The following piece is by Josh Healy and Kevin Coval, two of the poets who were scheduled to appear at next week’s J Street conference before the session was canceled under pressure. Healy explains, "I personally have been attacked in dozens of right-wing blogs and online magazines. Enough is enough. Here is Kevin and my joint response to this week’s events, and our take on the larger issues it brings up."
This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” PAC and Washington-based organization is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Specifically, we were invited to lead a workshop on how culture and spoken word create democratic spaces that sift through difficult issues and ensure a multiplicity of voices are heard: and how that can be used to open up the Israel/Palestine debate. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate.
This week, some right-wing blogs and pseudo-news organizations latched on to various lines of poems Josh wrote and churned the alarmist rumor mill saying that hateful anti-Israeli poets are keynote speakers at the J Street conference. This is not surprising. The radical right-wing, including the growing Jewish right-wing of this country and abroad, hates complex discourse, especially when it brings to light truths they seek to systematically deny. The Weekly Standard, Commentary, and their AIPAC-influenced brethren have been attacking J Street for weeks, scared that the conference will bring together the majority of American Jews who do favor a more rigorous peace process. When they found Josh’s poems and took lines out of context, they had the perfect straw man: the Van Jones to J Street’s Obama. Again, this is not surprising.
What is disappointing, and troubling, is J Street’s response in caving to this sort of McCarthyism. The executive director of J Street called us to say “I know what I’m doing is wrong…but there are some battles we choose not to fight,” before canceling our program, and disinviting us from the conference. This accommodates their red-baiting and is the wrong response. Rather than give in, which only emboldens the right and legitimizes their attacks, we need to stand up for our principles and engage on that front. Van Jones is another perfect example: after the Fox News venom became too much and he resigned last month, the radical Right hasn’t stopped attacking Obama, or more accurately, the alternative, progressive voice they fear he represents. The Right stands by its politics, and practices solidarity with their allies. Too often the Left doesn’t. And that’s why we often lose – on health care, on global warming, and on Israel/Palestine.
For the second time in two months Kevin, who is Jewish, has been told not to come to a Jewish conference because of what he will say about Palestine and Israel. This past August, the evening before the International Hillel Conference, conference planners said if he were to read poems about Palestine, they’d rather not have him. Today, Josh, who is Jewish, has had his name thrown into a mudslide of blogs and hate emails. All this because we are practicing the Jewish maxim of the refusal to be silent in the face of oppression, anyone’s oppression.
One of the key teachings of Judaism is the insistence on wrestling with and debating ideas. There are a thousand years of codified arguing, recorded in the Talmud and Midrash, over the meaning of the stories in the five books of Torah. Jews debate everything. There is the old adage, “when you have two Jews in the room, you have three opinions”. Our families cannot come to agreement about what constitutes a deli as opposed to a diner. (A deli must have pickles on the table with poppy seed rolls, etc….)
But when you try to talk about Palestine there is silence. When you talk about the role the United States plays in supporting Israel and its military coffers, there is no room for discourse. If you bring up Palestinians’ right to return to land they were forced out of, or mention that this past January over 1400 Palestinians, mostly civilian, were killed in Gaza, there is no room to speak in Jewish-centric spaces in this country.
There are many reasons why this trend of censorship is disturbing. We believe in democracy, in the right to speak and be heard and in the right be disagreed with. We are disheartened and outraged by the lack of democratic discourse in the American Jewish community and within the country as a whole.
Why are we scared of what will come from an honest conversation? What do we have to lose, or discover, or admit to if we question the policies of Israel or America’s support of its government and military? It can be unsettling for one’s worldview to unravel, the intricate web of white lies and half-truths pulled apart. This can be disconcerting for generations of Jews who have accepted the propaganda of a chosen people and the acting out of geostrategic nightmares via military might.
Kevin works at a Hillel for Hashem’s sake! He is charged with the task of addressing why so many young Jews are distancing themselves from the religious and cultural practice of Judaism. This is one of those reasons! American Jews are told at shul to repent for our sins, but silenced if we bring up the sins of the country that acts in our name. We need authentic, honest discourse in the American Jewish community. It must start today and it must be about Palestine and Israel.
So, we are searching for a minyan—a crew of progressives and progressive Jews to build and connect with. We want to have a conversation. Not wait for the conversation to be dictated and have borders and walls built around acceptable topics, but to have a conversation determined by us, Jews That Are Left, that are on the Left. A conversation that is honest and open and genuinely reclaims and considers our progressive past as well as forges the future world. A conversation engaged in the work of tikkun olam for real, the work of repair and healing and wholeness.
Progressive American Jews where you at? Holla at us! For real: jewsthatareleft@gmail.com. Let’s reshape the conversation. Let’s build a minyan, a coalition of progressive Jews and gentiles who want what is just and right for ALL people and all people in Israel and Palestine.
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Respect the sentiment of your opposition, even if the methods are insensitive and suppressive.
You’ll be able to cut through the surface.
You don’t need an oppositional minyon, a universal one will suffice.
In prayer, conclusions are not that important. “Heart-songs” are. Those that are similar to yours, and those that are different.
Follow this advice and you’ll be sure to accomplish nothing.
Respect the sentiment of your opposition, even if the methods are insensitive and suppressive.
Do you mean the same way you were critical of the protesters during Olmert’s speech at the University of Chicago a few days ago? Here’s what you had to say about that:
Adam obviously thinks it was a good thing that Olmert’s speech was disrupted.
Driving him from the podium an assertion of free speech?
Then there was this:
What do you think was actually communicated by the Abunimeh “leadership”?
I expect that part of what was communicated (especially noting that Abunimeh will have been identified to Zionists), is that dissent seeks the same relentless non-compromising condemnation of everything Israeli as it has historically.
That Abunimeh would be associated with such a disruption puts a nail in the coffin of any civil approach to a single state.
Yeah.
I respect the sentiment of seeking justice, and object to the manner that that sentiment is expressed.
Don’t you?
“I respect the sentiment of seeking justice, and object to the manner that that sentiment is expressed.”
No you don’t. That is an easily disproved statement — the part where you respect the sentiment of seeking justice. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be bashing Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Richard Goldstone, the American progressive movement, etc.
“That is an easily disproved statement — the part where you respect the sentiment of seeking justice. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be bashing Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Richard Goldstone, the American progressive movement, ”
Exactly. The only motivation for attacking those groups by people like Bernstein is to discredit their reporting on Israeli human rights violations. This would be obvious to anyone who read his column. Witty sides with Bernstein in a reflexive manner, because he knows that people use these reports to criticize Israel and he doesn’t like that. He claims to be for reconciliation and yet he supports the worst instincts of Israel supporters. Worse, he claims this shows that HRW needs reform, when what it clearly shows is a moral sickness among some supporters of Israel. Nobody who put the interests of peace first would take Witty’s stand and support the deniers of war crimes.
Interesting the conclusions that seem to follow from what this article says:
A.) The great overwhelming bulk of Israeli and American jewry are pretty much either in favor of the continued occupation, or at least unwilling to see it criticized.
B.) If this amount of vituperation is heaped on *jewish* dissenters, given the ability to resort to the cry of “anti-semitism” against gentile dissenters there simply will never be enough political force engineered to stop the occupation and settlements.
C.) However, while both jewish and gentile pressure to stop same will never succeed, there will never be enough pressure to make everyone accept that situation as being right, thereby meaning that Israel will exist for a long long time at least viewed as a kind of permanent rogue, racist state, with all that means for the image of jewry.
D.) Depending on just how long such an Israel does exist, being “anti-semitic” may well come to be something many people are *proud* of.
All in all, a nice little hell in the making.
I think you’ve got it.
Adding that the pressure on the US to support any crime that Israel commits will continue to marginalize both Israel and the declining US.
Sin Nombre,
Addressing your points:
A.): you are alas, right about that. Israel and allied jews got accustomed to living with the occupation long enough to view it as one more banal – and even benign – fact of life. As many have realized, it is of course, malignant – and is rapidly metastizing.
B.):Jewish history is replete with vituperation heaped upon the dissenters within – you should read what some rabbis had to say in the aftermath of Shabtai Zvi, the wanna-be messiah, to use just one tiny example from history. In fact, vituperation is something of a specialty in Jewish circles, going all the way back to….why, the Bible itself. Jeremiah is one excellent case in point. So by itself, the ability – and willingness – to tear each other apart in words – and back in the old days – deeds, is something of a long standing jewish tradition. Of course, it serves to make them feel all the more exceptional. What I’m saying is that yes, the viciousness is impressive, but it is not exactly a new element.
C.) In all likelihood, Israel can and will indeed continue to exist as a rogue state for a while yet, and you are right that pressure alone – be it from jewish quarters or otherwise – to alter its behavior is not likely to rise to a sufficiently high level to affect change all by itself. Indeed, Israel is uniquely capable of resisting pressure since its contrarian tradition enables it to view both inside and outside pressure as proof positive that it is on the right path (“right” is defined as whatever they want it to mean on any given day).
D.) You are also right that in due course, continued defiance of the world as well as its own commendable dissenters, coupled with the rabid aipac -like voices and zoa style pressure groups will come to contaminate Judaism itself – and by association – jewish people everywhere. People like M J Rosenberg, J Streeters of all sorts and the authors of this post, not to mention the many commenting on this blog, are worrying exactly about the boomerang effect of which you speak. Which is why they speak out in the first place.
However, the failure of pressure alone to affect timely reform of the rogue state israel has become, should not be cause for despair. Because the INTENSITY and/or SCOPE of pressure is not the only means at our disposal (that includes BDS). The other ammunition we have is TIME. Even gentler forms of pressure, when applied over long enough time, can erode the fiercest resistance through a mechanism similar to progressive fatigue. Plus we need to take into account the severe strains within Israeli society, including the rapidly changing balance between secular and orthodox. I believe that the ultimate fissure will come from within that society, as it must. The outside pressure is just one more catalyst accelerating a fatigue-inducing process already underway, even if it’s still mostly under the surface.
Unfortunately, what I cannot do is prophesize about what form that fissure will take. The potential for great violence is there, not just for israel and its neighbours, but for the whole world. So while you and others worry that it’s too long in coming, I already worry about the nature of the cataclysm, which I’m sure is on its way.
potsherd:
Excellent point about the U.S. being marginalized along with Israel. Will I suppose resemble the stench the U.S. brought upon itself when it seemed to be the only (or at least the major) foot-dragger on South Africa.
Danaa:
Keenly perceived points on your part as well. I guess I just can’t find the (admirable) hope you do. All I see is jews—not without some reason, but still foolishly—quailing from speaking out themselves, and gentiles saying “so what, I’m gonna stick my neck out and get called an anti-semite so as to *help* Israel eventually? Thanks but I think I’ll sit back, watch the show, and let ‘em hang themselves if that’s what they want.”
Irony of ironies: The real anti-semites will increasingly come to be the most silent, hoping all this lasts forever. And they won’t be unhappy if it does result in the cataclysm you foresee either.
The Zionist-lite lobby doesn’t deserve those poets anyway. And that “minyan” they seek most probably won’t be Zionist. Having to defend an indefensible and completely archaic ethnocratic ideal will always leave Zionists vulnerable to succumbing to their fear and loathing.
Call it the Minyan of Justice. The League of SuperJews!
Jewish law forbids murder, calumny, robbery…If the “Jewish” state can’t abide by Jewish law, away with it!
As a point, just of courtesy, if you invite someone you do not un-invite them. This is an affirmation of the rights power, telling someone to leave because of how “you” might look. Either you’re group or whatever genuinely cares for people, or you’re paramount concern is “image.” Even if you do everything they demand they will find something to criticize to de-legitimize what you are trying to accomplish.
Even if you’re main speaker was Alan Dershowitz they would make a comment about the “dump you had the convention at, and the color of the carpets were horrible.” What will you do than? Send a delegation to the next AIPAC meeting to check out the carpet colors?