The alternative Israel lobby, J Street, is one year old today. It is celebrating its birthday with a fundraising drive to hire two more staffers and it says it has 100,000 members. It is pretty impressive.
J Street's rise is the reason that several people speak of the Likud lobby now. James North did so on this site yesterday. Chas Freeman did so, even as he blamed the Israel lobby for blocking his appointment to be National Intelligence Council chair back in March. Freeman needed to explain the fact that a lot of Jews came to his side, even as the neocons defeated him. Though let's be clear: J Street never came to Freeman's side. The left came to his side.
I first heard about an alternative Jewish lobby three years ago from my friend Daniel Flesher, realistic dove. Walt and Mearsheimer had just come out in LRB and I loved the piece for the simple reason that it described my reality in journalism, but Fleshler was upset about it. He knew there was a lot of truth in what they were saying, but he was determined to show that the Jewish community was not monolithic and on the wrong side. Today you can say that he was on to something.That alternative lobby is forming. (Though for my part I don't think it's worth it to work within the Jewish community. The only way out of the mess is through a diverse group).
Fleshler is an adviser to J Street and he is about to publish an important book called Transforming America's Israel Lobby. It has a foreword by M.J. Rosenberg, who celebrates Fleshler's program of being "pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and pro-American."
There is a lot to celebrate in this book. One thing is the urgency of Fleshler's call for a change in American policy toward the Israeli occupation. This has nothing to do with Iran policy and the forces of "catastrophic Judaism," he writes. The occupation must be ended.
I met Fleshler 36 years ago, in freshman year of college. Back then I recognized him as a fellow Jewish neurotic. Our friendship was renewed, truly, by Walt and Mearsheimer's paper and the Iraq war. The qualities I love in him are literary sensitivity, intellectual honesty and a moral code. When the chips are down, those qualities win in Fleshler, which is why we've stayed friends through a lot of disagreement and turbulent times.
In days to come I'm going to be quoting stuff from Fleshler's book. Here is a great story from his chapter on the left:
Encountering him later, I explained why I thought terms like holocaust and genocide were needlessly inflammatory and also inaccurate, as the Israelis--whatever their flaws--are not going out of their way to deliberately exterminate another people. He didn't buy it. It was particularly infuriating to him, I suspect, that people who toldhim to measure his words carefully also concurred with him on a great many issues. That man had a good heart. He did not believe he was yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater. Who can blame him for being frustrated?"
Myself I don't think it's genocide, but I am all for debate of that point, and for people using the word holocaust if it describes what they perceive. War crimes too. And I honor Fleshler's book for giving our constituency a place in the discussion.
I haven't read the book, but am also very impressed with Dan Fleshler's approach, sensitivity, skill.
One critical difference that I have with Phil's approach of "(Though for my part I don't think it's worth it to work within the Jewish community. The only way out of the mess is through a diverse group).", is that I strongly prefer the effort to persuade, to the effort to force from without.
If the goal is peace and acceptance for Israel and viability and honor for Palestinians, persuasion results in consent, whereas external efforts, even "non-violent" ones like boycotts, might end up in consent or might be a stimulus to Israeli or militants' desparation and then desparate use of unconscionable violence.
Dealing with people like Netanyahu is a challenge. Obama in particular has to KEEP the warning up to Netanyahu that abandoning written and spoken agreements with the PA and the US, will strain to the point of serious discomfort, the relation between the US and Israel.
It is ironic that Bush declared himself an "adult" by not deviating from his definition of principles relative to terror, but so passively enabled Israel to continue settlement expansion.
Not going out of their way to deliberately exterminate another poeple? Give me a break! Remember GOlda's "THere are no such things as Palestinians"? Do you suppose it is an accident that only Palestinian residents of Jerusalem have their IDs confiscated, their property expropriated? That the "security wall" only intrudes on Palestinians? Get real.
Your "one critical difference" referring to your disagreement with Phil's approach of working though a diverse group, not excluding the gentile community, is that you strongly prefer effort to persuade (from within the jewish community), rather than the effort to persuade "from without"–that is, you, Witty, view the problem as one to be hashed out in private, as if it does not affect
gentiles. That is precisely why you and Phil are like night and day to us gentiles. You have never acknowledged the stake American gentiles (not to mention the rest of the gentiles in the world)
have in solving the problem. You didn't even acknowledge, i another post here today, the high
taxpayer input into to problem, whether those taxpayers agreed or not how their money is spent.
You have never acknowledged the road from PNAC to now, the war drums beating for attack on
Iran.
Phil is a humanist first, an American second, a Jew third, while you are exactly the reverse.
The USA needs a lot more Phils, a lot less Richard Wittys.
Please reconcile this, your recommended internal tribal resolution of the problem with what you say about Bush. The only irony is that you see Bush as a problem, and rightfully so as per his
not dealing with settlement expansion, and yet you do not see the irony in your recommendation
for Phil and his fellow travelers to ditch "the effort to force from without."
One critical difference that I have with Phil's approach of "(Though for my part I don't think it's worth it to work within the Jewish community. The only way out of the mess is through a diverse group).", is that I strongly prefer the effort to persuade, to the effort to force from without.
We know, Richard.
The advantage of Phil's blog and/or approach is that he has less guards alerting to trespassers ;) Which sends the message: "Outsiders" not welcome. …
My problem with this approach is, inside talks results in secrecy for the majority, but secrecy is also the best source for rumors.
The persuasion was to reach the parties themselves: Israel and Palestine.
The most effective external manner relative to Israel is to persuade through those that it trusts and seeks counsel from. It does not seek counsel only through the right-wing in the US, but from those that are even quite critical in their approach, but civil in their criticism.
Just like Arab communities rationally resent and are hyper-sensitive to implications of "occupation", Israelis are hyper-sensitive to external pressure.
The world risks more by severing even the limited (but still significant) means of accountability that the US exerts on Israel, than by keeping the relationship.
If the military funding decreased, or was conditioned on rational definitions, and presented to Israel as part of its ongoing strong relationship, that accountability is maintained.
I do enjoy Dan's approach (from time to time and at others I find him a little too sensitive to one's own bias and his is obvious) but there really is major fundamental problems with this whole new lobbying approach, yet I'll just nitpick on one. It is inclusive and as much as Phil and Dan want it to permeate the other fields, ultimately it is the object of American Jewry that is at stake here, not necessarily the fate of the others. For what it sees as the terrible affront is not the despicable acts that is being committed by Israel against the Palestinians, it is the fact that these actions are a detriment to their own humanity as people who identify themselves as Jews and sympathetic to Israel. Namely this: J Street had no problem with the Gaza cullings so long as it was logically okay and "just" for them to kill Palestinians but their main objection was whether this Operation was going to be successful in its goal of "peace" (that being an overstretch of everything covering occupation, apartheid and two-states).
For instance, the clever analysis of Ernie Halfdram of J Street's recent poll. Read it in its entirety but here's the breakdown:
"What this [poll] shows is that a huge majority of US Jews can somehow reconcile themselves to the basic assumptions that underlie support for Israel, among other things:
That Jews are a ‘people’ for the purposes of exercising the ‘right to self determination’
That to achieve that right, Jews were entitled to engage in terrorism and ethnic cleansing to achieve the desired Jewish majority
That in exercising that right, it is acceptable to privilege Jews in terms of land tenure, national symbols, public holidays, language, etc.
That it was ok for Israel to annex territory beyond that stipulated in the UN partition resolution (181) by force in 1948.
And that’s the case for those who support Israel within the Green Line, without cynical land swaps. The 76% who supported Gerstein’s outline peace plan also assume that:
Refugee rights are negotiable, and may only be exercised to the extent permitted by Israel
It’s fair, reasonable, and viable to leave an unarmed Palestinian state at the mercy of the most heavily armed state in the region
Acquisition of territory by force in 1967 and consolidated through cynical settlement ‘facts on the ground’ is legitimate.
In those respects, J Street and the majority of American Jews do not depart from AIPAC’s position. Where J Street departs from the mainstream Jewish organisations is in preferring a kinder, gentler image of Israel, a velvet curtain for the iron wall."
http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2009/04/across-potomac.html
Joshua,
You are aware that Arab states also forcefully annexed land that they weren't authorized by the UN, and that the original war was to remove Israel from the map.
The worst that you could say about Israel in 1948, was that they were opportunistic (even cruelly so) to take advantage of the absence of functional international law at the time.
The Arab states however rejected international law, which did affirm Israel's charter and right to live in peace.
The states and communities most affected by the UN Partition lost out due to economic art-twisting threats and bribery on the part of the major power players at the time; further, as Israel
gave lip-service to the Partition's allocations (already lop-sided in favoring Israel over demography), the Jewish regime at the time were simultaneously using force to grab more land;
this de facto Israeli SOP has never stopped. Additionally, Israel has always rejected international
law by ignoring it at whim, pointing to it when it seems useful to the pattern of the Israeli powerhouse agenda.