'Borat' and a new film on Antisemitism

“Look Into My Eyes” is a personal exploration into antisemitism (mostly in Hebrew) by the Israeli filmmaker, Naftaly Gliksberg. I saw it last week at the International Human Rights Film Festival at New York's Lincoln Center.

It helped that Mr. Gliksberg did a Q & A after the screening. Before learning his intent directly, the film seemed disjointed and self-indulgent. Gliksberg wants it seen by non-Jews; he says that he's bringing a mirror to Christians, helping them to see the conscious and subconscious elements of prejudice in how they view Jews. (He deals only with Christian antisemitism, nothing about Muslims or the Arab-Israeli conflict.)

The title comes from the final episode in Gliksberg's journey through Europe and the USA when he confronts neo-Nazis in Germany. He is cordial, seemingly almost becoming friends with an old man named Mahler, on trial for Holocaust denial, a criminal offense in Germany. (Mahler was, in fact, recently convicted.) One of his supporters tells Gliksberg that he cannot look a Jew in the eye, because of the pure evil that lurks behind his gaze. Gliksberg plays with the Nazi, even good-naturedly embracing him as he encourages him to look. But the man backs away in disgust and anger.

The Israeli's foray into Germany also involves a visit to a couple with a teenage daugher, all of whom were ex-neo-Nazis. The interaction with the girl is especially illuminating; it becomes clear that the “movement” had given them a sense of identity and belonging – more important than the actual ideology of hate. She recalls the movement songs and activities with genuine longing.

Gliksberg began his film with his visit to a Passion Play in Poland, where members of the mob and the Sanhedrin are clearly identifiable as Jews responsible for the persecution of Jesus. The Poles he interviews profess no antipathy toward Jews, but some reveal their belief in stereotypes about how rich, clever and clannish Jews are.

He also makes a painful visit to Kelce, where in 1946, a pogrom started by a blood libel rumor, cost the lives of over 40 Jews brutally murdered by their Polish neighbors. A liberal Pole tells Gliksberg of how a Catholic priest, years later, repeated this age-old fantasy that Jews murdered and bled a boy to make matza.

By way of contrast, a Passion Play at a rural American pentecostal church, where worship includes “speaking in tongues,” provides no such antisemitic imagery. In fact, the congregation enthusiastically welcomes their guest from Israel and the pastor professes his love for Israel and the Jewish people.

Toward the end of his visit, however, the pastor is caught on camera in an outburst against Israelis for being rude – in the way that Israelis often are because of their habit of directness. The pastor concludes that in the future the “Jewish people” would miss “Christian money” if this coarseness deters Christian tourists from coming in great numbers. This bursts out as a sudden stream of consciousness, with the minister ruminating at the end of a long day, too tired perhaps to filter his thoughts.

Then I saw “Borat” on TV over the weekend. This farce by the incredibly talented English-Jewish comic and actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, includes an outrageous dose of antisemitism in the plot. Cohen plays a faux-TV journalist from Kazakhstan, who is incredibly primitive, crude and bigoted. If you're familiar with Hebrew, you may notice that much of his faux-Kazakh dialogue is Hebrew. (Cohen was a member of the Labor-Zionist youth group Habonim Dror and spent a year in Israel on kibbutzim.) His Scottish fiancee (or wife by now) converted to Judaism and says that she is quite observant.

Chutzpa defines Cohen's technique, as his Borat personna confronts real people. Some of these confrontations are shocking. For example, he gets a straight answer without so much as a blink of an eye from a gun dealer he consults on the best choice of weapon for shooting a Jew.

An outtake from the movie, at least the version shown on cable television, viewable on 'You Tube', is of Borat accompanying himself on guitar as he entertains the crowd at an Arizona bar with a "charming" tune called “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” Words to the rousing chorus, which the patrons sing enthusiastically, include: “Throw the Jew down the well, so my country can be free … then we have a big party [pronounced par-tee].” (Gliksberg's mirror anyone?)

Tony Judt on settlements

I can certainly understand NYU historian Prof. Tony Judt's pique at Israel. Without being one-sided, as he always is regarding Israel, we would surely agree with him that the West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements policies of succeeding Israeli governments are obstacles to peace and illegal under international law. And he makes an excellent point in his most recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, June 22, that existing settlements are zoned with an outrageous amount of real estate to fill in with additional construction for “natural growth,” so that these new “neighborhoods” are not defined as new settlements.

Still, Judt leaves out a critical fact: that any reasonable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would include a swap of territories, with all or most settlements closest to the pre-1967 border being annexed to Israel in exchange for a comparable amount of Israeli land going to the new Palestinian state. Most peace-oriented parties have advocated this since the mid-1990s, when it was discovered that the most thickly-populated settlement blocs would only require moderate border adjustments (2-3 percent) to be included in Israel.

Moreover, while it's an embarrassment to me as an American and a progressive Zionist that the US gives as much economic aid as it does to Israel, despite the ongoing expansion of settlements, it is probably not accurate to continually say, as Judt does, that Israel is the number one recipient of US foreign aid. Iraq surely has that honor in spades, and Afghanistan may well join Iraq in this category soon. And when you add the very substantial aid programs to Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and the Palestinians (the latter to the tune of several hundred million a year), US aid dollars to Arab and Islamic countries far outweigh the total provided to Israel.

More thoughts on Netanyahu's 'vision' Part 2

After I posted Aaron Sharif's letter yesterday, I received this letter from Aaron. The letter below is Aaron's response to an Israeli Jew's reply to his letter. It is worthwhile reading. Meanwhile, on another level, let us all meditate on the uprising in Iran and hope for a resolution without too many more deaths. We are witnessing a brave uprising that will probably go underground. -- Lilly

Dear Friends,

A friend of mine forwarded my previous letter (Thoughts Re Netanyahu's Vision) to some Jewish friends here in Israel. My friend received one response which in so few words typifies so much of our government's policies towards the West Bank and towards Israeli Arabs, it also typifies the short-sighted "vision" of our Israeli Right.

This was the response:

My vision for Israel is a country for the Jewish People...If you don't like it, LEAVE. This small piece of land cannot accommodate more than one people and the Israeli people are it! Arabs have their own countries and have overtaken much of Europe & Indonesia. They have their Mecca and we have our Wall...And never the twain shall meet! -Terry

This was such a simple, pure, direct and honest response, that I felt obligated to comment on it. How well our problem is embodied in Terry's few short words. And so I wrote back to my friend:

Thanks for sending my letter onwards to others.

Yes, Terry's response is why Netanyahu is prime minister. Terry's answer is also a short-sighted one, perhaps given without much thought to what happens next. Its easy to say "If you don't like it, LEAVE", but what happens if that doesn't happen: They don't like it, but they don't leave. The 20% of Israeli citizens (2nd rate citizens at that) who are Arab have no intention of leaving Israel. The two and half million Palestinians in the West Bank also have no intention of leaving. Your friend Terry then has three alternative solutions because according to Terry the land "cannot accommodate more than one people":

1. Force them to leave…..mass deportation "somewhere", of up to four million Arabs. Quite a tragic scene, though perhaps Terry is not worried either of the moral implications or the consequences. If so, we don't belong to the same Jewish People.

2. Annexing the West bank as part of Israel and thereby making another 2.5 million Arabs citizens of Israel. Of course this would mean that we are on our way to be an eventual large Jewish minority within the country, a bi-national State….not really a Jewish State by any means. This is what the Palestinians would prefer. I don't think Terry would go for it.

3. Annexing (or not) the West Bank but keeping the Arab population without any rights of citizenship and penned up under a military clamp….Essentially similar to today's situation. In that case I refer you back to my previous letter which tries to show some of the consequences of this alternative.

All alternatives boil down to some concoction of one of these three. If Terry knows of some other alternative model, I would be anxious to learn of it. (Having Jordan take over the West Bank is also not an alternative. Both Jordan and the Palestinians reject any such possibility. Just as Egypt refused to take over Gaza once we were ready to give it up. Also "Leave everything to God" is not a viable alternative, I won't even begin to rebut that. Well, maybe I will say that God helps those that help themselves, and then only sometimes. )

But yes, there is one more possible alternative: Coming to some kind of mutual agreement about two States for two People. This too is not simple, and all of our moves via settlements in the West Bank are made to preempt such an alternative, but perhaps we have not quite yet passed the point of no return. Any agreement needs to be mutual, needs to refer to security matters, needs international participation and guarantees, needs to have stages for building trust, stages for reducing hatred, and probably a lot more.

There are many more moral and historical grounds that would classify Terry's response as lacking both knowledge and foresight, but the problem of the above alternatives will suffice for now. I assume Terry will probably choose alternative number 3 above. In that case, once more I refer you back to my previous letter (see below) and to where that alternative is taking us.

Still hoping for a brighter and more sensible tomorrow, Be well.

Aaron

More Thoughts On Netanyahu's 'Vision'

This is an email that was sent to me by my friend Aaron Sharif. I knew Aaron as a young boy in the Habonim Labor Zionist youth movement. He was sensitive then, as he is now. He has lived in Gesher Haziv, a kibbutz in the Galilee, for many decades now. I am sharing his "Thoughts Re: Netanyahu's vision." Sadly, I share his "thoughts" but I live here and not in Israel. -- Lilly

Dear Friends,

After Prime Minister Netanyahu created a great media spin around his pronounced “vision” for the future of our country in response to President Obama’s prodding, I needed to share my worries with others. I am not a politician, nor do I organize demonstrations. But I know that I need to do something….and sharing my worries with others seems to be the minimum I can do. I know that some of my friends and acquaintances will find dire displeasure with a few of my remarks…….nevertheless………..

While many Israelis praised the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s supposed about-face and his readiness to foresee a situation where the State of Israel lives beside a Palestinian State, my own impression was that Netanyahu spoke his best to put a damper on any such possibility. This is coupled to so many of his government’s actions since taking office a few months ago and to the unfortunate path led by most Israeli governments since those six days in 1967.

Among other conditions, Netanyahu preconditioned his grudging acceptance of a Palestinian State with a specific Palestinian assertion of Israel as the Jewish State. Not an “Israeli State which is the homeland of the Jewish People”, but a “Jewish State” – and without a single word about the 20% (and rising) Arab Israeli population (which a goodly part of his government would like at least to disenfranchise and preferably to transfer over to the Palestinian areas). While Palestinian negotiators could swallow the reality of Israel being the “Homeland of the Jewish People”, they can not openly voice a terminology which places Israel as a state solely for the Jewish People……not with a 20% (and growing) Arab population, and a desire for at least a symbolic return of some Palestinians.

Among other conditions, Netanyahu preconditioned his grudging acceptance of a Palestinian State with Palestinian knowledge of an undivided Jerusalem. Eastern Jerusalem with all its Palestinian neighborhoods, all of the Old City and the Temple Mount, and a greatly expanded city boundary so as to reach important outlying Jewish settlements within the conquered West Bank: all this within the Jewish State. This is a vision Netanyahu knows will be unacceptable to the Palestinians and will help drag the “peace process” on and on while energy is diverted to expanding settlements and setting broader boundaries which will make negotiations even more unacceptable to the Palestinian negotiators.

Netanyahu made it clear that his government will not halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This of course emphasizes that our cardinal sin of expropriating Palestinian land under various guises of legal manipulation or direct illegal land-grabbing will continue with the full support of our government. Netanyahu emphasized this knowing full well that his words (and deeds) are a spade that buries any process towards mutual understanding.

It is difficult to know what to do when faced with the pessimistic prospect of my country eventually crossing the point of no return between a democratic State which is the homeland of the Jewish people, and its metamorphosis into a quasi-authoritarian, quasi-theocratic, neo-colonial State steered by a jingoistic nationalism, led by a pride lacking humility and fed by fear.

Once crossing the point of no return, our future becomes fairly clear. We shall hold on to the West Bank and continue expanding our inhabited real-estate in the area. The Palestinians will continue to live without equal rights (or rights at all) in a territory policed by military rule. Within the Middle East we will remain a pariah whose moral and physical strength will be guided by the sword, a sword that will gradually weaken relative to the military abilities of our neighbors, a sword which will not sit favorably with the nations of the world on any continent. We will have wars. We will not always win. In the future, Jews in the Diaspora will write heroic stories about the rise and fall of the Third Jewish Commonwealth.

Our lust for real-estate in the West Bank will also continue to undermine our trust in the Arab citizens within Israel. We will continue discriminating policies which will ensure the righteousness of our mistrust. We will then at long last face our First Israeli-Arab Intifada. We will kill many while restoring order, thereby ensuring the Second Israeli-Arab Intifada, and the Third………and perhaps this will even happen during one of those wars which needed winning in order to ensure the continued existence of the Third Jewish Commonwealth and our precious God-given real-estate in the West Bank.

My Prime Minister offered all the reasons why all of Greater Israel is ours and ours alone. Under dire pressure he conceded the possibility of a Palestinian state. But, while insisting that negotiations with the Palestinians be with no preconditions or previous understandings, he firmly stated a heavy variety of preconditions for any possibility of a Palestinian State…..conditions making it ludicrous to begin mutual talks, and meant to perpetuate the status quo.

My Prime Minister could have offered an extended hand towards a “Sulcha” with our Palestinian neighbors. My Prime Minister could have conceded that not only the Jewish people have suffered. He could have delivered words of empathy to the suffering of the Palestinians over the last 60 years. He could have even conceded that other peoples had managed to root themselves in our land at various times during our two thousand years of exile. He should have hinted that our national aspirations came into inevitable conflict with other national aspirations which were already also evident at the very beginning of the 20th century. He could have conceded to all of that without giving up an inch of ground from our Jewish-Zionist legacy. He could have conceded to all of that as an introduction to our understanding that the conflict also resulted in a tragic calamity to the Arab people rooted in the ancient land of Israel. He could have conceded to all of that as an introduction to our welcoming the end of the conflict by the creation of a Palestinian State living peacefully side by side an Israeli one.

But he didn’t.

Once more he disregarded the opportunity of taking the initiative in the struggle for peace. For my Prime Minister the struggle for peace is worthwhile only if it involves no risk. It is therefore not worthwhile.

If we are ever “forced” into an era of “peace” by outside pressure, it will probably be a short respite not lacking in a continuation of hate and mistrust, for it will not have the element of “Sulcha” and the affirmation of the other’s legacy – two ingredients we ordinary Israelis refuse to initiate. My prime minister is just an ordinary Israeli. Evidently, nothing more.

With sincere wishes for a better tomorrow,

aaron

Hate group attacks Jews, Gays (among others)

Meretz USA’s New York headquarters has a pile of faxes with antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-gay hate messages from the so-called Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. But we are only one of many Jewish organizations that have been so targeted.

Paraphrasing these faxes, they stated that “Jews killed Jesus” and are “cursed of God,” and that “it’s a known fact” that “a disproportionate number of Jews are fags or support fags.” The Anti-Defamation League, among other groups, has documented their hate messages.

Among their bizarre activities, WBC supporters picketed the funerals of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man who was brutally murdered in Wyoming a few years ago, and of the security guard recently killed by a gunman at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. See the Wikipedia entry for a more complete discussion of this hate group that claims to be a Baptist church (totally disavowed by official bodies of the Baptist religion).

They struck New York directly on Sunday, with a dozen members who picketed

Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the mostly gay synagogue in downtown Manhattan. CBST is based in the Westbeth housing complex, a community for artists, such as our own former president, Lilly Rivlin, a filmmaker. She reported on the event and transmitted photos of the scene. Members, neighbors and friends of CBST counter-rallied against the haters.

Celebrating Theodore Bikel's first 85 years

As you may know, Meretz USA's board chair, Theo Bikel, is an internationally renowned singer and actor. At 85, he's in extraordinary physical shape, looking at least 20 years younger. He's also extraordinary in maintaining a busy schedule as a performer and as an activist. (I'm not simply kissing up to one of my bosses; he really is an amazing individual.)

He's even a fine writer, as you can see from his article in the May/June issue of Moment magazine, reviewing a new translation of “Wandering Stars” by Sholem Aleichem. Singing Yiddish songs, as well as Hebrew, French, Spanish, Russian and in a host of other languages, is his forte.

I had the pleasure of attending a benefit concert in honor of his birthday a few days ago at Carnegie Hall. It was MC'd by Alan Alda and featured 30 or more performing artists, including Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, the Klezmatics, Peter and Paul (of Peter, Paul and Mary) and the comic monologist of Yiddish, Michael Wex. Wex was hilarious as a singer. David Krakauer blew us away with his clarinet, and I could go on about other terrific performances.

The first half was good, the second half tremendous-- and not only because the second half included Theo himself. But Theo did bring down the house singing Jacques Brel's “If We Only Have Love” and reprising his role as Tevye singing “If I Were A Rich Man.”

True to his social activist side, the proceeds of the concert were for the benefit of the Juvenile Law Center, which advocates on behalf of children who get into legal trouble.

Meretz views on Netanyahu's speech

This links to the statement by Meretz USA's president, Lawrence I. Lerner, and our board chair, Theodore Bikel, entitled “Netanyahu's Speech Was a Wasted Opportunity.”

The Irish Times reported that Haim Oron, chairman of the Meretz party, described the prime minister's widely reported speech at Bar Ilan University as "too little, too late.” Another Meretz parliamentarian, Ilan Gilon, is quoted as stating: "So much preparation for nothing. The prime minister proved again that he is the number one peace refusenik. Bibi chose to serve the needs of the settlers and the extreme--right rather than those of Israel."

I am also disappointed. Although it was a small step forward for a Likud leader, Netanyahu's tone was more belligerent than conciliatory. And he laid down conditions that are very problematic for the Palestinians. Insisting upon an undivided Jerusalem is a complete non-starter. History suggests that the hope for compromise lies in a trade-off between a new arrangement in Jerusalem (a third of its residents are non-Israeli Arabs) and no unrestricted right of return to Israel.

Another problem is that thickening existing settlements through "natural growth" is an ongoing irritation; Palestinians understandably feel that their homeland is being gobbled up. Settlements need to be negotiated along with borders, refugees and Jerusalem. Creating "facts on the ground" undermines negotiations. (Click here for a more eloquent evaluation by the renowned writer, David Grossman, who is a Meretz supporter.)

Thomas Mitchell: Bibi's Palestinian State

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday evening puts him squarely within the mainstream of Israeli opinion regarding negotiations with the Palestinians. In the past Netanyahu had often positioned himself far on the right of Israel’s political spectrum—depending on his needs of the moment. He ran for the Likud leadership and for the premiership in 1996 from the right. He then behaved as a centrist by Likud standards as prime minister.

After losing power in 1999 to Ehud Barak, he then returned to the right when he returned to politics. He served as Sharon’s finance minister as a neo-liberal monetarist and was very critical of Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza, although he refrained at the last moment from openly challenging Sharon over it. Since Sharon and Ehud Olmert left the Likud for Kadima in November 2005, Netanyahu has once more been in charge in the Likud.

While running for election earlier this year, he dropped hints that he would be a very different prime minister his second time around because of lessons learned from his first time. He claimed that he would form a centrist coalition rather than a right-wing one, as he wanted stability. But he was unwilling to pay the price for a coalition with Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party. Kadima received one more seat than the Likud did, and Tzipi thought that this entitled her to a rotation of the leadership as in the 1984-88 National Unity Government when Peres and Shamir switched places. Netanyahu obviously did not agree.

After refusing initially to utter the magic words, Netanyahu has now agreed to “two states for two peoples.” He did put conditions on them, however. First, he stated that an undivided Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital. This restores the Israeli position before July 2000—which was really restored once Barak left office in February 2001. Second, he pronounced that the state must be demilitarized—meaning only small arms for its police as is the situation today with the Palestinian Authority. This is the position of Labor as well. De facto, Israel’s main parties have always said that Palestine would be a state with severe limitations. Third, Netanyahu demanded that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Yitzhak Rabin, Labor’s first prime minister during the Oslo process, did not even indicate that a Palestinian state would be the outcome of negotiations with the Palestinians. His foreign minister and successor, Shimon Peres, was a little more forthcoming, but it still was not Labor’s position in the 1996 campaign that the outcome of negotiations would be a Palestinian state. Only with Barak in 1999 did this change. Netanyahu is in essence returning to the status quo ante Barak.

The demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is problematic for two reasons. First, it wants the Palestinians to concede the right of return before negotiations begin. Second, Israel’s Palestinian leadership rejects this condition. Even if the Palestinians recognize the reality that no Zionist party will agree to a major return of refugees that would have the potential to drastically alter the demographic balance within Israel, no Palestinian leader could openly betray their Palestinian brethen before negotiations begin. In reality Netanyahu’s conditions and the Palestinian rejection of them are opening positions subject to change in a future negotiation.

But in reality neither Netanyahu nor Abbas is eager to begin negotiations for a Palestinian state. Such negotiations would likely lead to either a collapse of Netanyahu’s government or a quick collapse of the negotiations with Israel being blamed. Mahmoud Abbas cannot agree to make major concessions with Hamas contesting the legitimacy of his position as Palestinian president and his right to make such concessions. So both are content to posture and blame the other side for the lack of progress.

In reality Netanyahu now puts some pressure on the Palestinians, allows Obama to begin rallying the Arabs to deal with Iran, and possibly in the future allows for a shift away from the Palestinian track to the Syrian track. But with the questionable election in Iran, the focus will now shift in the Middle East back to Iran.

Thomas Mitchell, Ph.D., is an independent scholar on Israel-Palestine and other subjects of ethnic conflict and peace making, who occasionally contributes his analyses to this blog.

Einstein NOT a Zionist and other fables

It was early on the evening of May 28 that I went to hear Fred Jerome speak about his new book on Albert Einstein, the third of his works on Einstein's politics: Einstein on Israel and Zionism. I read and reviewed the first of his Einstein books, The Einstein File, about his general political stance and the vendetta that J. Edgar Hoover pursued against him, trying without success to persecute him as a "Red."

Fred Jerome is a journalist with a background in the Communist Party and later as a leader of the ultra-Stalinist offshoot, the Progressive Labor Party. His first book was well worth reading despite this unfortunate political legacy. This new book is another story, however.

He was among friends at Manhattan's Ethical Culture Society. I've rarely (if ever) witnessed a "book party" with a more enthusiastic reception for an author. Nor have I ever felt more alone as a Zionist.

The thrust of Jerome's new book is that it's a "myth" that Einstein was a Zionist or that he really supported the State of Israel. This is not necessarily a simple argument to make, since Einstein-- even in writings quoted in his book-- calls himself a Zionist and was in fact offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, following the death of Chaim Weizmann.

Jerome deftly identifies Einstein as a "cultural Zionist" rather than a political Zionist, and places him in the pantheon of other left and liberal Zionists who advocated a bi-national state in Palestine before the violent Arab onslaughts in late 1947 and the first half of '48. These people famously included Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber and Judah Magnes. They also included our own Hashomer Hatzair movement prior to '47-48. But this does not mean that they were not political Zionists who believed in the building up of Palestine as the reborn Jewish homeland.

Jerome quotes Einstein as saying in 1930 that Palestine has plenty of room for both Arabs and Jews, as if this were not in fact a perfectly acceptable Zionist position. It was the Arab side that vociferously opposed this notion in the 1920s and '30s, as they violently resisted Jewish immigration -- and the Arabs did so despite the fact that European Jewry mostly faced its doom with the rising Nazi menace.

We of the Meretz Zionist lineage-- which includes the bi-nationalist idealism of the pre-state Hashomer Hatzair-- honor Einstein and others who advocated these ideals. But this does not mean that Einstein and the others should now be stripped from the history of Zionism as mere "cultural Zionists." For example, Hannah Arendt is well known for acerbic criticisms of Israel, but she was enough of a "political Zionist" to have loudly advocated for a "Jewish army" during World War II. And Martin Buber lived for decades in the latter half of his life in Palestine and then the State of Israel. Our chaverim, Dan Leon and Hillel Schenker, worked as journalists for New Outlook magazine, an English-language Israeli journal that Buber helped found as an expression of his dedication to peace, but it would never occur to them to characterize Buber as other than a Zionist.

Fred Jerome, however, cannot accept Einstein as "really" being a Zionist, because this would make him a supporter of something "bad." What became very clear from being at this book event is that Jerome and his enthusiasts at Ethical Culture are denying the existence of left or progressive Zionism. This concept simply doesn't compute for them because they are, sadly, too ignorant and too prejudiced to understand. They also don't understand that a Zionist can actually oppose ongoing Israeli policies regarding settlements and the occupation and still be a Zionist.

Protecting the Zionist Narrative, At Last

I did the research for O Jerusalem, by Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre in which I interviewed many of those veterans of Israel's War of Independence. At least that record exists. Daniel Gordis's piece is important in reminding us all how quickly we forget. Lilly Rivlin

In Perspective: Protecting the Zionist narrative at last

Jun. 4, 2009
Daniel Gordis , THE JERUSALEM POST

Imagine that Germany, embittered by incessant reminders of what happened during the Holocaust, passed a law forbidding German Jews from publicly marking the destruction of European Jewry. Or that the US Congress, tired of hearing Native Americans recite their tales of woe, made it illegal for them to mention their losses on July 4. If Turkey passed legislation like that, directed at Armenian memories of 1915, we would hardly blink an eye. But if a genuine democracy followed suit? We would scarcely believe our ears.

So why are we not more distressed by legislation before the Knesset that would criminalize marking the “Nakba” on Independence Day? What kind of a democracy makes it illegal for a group of its citizens to mark the losses they have suffered? And in what kind of democracy can such legislation be proposed without massive waves of protest?

So why no protests here? Surely, few of us pretend that Israeli Arabs didn’t lose very much in 1948. We know they did. Is it that we’re still at war with the Arab world (unlike America and its native population, for example), or that marking the Nakba is tantamount to asserting that Israel is illegitimate, which we cannot and will not abide?

Perhaps. But we’re also witness to something new. It’s a belief in the ability of hastily written laws to correct problems created by decades of failed Zionist education.

Read the rest of Daniel Gordis' article here.

Crunch time for Israel – and American Jews

(This column originally appeared in the June 5 Meretz USA electronic newsletter.)

I arose early last Thursday to watch Barack Obama's much-awaited speech in Cairo. Unsurprisingly, I was impressed by the dexterity of the writing and the superb quality of the oratory. And, by and large, I found myself in agreement with everything the President had to say.

And yet, I came away feeling a vague sense of discomfort as well, a slight queasiness that at first defied explanation. After all, wasn't Barack Obama's clear enunciation of the illegitimacy of West Bank settlements and the non-negotiability of the two-state principle the best news since penicillin?

So, rather than duplicate the efforts of many others in the Jewish world, who were quick out of the blocks to recap, summarize, dissect and contextualize the President's address (none better, by the way, than the New America Foundation's Daniel Levy), I decided to pause, breathe slowly and focus inward on why a speech that made so much sense nevertheless left me feeling less than 100% celebratory.

And then I realized: Israel, a country that I care about deeply, had just been chastised - subtly but definitively - before the entire world. Like the father of a schoolchild who is loudly reprimanded by the teacher on parents' visiting day, I shifted uneasily in my seat as everyone in the audience seemed to turn their attention to my loved-one's transgression.

In reality, of course, Obama's speech was anything but anti-Israel.

READ MORE ON THE MERETZ USA WEBSITE!

Applauding Pres. Obama

We of the Zionist peace camp applaud Pres. Obama’s vision and support his clear statement that the “status quo is unsustainable” and in his laying out markers for all sides to achieve peace. We agree with him that Israel’s task must include ending the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Protestations from Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Peres notwithstanding, Israel’s secure future lies with ending settlement activity.

As at least one Israeli has pointed out, since when does a baby need a new house? Also asked was why does a newly married couple require a home in the same town as their parents?

But there are no easy formulas. I was impressed by how Ethan Bronner's NY Times article of May 28, on the Gaza situation, captured its complexity. In this spirit, you may wish to read my recent article in “In These Times” magazine, which includes an expanded version online.

You may also wish to check out the most recent column of our chaver, Ken Brociner, at InTheseTimes.com. Ken refutes Naomi Klein’s simplistic economic determinist argument for Israel’s rightward turn. She actually thinks that Israel’s economic elite is now against peace because its thriving security sector is too lucrative, and that this is determinative of the country’s foreign policy -- with no consideration given to the real security threats posed by Hamas and Hezbollah.

JTA: Lieberman party threatens Israeli democracy

A proposed bill in Israel calling for a year imprisonment for anyone denying Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state has touched off debate here about the role and character of the country.

“Are you the thought police? Have you gone crazy?” raged Chaim Oron, leader of the Meretz Party, ... during a stormy Knesset session last week.
The bill is one of a series of laws some Israeli legislators are pushing for in a bid to radically reshape Israel’s approach to its Arab minority….

The most controversial one of all, which seeks to make loyalty oaths to the Jewish state a condition of citizenship, was rejected by Cabinet members Sunday. But a Channel 2 TV poll released this week found that 66 percent of Israelis surveyed said they supported the idea of a loyalty oath.

And many of the bill’s supporters in the government -- which include Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who made it a cornerstone of his Yisrael Beiteinu Party’s recent Knesset campaign -- have vowed to press forward with it. Read entire article at JTA Web site.