The battle is joined. Scary excommunication article in the Jerusalem Post by Isi Liebler. So scary it’s funny. "Marginalize the renegades" is the big idea: purge the bad Jews. Get rid of "the rot in the Diaspora." Because why? Because Jews are in a permanent war:
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, took ruthless measures against Israeli renegades, insisting also that Israeli embassies maintain close ties with local Jewish leaders and persuade them to refrain from publicly criticizing policies impinging on security. The consensus was that it would be immoral for Jews abroad to influence decisions that could have life-and-death implications for Israeli citizens…
We are engaged in a battle against fiendish enemies committed to our destruction. The Israeli government must now take steps to neutralize the impact of renegade Jews who present themselves as legitimate alternative Jewish viewpoints. Such an initiative by a country which provides genuine democratic rights to all its citizens, including Arabs, could hardly be categorized as eradicating freedom of expression. It would rather represent a highly overdue effort to exorcise such odious groups from the mainstream and expose them as unrepresentative fringe groups with no standing..
IN THIS atmosphere, fringe groups of "non-Jewish Jews," many with no prior involvement in Jewish life, exploited their Jewish origins or Israeli nationality to defame Israel. Today, they occupy leading roles fueling global anti-Israel campaigns.
I guess that includes me. Guess what Isi: I’m Jewish. I’m married to a non-Jew. I eat fish without fins or scales. I have goyische friends. But I’m Jewish. My momma’s Jewish. I read books. I’m proud to be a Jew. And your narrowminded ethnocentrism is taking the community off the cliff.
It probably includes me as well.
Probably, but not likely.
You don’t get that advocating for the 67 borders, cessation of settlement expansion, rescision of the 50′s laws confirming the prohition for return (even to individuals), is not of the “mainstream”.
The mainstream and I do agree that Hamas terror is counterproductive, that Hamas exposing Gazan civilians to initiated war is counter-productive, that BDS is counterproductive.
Thats where progressive is on Israel/Palestine. The left of that is not progressive but excessive. The right of that is not progressive, but regressive.
“Progressive” is a balance, not a hammer.
“Thats where progressive is on Israel/Palestine. The left of that is not progressive but excessive. The right of that is not progressive, but regressive.”
Which makes you the focal point of all “balance,” what is your major malfunction?
How can “progression” ever assume a zero sum game as its premise? Such a solution
is a recipe for eternal war.
Well that’ll be great when you stop protecting people like this who are poised to stab a knife in your back, Witty.
Here is a fairly comprensive reply to Richard Witty, the “innocent” hasbara agent and Israel’s willing dupe on
this blog:
link to palestinechronicle.com
For you non-Jews out there, consider this response, Goldstone’s, Phil,’s and Witty’s.
Aren’t you happy you pay for this with your tax dollars and the blood of Uncle Sam’s “volunteer” military, and so will your equally economically deprived grandchildren? Have another hot dog on the grill. And don’t forget, we know you will not harbor Phil when the chips are down same as you secretely want all N****** to be lynched.
King Herod would completely agree with Liebler.
Certainly the Shministim have more Jewish credibility in opposing Israeli policy than a Jew who advocates intermarriage and assimilation. Certainly Marek Edelman with his Jewish bona fides has more Jewish credibility voicing support for Palestinian resistance than just about anyone I can imagine.
Mister Liebler in his customary bull in a china shop fashion is actually stating the obvious. Otherwise why would you, Mister Weiss, bother to quote the Shministim and Marek Edelman, unless you too recognize the need for Jewish credibility.
….Stating the obvious? I take it you agree with Liebler, then, and his theory of “Jewish purity.”
WJ, you must mean more credibility to Israeli jews and their American jewish (& Christian Zionists)
Israeli Firsters? Should Phil address only the American Jews who equate the historical American melting pot with the Shoah?
What makes you assume that the Shministim – or some of them – don’t also advocate intermarriage?
Hey, at least it is not building an apartheid genocidal nation, to gain credibility wondering. When everything is abnormal there is nothing to make a comparison.
First, Mister Liebler’s column is more toxic than bull in a china shop, so let me try to avoid most of his specifics and attempt to deal with the issue at large.
Any position (on the issues at hand) espoused by Jew, nonJew or Palestinian, should meet a minimal requirement of logic, realism and empathy towards Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Americans and all humans. But the question we are dealing with, the question raised by Mister Liebler is precisely, “Is it good for the Jews?”
Mister Weiss feels that current Israeli policy is leading Israel and its Jewish supporters in the United States over the cliff. Mister Liebler feels that a policy of BDS is prima facie bad for Israel.
But this major disagreement is complicated when Mister Liebler labels many of those Jews who espouse antiZionist ideas as nonJewish Jews. Certainly Jews who advocate values of justice and peace can find Biblical and traditional justification for their positions. But the question I feel that Mister Liebler is justified in raising is the question of Jewish continuity. It is natural for a nation as small as the Jewish people (who have yet to recover demographically from the physical onslaught of WWII) to wonder and worry about continuity. Certainly in this age of secularism and modernism a nation associated with a rather specific belief in a specific religion and god must worry about its survival. Zionism is one attempt to accept secularism and espouse a strategy for survival. Those who advocate antiZionism certainly can be asked to offer an alternate survival strategy. Intermarriage and assimilationism are natural processes. Yet they are not strategies for survival. Quite the opposite.
(Reading Kafka and Hannah Arendt are intellectual and Jewish plusses. Yet they within themselves are not a strategy for survival.)
Israel is bad for the Jews. Israel produces people like Liebler, whose extreme partisanship has eroded his rational faculties.
What good is survival when the vehicle is corrupting? If the Jews survive only at the cost of becoming a stench in the nostrils of humanity, is survival worth it?
“But the question we are dealing with, the question raised by Mister Liebler is precisely, “Is it good for the Jews?””
Sadly Mr. Liebler’s argument, based upon the above premise is really the only “philosophy” that can truly be can seen as especially adopted by America, Pragmatism. The gross extension of pragmatism can create terrible situations when taken to the extreme, as in the case of Israel or any other would be nation (as in America’s beginning, it was necessary for the young nation to expand on the continent in order to be influential – therefore the indigenous population was a target of genocide – but it was “good” for what was to be America). Ergo, are there Palestinians on that piece of property – it is good for the Zionists to have land – therefore we either cleanse them by expulsion or murder. Does the nation need water? The Palestinians sit on land which has a major body of water beneath the soil (or above it), repeat of the same atrocity regarding the land. This could go on indefinitely.
Bertrand Russell on pragmatism – “Pragmatism, in some of its forms, is a power-philosophy. For pragmatism, a belief is ‘true’ if its consequences are pleasant. Now human beings can make the consequences of a belief pleasant or unpleasant. Belief in the moral superiority of a dictator has pleasanter consequences than disbelief, if you live under his government. Wherever there is effective persecution, the official creed is ‘true’ in the pragmatist sense. The pragmatist philosophy, therefore, gives to those in power a metaphysical omnipotence which a more pedestrian philosophy would deny to them. I do not suggest that most pragmatists admit the consequences of their philosophy; I say only that they are consequences, and that the pragmatist’s attack on the common view of truth is an outcome of love of power, though perhaps more of power over inanimate nature than of power over human beings. ”
I would say in Israel’s case it is “power over human beings,” which is the expression of the love of power, over the Palestinians in such a pedestrian manner that it boggles the imagination. One may convince themselves of any necessity nor care about the consequences to other human beings, for their own “highest good.”
Similar to what Durkheim spoke of when he taled about the utilitarian nature of pragmatism –
“Seeking the useful is following nature, not mastering it or taming it. There is no place here for the moral constraint implied in the idea of obligation. Pragmatism indeed cannot entail a hierarchy of values, since everything in it is placed on the same level. The true and the good are both on our level, that of the useful, and no effort is needed to lift ourselves to it. For James, the truth is what is ‘expedient’, and it is because it is advantageous that it is good and has value. Clearly this means that truth has its demands, its loyalties, and can give rise to enthusiasm, but at the level of the useful, this enthusiasm is only related to what is capable of pleasing us, that which is in conformity with our interests.
Nor is it possible to see how pragmatists could explain the necessitating character of truth. Pragmatists believe that it is we who construct both the world and the representations which express it. We ‘make’ truth in conformity with our needs…”
What you espouse WJ is what can be linked to every atrocity of man against man since the beginning of time.
Bravo, Phil. If Isi was in charge, there would at once be “a highly overdue effort to exorcise such odious groups from the mainstream and expose them as unrepresentative fringe groups with no standing.” Isi and others are the ones who are slipping from the mainstream into fringe group status — and the constant IDF-is-the-most-moral-army-in-the-world hasbara following the incineration of innocent children of Gaza with white phosphorous weapons makes it increasingly so.
What a disgraceful article. Why shouldn’t we all form opinions based upon neutral considerations, such as the pursuit of truth, peace, justice and fairness, things that have nothing to do with our ethnicity. If I were asked to mediate the conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka, I would use those universal principles. Why should it be any different in the Middle East, simply because I have a shared ethnicity with one side? My identity as a Jewish man has nothing to do moral questions presented by this conflict. Shouldn’t we be even more vigilant regarding bad behavior of our own, rather than less? Does Liebler’s analysis apply to other people as well? Should Palestinians support terrorism against Israeli civilians? Should white South Africans have supported apartheid? Unfortunately, such narrow-mindedness is generally the rule. The idea of imposing ideological conformity on Israeli Jews, much less Diaspora Jews, is outrageous. But Liebler takes a bad idea and makes it a lot worse. He couches his arguments with the certainty that Israel is right and its critics wrong, but if that is the case, he should defend his point of view on the merits rather than insist that Jews be on his side.
When I read Liebler, I smell sulfur.
Is it the same sulfur smell the GIs took in through their nose on Iwo Jima, the rotten egg rascist smell reeking from the treacherous sands of Iwo Jima? Non-jewish Americans, please wake up! Listen to the few Jewish Americans like Phil who sometimes at lest acutally think you are fully human.
Is it the same sulfur smell the GIs took in through their nose on Iwo Jima, the rotten egg rascist smell reeking from the treacherous sands of Iwo Jima? Non-jewish Americans, please wake up! Listen to the few Jewish Americans like Phil who sometimes at lest acutally think you are fully human.
typo correx: actually
“And your narrowminded ethnocentrism is taking the community off the cliff. ” – Weiss
Yes, but it appears to be more than a call for ethnic solidarity. As an outside observer, I would say that Mr. Liebler is asserting that now, in these troubled times, not even dual loyalty is good enough for the Diaspora. In his view, as American interests more clearly diverge from Israeli policies, all American Jews must give unconditional support to Israel – or shut up.
It will be interesting to see how this intensified Israeli offensive against American Jewish “dissidents” plays out. How will the mainstream American Jewish organizations react? And will the non-Zionist Jews finally stand up in force and assert their own interests, and in the process save Jewry and Judaism from eventual destruction by Israel?
I’ve been wondering also if this offensive signifies that Israel will intensify its efforts, in conjunction with American Zionist organizations like ADL and ZOA, to identify individual Jewish-American “dissidents” and target them for retribution.
Same for the non-Jewish “dissidents” like me.
Ish, the call for ethnic solidarity is a dangerous gambit. The you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us clarion call will inevitably push more Diaspora progressives into the pro-peace camp. When Isi Liebler states there’s a “rot in the Diaspora,” it’s an indictment of all Diaspora Jews who don’t back the human rights abuses in Gaza as “self-defense” or who don’t chest-thump that Iran is an “existential threat.”
One of the things I admired most about Jewish culture is that intellectual debate is not simply tolerated, it is endemic to the culture. With Zionism co-opting the culture (truly, a dogma no less scary than end-of-days Christians, or the Islamic “fanatics”), it seems that there is an attempt to stifle debate because the “self-hating Jew” label doesn’t seem to get the same traction.
This is what Mondo has been about all along . . . the wedge in the Jewish community that provides an opportunity for J Street to rise to the occasion. Operation Cast Lead is that wedge, and here we go . . .
This is supposed to be the kosher form of “either you are for us or against us,” that is how it should ring in your ears. Actually I appreciate the help from Isi, because I am preparing a call in the opposite direction (which I hinted at on another post) and he is making it easier. What he does not know is that many are right in the middle of his group(s) of the faithful, and if it is forced to the floor he can look forward to another unceremonious exodus (in reality).
Oscar: “with zionism co-opting the culture….”
That’s what happens when a society such as the israeli one tries to limit democracy to its own members, while meting out the tools of fascism to others. It can only end up rotting the society from within as its raison d’etre and sense of righteousness collapses under the strain of trying to divide its affinities among “those like us” vs “others”…Ultimately, the forces of facism creep deeper and deeper towards the “center”, splitting off ever larger chunks of the ‘democratic” body politic. Trying to create more “renegade” minorities by pushing segments out to the fringe has the effect of shrinking the center – until one day, it’ll be pale shadow of its former self. And then, one day, it’ll be no more.
The non Zionist Jews are standing up. They are just a very, very small very vocal minority totally dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Fortunately they don’t count for much and always end up losing.
Zionists really are the cream of human kindness, aren’t they?
Sadly, they also confirm worst fears, rather than selecting to encourage the progressive views among liberals.
Julian, if the non-Zionist Jews lose, what are the Zionist Jews going to win? What will they gain? Their own demise? The loss of validity for any notion of Jewish morality?
In my estimation, the non-Zionist Jews who are standing up aren’t fighting for the destruction of Israel. They are fighting for, among other things, the preservation of Jewish ideals in the face of a barbaric assault by racist fanatics on all who stand in their way.
What will the Zionists win? The Zionists will lose their souls.
David Ben Gurion also said in 1967 that if Menachem Begin ever becomes Prime Minister of Israel it “will be the death of Israel.”
It has been.
The precedent of orchestrated settlement construction, and the assumption of annexation of the West Bank occurred with Begin and Shamir.
Well I’m glad you’re willing to confront that, at least. Although you’re implying a false dichotomy with Ben-Gurion — who was just as much for Israel’s territorial expansion, by military means if necessary, as any other leader of Israel.
“Although you’re implying a false dichotomy with Ben-Gurion — who was just as much for Israel’s territorial expansion, by military means if necessary, as any other leader of Israel.”
You’ve put your finger on an important part of the mythology for most moderately liberal Zionists. (I say moderately liberal to distinguish from Zionists further to the left, who don’t seem to have a need for this kind of myth). The myth is that the sins of Israel are mainly the fault of the far right. Often this is accompanied by a claim that it all went wrong in 1967.
Part of what drives this is emotional, I think, but there’s also apolitical aspect to it. If one says things went wrong in 1967, it’s easier to say everything can be made right if we have two states on the 67 borders. If you point out that things went wrong a lot sooner than that, that it was never legit to drive Palestinians from their homes, then you are accused of being a troublemaker. It doesn’t even matter if one is willing to support the 67 borders as the least bad achievable solution–you’re just not supposed to say that the UN partition plan was unfair to the Palestinians and that the ethnic cleansing in 48 was wrong. It stirs up anxiety among Israelis because you are pointing out the immoral foundations of their state and such talk , if it became widespread, might stimulate dangerous ambitions among the Palestinians, so you are supposed to be quiet. Or I think that’s the reasoning.
“Confront that”?
Chaos,
I’ve been a dissenter on Israeli expansion for almost 30 years. Your simplistic definition of liberals is insulting.
If anything, those of us that have been concerned, commenting, active on the issue deserve great respect for LONG commitment to mutual reconciliation.
Its trying, so most either give up, lie low, or get really angry. Only a few stay the course, encouraging moderation in all respects (moderation for Israel, moderation for dissent).
There is something very wrong with being able to speak about foundations and around the parameter, yet not being able to talk about particular atrocities to accomplish these horrid goals. In other words, to say that you are calling for the 67′ borders, and yet refusing to speak about the criminal nature – or, even describe the unspeakable acts upon an almost defenseless people as criminal, there is something really wrong. It is like talking about the Holocaust yet not recognizing the various acts which make up the whole, denouncing the whole without excoriating the atrocities. To accentuate the so-called “terrorist act” of the victim yet pass over the violent offense of the strong which is merely organized and funded terror. You can’t have it both ways, otherwise you devolve into a meaningless morass.
Most of us, I suppose, look on Israel as an anachronism, a vestige of 19th-century European colonialism gone berserk, which through its own vices will wither and die.
But what if Israel represents the future of humankind? As living space (Lebensraum) contracts, and resources – arable land, water, fuel – become ever scarcer, will political dominions fragment into smaller “national” entities based on ethnic, racial, or religious identities?
With the fruits of technology – advanced weapons systems and industrial engines of “prosperity” – unequally distributed among these pygmy regimes, will the stronger amongst them devour the weak, as the Israelis devour the Palestinians and maybe one day will devour the Lebanon and Jordan? Will the stronger mini-peoples control and rule over all aspects of the lives of the weaker, driven by fanatical expressions of group identity and existential fears of extinction?
As the world economy shrinks and the present international order of nation states breaks down, who’s to say the Israel model will not become the norm?
This piece almost reads like satire or snark, it goes to such extremes. “Fiendish”? The man makes himself a laughingstock.
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