During the AIPAC conference last month, speakers repeatedly called on Obama to have his differences with Netanyahu in private. The congressional letter to Hillary Clinton about the faceoff made the same point: "The proven best way forward is to work closely and privately together both on areas of agreement and especially on areas of disagreement." As if the privately-monitored peace process has produced anything but more settlements.
One day outside the AIPAC conference, Alan Dershowitz angrily called on J Street to join AIPAC because Jews shouldn’t air their differences publicly. They must speak with a "unified voice" to power, he said.
This is a central issue in the Jewish community: When we speak about Middle East policy to non-Jews, we must do so as a monolith. Otherwise we lose whatever little power we have. I saw the lobby acting this way before my eyes at Columbia University a couple of years ago, when a woman from the Zionist Organization of America hectored student leaders for having invited Breaking the Silence to describe the horrors of the occupation to an American audience. It’s fine if people do this in Israel, she said, but not here. I saw it for myself when my editors at mainstream publications told me there was no room for my dissenting views; why, because they could damage the effort to guard Israel’s survival in the U.S.
So it is a matter of survival– and even thoughtful liberal Jews are agonized by this commandment from the community not to battle publicly. How else can you explain the fact that Americans for Peace Now is on the board of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations? A liberal group that has done important work exposing the colonization process is in bed with people who defend the settlements night and day– out of Jewish solidarity. Or there’s my brilliant college professor Michael Walzer. A year ago he saw the crisis looming in the Jim Crow West Bank and he called for rightthnking people to "defeat" the settler movement. But he did so in a Jewish space, Dissent magazine, and he wrung his hands about the issue of speaking out against other Jews. "Why should we start a fight among ourselves [?]" he anguished. Well, the stakes were too high not to take on the settler movement, he said.
I write this post in disappointment. You routinely see the Jewish community locking arms to protect Israel– as it did in the anti-BDS statement that unified everyone from the ADL to J Street— but you rarely see community statements of criticism of Israel. I was glad to see J Street issue support for Obama when he confronted settlements; but even that statement was lukewarm and the emphasis was, Now’s the time to establish borders, i.e., it wasn’t anti-settlement per se, didn’t harp on the ethnic-cleansing of East Jerusalem. I seem to remember J Street being far more critical of settlements a year or so back; I wonder if all the spankings it has gotten from the old-line lobby has helped to bring it into line.
And I wonder why Michael Walzer and other prominent liberal Jews have not put a full-page ad in the New York Times to say that the settlements in East Jerusalem are illegal and are destroying the prospect for a viable Palestinian state. I’m not sure what I think about partition; but if you’re for it, then you must oppose colonization. Well, I don’t see vehement opposition within the Jewish community. And I know the answer why: Jewish omerta, a fear that if you break with the community publicly, you will hurt our small, outsider community.
This code of silence is based on traditional and outmoded ideas: that we are outsiders in society, that we must rely on powerful intercessors in the corridors of state, that we are persecuted. I know the fears. I grew up with them. They in no way reflect the 2010 reality: the two offices closest to Obama’s are manned by Jews; we are a powerful community that over decades has repeatedly acted to prevent self-determination by the Palestinian people.
A little knowledge of who we are would go a long way toward generating openness and even progress. As matters stand, the liberal Jews who claim to be against settlements are giving Obama very little political cover.
