Antisemitism or anti-Israelism?

On Tuesday night, Meretz USA screened the excellent PBS documentary, "Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence." I spoke afterwards, leading into a discussion by making reference to my op-ed article in The Forward, “Reconsidering Antisemitism,” which critiqued a conference at YIVO, four years ago.

As the film depicts, the violent European events of late 2000 and on, with the 2nd intifada, clearly have an antisemitic element. Still, the trigger is not the existence of Jews but rather painful images of Palestinian Arab suffering at the hands of Jews and televised into people’s homes. To be sure, more fair-minded media would show the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians and provide proper context, but European Jews were targeted as surrogates for Israel, not simply because they are Jews.

In making this point, historian Tony Judt (among others) makes good sense, but he can't resist making one anti-Zionist swipe, that not only do antisemitic attackers identify random Jews with Israel but the problem is worsened by Israel claiming to represent all Jews. I doubt that the latter abstract ideological point figures into attackers' thinking. The most impressive talking heads were two young thoughtful Muslim writers: Reza Aslan and a woman whose name escaped me; she made the unoriginal but important observation that corrupt and authoritarian Muslim leaders have used Israel and antisemitism to deflect opposition to their rule.

As Bernard Lewis indicates, Jewish life under Islam was not idyllic and occasionally bad, but not usually as bad as under Christianity. The film also contends (with justice, I think) that hardcore ideological antisemitism is a Christian import into the Islamic world -- brought by 19th century missionaries and Nazi penetration in the 1930s and '40s.

The following are snippets in quotes from my article, with some current observations: Leon “Wieseltier [the YIVO conference keynoter] restated the common conclusion that antisemitism is more about Jew-haters than Jews, that there is no ‘Jewish problem’ as such but the moral problem of non-Jews who buy into age-old prejudices and the illogic of scapegoating and demonization. Hence, there is nothing that Jews can do to modify the opinions of antisemites. ...

“This is a hard truth when related to hard-core antisemites, but not in relation to masses of people who react to news events and visual images, or the manipulation of same. ...

But antisemitism was “on the wane until reignited by scenes of the intifada[.] We have forgotten — or never really knew — how much of the Arab world established a level of relations with Israel during Oslo’s halcyon days. How many of us recall Saudi expressions of compassion for the Israeli victims of a wave of suicide bombings in early 1996?”

I suggest “that we envision the Oslo peace process as a near success instead of merely a bloody failure. It would be useful to engage in what-ifs: What if Baruch Goldstein had not begun the on-again, off-again cycles of terrorism and counter-violence that marred the Oslo years? [It’s instructive that Yihya Ayyash, the innovator of the suicide belt, the Hamas master terrorist known as the engineer, was motivated by the Goldstein massacre to become a terrorist.]

“What if Yitzhak Rabin had survived to maintain his experienced grip on the tiller of government? [I think Rabin, although far from perfect, was a steadier and more prudent leader than his successor Peres.] What if Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the fateful prime ministerial election of 1996, instead of winning by a tiny margin? [When elected he didn’t end but he slowed down the peace process, delaying the final settlement and raising pressures of impatience among Palestinians that eventually fed their return to violence. And we should remember that it was Peres’s decision to okay a Shin Bet hit on Ayyash, the engineer, that triggered the wave of suicide attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, killing 60 people, and raising Netanyahu 20 points in the polls.]”

I include more ‘what ifs’ in my article, but my point is that Oslo was a near miss:
“If Oslo had succeeded, the odious convulsions seizing Europe and the Islamic world would not be happening. Racist and especially theological antisemitism would endure, but increasingly on the margins. Since most of the anti-Jewish or anti-Israel occurrences we deplore are reactions to a changed political landscape, is it really best understood as antisemitism?”

Looking at these words four years later, my point is not really to say that it’s not antisemitism, but that the old adage that antisemitism is a disease that has nothing to do with Jewish behavior and can’t be affected by anything that Jews do is too rigid, dogmatic and self-defeating. Yitzhak Rabin himself knew this. His inaugural address to the Knesset as prime minister in 1992 was to reject the premise that “the whole world is against us.” He knew, very wisely, that if Israel’s statecraft is steeped in the view that most of the world, and the Arabs in particular, are unalterably and inevitably antisemites with whom we can never reconcile, this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy — state policy that never seriously even tries to reach peace.

To sum up: These events depicted in the film had more to do with Israel than Jews as such. The Arab world was beginning to change in its attitudes toward Jews through Oslo, but this trend was stopped and reversed when Oslo crashed and burned.

Needed: Negotiations, not Machinations

I was asked to write an op-ed piece for the New York Resident magazine, talking about "the latest" on "the situation." The article, as submitted, is below. It also appears online, in slightly amended form.

"The situation", of course, is vastly more complicated than what can be fit into 700 words. Due to space constraints, I was unable, for example, to mention the need for the Israeli government to take some immediate concrete actions, such as: Handing over "frozen" Palestinian tax monies; releasing some of the Palestinian prisoners (which Olmert has recently promised to do); and removing many of the checkpoints and obstacles that severely restrict internal Palestinian movement within the West Bank.

But I was motivated mainly by my first-hand memories of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which a megalomaniacal Israeli Defense Minister believed that he could successfully restructure another nation's socio-politics through force of arms. I hope and pray that Prime Minister Olmert, who was a member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the time and a member of Ariel Sharon's party, remembers the resounding failure that results when visions of grandeur take the place of sober reasoning and the path of moderation.

Israel and Palestine Need Negotiations, not Machinations By Ron Skolnik

Once again, confusion reigns supreme in the Middle East. Last week, in a military offensive in the Palestinian Gaza Strip that seemed to surprise everyone, but should have surprised no one, the forces of the fundamentalist Hamas party overpowered the troops of Fatah, Hamas’ long-time rival for power. This “Battle for Gaza” capped off months of on-again, off-again civil war between the two sides, which hold conflicting ideologies, maintain separate paramilitaries and control different, competing branches of the Palestinian government – Hamas its parliament, and the more moderate Fatah, its presidency, in the person of Mahmoud Abbas.

Characterized by Hamas spokespersons as a “liberation” of Gaza, but by Abbas as a “military coup”, the Hamas takeover has accelerated the centrifuge that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: With Hamas in control of Gaza, Fatah controlling the West Bank, and both sides claiming to constitute the legitimate Palestinian government, diplomats in the US, EU, Israel and the Arab world are scrambling to devise new policies adapted to the new reality.

The main thrust of the recent Western and Israeli approach has been to formulate steps that would bolster Palestinian support for Fatah at the expense of Hamas. In practical terms, this would mean more money, more weapons and more diplomatic backing for President Abbas. Within this context, one rather peculiar variant is suggesting that the West Bank and Gaza Strip be regarded as two distinct entities: Hamas-run Gaza would be treated as a pariah, while the Fatah-controlled West Bank would be showered with Western blessings.

Although an effort – even a sorely belated one – by the US and Israel to reach out to Palestinian moderates is welcome, one cannot help but be concerned about the more fundamental strategy underpinning these moves. While Abbas is certainly worthy of support due to his wholehearted embrace of a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, and for his and clear and consistent renunciation of terrorism, such support cannot be predicated on the proposition that he and Fatah serve as an American or Israeli stalking horse in the war against Hamas or, by extension, Iran.

Both Washington and Jerusalem will be guilty of a terrible miscalculation if a warming of ties with Palestinian moderates is meant to add fuel to the internecine Palestinian struggle; if they are naively hoping that, with enough money, enough guns and enough diplomatic support, Fatah will be able to reverse its fortunes in one fell swoop, and swiftly recoup its losses of recent days.

Israel has already tried its hand at micromanaging the internal conflicts of its neighbors: Its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, (mis)conceived by then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, was designed to take advantage of that country’s chaotic civil war in order to establish a new, malleable regime in Beirut that could be coerced into a peace accord. The strategy failed miserably then, and – if this is indeed the current Israeli concept – would fail miserably again. Israel lacks the finesse to play puppeteer to the Palestinian political arena. Even more importantly, Israeli support for Abbas in an all-out civil war is certain to be a “kiss of death”, casting the Palestinian President in the unforgivable role of Israeli lackey, rather than loyal Palestinian nationalist.

For the US and Israel to truly bolster the standing of Abbas and Fatah, one needn’t reinvent the wheel. One merely needs to get back on track – the diplomatic track, that is. Israel must reach out to the entire Palestinian people – not Fatah alone – by engaging President Abbas in substantive negotiations over an Israeli-Palestinian final-status agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert must not only use the phrase “political horizon”, he must fill it with palpable content: His refusal to discuss core issues such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees only reinforces those Palestinians who maintain that diplomacy and non-violence will not bring results. Conversely, an Israel that signals a willingness to reach an agreement based on such hallmark documents as the Clinton plan, the Geneva Initiative and the Arab League proposal will show the Palestinian people that they can advance their cause not by reason of force, but by the force of reason.

In the weeks ahead, Israel will have an opportunity to take a bold initiative, aimed at depleting the one resource that Hamas relies on most: Palestinian despair. The United States must do its share by encouraging Israel to walk this path and by reassuring her that she will not walk this path alone.

How to talk about Israel (Con’t.)

The tone of Thursday night’s dialogue event was so polite that we had thought it marked the beginning of a constructive conversation. Meretz USA’s director, Charney Bromberg e-mailed his congratulations all around, remarking that "I hope everyone who attended felt, as I did afterwards, that they had sat around a grand family table where all were welcome and all could speak."

To Phil Weiss he wrote in part: “You are a brave and thoughtful person and I was very impressed at your spirit of openness. ... You and Dan [Fleshler] describe the boundaries and the core of an issue that is rarely well defined, much less well articulated. I hope we can take this further.”

Then we were blind-sided by Weiss’s unkind, even hostile (as well as inaccurate), version (posted on his blog) of what had transpired. I suggest that readers go to Dan Fleshler’s recounting of this event and that they link to Dan's prepared text posted there. For further background on Mr. Weiss, you might checkout my posting of June 10 on his article in Pat Buchanan’s The American Conservative (of all places) on how “Zionists” made him (NOT!) end his blog at the New York Observer.

How to talk about Israel

Meretz USA and Ameinu jointly sponsored a public program in New York, June 21, “How to Talk Candidly About Israel: A conversation among progressive American Jews.” The spirit of this event was unusually civil and well-intentioned.

The one minor exception was an individual with a Scottish or Irish brogue who could only see Jewish identity in religious terms and pontificated from the mike on how he considers Israel a “theocracy.” I had hoped to find him after to suggest that he learn more about Israel and the nature of Jewish identity before telling Jews how to define themselves.

But then we noticed Phil Weiss’s Weblog posting the next day and were shocked by what he wrote. The following was typical:

The Zionist left doesn’t want to include non-Zionists or anti-Zionists (I’m not entirely sure which camp I’m in). Yes, they gave me a microphone, and I am grateful, but I think they have no more desire to empower us than AIPAC and the Israel lobby do. When push comes to shove, the Zionist left is by and large going to line up with the Zionist center and right, and invoke the great threat to Jewish life in the Middle East, a threat they perceive us anti-/non-Zionists to be abetting.

That he was invited on the panel in the first place, that we reached out to “progressive” non-Zionist opinion by advertising on The Nation’s Web site, even the fact that we framed the evening in the way that we did, belie his first point. But It’s clear from his posting and the course of the program last week that Weiss does NOT see Jews (whether here, in Europe or in Israel) as subject to any real threat as a result of the previously dormant virus of antisemitism having re-emerged – abetted by grossly exaggerated and sloppily formulated claims ascribed to Jewish power and influence. He’s correct that our concern for Jewish well-being and safety – given the tragic history of world Jewry of being welcomed and comfortable in various places and then being hated, oppressed, expelled or massacred in these same places (e.g., Spain, Britain, Poland, Germany) – is part of our disagreement with him.

It’s also telling, both in his blog and in the course of our forum, that Weiss doesn’t even know his own mind enough to declare if he’s a non-Zionist or an anti-Zionist. His repeated antipathy or indifference to our concerns indicates that he’s anti-Zionist, but as a member of the audience commented the other night, this is a very large matter for him not to even know where he stands. I’m afraid that Mr. Weiss is one very confused dude.

His blog entry seriously distorted what fellow panelists Dan Fleshler and Anne Roiphe said and what Meretz USA and Ameinu intended in sponsoring this dialogue with him. Weiss completely ignored Anne Roiphe's initial words recounting how she had walked out of (along with Michael Lerner) a panel they sat on with Cynthia Ozick and other right-wing Zionists, when they made it impossible for them to speak.

Dan spoke of the need to reshape a discourse that regards Israel as “evil” into one dedicated to “making Israel better.” And Dan never equated the suffering of Palestinians at a checkpoint with that of the soldier. He pointed out that the soldier and Israeli society are damaged and undermined by the morally repugnant burdens of occupation. This is one of our arguments as Zionists in the Jewish community that the occupation must end. If anything, this concern should bring him and us closer together.

The "hunkered down self-involvement" he charges us with is precisely what we are acting against. He just can't reasonably expect us to give up on our core value of defending the existence of the State of Israel. Yet, like him, we want to see "reform" there.

He deplores “nationalism” and exaggerates the extent to which it’s on the wane internationally. But progressive Zionists are not chauvinistic "nationalists." We don't argue for nationalism as such, but in a world inhabited by many more nation-states today than existed before the fall of the Soviet Union, he can't expect us to surrender the right of the Jewish people to self-determination before most other peoples do or before antisemitism disappears as a reality on the world stage.

We can discuss why and in what ways the Jewish people are a nation (one of the world's oldest) and not merely a religious group (as the gentleman with the brogue assumes). Finally, Weiss should listen to us before he assumes that we don't work for equal rights for Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel and for the right of Palestinians who are not Israelis to have a state of their own. This guy neither hears nor sees us for who we are, for what we really believe as opposed to what he thinks “Zionists” believe.

Gaza Coup: Islamization is coming

Walid Salem, a Palestinian, is the director of Panorama, the Center for the Dissemination of Democracy and Community Development, East Jerusalem office. This links to his analysis on the Mideast Web publication site; it’s an informative albeit frightening depiction of the new reality, now that Hamas has taken over the Gaza Strip.

Can You Hear Me?' Part 2

One powerful image that Lilly Rivlin provides early in her film is of dead Israeli civilians, victims of a bus bombing, lying stiffly against their seats. This is the sort of picture Israelis and Arabs see often on their news broadcasts, but Americans are never shown. Most of the film depicts Israeli and Palestinian women struggling against the occupation — the wall/barrier (with memorable views of the five percent that is wall, instead of the 95 percent that is fence, but I'm not complaining), Machsom Watch women at a checkpoint, etc. But that stark initial footage of the victims of terror should convince anyone that Lilly is depicting the struggle against violence as well as the occupation.

In a question to the panel at the screening that I attended at the New School in New York last week, I tried – lamely perhaps – to get across my sense that the Israeli peace movement is making a tactical error in not equally emphasizing their opposition to terror, as well as the occupation. Panelist Rafi Dajani (executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine – an Arab-American group that forthrightly supports the two-state solution) presented a host of survey data that indicates clear majorities of Arab Americans, Jewish Americans, Israeli Jews and Palestinians as all supporting two states and peaceful coexistence, but also mistakenly viewing the "Other" as not holding similar views.

It seems to me that there is a similar misperception that the Israeli peace camp suffers from. Most Israelis share concepts and beliefs with the peace camp yet simultaneously hate it. Why? Because they don't see the peace camp as being on "their" side. This is why I see a need for peace activists to more clearly articulate opposition to extremists on both sides and to be impatient with the weakness and shortcomings of both the Israeli and Palestinian Authority governments. I realize that Israel has more power in its hands than the Palestinians – clearly – but this does not negate the fact that unless reasonable Palestinians act against terror, progress toward peace will fail but again. It is devastating to the prospects for peace that Hamas, even as a party of government, has remained so violent and rejectionist.

Gaza Stripped

One unfunny joke making the rounds as a result of the civil war in the Gaza Strip is that Hamas has now accepted a two-state solution: one in Gaza and the other in the West Bank. A line that I’ve come up with, although I’m surely not the only one, is that the Palestinians have finally had their “Altalena” moment — but this time, it’s the Irgun that has won.

To those who need an explanation: the Altalena was a ship that was running arms in 1948 to the hardline Irgun militia, commanded by Menachem Begin. Independence having been declared, however, David Ben-Gurion, the head of Israel’s provisional government, ordered that all militias be dissolved into the new national army. Begin refused, Ben-Gurion ordered an army force under a junior officer named Yitzhak Rabin to open fire. Men were killed on both sides (but mostly from the Irgun), the Altalena sank and Begin ordered the Irgun to stand down and be incorporated into the army.

I have two commentaries I wish to share in connection with recent events in Gaza. One is M. J. Rosenberg’s latest column from the Israel Policy Forum, “A Hamas-Run Gaza; We Can Thank Ourselves”:

Gaza has fallen to Hamas. Abbas’ Fatah is on the run. Unless a United Nations force (like UNIFIL) steps in, a sliver of territory with a population of 1.4 million, a short drive from Tel Aviv, will become a dagger aimed at Israel's heart and perhaps even an Al Qaeda staging ground. A humanitarian crisis of horrific proportions is a near-certainty.

Whose fault is it? The Palestinians’, of course. But hardly theirs alone. As Nahum Barnea, Israel's finest journalist, puts it in today’s Yediot Ahronoth, “The US and Israel had a decisive contribution to this failure. The Americans, in their lack of understanding of the processes of Islamization in the territories, pressured [the Palestinians] to hold democratic elections and brought Hamas to power with their own hands…. Since the elections, Israel, like the US, declared over and over that ‘Abu Mazen must be strengthened,’ but in practice, zero was done for this to happen. The meetings with him turned into an Israeli political tool, and Olmert's kisses and backslapping turned Abbas into a collaborator and a source of jokes on the Palestinian street.”

The second is from our long-time khaver, Hillel Schenker. He writes with urgency but also hope in the UK Guardian’s Weblog, “Comment is free” on having just attended a conference in Italy, in his capacity as co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal. Click here to read his entire piece.

‘Can You Hear Me?’

This past week, I had occasion to see this film by Lilly Rivlin, the former president of Meretz USA, about women’s peace movements among Israelis and Palestinians. I very much liked this 50-minute documentary, finding it engaging and informative, but I have doubts about Lilly’s thesis. She posits that if women ruled the world, there would be no or fewer wars. This is a proposition that is never likely to be put to the test and it need not affect one's overall sense of the film.

The evidence so far of women in power, alas – admittedly within what is mostly a man’s world – is dubious. The few examples we have is of women who show toughness as heads of government, to the point that most are associated with war and not peace. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi were all war-time leaders:

1. Thatcher decided to rally the United Kingdom and the Royal Navy for one last hurrah, a final assertion of imperial power, exactly 25 years ago, to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina.
2. Meir (as indicated in our previous posting) missed preventing the 1973 Yom Kippur War by not responding to peace feelers from Anwar Sadat, and refused to close a deal with King Hussein that would have meant peace with Jordan and a possible solution to the Palestinian issue — over 20 years before Rabin and Hussein signed a peace treaty in 1994.
3. Indira Gandhi used military force to conquer the Portuguese enclaves on the Indian subcontinent (the largest being Goa), continued the conflict with Pakistan and employed force to crush a Sikh insurrection with such brutality that she was assassinated by a Sikh bodyguard in revenge.
4. Benizar Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan in the 1990s plus two or three prominent female leaders of Sri Lanka (with long unpronounceable names), were all undistinguished in resolving their countries’ civil and military conflicts.
   

But you don’t have to agree with this underlying view of the filmmaker to appreciate the film. The powerful images of walls and violence, and the words and actions of these dedicated women, will reverberate in your mind. Unfortunately, there was also a line toward the end, proclaiming – as if it were a positive thing – that women figured prominently in the electoral victory of Hamas; but I’m sure that Lilly was hopeful at that time that the elevation of Hamas into a governing party would make it more moderate and responsible.To be continued...

What was and might have been

A counter-factual history

As we commemorate the Six Day War of June 1967 and recall the immediate years that ensued, we have to count our lucky stars for how things have worked out for Israel and its Arab neighbors. Initially, Israel’s remarkable military victory did not result in a stampede toward the negotiating table. The three no’s of the Khartoum Summit of September ‘67 – no to negotiations, no to recognition, no to peace – threatened to entrap Israel in a long-term occupation of lands captured from Egypt, Jordan and Syria, despite the invitation of Levi Eshkol’s government to discuss a return of most of these territories.

Furthermore, Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem within weeks of its conquest and a number of settlements were established in the West Bank and the Golan Heights for what Israel viewed as security reasons. Militantly nationalist and (mostly) religious settlers established themselves in the face of official but weak government opposition in the old Jewish section of Hebron and some other places in the West Bank. Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) a fervently nationalist movement sprang up from within the previously moderate ally of the ruling Labor Alignment, the Mafdal or National Religious Party, to inhabit these places and to mobilize broad public support, but events soon intervened from unexpected quarters to stop it in its tracks.

In September 1970, the Palestine Liberation Organization, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, attempted but spectacularly failed to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan. Syria invaded Jordan but turned tail when unequivocally threatened by Israel; covered by the assurance of Israeli intervention as necessary against the Syrians, Hussein withdrew his tank units from the north to defeat the PLO in the south.

Jordan’s King Hussein now owed his throne to Israel’s willingness to intervene on his behalf; the diminutive monarch reciprocated by forging a secret alliance. One night in 1971, Moshe Dayan was the King’s personal tour guide in Tel Aviv. The King, a veteran pilot, flew into Israel on a number of occasions — perhaps most significantly in October 1973, just before Yom Kippur, to warn of suspicious Syrian troop movements along the Golan Heights.

In the meantime, King Hussein made his conditions known for a peace treaty. He was offering some minor border modifications in Israel’s favor, including what was known as the Latrun salient – a strategic extrusion of Jordan’s West Bank that had blocked the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road – and the Jewish Quarter of East Jerusalem with access to the Western (“Wailing”) Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. In exchange, he demanded an Israeli withdrawal from most of the rest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

This was a hard sell for the government of Golda Meir. Prime Minister Meir was particularly reluctant to part with any section of East Jerusalem, all of which had been officially incorporated into Israel’s “eternal” and “united” capital. She was also influenced by such Labor party leaders and former generals as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Alon who had a variety of ideas on how to deal with the West Bank, none of which involved a wholesale return of the territory to Jordan.

Also during the early 1970s, Anwar Sadat, Gamel Abdel Nasser’s successor as president of Egypt, was making some intriguing public statements about the possibility of peace with Israel in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai. Gideon Rafael, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time, proclaimed Sadat’s very public words to be “unprecedented” from any Arab leader. Both foreign minister Abba Eban and Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s rising political star (who would eventually succeed Golda Meir as prime minister) advised Meir to take Sadat seriously.

Balanced against these dovish influences were, again, Moshe Dayan and Yigal Alon. Dayan stated boldly: “Better Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh.” (Sharm el-Sheikh is the strategic tip of the Sinai Peninsula from where Egyptian guns had blockaded the port of Eilat in 1967, precipitating the war.)

But with peace now looming as possible along Israel’s two most important borders, Meir was narrowly persuaded to give peace a chance. Ironically, it was a left-wing alternative that decisively pushed Israel’s leader to embrace concurrent and interlocking treaties with Egypt and Jordan as the “centrist” option. In 1972, Victor Shemtov, the leader of Mapam – Labor’s left-wing partner in the ruling parliamentary bloc known as the Labor Alignment – had teamed up with Aaron Yariv — a Labor party minister, reserve IDF general and former commander of military intelligence. Their joint statement that Israel should deal with any Palestinians who "recognize Israel's right to exist and abandon the use of terror" –– was known as the “Shemtov-Yariv formula.” It was understood as attempting to push Arafat’s PLO faction into a peace process.

The mainstream of the Labor party was rhetorically enamored with the “Jordanian option” — the notion that the Palestinian issue be resolved within the context of the Kingdom of Jordan and not an independent Palestinian state. Shemtov-Yariv helped make the actual Jordanian option as presented by King Hussein an attractive alternative.

The window of opportunity for this direction was only open for a limited time, however. President Sadat said then and indicated afterward that if he could not peacefully negotiate a complete return of the Sinai to Egypt, he would have opted for war to achieve the same objective. Likewise, we now know that forces within the Arab League were in motion to take the Palestinian “franchise” away from Jordan and hand it to Arafat’s PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Happily, the concurrent Israeli peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt were enacted before these could happen.

The Egyptian and Jordanian treaties fit with each other like a hand and glove. Recall that Egypt had never incorporated the Gaza Strip as sovereign Egyptian territory and made a point of refusing to accept its return. But Gaza’s transfer to Jordan facilitated the entire three-way peace process. This new territory brought the vast majority of people who came to regard themselves as Palestinian Arabs, including most of the refugees of 1948, into a single sovereign entity where they constituted a majority of citizens. Jordan – originally the eastern two-thirds of the League of Nations Mandate that the British detached to create the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan – was also the only Arab country that had allowed Palestinians equal rights as citizens in the first place.

And with the Gaza Strip, came a Mediterranean seaport, rail and road links through Israel and a flourishing economy. Gaza refugee camps were largely emptied with Palestinians freely settling to establish new productive lives in the West Bank and in the rest of Jordan. Conditions of overcrowding and poverty in the tiny Gaza Strip were alleviated to the point that a modest level of prosperity has taken hold with Gaza’s lovely Mediterranean beaches and hot, dry climate now sustaining a healthy tourist industry, as well as successful greenhouse agriculture.

As we know too well, nothing on earth is totally idyllic. Tensions do rise up from time to time. Jordan and Egypt still struggle with issues of modernity and democracy. And some Palestinian nationalists have found it difficult to adjust to a surrender of what they consider inalienable rights to their ancestral homes in Israel and to accept a state that is called Jordan and not Palestine. But the late King Hussein’s decision to provide West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians with a parliament of their own in a more federal structure has been of some help in this regard. All in all, we can look back on the 40 years since the war of 1967 with considerable relief that Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and most Arabs now live as neighbors in considerable harmony.

Note to Above

This flight of fancy is about 90 percent accurate in terms of historical fact. What did not happen were the decisions of Israel’s Labor government under Golda Meir to respond to Anwar Sadat’s peace feelers prior to the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and to take full advantage of the genuine (albeit secret) alliance with Jordan’s King Hussein in the early 1970s. What might have happened in the wake of peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan in the early ‘70s is, of course, pure speculation.

Anti-Zionist blogger tells ‘all’

Philip Weiss tells us in an article in the June 4th issue of The American Conservative – at enormous length – how and why he left The Observer — even though they never fired him nor even challenged his views. He apparently wanted to get paid for his blog (he had agreed to start without payment). He dresses this up as principled unease with the fact that The Observer's editor, some writers and its new owner are pro-Israel.

After setting the scene, he quotes himself as telling his Observer editor:

I grabbed a galley of Jeffrey Goldberg's book. ... "Goldberg works for The New Yorker in Washington and because he thought America was dangerous for Jews, he moved to Israel and served in their army, then he moved back here and pushed America to go to war in Iraq. Well, I'm different. I don't think America is dangerous for Jews, and I'm critical of Israel. And there's no room for me here. There's no room."

Notice how Weiss reduces the nuanced views of this progressive-Zionist journalist to his earnest but immature rationale for making Aliya as a teenager; then Weiss accuses Goldberg of “push[ing] America to go to war in Iraq.” It’s a short hop from there for Weiss’s article to raise the old "dual loyalty" issue.

And he calls American Zionists (again, including progressive Zionists) "paranoid" for being concerned that the American majority may turn against the Jewish minority one day. But this notion, raised so tendentiously by Weiss as an accusation, is a haunting fear of many (perhaps most) American Jews — whether Zionist or not. It is, after all, part of the classic historical pattern that has cursed Jews for centuries as a minority group.

What does his “Zionist” editor do in response? This ever-tolerant guy tries to persuade him to stay.

And Weiss writes this in – of all places – The American Conservative, the magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and his basically anti-Semitic partner, Taki Theodoracopulos. (I doubt that Buchanan is personally anti-Semitic, but his agenda and public leanings have always been anti-Jewish, including not only an unwavering line on Israel – even if sometimes on target – but even in defending Eastern European Holocaust-era war criminals, and in having blamed the first Iraq war on Israel's "Amen corner.") Weiss's "confession" has to be music to their ears.

P.S. I happen to have served as co-chair of a joint task force of Meretz USA and Ameinu (the Labor- Zionist affiliate in the US) to plan programs to promote civil discourse among Zionists and progressive American Jews about Israel. We are presenting a panel entitled “How to Talk Candidly About Israel: A conversation among progressive American Jews,” on Thursday, June 21, 7:30 PM at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 West 68th Street, New York, NY. Among our panelists is this same blogger and writer Philip Weiss. So please understand that I’m all in favor of enlightened dialogue. I hope that the inestimable Mr. Weiss is as well. We’ll see.

Documentary special on Six Day War

The JTA’s review of this thoughtful documentary, “Six Days,” being broadcast this week on PBS stations, culminates in a caustic, pithy quote by Yossi Sarid – Yossi Beilin’s predecessor as head of the Meretz party and an adviser to Prime Minister Eshkol during the Six Day War. His words were translated from Hebrew as follows:

"So, all right, Nasser made a mistake and Hussein made a mistake," Sarid said. "So why do we have to fall into the trap of their mistake and turn our lives into an ongoing hell? Forty years, 40 years, we have been living in an ongoing hell because of this cursed occupation."

Among the little-known facts mentioned in the documentary: The Egyptians were planning their own preemptive strike against Israel for about a week prior to Israel’s attack; it was canceled when the Soviets strongly advised against it. IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin suffered a nervous breakdown – one might also describe it to be a loss of nerve – after being warned against going on the offensive by David Ben-Gurion in a private visit he made to the retired prime minister in his home at Kibbutz Sdeh Boker. And Israel’s response to Jordan’s opening of hostilities from the West Bank (hitting hundreds of buildings, killing 20 civilians and injuring “hundreds”) was so effective, that local commanders seized the West Bank entirely on their own initiative, without government authorization.

This prompted journalist Tom Segev to lament on the pages of the New York Times and Haaretz, this past week, that if only Hussein had not succumbed to the blandishments of Nasser in going to war or that Israel had responded in a more limited way to Jordan’s initial aggression, Israel’s situation would be much better today without having occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Lurie: Six Days, 40 Years Ago

On this memorable day of commemoration, let me recommend two interviews:

1. With journalist Jeffrey Goldberg on “On the Media” – broadcast on NPR during the weekend of June 2-3, 2007.
2. And with Meretz USA executive director, Charney Bromberg, reflecting on the continuing relevance of and challenges to the peace camp, transcribed on the "Swords and Ploughshares" Web site.
   

Finally, the following is J. Zel Lurie’s column written for publication in the Jewish Journal of South Florida, June 5:

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first day of the Six Day War. June 5, 1967 was a day of anguish followed by euphoria for Jews all over the world.

I was awakened at 6 AM by a call from my daughter in Israel. It was 1 PM in Israel. The Egyptian air force had been destroyed, but my daughter did not know it. Neither did the rest of the world. King Hussein in Jordan believed the Egyptian radio's false boasts of victory and was about to enter the fray.

I was worried sick for my family and for Israel. I rushed to the UN, which I was covering for the Jerusalem Post. I found the Russian Ambassador was delaying an emergency meeting of the Security Council. He had not received the news. Neither had the Israeli delegation. At least they weren't talking.

At lunch time, the atmosphere changed. Abba Eban's deputy told me: "The war must be going well. The Russian Ambassador is now hollering for an emergency meeting of the Security Council."

But I still had no real news. The BBC editors in London were sitting on a scoop from their stringer in Jerusalem who had wandered into the Knesset and found the delegates surprisingly celebrating. He learned why and cabled it. The BBC editors refused to broadcast the news of the destruction of the Egyptian air force without a confirmation.

It was still a scoop when it was finally broadcast five hours later and picked up by the news wires: "BBC reports that..." My anxiety and that of all Jews was finally relieved.

The Israeli air force had followed a carefully planned program which had been rehearsed for almost a year. The first wave bombed the runways so no planes could take off. Then wave after wave destroyed the planes.

It was a gamble. Less than a dozen planes were left behind to defend the country from a surprise attack by Syria or any other enemy.

The gamble paid off. On the fourth or fifth day, Syria was attacked and conquered. In six days all of Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights were occupied by Israel.

The 40th anniversary of this stunning victory will be celebrated all over the world. It is also the 40th anniversary of the occupation and its many evils which has been the subject of many of my columns. But not this week.

It was a stunning victory that will never be repeated. The enemy is no longer a state with an army and air force. The enemy is suicide bombers. The enemy is guerillas firing home-made rockets and then disappearing.

Last week, the Israel air force used one of its sophisticated and costly bombs to zero in on a car carrying three Gaza Hamasniks and a home-made rocket to a launching site. But 20 others got through and about 15 landed in Israel. A house was hit in Sderot while Prime Minister Olmert was visiting in another section of the town.

American leftists and Palestinian students have seized on the Israel army's preparation for war to call the Six Day War a war of aggression. They forget that in mid-May the Egyptian dictator, Gamel Abdel Nasser, had demanded that the UN withdraw its peace-keeping force from Gaza. A week later Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran preventing tankers from delivering Iranian oil to Eilat. At that time Israel was getting a third of its oil supply from Iran.

These were acts of war. The Israeli Defense Forces could reply and did so on June 5, 1967.

This is no longer possible. The IDF can destroy Hamas installations but they can't defeat
it. They thought that they could knock out Hezbolla and its rockets last summer. This was a costly mistake. Bombing Iran and its potential nuclear weapons is impossible. So what to do.

Israel can try diplomacy, beginning with Syria. I don't know, and neither does Israel. whether Bashir Assad is any more interested in peace than his father before him. But he is certainly interested in starting the peace process. Israel and the United States have been hemming and hawing about responding to Bashir's peace overtures.

The United States wants Syria to stop funneling into Iraq suicide bombers from all over the Moslem world. Israel would like Syria to kick out the leaders of Hamas and Islam Jihad who are holed up in Damascus, and stop supporting these terrorist organizations. Israel also wants Syria to divorce Hezbolla, to stop sending them Syrian arms and Iranian rockets and money.

They are not going to achieve these worthwhile objectives unless they talk to Bashir Assad and break his current isolation as a sponsor of terrorism.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met for the first time recently at a conference in Egypt with the Syrian Foreign Minister. The State Department announced that it was only to say hello. I doubt that but in any event it was a significant hello.

It was a signal to Prime Minister Olmert to consider responding to Assad's signals. The New York Times on May 27 published a 3-column photo of an Israeli peace demonstration. Large Hebrew signs "ledaber im Surya," talk to Syria, dominated the photo. The story quoted Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich who negotiated in vain with Syria in the 90s. He said:

"I can't imagine a quick negotiation or an easy fix with Syria. But if an Arab leader says he wants to make peace, any Israeli leader must take advantage of the opportunity."

It's too early for my friends in a Golan Heights kibbbutz to begin worrying about losing their homes. But peace with Syria is in the air.

Meretz USA News Update 6/1/07

40 Years since June 5, 1967

This Tuesday, June 5th, marks 40 years since the commencement in 1967 of the Six-Day War, often referred to in the Arab world as an-Naksah (the Setback) and by more non-partisan observers simply as "the Third Arab-Israeli War".

So much has already been written about the war and its four-decade aftermath that one sometimes begins to feel there is nothing new to say, or write or read. But even if this were actually the case, the Jewish tradition of retelling crucial historical episodes - evidenced most clearly in the Passover haggadah - obliges us to stop, remember and give pause.

This week's Forward editorial [a must-read!] sagely reminds us that all peace-seekers must continue to press for a territorial compromise based on the pre-war borders of 1967. The alternative, the paper warns, "is chaos that will consume all around it in a whirlwind of destruction, and that is no alternative at all."

But time for such a compromise might be running out. Jerome Segal (in Hebrew) argues that we now have a two-year window for transforming the Clinton Vision into a peace deal because, after that time, a Hamas candidate might win the Palestinian Authority Presidency and end any hope for true mutual recognition. But, the New York Times reported this week, there are even more acute dangers lurking on the horizon if the stagnant status quo is allowed to continue: Jihadist groups making increasing inroads into the hearts and minds of despairing and disillusioned Palestinian youth.

The dangers of extremism exist not only on the Palestinian side, however. Just this week, former Israeli Chief-of-Staff and up-and-coming political star, Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon, argued on the Web pages of YNet that the two-state solution is an "irrelevant concept," and that discussion of the idea must be brought "to a halt". One wonders what more "relevant concept" Ya'alon will offer the Israeli public as a way out of the current deadly impasse. If the Yesha Council of West Bank settlers has its way, the "solution" will come through a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip –- a massive military assault a la "Operation Defensive Shield" in the West Bank in 2002, followed by a rebuilding of the Gaza Strip settlements that were dismantled in 2005.

But the war in 1967 marked not only the birth of the "Greater Israel" settlement movement: It also began a process of increasing moderation within much of the Arab world, notes Dr. Eli Podeh of Hebrew University. Writing in Haaretz, Dr. Podeh points out that another positive result of the 1967 war was that it created a territorial outline for peace. But the conflict will not resolve itself: The outlines, visions and opportunities need to be acted upon. War is not inevitable, but peace isn't either.

Dr. Mati Steinberg has recently argued, as well, that the Arab world has made great strides towards peace in recent years. This contrasts with Prof. Shlomo Avineri, a veteran dove, who forcefully argues an alternative view.

Finally: For those interested in comparing the competing historical narratives of the 1967 war, the following Web pages might be of interest:

* The historical chronology offered by the PLO Mission to the UN
* The historical chronology offered by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
* The historical chronology offered by mainstream Israeli news website, YNet
* Also of note in this context is the Web page offering of Americans for Peace Now, "Perspectives on the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War" - which it describes as a "mosaic of opinions on the meaning of this anniversary"

Gay Rights in Israel

The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the overwhelming stakes involved, sometimes cause us to lose track of other crucial issues within Israeli society. The question of civil rights for the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered) community is no exception.

Several weeks ago, the Meretz USA news alert reported the good news that the Israel Police had granted permission for holding the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem in June 2007. But in politics, as in physics, every action seems to generate an equal and opposite reaction: National Religious Party MK Eliahu Gabbay is promoting legislation that, if passed, would allow the Jerusalem Municipality (now dominated by the ultra-religious) to ban gay pride events if it rules that such events, "disturb public order, offend the public's sentiments or on religious grounds." The bill, which has the support of most of Israel's governing coalition, is slated to come to a vote in the Knesset this coming Wednesday.

YNet reported this week on the formation of a gay party in Israel, named "Magi" (Hebrew acronym for "Israeli Gay Party"), as part of the effort to combat the continuing legitimacy of homophobia in Israel. The head of the Meretz party's Gay Youth wing, Dror Mizrachi, responded by arguing that Meretz is Israel's true gay rights party. He noted that, "the members of the Gay Party .... themselves say that Meretz promoted our rights and did things that no one else did." Indeed, several weeks ago, the Meretz party issued a declaration in honor of the "International Day against Homophobia," which stressed the party's "commitment to fight for fully equal rights for the gay/lesbian community."

Let us hope that, whether united under the Meretz banner or through separate efforts, the LGBT community earns a place of acceptance and true equality in Israel.

Alex Stein on ‘Nakba Day’

... I understand where the Palestinians were coming from, and I understand the logic behind their strategy. But if I had chosen such a path [of going to war rather than accepting the UN partition plan], I would like to think I would have paused to consider what might happen in the case of failure. Absolute rejectionism leaves no room for error. A morality that is unrealistic quickly becomes immoral. If Nakba commemorations do not acknowledge the role played by Palestinian rejectionism in creating the Arab-Israeli conflict, the mistakes of the past are doomed to be repeated.

We learn from Isaiah Berlin that there can be no neat reconciliation of conflicting values. Israel/Palestine represents a case in point. ... The only hope is for an uneasy compromise – a compromise that was embodied in the original UN partition plan.

Today, as Uri Avnery has demonstrated in a major debate with Ilan Pappe, division of the land remains the only feasible solution. To achieve this, there has to be a change in mentality. ... Even though I simultaneously understand and disagree with the Palestinian reasons for opposing Jewish statehood, the point is that they failed. On Nakba day, amidst the mourning, this must be acknowledged. You can read Stein’s entire piece online.