Finding Refuge: Why Palestine?

I've recently been asked to explain why efforts of Hannah Arendt--and others associated with the Zionist movement in the 1930s and '40s--to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine were justified (asked presumably because this contributed to the tragic conflict with, and eventual widespread displacement of, the indigenous Palestinian-Arab population). The questioner mistakenly assumed that other destinations, such as South Africa and Latin America, were readily open to Jews. I've pulled together a variety of sources to respond.

Places where Jews could find refuge in the 1930s and '40s were few and far between. Until the British imposed its infamous "White Paper" in 1939, limiting the legal entry of Jews to Palestine to a trickle, Palestine was the only destination where Jewish organizations could directly engage in mass rescue.

Early in the days of the Nazi regime, the Zionist movement negotiated to (in effect) ransom tens of thousands of German Jews. They broke an international boycott of Nazi Germany at the time with the "Transfer Agreement" to buy German goods to go with the 60,000 or more German Jews who found refuge in Palestine in the 1930s. There are anti-Zionists who argue that this episode proves that the Zionists were in league with the Nazis, but this is a very extreme and unfair interpretation.

The Nazis took heart from the difficulty German Jews found in being admitted almost anywhere else in large numbers, to move from expulsion and ghettoization to the “Final Solution” of genocide. In particular, the failure of the eight-day Évian Conference in July 1938 to agree on any plan for receiving Jewish refugees, or even to pass a resolution condemning Nazi antisemitism, reportedly emboldened the Nazis against the Jews.

In her blog (reprinting an article of hers in the Wall Street Journal), Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt describes James G. McDonald as “an American who served as League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and who passionately sought to sound the alarm about the dangers of Nazism.” In “Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945” (Indiana University Press, 2009), McDonald documented that President Franklin Roosevelt had made efforts to persuade other Western countries to take in Jews.

McDonald contended that Roosevelt supported using European colonies in Africa and Palestine, as well as Latin American countries, as places of refuge. But with the exception of Bolivia (cited as having taken in 20,000 Jews), these efforts largely came to naught and were abandoned altogether in 1940 when other priorities displaced FDR's focus.



I would add that FDR did not work for an American solution; he made no concerted effort for the U.S. to ease or lift its own quota barriers. It was only when faced with the threat of the public release of a scathing study from within his own Department of the Treasury, documenting the State Department’s hostility toward Jews, that the War Refugees Board was established as an executive agency in January 1944, providing some measure of relief---but clearly too little and too late.



Immigration to the U.S. was mostly closed off by the sharp quotas imposed on Southern and Eastern European countries in 1924 and the antisemitic policy directive imposed upon U.S. consular officials by Under Secretary of State Breckenridge Long in 1940. As disclosed by Professor David Wyman and other post-World War II historians, Long instructed consular personnel to process visas to Jews as slowly and parsimoniously as possible.

My own parents almost fell victim to this policy, as a consular official in Belgrade, Yugoslavia made my father go through totally unnecessary hoops before releasing the visas that were, by his own admission, already in his hand. If the Germans had attacked Yugoslavia just a bit earlier, this policy would have succeeded in getting my parents murdered. My father indicated to me that prior to this ultimate success, over two years of efforts to emigrate anywhere else—including England, Australia, Canada and South Africa—had all failed.

Historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper wrote “None Is Too Many,” on the near total closure of Canada to Jewish immigrants during this critical period. When I asked a Jewish acquaintance originally from South Africa, about the Nazi-era situation in that country, she indicated that the pro-Nazi sympathies of many Afrikaners, the most powerful ethnic group at the time, insured that this country too was mostly closed to Jews.

And when I inquired with Dr. Philip Mendes, an associate professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, about his family's experience, he emailed that his mother's aunt had to personally plead her case with the immigration minister in 1938, for his mother and her family to be allowed in from Czechoslovakia. Mendes wrote: “There was some rabid right-wing campaigns against Jewish entry both in the late 1930s and again after World War Two.”

Film on religious conflict fails at box office

The following is an abbreviated version of my full film review now online at the In These Times website:

It may be relevant that Agora does not emphasize the sensual and romantic qualities of Rachel Weisz.... [H]er star turn as Hypatia, a scholar and astronomer of pagan background who preaches tolerance and brotherhood in late fourth-century Alexandria, while scientifically probing the secrets of the solar system, is apparently not the stuff that draws Americans to the box office.

Agora is an English-language Spanish production ... that was highly prized internationally and Spain’s highest grossing film in 2009; yet it struggled for distribution in the United States before its release here on May 28. With a female intellectual as its hero and Christian fanatics as its villains, Agora’s limited American appeal is perhaps understandable. ...Weisz’s Hypatia struggles against the rising tide of bigotry as Christians seize power in Alexandria....

Interestingly, Weisz is an English Jew whose parents found refuge in Britain from the Nazis. Ashraf Barhom is a veteran Israeli-Arab actor (featured in The Syrian Bride, Paradise Now and The Kingdom) who plays Ammonius, the head of the Parabolani monks, an order of paramilitary Christian militants. The Parabolani remind one of the Taliban for their violent enforcement of a narrow-minded and woman-hating ideology of exclusive religious truth and social morality.

Christianity emerged from being a persecuted minority faith to becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire, following Emperor Constantine I’s mystical conversion experience .... Constantine not only profoundly changed the fate of Rome and its empire, but also enforced a new orthodoxy upon other Christians. And he forever transformed Christianity beyond its pacifist origins.

Agora reminds us that nothing better turns a revolutionary movement of the downtrodden toward fanaticism than long years of injustice and indignity at the hands of others.... This resonates today, whether in the odious acts of suicide bombers murdering innocent civilians or of ultra-nationalist settlers seizing land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem....

... Agora graphically depicts the eclipse of Greco-Roman paganism and the suppression of rational intellectual inquiry in the name of a rigid text-based orthodoxy. Agora also re-enacts a bloody pogrom against the Jews and the expulsion of this substantial community from Alexandria, a pattern tragically repeated in numerous places during the next 15 centuries. ....
(Read it all at InTheseTimes.org.)

More on '08 peace deal that floundered

We learn from MideastWeb.org of Neville Teller, a BBC news analyst, blogger and writer on this subject (and a self-described optimist). Teller blogs on the Palestinian peace proposal in response to Olmert's offer at the end of 2008:

It is not generally known that the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, initiated amid high hopes in Annapolis on 27 November 2007, spawned two potential peace deals before the talks collapsed in December 2008 in the wake of Israel's strike against the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.

One of the deals was the well-publicized offer from Ehud Olmert, made in the dying days of his premiership. The other – revealed in a TV interview only a few weeks ago by chief PA negotiator, Saeb Erekat – was a far-reaching, written peace proposal submitted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the Israeli government during the final days of the Bush administration. ...

Teller goes on to indicate that:

... either plan, if simply resurrected, would now be quite unacceptable to both Israeli and Arab opinion. Much water has flowed under the bridge since December 2008 – not least the strengthening of Hamas's hold over Gaza. ....

Other sticking points to a final agreement are, on the Israeli side, the demand for an unambiguous Palestinian acknowledgement of Israel as a Jewish state. The PA side are currently demanding an equally unambiguous declaration of a halt to all construction and development on the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a precondition to entering face-to-face discussions. Both issues seem little more than bargaining chips, relatively easily disposed of – provided the game is actually being played out....

Read the entire piece at Teller's blog, A Mid-East Journal.

Optimistic note from Martin Indyk

Martin S. Indyk, a former two-time US ambassador to Israel, now a vice president and director in foreign policy for the Brookings Institution (a liberal policy think tank), is somewhat bullish on the prospects for positive diplomatic developments between Israel and the Palestinians. His July 12th "Postcard from Jerusalem and Ramallah" (reflecting his visit last month) begins as follows:

Ramallah looks like a boomtown. The West Bank economy continues to grow at a robust 11 percent, fuelling a Palestinian desire for normal life after a decade of intifadah-inspired suffering. There is no appetite for a return to violence among West Bank Palestinians; a sentiment that appears to be shared by their counterparts in Gaza, where the easing of Israel’s closure holds hope for a new beginning.

Strangely, the Gaza flotilla crisis seems to have bolstered the sense among the West Bank leadership that it is time to try to strike the deal with Israel. Abu Mazen, buoyed by his meetings at the White House and with American Jewish leaders, appears to be ready to move into direct negotiations with Bibi Netanyahu. He is flexible about the necessary fig leaf to make this possible – he is just looking for a credible explanation he can give to the Arab League, which mandated his participation in the current “proximity talks.” If Israel were to permit Palestinian police to resume control of “B Area” villages (where the Israel Defense Forces retain overall security control), and declare that there would no longer be IDF incursions into “A Area” cities (where the Palestinian Security Forces are supposed to have full responsibility) that would probably do it. He intends to continue a campaign of public diplomacy designed to convince Israelis and their American Jewish supporters that they have a Palestinian partner for peacemaking. He is even ready to address the Knesset.

In Israel, the public mood is in flux. While Prime Minister Netanyahu was preparing to depart for another meeting with President Obama in the White House, twenty thousand Israeli citizens were marching on his residence to demand that he negotiate the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit with Hamas. The price for that deal is well known: the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners including 425 Hamas terrorists some responsible for the worst attacks on Israeli civilians. The Israeli people seem to want their leader just to get on with it.

The Israeli public also knows the price for peace with the Palestinians: the relinquishing of all the West Bank, save the settlement blocs, shared sovereignty in Jerusalem, and a deal on Palestinian refugees that compensates them for their suffering but denies them the ability to return to Israel. Until now, Israelis have shown little interest in pressing their leaders to make that deal. They felt there was “no partner” on the Palestinian side, so there was no point. But that was before the advent of an American president who defined the U.S. national interest as requiring a settlement of the Palestinian problem. And that was before their government bungled the interception of a flotilla bearing aid for Gaza, triggering a wave of international condemnation.

Click here to read entire article online.

Looking anew at the neocons

In The New Republic online, Adam Kirsch reviews a new and apparently good book on the neoconservatives by Justin Vaïsse, a European author: "Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement." This is the latest of a growing library of works on the neocons. Back in 2006, an article of my own on this subject was published in the online journal of Engage, a British web project that combats antisemitism and the demonization of Israel.

The following is from Kirsch's introductory paragraph:

... as it became clear that the American invasion of Iraq would result not in a quick “mission accomplished” but a long, bloody occupation, a certain narrative of what went wrong began to take root in some precincts of the anti-war left. The decision to invade Iraq, this story went, was the result of the government falling under the sway of a dangerous ideology, called neoconservatism. The neocons, as they were often derisively called, believed in the naked assertion of American power—in a kind of imperialism, really, which gave America the right to invade other countries and remake the world at will. Such adventures might be cloaked in the rhetoric of promoting democracy, but in truth the neoconservatives were anti-democratic, because their intellectual guru, the University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss, had taught them that the ruling elite should keep the masses in ignorance. At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, the neoconservatives did not really care about American interests; their primary goal was to remake the Middle East for the benefit of Israel, and the invasion of Iraq was really carried out at the behest of Likud.

Kirsch concludes importantly as follows:

[Vaïsse] is strongly critical of neoconservatives—for their hubris about American power, for their tendency to exaggerate threats and underestimate dangers, and for seeing states such as Iraq as bigger threats than terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. But unlike most critics, he sympathizes with neoconservative aspirations and anxieties. .... And he is very tough about the canards that have grown up around the word “neoconservative”—in particular, the ludicrous overestimation of the influence of Strauss, which often goes along with a shallow or malicious misreading of his work.

As a result, Vaïsse is perhaps a little too careful to minimize the role of Jews ... in neoconservative thinking. It is quite true, as he says, that it is not “‘in essence’ a Jewish movement”: not all neoconservatives are Jews, most Jews are not neoconservatives, and neoconservatives certainly do not place “Jewish interests” ahead of “American interests.” Still, I think that the appeal of neoconservatism to many Jews can be related to lessons that they draw from Jewish history.

Neoconservatism can be defined as aggressive support for (classical) liberalism, and it is clear that the fate of the Jews has absolutely been connected to the fate of liberalism. Where free speech, the free market, individual rights, and tolerance flourish, Jews flourish; where they are destroyed, Jews are destroyed. ... The desire to defend and to extend American freedoms is what leads many Jews to be left-liberals; but it is only a different interpretation of what that same defense requires, and who freedom’s enemies really are, that leads some Jews to be neoconservatives. And there is nothing sinister about that.

David Twersky (1950-2010), z''l

David Twersky--a veteran journalist, Labor Zionist activist and one-time kibbutznik and Israeli Labor Party official--passed away last Friday after a long struggle with cancer. I knew him only slightly, but felt indebted to him for publishing a number of my reviews and news commentaries in the New Jersey Jewish News, one of the first places that actually paid me for writing, which he edited (first as the Metro-West Jewish community federation paper that expanded into other New Jersey Jewish communities) from 1993 into the next decade.

Because I was not a student Zionist activist, and I later entered the Americans for Progressive Israel/Mapam-oriented Zionist stream, rather than his Habonim-Laborite ranks, I did not know him as a young man. But a number of people active in API or in left-Zionist student politics in the late '60s/early '70s did know him well and feel his passing keenly. In 1970, he become national chair of the North American Jewish Students Network and editor of the Jewish Student Press Service.

He made aliyah in 1974 and was in the group that revived Kibbutz Gezer in those years. He worked in international affairs for the Labor Party and edited Spectrum, the party's English-language political monthly. He also started the English-language literary and political magazine, Shdemot, of the combined kibbutz movements. After serving in the Lebanon war in 1982, he became a legislative aide associated with such dovish Labor young Turks as Avram Burg and Yossi Beilin. In 1986, he returned to the U.S. out of family health concerns.

He joined the staff of the English-language Forward from its inception in 1990. As the Forward's Washington correspondent, he scooped a number of major stories, some of which were difficult for friends and colleagues on the left to swallow. In the words of J.J. Goldberg, an old friend and colleague who writes of David in The Forward: "Most famously, he unearthed information that sabotaged the job prospects of Johnnetta Cole, a Clinton transition team appointee who was considered a leading candidate for secretary of education, and Lani Guinier, a law professor who was nominated to be assistant attorney general for civil rights."

In trolling the Web for writings on his demise, I discovered that the defunct print neoconservative daily, The New York Sun, still has an active and rather impressive website. From The Sun's editorial on his life and death, I've discovered that after supporting George W. Bush for President in 2004, David returned to the Democratic fold in 2008.

In the last years of his working life, he wrote a foreign affairs column for The Sun and also worked as director of international affairs for the American Jewish Congress. I had asked him how comfortable he felt as a liberal writing for The Sun; he pointed out that Jack Newfield (still around at the time) was also a liberal columnist for the Sun. Now both are gone.

Mainly out of concern for Israel, David (as I have indicated) had stopped being much of a liberal for a while. He would occasionally send me a sharp email questioning some position of the Meretz party that annoyed him. Like him, I value analysis over ideology and have not always followed a strictly liberal line, but I didn't stray quite as far as he. It's nice to know that he had voted for Obama.

In working with the American Jewish Congress, he participated in AJ Congress's lurch to the right in recent years out of concern for Israel. There is a certain poignancy in his death coming in the very week that I was learning of the demise of the AJ Congress, a once bellwether liberal institution in the American Jewish community--see The Forward piece by Jerome Chanes on the history and legacy of AJ Congress. Congress suspended operations on the very day that David died. May their memories be for a blessing, as we Jews traditionally say.

Talks of Peace: Useful Moments Wasted

This past week, Shalom TV posted a video on its website of a roundtable discussion it held called Netanyahu /Abbas: Obstacle To Peace?. Ostensibly a discussion of the meeting recently held between Bibi and Obama in Washington, it quickly devolved from open discussion to agitated and unproductive debate, in which Ron Skolnik, Executive Director of Meretz USA, faced a barrage of typically center-right talking points which place blame predominantly on the Palestinians for the status quo, and because of his opposition to many of their assumptions and claims, was cast unfairly as a representative of left-wing, Palestinian interests.

The roundtable discussion began with a question from the moderator about the consequences of the recent Bibi-Obama meeting. Ron was asked to answer the question first. The video showed him saying that we should not put too much stock into this meeting or any one particular event but instead should situate them within longer-term historical trends, which reveal that US-Israel relations are in fact changing over time; Shalom TV cut out Ron’s more holistic answer, which discussed the consequences of the Occupation for Israeli’s stability and international reputation. The other commentators believed that the meeting was important because it revealed Obama’s increasing warmth toward Israel. They thought that his tone earlier in his term favored the Palestinians and not Israel, a political move which came at the expense of Israel’s security needs. This theme, that is, the US government’s neglect of Israel’s security, recurred in subsequent conversations.

The moderator then moved on to a discussion about obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace. It was precisely at this point that the discussion transformed into a left-right debate. Ron was asked to answer the question first, since the moderator believed that he was likely to have the strongest opinion against Israel on this matter. Indeed, Ron did note Israel’s complicity in the status quo, but emphasized that Israel was one part of the problem and not the whole. More specifically, he argued that Israel’s current settlement policy suggests to the Palestinians that they are not genuinely interested in meaningful peace and reconciliation. This comment sparked hostile questioning predominantly from the moderator, a participant in a discussion who is normally charged with maintaining neutrality. However, he questioned Ron on the subject of settlements, asking him why the instatement of a settlement moratorium cannot be understood as a good enough gesture to the Palestinians. Ron replied that the moratorium is in reality more of a “chill” or deceleration: Palestinians cannot see a palpable improvement in the status quo even with the moratorium in place since Israel still allows construction. He noted that the moratorium may be even less meaningful if it is lifted in September.

The moderator and other commentators continued to press Ron on the issue of settlements, asking him about his problem with building up settlements which already exist; noting that Israel had taken down settlements already; and that the construction of settlements creates jobs for Palestinians. Ron mostly re-iterated his earlier point, arguing that the continuation of any settlement construction undermines the trust of the Palestinians.

The debate moved naturally into a discussion of Palestinian reluctance to come to the table and talk to Israel about creating peace, and ultimately, to their unwillingness to enact tangible trust-building measures. Again, a typical topic of discussion in these fora. The consensus of the moderator and other commentators was a feeling of frustration and mistrust, a tendency to blame the Palestinians for not doing enough while leaving Israel blameless. Israel was willing to give up most everything, they said, if they could be assured that Palestinians would not attack them. The onus was clearly on the Palestinians, and not on Israel, to take the next positive step toward peace. Ron responded by saying that the Palestinians cannot continue to come to talks that they know will be empty, as they will look like puppets of the Occupation to their people and will become too weak to create long-term change.

The moderator and commentators would not accept this, and were instead quick to question whether it was Abbas and not Bibi who made the talks empty. Ron then named a number of trust-building measures that the Palestinians have initiated, most notably its establishment of an effective domestic security apparatus. The moderator was quick to respond that Abbas only established this out of self-interest, that he was still ideologically against the existence of the state of Israel and was only making these gestures as a pragmatic move.

This segment was clearly an exhibition of the “Israel can do no wrong/the Palestinians can do no right” voice on the conflict. Never did the moderators or other commentators concede that Israel had erred, or that the Palestinians had made gestures toward peace. Indeed, they did not accept any of the examples Ron brought up which showed that the Palestinians were working to build Israeli trust. For example, although they noted that the warming of Obama’s tone toward Israel was a positive and productive step, they would not accept that the warming of the Palestinians’ tone toward Israel over time was similarly positive and productive. The moderator called upon the Palestinians to show the state of Israel on their maps, without demanding that the Israeli Ministry of Education put the Green Line on textbook maps.

The debate amounted to the perpetuation of a long-ago established echo chamber of mistrust, hostility, and nerves, one which excluded the views of Ron Skolnik, Meretz USA, and many other Jews and non-Jews worldwide. These are the precise moments, in which different viewpoints are invited to the table to talk about peace and social justice in Israel and the future Palestinian state, that these echo chambers should open, and ideally, should begin to erode. We as a Jewish community must be more open and frank in our discussions, accepting differences as useful to our progress as a people and a nation. I personally do not look forward to a future in which my Jewish peers will still wring their hands and lament at the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let us use this moment and moments like it to improve, to move forward and support more meaningful conversations and more genuine teamwork towards peace.

To see the full segment, visit http://www.fliqz.com/aspx/permalinkblank.aspx?vid=1f865ed49b3845288b415ad5b48fa24f

Film on ancient religious conflict still resonates

'Agora' is an English-language Spanish production that was highly prized internationally but has not been a commercial success in the US. With a female intellectual as its hero and Christian fanatics as its villains, perhaps one can see why such a big film has a small American audience.

Rachel Weisz, a Jewish actress of some note from England, plays the central role of Hypatia, a scholar of pagan background who preaches tolerance and brotherhood against the rising tide of bigotry that takes hold in late 4th and early 5th century Alexandria. Ashraf Barhom, an Israeli Arab actor, plays Ammonius, the head of the Parabolani monks, a violent order of paramilitary Christian militants, who remind me of the Taliban.

This is the time when Christianity suddenly emerged from a persecuted minority faith to being the new state religion of the Roman Empire. With Justin Pollard, co-author of The Rise and Fall of Alexandria (2007), as historical adviser, 'Agora' graphically depicts not only the eclipse of Greco-Roman paganism, and the suppression of rational intellectual inquiry in the name of a rigid religious orthodoxy, but also the brutal oppression and exile of the large Jewish minority in Alexandria. It is here, perhaps for the first time, that Jews are subject to the charge of deicide (as in "they killed our lord").

'Agora' is a warning of what happens when one religious authority alone exercises total state power: what Iran and Saudi Arabia already experience and of what some other Muslim-majority countries (not to mention Israel and the US, to some degree) are at risk of becoming.

Kristof for nonviolence led by women

Many of us feminists thought to do what Nicholas Kristof suggests in "Waiting for Gandhi", to encourage women to come to the border between Israel and the Palestinians. Perhaps this is an idea whose time has come. I quote from his NY Times column below. -- Lilly

.... Bilin is one of several West Bank villages experimenting with [non-violent] methods [another is Budrus]....

Most of the marchers were Palestinians, but some were also Israeli Jews and foreigners who support the Palestinian cause. ... At first the mood was festive and peaceful....

But then a group of Palestinian youths began to throw rocks at Israeli troops. That’s the biggest challenge: many Palestinians define “nonviolence” to include stone-throwing.

.... But imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead. What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world — particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.

Kristof names Ayed Morrar as a possible Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King:

[Morrar says that] Israel has a right to protect itself by building a fence — but on its own land, not on the West Bank.

Most Palestinian demonstrations are overwhelmingly male, but in Budrus women played a central role. They were led by Mr. Morrar’s quite amazing daughter, Iltezam Morrar. Then 15, she once blocked an Israeli bulldozer by diving in front of it (the bulldozer retreated, and she was unhurt).

Israeli security forces knew how to deal with bombers but were flummoxed by peaceful Palestinian women. Even when beaten and fired on with rubber bullets, the women persevered. Finally, Israel gave up. It rerouted the security fence to bypass nearly all of Budrus.

The saga is chronicled in this year’s must-see documentary “Budrus,” a riveting window into what might be possible if Palestinians adopted civil disobedience on a huge scale. In a sign of interest in nonviolent strategies, the documentary is scheduled to play in dozens of West Bank villages in the coming months, as well as at international film festivals. ...

Reach Out, Take Part, Make Peace

I made a movie, in Israel, as a brief portrait of Israeli peace activism. It includes interviews with Peter Beinart himself, as well as Israeli activist groups ACRI, B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Ir Amim and Shalom Achshav.

It's posted on J Street U's Street Cred Blog:
http://www.jstreetu.org/latest/reach-out-take-part-make-peace

With hope,
Moriel

Interview with Peter Beinart

The Haaretz Friday supplement carried an interview with Peter Beinart, the American Jewish journalist who created a stir with his NY Review of Books blast at the American Jewish establishment over its overly accepting attitude toward intolerant trends and illiberal policies in Israel, which he sees as contributing to a serious alienation from Zionism by many young American Jews. It's a long article from which I've selected a central passage. Beinart's responses are in quotation marks:

If we look at your past writings, you seem to have undergone a transformation in regard to Israel.

“First of all, I had not been writing that much about Israel. Like many people, I was hesitant to write about it too much because I think I was conflicted internally about being very publicly critical of Israel. I was also concerned about how some of my friends would feel about it. There’s also a feeling that our lives are very easy, and that we sit there in America, and our children don’t go into the army. But I think a couple of things happened. For me, I think the rise of [Avigdor] Lieberman was a significant moment. What upset me was that, the minute he emerged and people in America started to hear about him, the reaction from most American Jews was that there’s no problem here: he’s misunderstood. They would always say, ‘He’s for civil marriage’ − as though that had anything to do with his views on the Arabs. I thought it was like the frog in boiling water. At a certain point, you have to have the capacity to be outraged.”

Beinart is the son of South African parents who immigrated to the United States. His grandmother was born in Egypt and spent time in the Belgian Congo. “I learned my Zionism from my grandmother, who always said that one day we would all go on aliya to Israel. That was a Zionist perception of Israel as a haven,” Beinart says. “But I think that most young American Jews don’t feel that way. They feel America’s perfectly safe. They feel the opposite: Israel’s dangerous, America’s safe. That made me think that we in the United States need to create a different kind of Zionism. I think that if there is anything that might attract these young Jews and connect them to Israel, it’s precisely the voices that are now under attack. Human rights activists and liberal journalists in Israel are what revived my Zionism.”

You attend an Orthodox synagogue and gave your children very Jewish names.

“Yes, Ezra and Naomi. I think it’s important to provide kids in the United States with a sense of a particular Jewish identity in a whole series of ways. The names are the superficial elements, but still valuable. In our society, even much more than the other diaspora communities like Canada or Australia or Britain, the pull of assimilation is extremely strong. American elite Christians have welcomed American Jews with open arms and said, ‘Marry our children. Please marry our children.’ So I like the fact that my son, even though he’s only 4, because he’s gone to shul [synagogue] every week since he was born, and to a Jewish preschool, feels he has a connection to being Jewish that, if we hadn’t done those things, he wouldn’t have at all.”

Marching to a different tune

Beinart’s warning about the mood among young American Jews is based in large measure on the research of Prof. Steven Cohen from Hebrew Union College. Cohen found that Jewish identity and commitment to Israel have weakened in the community’s younger generation. Beinart also draws on studies by a leading Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, who last week published new findings showing a serious blow to Israel’s image among the general American public as well, mainly after the incident of the intercepted ship in the Free Gaza flotilla. Luntz’s research, which was commissioned by The Israel Project, an organization committed to improving Israel’s image, warns of “dangerous deterioration” in the attitude of Americans toward Israeli policy. The findings, which were transmitted to the Prime Minister’s Office and reported by Channel 10, show that only 34 percent of all Americans support the Israeli action against the flotilla. Luntz notes that whenever Israeli spokespersons hurl accusations against the international community, they lose their audience − and this in the country that is considered Israel’s greatest friend. ...

Kristof on the 'other Israel'---good & moral

I went to a leading edge Israeli film the other night, entitled "Andato." It was a first feature of an Israeli filmmaker about a world without dreams, a dreamless society, and two dreamers who find each other, but are caught by security police and are made to forget how to dream. Shot in 35 mm stylistically it reminded me of the hard clunky industrial lines of the British film "Brazil." I asked myself, what does it mean? A deep and disturbing film.

People in my life who I highly value have called my attention to this NY Times piece by Nicholas Kristof. It is a worthwhile read. And below, I include my friend Jonah's comments about it:

You may have seen this [Kristof piece] already, and it's hardly news to you, but I just had to share with you how glad I am that Kristof is telling it like it is: that the good and the bad exist together everywhere, no less in Israel. He always does so, and I'm a big fan, but this one struck me with particular force.

This is what I'm talking about when I say that I expect better of a Jewish state: these rabbis are upholding Jewish values at the same time that the settler/fundamentalist contingent is making a mockery of them. I know they are out there, and am hoping that they prevail over the forces of tyranny, racism, and corruption--much as I wish the same for people fighting injustice in the US or anywhere else.

It is a source of hope (and this is coming from a devout cynic) that Israeli Jews are taking a stand as to what their country should and should not represent, that they are refusing to give up in the face of desperately bad odds, and that people are paying attention. I maintain my position that a peace agreement is the only way of really overcoming the atmosphere of hatred and suspicion that permeates the whole damn Levant....

More on conversation with Ibish

The Web editor of In These Times required a 2,500 word limitation for the online article. The ISRAEL HORIZONS version, pending for the fall, will include almost all of my discussion with Hussein Ibish. What I particularly regret having had to exclude from the ITT piece is the following further response from Hussein Ibish to my question on how he felt about the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state:

... it's perfectly reasonable and morally appropriate for everybody to be concerned and interested about the rights of the Palestinian minority of Israeli citizens in Israel proper. But I don't think this is an appropriate subject for negotiations between Israel and the PLO. It introduces another complication in an already overburdened negotiation agenda and blurs the crucial distinction between Israel and the occupation that should be the basis for all Palestinian diplomacy.

People worry about the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the context of a two-state agreement, but I completely fail to understand the logic of this. Israel's Palestinian citizens already have a legal status that allows them to pursue their rights within the Israeli political and legal system, and they've been partly successful in doing that already. It strikes me that not only is this the path forward for them to secure their full rights as Israeli citizens, but that nothing conceivable could possibly strengthen their position more than the realization of a two-state end of conflict agreement. Of course there will always be ethnic and religious discrimination because of certain prejudices in Israel and everywhere around the world.

I don't think we should kid ourselves that human beings are suddenly going to become reasonable creatures across the board. However, it seems to me that most of the systematic and onerous forms of discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel have their origins in the fact that these Israelis have kinship, narrative, cultural and ideological ties to the other side in a conflict. In other words, they're considered a possible fifth column, a potential security problem, as well as an anomaly within the "Jewish and democratic state."

It seems to me obvious that an end to the conflict would largely, and over time probably entirely, remove this powerful and definitive obstacle to the complete integration of Palestinian citizens as full citizens of Israel without legal forms of discrimination, and raise the barriers to their participation in all sectors of society. Moreover, Palestinian citizens of Israel would no longer be cut off from the Arab world, as they largely have been until now, but would rather be poised to be Israel's ambassadors to the Arabs, literally and figuratively, especially in terms of business and commerce, as well as culture. In fact, I think it's obvious how much the Palestinian citizens of Israel have to gain in any peace agreement, even if their specific issues are not subject to negotiation, and I just don't understand how people fail to see this. I think the issue is raised really in order to criticize the concept of negotiations and a negotiated agreement rather than out of any thoughtful, serious approach to advancing the real, practical interests of the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Candid conversation with Arab-American activist

Hussein Ibish was a star at the recent conference of the Jewish Academic Network for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (JANIP). He has long been an activist in, and a spokesperson for, the Arab-American community, including a six-year stint as communications director for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Currently a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, he blogs independently at Ibishblog.com.

Although he sees no alternative to a negotiated agreement with Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian territories and the conflict, he has been writing recently of three additional tactics: State and institution building by the Palestinian Authority (as being pursued by PA Prime Minister Fayyad), nonviolent popular protests against the occupation, and economic measures aimed at the settlements.

Ibish has a Ph.D. in comparative literature and is the author most recently of What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal. An abbreviated version of our conversation is now online at the In These Times magazine website. The ITT article provides Dr. Ibish's responses to the following:

1. How would you prevent Palestinians from doing construction work in settlements? Would you endorse strong-armed tactics, legislation or something else?

2. Hasn’t there been some progress for Palestinian interests from the era of negotiations which began in Madrid in 1991 and the backchannel Oslo process that began about a year later?

3. The failure of Oslo had everything to do with errors and malicious deeds by both sides and the United States: the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the wave of terror attacks in Feb-March ‘96 that led to the first election of Netanyahu, blunders (perhaps by all sides) in the negotiations at Camp David in 2000, Arafat’s mistaken belief that the violence of the second intifada could be controlled and used in such a way as to bolster his negotiating hand. Do you agree?

4. Is there something you’d like to say or ask about the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state or what such a Jewish state should be?

A more complete version of our conversation will be published in the fall in ISRAEL HORIZONS. Click here for more on my discussion with Dr. Ibish.

'Five-state solution' of Daniel Gordis

I usually don't send out pieces by Gordis [who is affiliated with the neoconservative Shalem Center], but this one from his column in The Jerusalem Post is humorous, if not tragic:

At long last, even if years too late, Israelis woke up this week to the realization that we face yet another existential threat. Yes, it took 100,000 "Men in Black" in downtown Jerusalem to make the point, but finally, we get it. As dangerous as are the delegitimization of Israel and the specter of a nuclear Iran, Israel is no less threatened by a growing population of religious fundamentalists who insist on the right to racial discrimination in their schools and who utterly reject the legitimacy and authority of the Supreme Court. They reject, in other words, the idea of a "Jewish and democratic" state. [....]

THE HAND-WRINGING of the past week suggests that most Israelis believe that there's little we can do. I disagree. With apologies to Jonathan Swift, I offer the following modest proposal for our collective consideration. Those who argue that the two-state solution will not work are right. We need not a two-state solution, but a five-state solution.

1. Hamastan will be created on the territory now known as the Gaza Strip, and will be ruled by the same people who already run it. Like Iran and North Korea, Hamastan will survive through sheer force and the use of terror, until its citizens rebel. Its borders are already internationally recognized. It already has a flag, and international sympathy in abundance.

Yes, it's short on many other commodities, so one presumes that even as Israel continues to blockade it (for it will remain sworn on Israel's destruction), it will have to continue to let in massive humanitarian aid, either by sea or by land. But perhaps Egypt will open its borders and let goods flow in from the south. After all, it's not as if Hamastan will be sworn on Egypt's destruction. In Hamastan, in short, nothing but the name changes.

2. Fatahland, on the other hand, will rise from what is today the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria. It, too, thankfully already has a flag. It could become a democracy, though probably a limping one at best, considering the Palestinians' record of creating transparent, democratic institutions. True, we might be pleasantly surprised, and its democracy might flourish. Equally possible, though, is that absent Israel's efforts at propping up the scaffolding of its democratically inclined leaders, Fatahland could slip into dictatorship. The jury is out, but whether Fatahland is democratic or just another version of the brutal regime of Hamastan would really not be Israel's problem.

Fortunately, even if Fatahland begins as a despotic regime, however, that could eventually change. For as Americans like John Adams and his compatriots knew, as millions of former Soviet citizens learned and Zionists before May 1948 understood well, you can earn freedom when you want it badly enough and are willing to risk - and sometimes to die - for it. Perhaps Fatahlandians will really crave freedom enough to be willing to die for it. They've proven that there are those of them willing to die to kill us; now we'd see if they're willing to die to make themselves free.

3. Palestine will be the country of today's Israeli Arabs. Increasingly, Israeli Arabs are wholly unambiguous about the fact that they reject the notion of Israel as a Jewish state. Adalah is only one of the Israel-Arab advocacy groups that have openly called for ending the Jewish character of the State of Israel. And the citizens of Umm el-Fahm, Israeli Arab citizens who rioted after the recent flotilla incident, continuously make it clear that they want a different type of government. It's time to give them one. Though its borders would have to be negotiated, Palestine would be based in the "Triangle" section of the Galilee where such sentiment is strongest. And we'd have to figure out how to handle the other pockets of such sentiment, which are not geographically contiguous with the Triangle.

Palestine would probably be democratic. It would simply be liberated from the oppressive Jewish regime that it can't bear, and would be free to chart its own course. And amazingly, Israel might have a neighboring Arab state with which it's never been at war.

Alas, Palestine does not have a flag. The PA's flag will be taken by Fatahland. And Israel's flag, based as it is on the image of a tallit, would be thoroughly unacceptable. Designing a flag will thus be one of the first challenges to which the leaders of the new state will have to turn their attention.

4. Haredia will be the ultra-Orthodox state. Based primarily in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Mea She'arim, Geula and Sanhedria, along with Bnei Brak and perhaps a few other localities, Haredia would be the country that last week's 100,000 plus protesters clearly desire. It would have a Supreme Council of Rabbinic Elders, not the vile secular Supreme Court that so offends them. They would be free to do whatever they wished with their schools, and with their Sephardim. They could impose a halachicly based system of law as other countries have done with Shari'a. They could virtually guarantee the exclusion of all the nefarious influences they so deeply object to in contemporary Israel. They could impose whatever standards for conversion they wished, without causing a rift with the rest of the Jewish world, which would actually have more in common with Turkey than it will with Haredia.

Today's haredim already have a political party called Degel Hatorah, the flag of Torah. Surely, they'll have some ideas for a flag.

How Haredia will defend itself against attacks from elements emanating from Hamastan and Fatahland is, admittedly, not entirely clear. Defense, after all, takes some serious commitment, a willingness to risk and lots of training. There is a real possibility, unfortunately, that Haredia will be utterly unable to defend itself, and Haredians (some will just call them Haredim, probably) will find themselves the most abandoned and vulnerable group in the Middle East. What will the world say about that? Will there be the same outpouring of concern that there is now for the Palestinians of Gaza? We'll learn a lot about the world from watching how many other countries come to the verbal and physical defense of Haredia facing its Arab neighbors all alone.

5. Israel will be the region's Jewish and democratic state. It doesn't have recognized borders, but at least it does have a flag. It will be mostly Jewish, though some Israeli Arabs will decide to remain Israelis instead of becoming Palestinians, and they should be welcomed. The same with Haredim - a few might be willing to recognize the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and might decide to live in a Zionist entity. If they want to go to the army and are willing to live off their own salaries and not off government subsidies, then they, too, should be welcomed.

ISRAEL WILL be a broad tent. It will include religious and secular, right wing and left wing, free marketers and those more inclined to socialism. It will be home to Im Tirtzu, a right-of-center student organization seeking to restore Zionism to Israeli campuses that countenances no criticism of Israel whatsoever, and Breaking the Silence, former IDF soldiers - and other peaceniks who've now glommed on to them - who travel across the world telling anyone who'll listen about the excesses of Israeli power. It will be home to Avigdor Lieberman and Naomi Chazan. ...

His entire piece may be accessed online by clicking here http://danielgordis.org/2010/06/24/the-five-state-solution/print/.