Josh Nathan-Kazis reports in the Forward from New Orleans that the Jewish leadership is not really interested in hearing from Israel’s critics, or even from young Jews:
Communal leaders said that their effort to bring students to the conference undercut protesters’ complaints about exclusion. “The community gets it right when it says we’re not just giving you a symbolic presence, but we’re inviting you into the discussion,” said Wayne Firestone, president of Hillel.
But one Hillel student pointed out that although Hillel professionals spoke on G.A. panels, no undergraduate students were included as speakers.
And though conference leaders claimed to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from delegitimization, the panels promoted as addressing the issue contained no public critics of Israeli policy. The audience heard instead from Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz and from representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the right-leaning Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Five panels addressed the topic of delegitimization, and each of the conference’s keynote speakers — Netanyahu, Vice President Joe Biden, and Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni — spoke of the seriousness of the threat. Biden and Netanyahu both praised the Israel Action Network, a new $6 million effort that is sponsored by the JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and will facilitate local responses to efforts to boycott Israel.
Writes a friend: Reading the response of some students and leaders, I couldn’t help but think of the white ministers whose silence and inaction so bothered King. There’s been a huge shift in the Jewish community in the last 50 years. My sense is that 50 years ago Jewish communal organizations were far more engaged in important civil rights work and it wasn’t just individual Jews acting independently, though that was probably the case too. Today, though, the action on Israel/Palestine is from individuals and a handful of groups such as JVP, but not from the mainstream communal organizations. They’re blocking the whole way. And the mainstream groups seem to remain popular with other liberal organizations because they’re fairly progressive on other issues. For broader coalition work, it looks as though the pass on Israel/Palestine continues.
