In this editorial titled "A Moral War," the Jerusalem Post seems to recognize how isolated Israel is becoming, in world opinion, and even among some Jews.
Among those troubled by Israel's actions are Jews whose connections to things Jewish are limited to the occasional bagel or lox sandwich. They too march to make clear they're nothing like those pitiless Israelis...
What about if I read Norman Finkelstein and Alan Dershowitz? Does that make me Jewish? The Post also attacks J Street, whose back I've got right now.
The folks at J Street believe "there is no military solution to what is fundamentally a political conflict...." Hamas would beg to differ. Indeed, Hamas has been trying to prove the contrary, forcing Israel's hand.
What Israel's critics need to understand is that there can be no political solution while we are under Palestinian bombardment.
This is deeply deluded. It is on this basis--"bombardment"--that Palestinians have been denied the right of self-determination for 60 years. As if they're the only bombardiers.
They'll be attacking him too
http://www.newsweek.com/id/177716?from=rss
JPo is losing the argument:
by Rabbi Arthur Wasko
'It gets harder, Shabbat by Shabbat, to say without weeping the words "Shabbat shalom" – a sabbath of peace — when the present government of Israel has used last week's Shabbat and yesterday's to massively increase the level of its violence as a response to the violence of Hamas.
The ground invasion of Gaza that began yesterday/ Shabbat is likely to kill many many Palestinans and Israelis. "Shabbat shalom" could instead have meant seeking such elements of "shalom" as ending the blockade of Gaza and ending the assassination of Hamas leaders in exchange for an end to rocket attacks on Israel. — As 10,000 Israelis, marching yesterday in Tel Aviv, were urging.
On The Shalom Center's website (lead story at link to
) is our analysis of alternatives to the present death machine, including our approach to building the politico-religious base in America to make those alternatives real.
And at the same time, we need to resist recurrent efforts by some Jews to define what is kosher for other Jews to say and do — even when they are urgently trying to protect Israel from attack.'
At link to opednews.com
See also "President-Elect Obama, You Must NOT Be Silent"
link to opednews.com
I just supported JStreet with a donation to let them know that I am grateful for the position they have taken. They represent a sane policy towards the Middle East. By the way, I'm not Jewish.
Rabbi Lerner on Israel in Gaza
Posted Friday, January 02 2009 @ 12:43 PM PST
Rabbi Lerner refines previous statements on the current situation in Gaza.
Israel in Gaza
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
January 2, 2009
*
Israel is still using a strategy of domination in its struggle with Hamas, trying to use force to gain security. But this is a recipe for endless war.
Gaza, December 31, 2008
Israelâs attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but dumb.
No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighboring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialist South Americans bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for the US to mobilize a counter-attack. Israel has every right to respond.
But the kind of response matters.
Massive bombings of the sort that have thus far killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded 1,000 other civilians is a classic example of a disproportionate response.
Before Israelâs massive bombing, the Hamas bombings that began when the previous ceasefire ran out had not (thank God) killed any one. The reason is obvious: Hamas has no airplanes, no tanks, nothing more than the weapons of the powerlessâlimited range mortars with limited accuracy. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamasâ indiscriminate bombing of population centers is a crime against humanity, so is Israelâs massive attack against civilians (in addition to those killed thus far in Gaza, there are the thousands killed by Israel in the years of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza). Israel's human rights violations during the cease fire included a massive cut off of food and other vital necessities–a crime against international law.
On the other hand, any understanding of the situation must also include acknowledgment of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder faced by Israelis living under the constant threat of terrorism, to which the katyushka bombings, however ineffective militarily, contribute massively. Living under constant threat of attack, plus hearing the leader of Iran talk about wiping Israel off the map, is a background condition that shapes Israelis ability to be so insensitive to the human damage they have caused by the Occupation. Conversely, the ongoing trauma of expulsion and the Occupation that has contributed to the ongoing ethical insensitivity of many Palestinians to the suffering that they cause Israelis by engaging in terror attacks against civilians. In short, compassion for both sides is a desparate necessity.
Hamas had respected the previously negotiated ceasefire except when Israel used the ceasefire as cover to make assassination raids against Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Arguing that these raids were hardly a manifestation of ceasefire, Hamas would, as symbolic protest, allow the release of rocket fire (usually hitting no targets). But when the issue of continuing the ceasefire came up, Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition bordering on starvation, Hamas insisted that the borders be opened to counter Israeli attempts to starve the Gazans into submission. And in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, it asks for the release of a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
Hamas has made it clear that it would accept the terms of the Saudi Arabian peace agreement, though it would never formally recognize Israel. It would live peacefully in a two state arrangement, but it would never acknowledge Israelâs âright to exist.â This position is unnecessarily provocative, and represents deep self-destructiveness on the part of Palestinians who believe that this failure to acknowledge Israelâs rights is the only symbolic weapon they have left. To many Israelis, trapped in their own history as survivors of genocide and oppression, Hamasâ refusal to give official recognition is a way of saying, âWeâll wait till we have adequate military power, and then weâll break any de facto truce and ceasefire and use that power to wipe out Israel, so just give us time.â Some Hamas people have actually said that publicly. Similarly, there are members of the Knesset who say that they will never accept anything less than the total expulsion ("transfer") of all Palesitnians to neighboring Arab states.
How do we get out of these dynamics that lead to the current situation in which a small number of Israelis and a huge number of Palestinians are killed or maimed?
The first step is for the world to demand an immediate ceasefire. That ceasefire should be imposed by the United Nations and backed unequivocally by the US. Its terms must include the following:
A. Hamas stops all firing of missiles, bombs, or any other violent action originating from the West Bank or Gaza, and cooperates in actively jailing anyone from any faction that attempts to break this ceasefire from territory controlled by Hamas;
B. Israel stops all bombing, targeted assassinations, or any other violent actions aimed at activists, militants, or suspected terrorists in the West Bank or Gaza, and uses the full force of its army to prevent any further attacks on Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, including Hebron, from any Israeli citizen or anyone based in territory under the effective control of Israel;
C. Israel opens the border with Gaza and allows free access to and from Israel by Gazans and Palestinians, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons. Israel allows free travel of food, gas, electricity, water, and consumer goods and materials including from land, air, and sea, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons or materials typically used for weapons;
D. Israel agrees to release all Palestinians held in detention with or without trial or in prison and to return those Palesitnians to the West Bank or Gaza according to the choice of the detainees or prisoners. Hamas agrees to release Gilad Shalit and anyone else being held involuntarily by Palestinian forces;
E. Both sides agree to invite an international force to implement these agreements;
F. Both sides agree to end teaching and/or advocacy of violence against the other side in and outside mosques, educational institutions, the press, the media, etc;
G. This cease-fire is agreed to for the next twenty years. NATO, the UN, and the US all agree to enforce this agreement and impose severe sanctions on either side should either be determined to be in violation of the conditions.
These steps would make a huge difference by isolating the most radical members of each side from the mainstream, making it possible to begin negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people on a much broader and deeper set of issues.
The basic condition for creating peace is to help each side feel âsafeâ enough to ignore those within their own community who claim that peace is impossible and that no one cares about the safety of âthe Jews,â or âthe Palestinians.â A first and critical step is to speak in a language that is empathic toward the suffering of each people. Rather than try to prove that the Palestinians are ânothing butâ terrorists or that Zionism is nothing but an elaborate scheme for continuing and escalating Western colonialism and imperialism, we must create a climate of discourse in which both sidesâ stories are genuinely heard and undertstood. Iâve done this last part in my book Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003).
Yet Israel, as the militarily superior power, ought to take the first steps to end this conflict once and for all. It could do that at any time by making the following moves:
1. Implementing a massive Marshall Plan in Gaza and in the West Bank to end poverty and unemployment, rebuild all that has been destroyed of the Palestinian infrastructure, and encourage investment in a new Palestinian economy;
2. Dismantle the settlements or tell the settlers unequivocally that they must become citizens of a Palestinian state, live by its laws, face charges if their settlements were constructed on land stolen from Palestinians, and that they will not be able to count on Israel to protect them;
3. Accept 30,000 Palestinian refugees back into Israel each year for the next thirty, a number that would not seriously endanger the population balance, apologize for its role in the 1948 expulsions of Palestinians (known as al Naqba), and offer to coordinate a worldwide effort to raise funds to compensate Palestinians for all that they lost during the Occupation (at least to those living in poverty–and conversely, there should be reparations to Jews who fled Arab lands, at least to those who are todaly living in poverty).
4. Recognize a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the Geneva Accord of 2003.
This is the only way Israel will ever achieve security. It is the only way to permanently defeat Hamas and all extremists who wish to see endless war against Israel. But it wonât happen until there is a massive shift in understanding about what promotes âsecurity.â
Israelis have bought into a worldview about security that predominates in much of the world and is the central principle of American foreign policy: âhomeland security can only be achieved by domination, either military, economic or diplomatic, of all those who might be potential adversaries.â It was this strategy of domination that led the US into the war in Iraq and that still leads some Obama advisers to believe that it would be wise to shift the focus of that war to Afghanistan and/or Pakistan. Yet the strategy of domination does not and cannot work in the 21st century.
The most significant contribution the new Obama Administration could make to Middle East Peace would be to embrace an alternative strategy: that homeland security is best achieved through generosity and caring for others. If the US were to announce its embrace of a Global Marshall Plan, beginning with the Middle East and backed up with money and the conscious articulation of a Strategy of Generosity, it would do more to help Israel than all the armaments it can promise and all the shuttle diplomacy it might facilitate. If this new way of thinking could become a major part of US policy, it would have an immense impact on undermining the fearful consciousness of Israelis who still see the world more through the frame of the Holocaust than through the frame of their actual present power in the world.
Meanwhile, it breaks my heart to see the terrible suffering in Gaza and Israel, as it does when witnessing the suffering brought to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfurâand the list goes one. For me as a religious Jew it is all the worse, because under the guise of serving God, both Jews and Arabs are actually acting out their accumulated pain in ways that will generate future suffering. At the same time Jews in the US who yearn to justify Israelâs actions only confirm to many young Jews that there is no place for them in the Jewish world if they hold a normal ethical sensibility, and further confirms to me how easy it is to pervert the loving message of Judaism into a message of hatred and domination. So I remain in mourning for the Jewish people, for Israel, and for the world.
'3. Accept 30,000 Palestinian refugees back into Israel each year for the next thirty, a number that would not seriously endanger the population balance.' — Rabbi David Lerner, quoted in jim byers' post above
Most of Lerner's proposals are thoughtful and generous. The sentence above still reveals the troubling zionist instinct toward social eugenics — that is, carefully managing Israel's immigration and borders to ensure that the all-important Jewish majority is never threatened.
Lerner's zionist views on 'population balance' are analogous to those of David Duke, who stipulates that he does not hate black and brown people. He simply feels that 'white europeans' should maintain themselves as the ruling cultural majority in the U.S.
Eugenics fell out of fashion (for obvious reasons) after the 1930s, becoming practically a taboo in polite discussion. But zionism is an unregenerate throwback to that era, and large-scale social eugenics remain central to the maintenance of the Jewish state.
Judaism and eugenics — what an unlikely, toxic combo. The world waits for organized Judaism to renounce the heresy of zionism, and reclaim its rightful prestige among the world's great religions.
And the world waits. It waits. And waits, and waits, and waits.
Eventually the world may wish to take matters into its own hands.
If Europe can ban Holocaust denial, why can't the U.N. ban "Palestine denial", and expel Israel?
Nice try Haygood (or whoever you really are). You make a completely ahistorical critique of zionism, which was spawned by the danger that nationalism posed to Jews who weren't considered full citizens in the European or Islamic nations that they lived in. As a result of the Dreyfus Affair and the pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine, Herzl, amongst others, concluded that the Jews would need their own nation in order to not be at the mercy of the fanatics among the majority of non-jews in those nations that they lived in. Establishing a state in which jews comprised a majority and could live without fear of being exploited or persecuted was one of, if not THE main objectives of Zionism. Now, granted, many of the Zionists have failed in living up to the ideals espoused by Judaism and treating the stranger as one of their own (Be kind unto the stranger, for once ye were a stranger in a strange land), but Lerner is pushing them to do so. That he doesn't want to give up the desire for their to be a majority of jews in Israel is not racist. Lerner wants non Jews in Israel to have the same rights as jews, he just wants to Jews to remain the majority in Israel and Palestinians the majority in the Palestinian State. While this concept is foreign to us Americans, it's the norm almost everywhere else in the world. While the UK is becoming more like the USA, it is experiencing typical backlash
link to jonjayray.wordpress.com
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and lets not even get started on France. You think the Italians would be OK with the majority of citizens being from Germany or Albania? Are they racist for wanting to maintain a majority of Italians and Alabnians in the minority in Italy? I'm fairl certain the Palestinians will want their new state to have a majority of Palestinians and would not be keen on a majority of Afghanis moving in and becoming the ruling majority in Palestine.
Comparing Lerner to Duke is laughable if you have read either one carefully.
If you are proposing doing away with all nationlism and creating a universalistic paradigm that will be accepted and permanently adopted by the world, then you have my vote and blessing, and likely those of many zionists, but since we both know that even if that is what you or I prefer, the vast majority of the world is not inclined to go that route, and as a result many Jews, even Lerner, prefer for their to be a humane state with a majority of Jews with complete equality for non-Jews. If the population demographic should shift over the next decades, so be it, but to ask the Jews in Israel to give up being a majority in Israel seems unreasonable, assuming the Israelis are willing to follow the rest of the parameters of Lerner's proposal.
Clearly put, Henry, but I don't think Jim has any delusions that Israelis would actually surrender their zone of Jewish purity. But one COULD legitimately question why Americans would want to support such a program.
Don't you have anything better to do than read JPost's sneering op/eds, Phil? That rather suggests you have losy your compass.