues who were initially shocked and dismayed at Yigal Amir and Barukh Goldstein’s actions; some even remained shocked. All people live with contradictory beliefs and self-delusions. Some of them can say that X deserves death and not mean that literally.

But although those who occupy the outside circle – let’s call them the Ideological tribalists – shouldn’t take the rap for the perpetrators, they are certainly responsible for their own bigotry, which itself is a moral wrong, whatever the consequences. Pamela Geller is not responsible for the Norwegian massacres, but she is responsible for the anti-Islamic hate she spews forth – hate that is a carbon copy of the anti-Semitic diatribes of Father Coughlin in the 1930s.

Europe faces serious questions, and different solutions have and will be tried. There are trade-offs in the amount of diversity a society can allow itself to have, and there are many degrees in the middle between enforced assimilation on the one hand and balkanization on the other. The Jerusalem Post editorial that declared that multi-culturalism in Europe has failed should remember how many Jews left Judaism in Europe because of the pressure to assimilate – and how toleration of diversity has allowed varieties of Judaism to flourish in many places. Sure, there has to be some balance – but to err in the direction of diversity befits the liberal society. What cannot be tolerated is hate-filled bigotry, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or None of the Above.

There always are barbarians at the gates. In every generation they rise up to destroy us. The question is how do we fight against them? And even more pressing, how do we recognize them?

Religious/nationalist/ethnic fundamentalism of all kind, coupled with power, not to mention weapons, has been shown time and again to be deadly. Their adherents are the barbarian at the gates; and fighting them is the clash of civilizations. And liberal and conservative moderates of all stripes should ally to fight those barbarians.

I write this not just as a liberal but as an orthodox Jew. Nobody suffers more from religious fundamentalism than religious moderates.

Friday’s March Supporting Palestinian Statehood in Jerusalem

For the first time ever, Israeli Jews and Arabs marched together in Jerusalem to affirm support for Palestinian statehood. Well, that was the official motto of the Solidarity Movement march. Judging from the signs and the chants, the real message was the liberation of the Palestinians from the 67 occupation, And there were a lot of chants and signs, in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, simply calling for the freedom of the Palestinians.

Out in force were what I would call the leftwing of the liberal Zionists – the young two-staters who shouted in Arabic “From Sheikh Jarrah to Bil’in, Will be liberated Falastin”. But there were one-staters there as well, and it really wasn’t about that – it was about recognizing the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Stickers and posters seen: “Bibi, Recognize Palestine!” “67 lines – a Palestinian State Alongside a Jewish State” and my favorite one, “Only Free People Can Negotiate.” The march started at Jaffa Gate, winded around until Damascus Gate, then went along Nablus Road past the American Consulate, the St. George School, the American Colony Hotel, etc., and ending in Sheikh Jarrah. The main street around the walls was not closed for us, so the marchers had to walk on the sidewalk, sometimes only 5 abreast, and that was a pain. The whole march took around an hour and a half.

Young people were out in greater force than their elders. I saw a lot of people I recognized from the Sheikh Jarrah demos; the crowd was overwhelmingly Jerusalemite, despite the lead editorial in today’s Haaretz, endorsing the march. I would have liked to have seen more people from outside Jerusalem…but I am proud that probably the most politically rightwing Jewish city in the country had such a high turnout of leftwingers. Of course, some leftwing politicians were there, Zahava Galon of Meretz, Dov Khenin of Hadash. A lot of prominent academicians were there. A few people with kippot.

Numbers. Haaretz Hebrew edition reported 2,000; Haaretz English version at first reported 4500 but has now degraded that to 2000; Ynet writes 1500. The police, I am told, estimated 500, which was a joke. Since the march and rally went on for close to 3 hours, and people came and went, I would have said some number close to 2500, at least as far as I could tell.

Arabs were very supportive along the route but there was little organized Arab participation; a representative of the Popular Committees spoke at the rally, but that was it. I can’t blame them. I saw police photographers videoing everybody participating – what Arab would want that hassle, and for what?

Still, the day hasn’t yet come where a march like that gets 10,000 people in Jerusalem. That would indeed be a glorious sight. But it is Jerusalem in July, with a hot afternoon sun, so I was pleased with the turnout, at least five times the normal Friday demonstration turnout.

Kudos to the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Folks, and their helpers, for doing things so well.

Creating A New Communal Tent For Ending the Occupation

For some time I have had a dream about a community, a coalition, a big tent that includes within it all those constituencies who cry out to end the occupation now. Yes, I know, there already is a US Campaign to End the Occupation, and they do good work. Read about them here. But I am thinking of something else

I am thinking of people of all colors, races, creeds, ethnicities, sexual orientation – and of varying, even opposing ideologies. Under this tent are committed anti-Zionists who believe that a Jewish ethnic state is a bad thing; others who don’t think that Jews have right to national self-determination in Palestine; Palestinians who would, if they could, liberate all of Palestine from Zionist hegemony, and liberal Zionists, who believe that Israel, for all its flaws, offers promise to the Jewish people, the world, and, yes, even to the Palestinians. What unites these constituencies is the conviction that the occupation and subjugation of one people by another over three generations is morally intolerable and can go on no longer. And that now is the time to link arms, despite our profound and irreconcilable differences, and act to end the occupation.

But what does “ending the occupation” mean? It doesn’t mean merely a withdrawal of the Israeli Defense Forces from the West Bank. It doesn’t even mean the creation of a Palestinian state. It means simply this: that Palestinians can live freely and with dignity, that they are not under the control of anybody else, that they are free at last. And that this freedom extends not only to the Palestinians living still within Palestine but wherever they may be, in the camps, in the Arab emirates, in Jordan, in Detroit. It also means that Israelis, Jews and Palestinians, can also live a life of freedom and dignity, enslaved neither to fear, nor to feelings of ethnic entitlement.

Who is not in the tent, aside from the usual suspects?

Well, if you want to drive Palestinians or Israeli Jews into the sea, or coerce them in all sorts of ways to leave Palestine, you are not in the tent.

If you think that the occupation, though unfortunate, cannot end soon because of the possible threat to Israel’s security, you are not in the tent.

If you oppose the occupation, but hold it hostage to a bilateral “peace process,” you are not in the tent.

If you, like Prof. Ruth Gavison, claim to favor two states but oppose Palestinian unilateralism because it does not really advance the two-state solution, you are not in the tent. (Especially if you, like Prof. Gavison, have no qualms about supporting the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of statehood in 1948. That surely advanced the two-state solution, didn’t it?)

If you think that a Jewish right to self-determination trumps the Palestinians right to live freely in their homeland, you are not in the tent.

If you are more worried about the Fateh-Hamas reconciliation than the ongoing theft of land and resources, you are not in the tent.

If you are more concerned with tribal loyalty, and with possible coalitions with “enemies” of your people, then about the subjugation of a people for decades, you are not in the tent.

If, when people bring up the occuption, you say, “Yeah, well what about terrorism and the kassam rocket firing?” you are not in the tent.

Every day, more and more liberal Zionists are entering the tent. They are not checking their liberal Zionism at the tent’s opening. Some of them are swallowing hard when they see who is inside the tent (as do the others, when they see the liberal Zionists hovering at the entrance flap). But the actions of this horrible government and the equally horrible Knesset are pushing them into the tent.

When Peace Now – the grande dame of liberal Zionism, always so careful not to break the establishment Zionist consensus – issues public calls to boycott the settlements in a knowing act of civil disobedience it moves closer toward the tent. When Palestinians, though they refuse to “normalize” relations with Israeli Jewish peace activists, are nevertheless convinced that there are Israelis who support their cause in a non-condescending and non-paternalistic manner, they move closer to the tent.

This is happening here in Palestine/Israel. On Friday at 2 pm at Jaffa Gate, there will be a solidarity march of Israeli Jews and Palestinians (and others) in favor of Palestinians Statehood, and the September initiative. Liberal Zionists should be at the head of the line on this one. As Zionists, they should rejoice that the Palestinians are acting unilaterally, as did the Zionists in 1948,and that they are doing so within the framework of two states. As liberals, they should be appreciative that the Palestinians are seeking their self-determination in a diplomatic and non-violent manner.

The only liberal Zionists who can oppose the move, in my opinion, are the ones who are more Zionist than liberal, and indeed, their self-perceived “liberalism” is nothing more than a delusion.

It’s time for liberal Zionists to get off the fence and start heading towards the tent with the one-staters and the BDSer’s – without, necessarily, accepting those ideologies. This move will come first, in Palestine/Israel, and then throughout the world.

“For Torah Will Come from Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” The Torah that proclaims liberty throughout the land and the Word of the Lord that procaims, no more fear.

Inshallah.

“Don’t Buy Golan Wines…and Sue Me”

When I was growing up in the 1960s, opponents of the Vietnam War would always ask each other, "What year did you come out against the war?" Higher status was always accorded to the early-birds. After all, by the 1970s, who wasn't against the war? As I write these lines, the Knesset is debating the anti-boycott law. Not to be outdone, Peace Now has already opened a Facebook page entitled, "Sue Me – I Boycott Settlement Products." Please go there, click the like button, and leave a comment. Note that they don't really call for a boycott; they just say that they themselves boycott. You can't get sued for that under the new law.

Would it be totally self-absorbed of me to point out that when the bill was first proposed a year ago, I published a post entitled "Don't Buy Golan Wines…and Sue Me". Now I have two posts with the same name.

This just in….the bill passed. So I am posting this to be one of the first up there to call for a boycott of Golan wines. (I think the law is retroactive, so I really was one of the first after the bill was proposed) I am not asking you just to boycott Golan Wines, since there is a lot of wine made on the West Bank by settlers, some pretty good (I am told), some pretty crappy.. But I picked Golan wines because, let's face it, they are pretty popular among kosher wines, and some are really good.

Full disclosure. When somebody brings me some good Golan wines for Shabbat, I don't throw it away, I drink it. I know, I know, such a bleeding heart hypocrite… But what do I know from wine? I just drink the Kosher stuff. The worst is when you find out that a wine you like may actually be made in the West Bank, despite what's on the label. It's not fair. Read the report here. In fact, according to that report, I may not be able to drink a lot of Israeli wine. I should stop reading those reports

But I wander.

Anyway, I don't want to give the impression that I am violating the new law. As I argued in my previous post, I don't want you not to buy Golan wines because they are made in the Golan. No, I want you not to buy Golan wines, because Israel has no right to have industry in occupied territories that does not benefit the population of the occupied territories, and I don't mean the Israeli settlers who are illegal there. I pick the Golan precisely because most Israelis don't see it as "occupied," the Syrian regime is horrendous, and wine is the sort of thing that, you know, comes and goes.

All right, all right, buy Golan wine if you want….how about those mushrooms from Tekoa? I mean, what's the deal with them? Do you really need to eat those mushrooms, you know, the fancy kind whose name I forget? What's wrong with normal mushrooms?

And while we are on the subject, don't buy Soda Stream. I mean, have you ever tasted the seltzer it makes? I got one of those things for my wedding years ago. Buying the cartridges drive you nuts. They tell you it saves you money; I don't believe it. Has anybody ever made good homemade cola with them? Even if it weren't manufactured on the West Bank, you shouldn't buy it….

Mei Eden bottled water. All right, I confess, I buy it occasionally. Cesar Chavez, please forgive me for the grapes I ate in college.

No seriously, the bill passed; that wasn't a joke….uh, oh….well, anyway, please pass around this call. Don't drink the Golan wine stuff (unless a guest brings it for Shabbat, in which case it is not nice to get rid of it.) There are a zillion Facebook groups out there for boycotting; I couldn't find any one with more than a couple hundred people, but you can join them.

Check out the JVP divestment campaign here. Gush Shalom has taken down its list of settlement products to boycott. Here is a list that the PA gave out to Palestinians last year. It's been downloading for the last ten minutes. That must be one big list. Viva the global BDS movement!

And if I start getting sued by any of the companies out there, I may actually have to figure out how I can ask for donations for my legal fund on my blog.

Did I mention that I have Paypal?

Why Endorsing Partial Boycotts of Israeli Products, or Even Global Boycotts, Doesn’t Violate the Proposed Anti-Boycott Law

For some time I have been waiting for the Anti-boycott Bill to pass on its second and third parliamentary readings so I could be one of the first to violate this ridiculous infringement of free speech as an act of civil disobedience.

Yet having read the current version of the bill, I find that violating it won't be easy. In fact, I can't do it.

You see, I thought that the bill outlawed, for example, calling for boycotts against Israeli companies. But that can't be right because a successful boycott against cottage cheese recently caused companies to lower the price. So according to the law, there is nothing wrong about supporting a boycott of an Israeli company, as long as you do it for the legitimate reasons.

But what are the illegitimate reasons?

Say I don't want people to buy B & B pretzels because I happen to be connected with their competitor, Osem. So I say, "Don't buy B & B pretzels." And B & B pretzels happen to be manufactured on the West Bank. Does that make me culpable, i.e., liable to some suit, according to the new law?

Not really. The Anti-boycott Bill says,

In this bill, "a boycott against the State of Israel" [means] deliberately avoiding economic, cultural or academic ties with another person or another party only because of his ties with the State of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control, in such a way that may cause economic, cultural or academic damage.

At first glance, that seems to be saying that I can't call for a boycott of products originating from the West Bank, an area under the State of Israel's control. So I can't call for a boycott of B & B Pretzels.

But the operative clause is "only because of [the company's] ties with [the West Bank]. " And, frankly, I don't think B & B should be boycotted only because it is located on the West Bank. For if it were a Palestinian company, of were Israel licensing the rights to operate the company from the Palestinians, I wouldn't be boycotting it. It's not the geography that concerns me, it is the fact that the company is built illegally on Palestinian land and hence should be boycotted. Had the law said, "only because of its ties with the State of Israel's policy of confiscating lands" that may capture better my motivation.

And the same thing within Israel, proper. Say I support the boycott of Sabra Humus and publicly endorse it on this blog. If I do it as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinian students at Princeton, then I can't be said to boycott it solely because it is made in Israel.

But what if I call for a boycott of all Israeli products, or endorse the global BDS movement. Surely, the intent of the law is to prevent such blanket endorsements? But the law doesn't say it; it simply says you can't call for a boycott of a product simply because it is made in Israel. And even the BDS movement doesn't cite "being made in Israel" as the motivation of the boycott, but rather, the desire to hold Israel to the standard of decent nations.

And now I understand the crazy reasoning behind those who framed the law. You see, they thought that the purpose of the global BDS movement, or the targeted BDS movement, limiting it to the occupied territories, is to destroy Israel. If that is the purpose then it makes sense to say that anybody who calls for a boycott of Israeli products simply because they are made in Israel or the territories is liable to suits, punishments. But that's not their purpose of the global BDS movement, and they don't say that it is.

Ditto for the cultural boycott. If I call on artists not to appear in the theater in Ariel, it's not because the theater is located in Ariel, which is in the West Bank;. It is because Ariel and the other illegal cities and settlements directly benefit from the occupation. Were Israel to change its policies and end the occupation, I would end my call for a boycott. The global BDS movement has higher requirements but they certainly fall short of calling for the end of the Israeli state.

Heck, the international sanctions against Iran don't aim to destroy the country, but to get the government to fulfill their international obligations.

So I would like to go on to record, as I issue my call for boycotting the companies that profit from the occupation, that I do not intend to violate the new boycott law, should it pass.. I am not calling to boycott these companies "only" because they are in the West Bank or Israel proper.

I have other reasons.

And here's a useful website that contains of some of those companies.

Israel's Hamas, Akiva Eldar's Obituary for Oslo, Adam Shatz's Picture of the Palestinians

My day job has kept me very busy lately, but there are three short points I would like to make before Shabbat enters.

1. Israel’s hamas

Today’s Haaretz headline says it all: Israel Expropriates West Bank Land in Order to Legalize Settlement. How many similar headlines has Haaretz published in the last forty years?The system is simple. Settlers squat on Palestinian land. The settlement is considered to be an "outpost," illegal even by Israeli standards. Then the government confiscates the land on which the settlement sits in order to retroactively legalize the settlement. In Hebrew that is called, le-taher et ha-sheretz, to purify a reptile that is inherently impure. It doesn't work in halakha, Jewish law; it doesn't work it in real life. We sin against the Palestinians, and we lie to ourselves.

That is what we call in Hebrew hamas, the Biblical word for theft and oppression. Israel has ruled the West Bank by force, through theft and oppression. Of course, the thief doesn't agree that it is theft, but it is indeed our hamas.

It is morally and legally indefensible. And as a religious Jew, I believe that Providence will in the end deal justly with the perpetrators and the victims of that hamas. But the Lord helps those who help themselves. It's up to us to begin.

2. If you are a two-stater, this piece by Akiva Eldar is a must read

Akiva Eldar is one of the last serious two-staters in Israel, a believer in the Geneva Initiative. Of course, I have written here many times that the Geneva Initiative does not give the Palestinians a real state. But no matter; Eldar is convinced that this is the way to go.

So when Eldar -- and not Jerry Haber or Ali Abunhimah -- lashes out at Dennis Ross and the fake peace process, you two-staters should read it here...and weep.

If I had one wish, it would be that every so-called liberal Zionist, from Jeremy Ben Ami to Alan Dershowitz and all the people in between, read Eldar's obituary for Oslo.

I take that back -- I will be happy if only Tom Friedman reads it.

2. The Must-Read Article of the Week: Adam Shatz on the Palestinians in the LRB

Finally, the best take on the Palestinians in June 2011 -- including the various groups within Palestine, but not so much those outside Palestine -- is provided by Adam Shatz in a long article in the current London Review of Books here. Some may take objection to some points, but the article is a must-read.

I was particularly interested in the claim that West Bank Palestinians are more inclined to see Israelis as temporary invaders, like the Crusaders, than they were during they were in the halcyon Oslo days -- primarily because they are isolated entirely from Israelis. It seems that the "Iron Wall" actually makes Arabs less likely to accept Israel's existence. Is anybody surprised by that?

Who should read this article? Anybody who thinks Palestinian society is monolithic, that things are getting better for the Palestinians on the West Bank, and who see Fayyad and Fayyadism as the hopeful wave of the future.

In other words, self-deluded Zionists.

Advice for the Next Gaza Flotilla

Let me put my cards on the table. I think that Israel's blockade of Gaza blockade is illegal, has nothing to do with Israel's security, and has everything to do with Israel's desire to control the lives and resources of Palestinians without taking responsibility for their welfare -- and without treating them as equals.

All that said, the present Gaza flotilla, which I support, has left its purpose open to misconstrual by its insistence on bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. Its real purpose is to demonstrate the illegality and immorality of the blockade. But, no matter what its expressed intentions are, and despite the fact that the American ship, the "Audacity of Hope," apparently contains no humanitarian aid on it, the focus of the media story has been the aid -- and that plays into the hands of the Israelis, because they can counter that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza; that they themselves are prepared to deliver the humanitarian aid to Gazans; that they cannot take any chance that illegal material is being smuggled to Hamas. None of this is true -- the flotilla organizers themselves wish to focus on the questions of freedom of movement and economic freedom -- but to this end the humanitarian aid gets into the way.

Even Gisha, the excellent NGO that monitors the situation in Gaza with respect to access and freedom, wishes to focus on the freedom of movement and freedom to export. They are not very happy that the question of aid has dominated the discourse.

So, here's my proposal to the organizers of the next Gaza flotilla:

Bring to Gaza empty boats.

Install webcams in each cabin to show that it is empty, with members of the crew going in and out. Invite members of the press and the world community to travel on the posts. Heck, invite Prime Minister Netanyahu and any of his cabinet.

Ships that are designed to take out exports in the full light of day cannot be described as a clandestine operation to smuggle in weapons or threatening materials. Israel may want to make the argument that its security is threatened by a healthy economy in Gaza -- in fact, I would love to hear that argument -- but that won't fly with anyone outside the true believers.

On the contrary, such a flotilla would point to the real humanitarian crisis in Gaza -- the inability of Israelis to treat Gazans as fully human, with the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as they enjoy.

Of course, the last thing a Gazan may want to do is to put his person and property in jeopardy by loading up one of the flotilla boats. So this would have to be a symbolic gesture, like publishing the names of all the Gazan students who have been prevented from studying abroad, or the Gazans who have been denied exit visas, or medical attention.

But symbolic gestures are important, too. After all, isn't the Flotilla ultimately a symbolic gesture?

How Big Can the Communal Tent Be?

I recently participated in a conference that dealt with the question of Jewish peoplehood. One of the speakers noted that in the Bible there seem to be two models for the Jewish people, one based on family (Genesis), the other on religion (Exodus).

If one wishes to add to the concept of family the notion of shared historical experience, one gets to the distinction offered by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik between the covenant of fate and the covenant of destiny. According to Rabbi Soloveitchik, the People of Israel was forged initially in Egypt, i.e., prior to Sinai by their shared experience; that was their fate, their looking backward. Sinai provided them with another model of peoplehood, one formed by a covenantal religious community. They looked forward to a shared religious destiny. One could be a member of the former community without signing on to the latter community. Through this distinction Rabbi Soloveitchik broadened the Jewish community beyond that of a community determined by religion.

Even a family often has its renegades. At the conference we discussed texts dealing with various categories of social deviance in the Jewish tradition, apostate, heretic, sabbath-violator, etc. Because the conference was under the auspices of a liberal institution, there was sympathy for the inclusive position that you can be a member of the tribe, even a member of the tribe in good standing, without affirming theological doctrines or observing Jewish law. There was little sympathy for doctrinal litmus tests. What mattered was whether you consciously distanced yourself from the community – like the wicked of the four sons in the Passover Haggadah, who excludes himself from the community and hence is criticized (but he is still there at the Seder.)

The institution sponsoring the conference is now engaged in a big project that will attempt to “civilize” discourse on Israel among American Jewish groups and individuals. Whether you are J Street or Z Street, Peace Now or ZOA, there should be some respectful communal space in which the dialogue can continue, according to those involved with the project.

Will the institution decide that there are limits to this inclusiveness? Will it say that groups and individuals can take no steps, or support no polices, that threatens Israel’s well-being in any way (such as asking Justin Bieber to cancel his concert). Will Jews be able to support criticism of Israel from gentile quarters. What of those who question the merit of the Zionist regime founded in 1948? What of the position that gives he Palestinian refugees the choice to return to their homes? Does one have to be a Zionist, or, at the very least, not speak in public about reservations from Zionism? Can you question whether Israel has been good for the Jewish people. Can you suggest that its actions provide fertile ground for anti-Semitism? Must criticism of Israel, when offered, be discrete and loving.

I know many committed liberal Jews who are usually tolerant of all sorts of Jewish doctrinal deviations. Yet they become intolerant Torquemadas when they talk about leftwing Jewish critics of Israel, even those who are motivated by their Judaism to criticize Israel’s policies. Why is this the case? I think that there are three answers. First, the image of a weak Israel surrounded by the powerful Arabs has become so central to the identity of many American Jews (the ones who care!) that they literally believe that Israel faces serious external existential threats. Now this is truly one of the most ridiculous claims on the face of the earth, but when it comes to your existence or the existence of your loved ones, the liberal mask often drops. Even if they are intensely uncomfortable with Israel’s actions, they are afraid that their criticism will be used to weaken the Jewish state significantly (cf. Elie Wiesel.) Add to this the claim that the survival of the Jewish people depends upon Israel – not a ridiculous claim, just one completely without basis – and you understand the vehemence of those attempts to exclude and delegitimize the critics of Israel.

What galls Jews most is the forging of alliances outside the Jewish community, especially with Arabs and with liberal Christians. How many times have I been told, “Jerry, you have some good criticisms, but you have to understand that they are being manipulated and exploited by anti-Semites’? Or: “Your support of the Global BDS Movement means that you support those people who want to throw Jews into the sea.” My answer to that is to say that I don’t endorse people; I endorse principles, and there is nothing in the principles of the Global BDS Movement that is remotely connected by any stretch of the imagination with throwing Jews into the sea – in fact, to suggest otherwise is the height of bigotry. And if there were people in the movement who were anti-Semitic, so what? Do I have to agree with every thing anybody says who supports some of the principles I support?

I have yet to hear somebody say that one cannot be pro-settlement because Christian evangelicals view settlement activity as a necessity step in the conversion of the Jews. I think it would be inappropriate for a Jews to be pro-settlement for that reason, and whether one wishes to form coalitions with such people is an open question.

I have been asked whether, in the name of tolerance of Jewish viewpoints, I would give Jews for Jesus a place at the communal table. Or Jews for the Lubavicher Rebbe. These are good questions, and there are no easy answers. Groups always draw lines; I am not against that. I am against making Zionism and support of Israel into such a dogma that those who question it are shunned as heretics, and their organizations booted. To change that situation, there are concrete steps that these individuals and organizations should take. Here is what I suggest:

1. Keep trying to engage, and when the other side refuses to play, be prepared to embarrass them publically.

2. Keep making the arguments within and without the Jewish community against the dogmas

3. Make your case civilly and respectfully, understanding that your opponent is driven by fear and tribalism. Take those fears seriously.

4. Try not to become a one-issue Jew. It’s not that this is illegitimate; it simply detracts from your effect. People are complicated, and I have found that I have things in common with the most rightwing Jews, even those who read this blog. That shouldn’t be important but it is…if you are family.

The New Yale Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism Hopes to Be Scholarly – For a Change

I have been in academia for over thirty years, and I never saw anything as fast as Yale’s damage control over its decision to axe the Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism. After a little over a week of there being – God forbid – no plan for a center for the study of anti-Semitism at Yale, a new center was announced.

This blog was one of the harshest critics of YIISA. It couldn’t understand how a great institution like Yale could lend its name to an advocacy group that dealt in Islamaphobia. (Maybe it should have been called, the “Yale Indisciplinary Initiative for the Support of Anti-Semitism” ).

In what follows, please pay attention to the following paragraph, by Charles Small, the discredited director of the now-defunct Initiative, who comments on the fiasco of a conference that he helped plan:

Small blamed radical Islamic and extreme left wing bloggers for the bad publicity the conference got. He pointed out that it was the largest conference on antisemitism ever, and it would have been absurd for the conference to ignore Muslim antisemitism.

Who says the blogosphere has no impact? Small continues:

“It appears that Yale, unlike YIISA, is not willing to engage in a comprehensive examination of the current crisis facing living Jews, but instead is comfortable with reexamining the plight of Jews who perished at the hands of antisemites,” Small said. “The role of a true scholar and intellectual is to shed light where there is darkness, which is why we at YIISA are committed to critical engaged scholarship with a broader approach to the complex, and at times controversial context of contemporary global antisemitism.”

Sociology Professor Jeffrey Alexander, a member of the YIISA faculty governance committee, said that Small’s use of the phrase “engaged scholarship” revealed YIISA's focus on politics over scholarship. YIISA was "definitely" too political, in his view, which reduced its appeal to the broader Yale population, causing it to fail the review of its academic standards.

“The reason [for YIISA’s lack of success] was that it was political, had a strong political orientation,” Alexander said. “[This orientation] was to defend the policies of the current conservative government [of Israel], and the whole post ‘67 tendency of Israel’s foreign policy, which is to occupy conquered territories, to continue the settlement movement.”

He said that Small saw antisemitism scholarship as a tool to discredit Arab critics of Israeli foreign policy. Small disagreed, telling the News Thursday that YIISA never had a political agenda. He cited the wide variety of ideologies and opinions among YIISA faculty as evidence that the initiative was not singlemindedly Zionist.

That last line is ridiculous. The whole thrust of that conference was singlemindedly Zionist. He should say, who were the non-Muslims participating who were not staunch supporters of Israel.

Here’s the article from today’s Yale Daily News:

Yale's replacement for the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, aims to have a more scholarly focus than its predecessor, which has been called too political for an academic environment.

Yale announced in early June that YIISA would not continue because it lacked sufficient academic interest from students and faculty, prompting public outcry from newspaper columnists and Jewish groups such as the Anti-Discrimination League. In its place, Yale will introduce YPSA, Provost Peter Salovey announced in a Sunday email.

YSPA will aim to bring a renewed scholarly focus to the study of antisemitism, Salovey told the News Tuesday. The new program will be headed by Professor Maurice Samuels, director of graduate studies for the French department and an expert on French Jews.

“I’m very impressed with what Professor Samuels has planned for YPSA and think it will attract many of our faculty members due to its scholarly focus on both historical and contemporary issues,” Salovey said.

Though administrators maintain that they decided to discontinue YIISA because it was not supporting enough faculty research or student courses, critics have accused Yale of canceling YIISA because it focused on combatting Muslim antisemitism.

Charles Small, executive director and founder of YIISA, released a statement that YIISA had been publishing articles at a "high caliber," contesting Salovey's claim that YIISA had not produced enough scholarly papers. In Small's view, the real reason for the administration's decision to close YIISA was the initiative's focus on modern antisemitic countries, such as Iran, because the administration would prefer to study only historial examples of antisemitism so as to avoid controversy.

“It appears that Yale, unlike YIISA, is not willing to engage in a comprehensive examination of the current crisis facing living Jews, but instead is comfortable with reexamining the plight of Jews who perished at the hands of antisemites,” Small said. “The role of a true scholar and intellectual is to shed light where there is darkness, which is why we at YIISA are committed to critical engaged scholarship with a broader approach to the complex, and at times controversial context of contemporary global antisemitism.”

Sociology Professor Jeffrey Alexander, a member of the YIISA faculty governance committee, said that Small’s use of the phrase “engaged scholarship” revealed YIISA's focus on politics over scholarship. YIISA was "definitely" too political, in his view, which reduced its appeal to the broader Yale population, causing it to fail the review of its academic standards.

“The reason [for YIISA’s lack of success] was that it was political, had a strong political orientation,” Alexander said. “[This orientation] was to defend the policies of the current conservative government [of Israel], and the whole post ‘67 tendency of Israel’s foreign policy, which is to occupy conquered territories, to continue the settlement movement.”

He said that Small saw antisemitism scholarship as a tool to discredit Arab critics of Israeli foreign policy. Small disagreed, telling the News Thursday that YIISA never had a political agenda. He cited the wide variety of ideologies and opinions among YIISA faculty as evidence that the initiative was not singlemindedly Zionist.

Alexander said he was hopeful that Samuels, with his “impeccable” academic credentials, would be able to make YPSA more scholarly and reputable.

While the curriculum for YPSA is still in the works, Samuels said it will focus on research and not policy work — giving grants to faculty and students, creating a faculty reading group, and recruiting a visiting scholar to teach a class each year.

Samuels said he would like YPSA to host an annual conference on antisemitism, with the inaugural one slated for spring 2012, probably on the topic of French antisemitism.

Last year's YIISA conference, Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity, made Yale administration concerned about the YIISA'S work, Economics Professor Gustav Ranis said.

Ranis became the co-chair of the YIISA faculty governance committee set up in the wake of the conference. He said that the faculty governance committee tried to push YIISA in a more academic direction to attract more interest from non-Jewish students and faculty, but "ran out of time." Samuels and Alexander were also members of the faculty governance committee.

Small blamed radical Islamic and extreme left wing bloggers for the bad publicity the conference got. He pointed out that it was the largest conference on antisemitism ever, and it would have been absurd for the conference to ignore Muslim antisemitism.

"Could you imagine if we'd had the same conference in 1938 at Yale University. Would we have been called anti-german, anti-Christian, and perhaps Communists?" Small said. "Today we've been called neoconservatives, racists, apartheid supporters, and advocates not scholars."

He added that YIISA was against all forms of racism.

Natalia Emanuel ’12, a student intern at YIISA, said that ending YIISA is a step backward given the current state of anti-Semitism in the world. But she was relieved to hear about YPSA.

“As long as the reformulated YIISA is allowed to explore bias and its implications with honesty – even when some aspects are charged – I believe this center can do a tremendous amount of good work,” Emanuel said.

The original YIISA may may still exist in some context only not at Yale. Small said that he has been in contact with other academic institutions and aims to relocate YIISA to one of them.

YIISA was the first interdisciplinary program to study antisemitism at a North American university.

Let’s hope it is the last.

(h/t to Ali G)