If you’re Palestinian, you know about checkpoints. There are over 600 checkpoints in the West Bank alone. They block, obstruct, frustrate and kill. Women die in childbirth at checkpoints, students are kept from attending school, parents from visiting their children, laborers from going to work. No one can swim in the sea. Israeli Jews are waved through checkpoints. They can swim in the sea. No problem. Jews travel freely on a complex system of Jewish-only roads and live on the Jewish side of the Separation Barriers along hundreds of miles of walls and fortified fences that keep Palestinians out. Palestinians live in an open air prison. Sometimes there is a moment of spring and the guards open the gates. But spring never lasts long. Blockades, nightly incursions, full-scale invasions, imprisonment, collective punishment, land theft, water theft, denial of education, health care, an economic future, frequent beatings and no freedom of movement is the daily bread of Palestinians. You can’t travel more than three miles without encountering a check point. Talk about stress.
J Street was a place where Jews talked to Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Few Palestinians were present. Apparently they didn’t make it through the checkpoint. The narrative of J Street, like most Jewish narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflects the nature of the conflict as seen through a Jewish lens: Palestinians are physically absent. A Jew who seeks to express her activism in solidarity with Palestinians is in danger of loosing her ‘I love Israel’ card at a mainstream Jewish checkpoint. There were checkpoints at J Street. Some people were allowed in but not officially asked to participate, some were dis-invited, and some were not considered to be part of the conversation in the first place.
If we were talking to Palestinian friends and colleagues, we would already know that we cannot control the Palestinian struggle for human and civil rights. No matter how many congress people we talk to, or how many J Street members are recruited, the Palestinian struggle for freedom is in their hands. Whether the next eight years yields an agreement or not, Palestinians will continue to struggle nonviolently for an end to the Kafkaesque labyrinth of systematic inequality that oppresses every dimension of Palestinian life and culture. Martin Luther King observed, ‘The direction of history arcs toward justice.’ How can we think that calling together 1,500 Jewish progressives with few Palestinians present will yield a realistic picture of how and what kind of struggle we might conduct in the name of peace? Only in partnership with Palestinians can we ever hope to transform the current conflict.
In addition, peace will not emerge if we don’t start holding ourselves accountable for the massive abuse of human rights Palestinians endure at our hands, which has been meticulously documented for decades and more recently, in the Goldstone report. In that regard, as a Jewish practitioner of nonviolence, Shomer Shalom, I begin with the premise that we need a very different kind of imagination to construct peace. Only in shared struggle together with our Palestinian brothers and sisters can we transcend our current limitations and work toward realizing a future we have not yet envisioned.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is a resident elder with the Shomer Shalom House at the Community of Living Traditions at Stony Point, a multifaith community dedicated to nonviolence and peace activism.
How about an Apartheid Colonial Fascist State?
Would J Street be against that?
link to commondreams.org
Are US tax payers aware of these trips? Do they know where their Senators and US Senators’ loyalties lie?
link to jpost.com
AIPAC has got Washington DC by the Beitzim
Bravo Rabbi – you nailed it!
Yes! I really hope people like Ben-Ami see this and realize what they are doing.
Oh, thank you. Just thank you, Rabbi, for saying what is in my heart…and kickin’ it.
[Loved the J Street as Jewish Checkpoint analogy.]
I think she missed it entirely.
In asking that Jews not gather in their own voice, in their own meeting. How self-suppressive do you need to be.
The presence of J Street doesn’t prohibit other forums of actual dialog. She is an able organizer. She can organize such a more open dialog forum if she is able.
Do the next step makes sense. Condemning doesn’t.
“In asking that Jews not gather in their own voice, in their own meeting. How self-suppressive do you need to be.”
You twisted a critique on Jewish exclusivity and lack of dialog with non-Jews into a a mischaracterization that the good Rabbi is somehow railing against the notion of Jews meeting together at all.
Goebbels would have been proud of you, I think. Apparently his legacy lives on in unexpected ways.
Well, yeah, but that’s only because we need our checkpoints to secure our security.
“Palestinians will continue to struggle nonviolently for an end to the Kafkaesque labyrinth of systematic inequality that oppresses every dimension of Palestinian life and culture.”
The Palestinian “peaceful” struggle of almost daily suicide bombings and thousands of missiles and artillery shells put the labyrinth in place.
She must know different Palestinians than the rest of the world.
How many suicide bombings were there yesterday? How many missile strikes?
In three weeks alone Israel killed over three hundred Palestinian children in Operation Cast Lead. How man Israeli children have Palestinians killed in the last three years.
You’re nothing more than a dishonest Zionist racist, completely devoid of facts.
The world that Julian lives in, a world of hate.
Yep, them slaves sure are uppity, huh, Julian?
The very historical fact, once understood by the Jewish majority in fainess, is: “Why should Palestinians or Muslims for that matter – be made to pay for the crimes committed against the Jews in Europe by the Christians and the fellow Jews?” This question was put, first by Mahtama Gandhi in 1938 and later Indian FM, Krishna Menon, in 1948.
Once the Jews find out Muslims and Arab tolerance toward their ancestors and the hatred they faced in the Christian world for many, many centuries – they should be ashamed of their treatment of Muslims and Arabs in the occupied Palestine and other parts of the world.
Did Muslims hate the Jews?
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Rehmat wrote:
and more recently by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: link to washingtonpost.com
It’s a root question; too bad Americans never ask it, except for a handful, who, if they wish to have a career, would be better off not asking it for public consumption.
Perhaps LeaNder has asked her fellow Germans how they feel about having all Israelis come to Germany so we can have some moral symmetry solution? Would that be more expensive than reparations to Israel coupled with a state that does not allow freedom of speech?
I may be a little unclear on this, but I’m not aware that J Street says it’s for Jews only. They don’t explicitly solicit gentile participation or financial support, but certainly don’t discourage it. Joining J Street is a reasonable option for anyone who thinks it’s an effective organization and roughly supports their goals. It may be that five years from now, half of J Street would be Christian or Muslim or whatever.
Scott,
J Street will always be a predominately Jewish organization, as it is an attempt to present an alternative Jewish political voice to the discussion.
That is reasonable, and should be encouraged.
In inviting Palestinians to the conference, J Street regards the Palestinians contributions as information that they believe that liberal Jews need to hear, moreso than an actual forum.
Rabbi Gottlieb is excessive in her rhetoric. There is nothing in the presence of J Street or the character of the conference that describes it as “another exclusively Jewish road” (implying some malicious exclusive “public road”).
Its actually a mean statement on her part. I hope she recants it, or at least qualifies it.
She is a rabbi. Unless she was insincere in becoming a rabbi, she values the importance of Jews identifying as Jews and in gathering a coherently distinct community in some regard.
Maybe her emphasis is more universal now. I sometimes present Richard Witty CPA when I publicly write criticism of US tax law, even though my CPA role is about individual consultation, more than public policy.
Or Walt and Mearsheimer write U of Chicago political science chair, when they are writing a strictly personal opinion, or in the case of the London Review of Books article, a somewhat polemic presentation on an area that is somewhat outside of their stated area of expertise.
In all those cases, our professional background touch the material presented certainly, but there is also an element of our using our credentials for other purposes beyond the content area.
Wow, you just have to look at Witty to really see how J Street really is turning into AIPAC lite because of people like him.
OMG! Zionist Witty attacking yet another Jewish woman speaking out against Zionism! Gee, no pattern forming here.
She merely looks at the logic of Jewish highest values as proclaimed and sees the often repeated humanitarian aspect of their rhetoric, and, unlike, say RW, takes those values seriously. Please compare the universal appeal of any religion; the more universal their values and moral and ethical standards are, the more universally appealing. Pretty simple, nicht wahr?
I get emails and snail mail from J St all the time–they address me as a Jew merely because I have shown support. I never identified myself either way. Does that tidbit help?
Rabbi Gottlieb is absolutely correct. In a society in which Christian Zionists, the Israeli lobby, an overbearing set of “Jewish leaders,” and congressmen angling for campaign donations were absent, everybody would get an equal voice at the table, particularly the victims of this oppression, the Palestinians.
However, that not being so, the JStreet strategy is to amplify a limited, focused and disciplined Jewish voice into this complicated stew of interests. Some of us (and I do mean myself here) find JStreet too centrist, but it is difficult to argue with the reality of the political situation. Giving JStreet a year to demonstrate whether the approach is viable may be the best thing we can do, rather than sniping and griping. After a year we can all say “we told you so” if our fears and calculations have been proved right.
Yeah, you got a point, ehrens–maybe a year is not enough? Look at Obama.
OTH, it’s pretty obvious evem sincere reformers can be strung allong practically forever, at least until some big event happens–happens because of all the prudent political stances taken by the reformer seeking to have a real impact.
“If we were talking to Palestinian friends and colleagues, we would already know that we cannot control the Palestinian struggle for human and civil rights. No matter how many congress people we talk to, or how many J Street members are recruited, the Palestinian struggle for freedom is in their hands.”
I’m sorry, but that is an absurd and irresponsible thought. If the traditional Israel Lobby, with the billions of dollars and diplomatic cover it provides, can have such a malignant effect on the peace process, why would an organized attempt by Jews to subvert or dismantle that Lobby NOT be a positive contribution to the Palestinians’ struggle for human and civil rights?
Like the other poster, Ahmed, you seem to miss the point of J Street. It’s an attempt by organized Jewry to CORRECT THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR. If they have to invoke a liberal-Zionist, and thus necessarily ethnocentric, discourse to build popular support for this, who cares?
You say: “In addition, peace will not emerge if we don’t start holding ourselves accountable for the massive abuse of human rights Palestinians endure at our hands, which has been meticulously documented for decades and more recently, in the Goldstone report.”
Guess what? That’s exactly what J Street is doing! Jeremy Ben-Ami called for an independent investigation, and people cheered just as they booed the recalcitrant Eric Yoffie when he refused to acknowledged Goldstone’s legitimacy. On one hand, you don’t want American Jews to organize themselves because, to you, it reeks of exclusion. But on the other hand, you WANT them to express collective responsibility. I’m not sure I follow the logic. And I’m not sure the kind of handwringing your article displays is helpful or warranted.
It depends on what J Street wants to be. If it wants to be exclusive, a place for liberal (but not too liberal) Jews to lave their collective conscience, fine. But it can never, as such, take the leadership in the movement to liberate the Palestinians.
It doesn’t exactly look like they are, considering.
For a person looking for a progressive organizational home, it’s obvious that J Street is the wrong place. What is the right place to be active for peace and justice?
Jewish Voice for Peace seems to be an activist organization.
I’m considering CNI, that Helena Cobban is now running.
I wish I could agree, Matt, that J-Street is an attempt by organized Jewry to CORRECT THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR.
Brit Tzedek has formally merged with J Street.
I’ve been to seminars and training sessions run by BTVS, and also to one of the convocations BTVS organized to showcase Izzeldin Abu Laish.
The initial seminar announced the goal of BTVS: act as a counterpoint (NOT an opposition group!) to AIPAC to encourage the Obama administration and Congress to support a two-state solution. The reason for supporting a 2-state solution was that if Israel does not implement a 2-state solution, then Palestinians will achieve a one-state solution, and that is not acceptable.
But there’s more to the support for 2-state solution: citing passages culled from Dennis Ross most recent ouvre, BTSV seminar leaders assured their audience that, in the medium term, the Palestinian side of the two-state solution will fail. BTSV supports a two state solution because they know it will fail.
Thus, I found the PURPOSE of BTSV to be disingenuous.
I was equally dismayed at the methods BTSV sought to employ and did implement: LOBBY CONGRESS. No mention of, “CORRECT THE BEHAVIOR OF YOUR FELLOW JEW” in congregations or internal colloquia the equivalent of a Vatican Conference; no, the agenda and of BTSV was to mimic the activities of AIPAC in influencing state and federal legislators to support the BTSV policy recommendation, which was not discernibly different from AIPAC’s. Political activist trainers laid out the schedule of buses traveling to Washington, DC to mount mass lobbying efforts; scripts for phone banking were discussed and rehearsed; models of fliers, fact sheets and talking points were displayed, all geared to train a new cohort of non-AIPAC Jews to behave in the same way as AIPAC in advancing a pro-Israel agenda in pretty much its current arc.
Perhaps goy were not invited to the sessions in which Jews CORRECTED THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR or gave expression to the ways in which “good Jews” would ‘lobby’ “bad Jews” to persuade them to CORRECT THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR. I certainly didn’t see anything like that taking place under the Brit T’zedek V Shalom umbrella.
Yes, and if anyone here on this blog thinks non-Jewish Americans don’t have a
real live dog in this fight, I can only ask, are they living on the moon? The head
of J St thinks that those non-jews are the moon walkers, even as their purse is stolen and their kids are dying–for AIPAC’s agenda. You want that lager, or a lager lite?
Well said, Lynn.
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Not unlike many other issues, the liberal perspective on Israel is oil and water to many of the radical theses.
Although there is much agreement on important observations, particularly the suppression of Palestinians relative to fortress Israel, in remedy and attitude they are entirely different.
The liberal view seeks consented reconciliation, with optimized self-governance in two genuinely independant and free states, that resolve to live as good neighbors to good neighbors.
The radical view seeks condemnation, with imposed fantasy as remedy.
For Scott,
Your views, stated editorially and in our limited correspondence, indicated support for a two-state solution, a fair one. Phil’s comments have beyond flirted with the concept of a single state.
I wish he had the confidence to declare his advocacy overtly, rather than by journalistic “silhoette”.
On humane grounds, I oppose the two-state solution, except by consent. If there was a clear civilist majority, then the single-state solution might represent the choice of the single people, the single nation.
I DOUBT that that is the case, in either Israel or Palestine, that in fact the two-state solution would represent an imposition onto 80 -90%, 80-90% of Israelis favoring nationalist Zionist rule where they live, and 80-90% of Palestinians favoring nationalist Palestinian rule where they live.
To impose a single state in that condition, would resemble a Bolshevik revolution, in which an imposing idealistic 10% compelled radical change on the other 90%.
With all the failings of an imposed solution. I assume that Scott, as editor of the American CONSERVATIVE, would not be in support of such an imposition, even without the pejorative “Bolshevik”.
I had the opportunity to join the FORUSA peace delegation to Iran that Lynn Gottlieb led in Spring 2008. I chose to join a different group that planned a larger itinerary, but we were in Iran at the same time, and our groups’ paths crossed on one or two occasions. The trip changed my life; I’d be interested to hear more about Lynn’s experiences and impressions.
In addition Gottlieb was, together with dozens of others including link to forpeace.net Phil Wilayto of Virginian AntiWar Network and CASMII, among those who had a conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York City just one year ago.
Hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands of people have been taken on trips to Israel; fewer to Palestine; fewer still to Iran. When those numbers become more evenly distributed, when US Congresspersons and think tankers and ordinary Americans like me travel to Palestaine and to Iran in the same numbers as have traveled to Israel, then more walls will come tumbling down, more truths will be ineradicably imprinted in the minds of more American voters and legislators and opinion shapers, and the world will be a more just and peaceful place.
Thanks for a good start, Rabbi Gottlieb.
“Not unlike many other issues, the liberal perspective on Israel is oil and water to many of the radical theses.”
Funny that you mention oil and water, Witty, considering.
Interesting that Richard Witty would say the liberal perspective on the I-P situation is a scenario of oil and water. And, even if so, is the right wing perspective less of an oil and water scenario? What is clear is that the enabling USA nation has so far definitely taken an oil versus water perspective, and has funded one POV, Israeli’s,
extravagantly for many decades, and this has not resulted in the USA’s and/or world humanism’s best interests.
The liberal versus radical position is oil and water.
Very odd word-twisting Citizen.
It really does take clarity as to whether you or others are anti-Israel or pro-peace (meaning consented, not subordinated).
Its a continental divide. Water flows east on one side, west on the other.
There is a great trail at Mt Katahdin called the knife edge. Its a difficult trail as it is a very thin path (for most of the trail) between two quite steep divides. It takes skill and care to walk it, and you can get to the summit.
But, there are MANY accidents on the trail, that require pretty involved intervention and rescue to fix.
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