More about Paul Berman, whose lofty interview about Gaza on the American Jewish Committee site, Z-word, is under my skin. Berman says:
the anti-Zionist left in America:
The Nation magazine, the Answer
movement, the professors who want to boycott Israel (now, that's an interesting
phenomenon!) – these kinds of tendencies are pretty marginal, in America.
On the one hand, Berman is right. The anti-Zionist left is surely marginal. I'd say we're 5 percent of the American Jewish community, for instance. We've got maybe 5 congressmen who are openly critical of Israel, a lot more who merely murmur.
What Berman (who is very backward-looking, engaged by Bernard Lewis) is missing here is the new attitudes in the progressive community that Gaza has only advanced. Opinion polls showed that Democrats opposed Israel's attack on Gaza by a healthy margin. And many Jews were disturbed by the slaughter. Berman is simply ignoring all the young Jewish bloggers who spoke out against Gaza, from Max Blumenthal to Ezra Klein to Dana Goldstein, not to mention Glenn Greenwald, David Bromwich, Steve Clemons, Andrew Sullivan, and Bill Moyers. We're talking about the Democratic progressive base (Sullivan notwithstanding).
Last night I saw Jack Ross at an event sponsored by Brooklyn for Peace, and he told me about an important meeting on Tuesday night at his synagogue, Kolot Chayeinu, a progressive shul in Brooklyn.
The congregation was having a soul-searching meeting in the wake of Gaza, led by Rabbi Ellen Lippmann. A lot of people talked about their Zionist upbringing and disillusionment, and their anger over the massacre. At the end of the meeting, Lippman asked people to stand up if they agreed with certain statements. One question Ross cited: "Do you believe that Israel should remain a Jewish state?" 2 of 20 people stood up.
Things are happening out there that Berman hasn't a clue about–for instance, a democracy movement in the age of Obama.
