This is good. J Street mans up and says the U.S. should not veto a Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Yes there is a lot of stuff about We as American Jews commit ourselves to changing Israel's diapers till the red heifer comes to Jerusalem, but there is some good language here, too. Is this the moment? Yesterday the 50 public leaders including Peter Beinart and Chas Freeman, today Hanan Ashrawi and J Street? Is it too late for the 2SS? J Street excerpts:
For over forty years and across eight Presidential administrations, the United States has made it crystal clear that Israel needs to stop building settlements over the Green Line. As President Obama put it in his June 2009 Cairo speech, "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop....
Our preferred outcome would be Israeli or American action that averts the need for such a Resolution. However, if the Resolution does come to a vote, we urge the Obama administration to work to craft language, particularly around Jerusalem, that it can support condemning settlement activity and promoting a two-state solution.
While we hope never to see the state of Israel publicly taken to task by the United Nations, we cannot support a U.S. veto of a Resolution that closely tracks long-standing American policy and that appropriately condemns Israeli settlement policy.
Finally they do something to justify their existence.
I felt the same way when I read J Street’s article. I spread their message.
excellent news, this is the one action obama can take without congress, if he doesn’t do it he’ll look emasculated by the lobby.
This sounds like a first, particularly if the US abstains from vetoing the Security Council resolution.
J Street is quite right that Israel is sandbagging its own interests. Plenty of expansionist powers have overreached in making territorial grabs and gotten burned. Why does Israel think it can get away with it? A bracing whack on the wrist from the Security Council’s ruler would do the outlaw state a world of good. Forty-three years of defiance is enough.
Occupied Palestine is nothing but one humongous settler-entity, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. So the UNSC should consider declaring not only WB and EJ settlements, but the entire settler-entity null & void. Then it’ll be up to the Palestinians (plus any settlers who agree to downgrade their status from being privileged to being one smong equals), as to what sort of nation Palestine is to be.
Another crack in the wall:
link to haaretz.com
RE: “The United Kingdom would consider support of UN condemnation of Israeli settlements…” – a Foreign Office official
HASBARA REPLY: “Everybody knows” the UK is irrefutably anti-Semitic! Take Lord Balfour, for instance…
Unfortunately, they also say they won’t approve the unilateral declaration of a state.
“Everybody knows” the UK is irrefutably anti-Semitic!
This is obvious! When did you last see anyone who was even slightly Jewish in a position of influence in British politics, business, academia, arts, or media?
I hope you’re being facetious but just in case you’re not, let’s start with Ed Milliband – leader of the British Labour Party and Shadow Prime Minister and his brother David.
Go here for more Jewish politicians in the UK – though the site is a little out of date
link to en.wikipedia.org
Considering that there are less than 300k Jews in the UK that’s a pretty significant list – around 30 current Jewish MPs. Interestingly there are 1.5M ( around 2.5% of the population) Muslims in the UK
and as far as I can gather no more than 4 elected Muslim MPs out of 630 or thereabouts.
As to other areas you mentioned I refer you to this
link to en.wikipedia.org
and this
link to en.wikipedia.org
The latter includes the sadly missed Harold Pinter.
I knew someone would bring up the Milibands.
I was, of course, supporting Dickerson in pointing out the grotesque absurdity of the particular Hasbara claim that the UK is anti-Semitic. The UK is one of the (many) countries that are counter-examples to the general Hasbara claim that Jews cannot live together with Gentiles.
(The lists are a bit tweaked. They include ex-Jews and people like Disraeli who were brought up Anglican, etc. But they all fit my criterion of “even slightly Jewish”.)
Thanks for confirming that you were being facetious – it ‘s a relief. I wasn’t counting Disraeli in my list of current MPs! ;) Though he was born of Jewish parents – his secular Jewish father disagreed with the local Rabbi and had him baptised an Anglican. How do you define Jewish?
If we talk about “even slightly Jewish” we should include the current Prime Minister – David Cameron.
Good for the UK. Problem is: I’m not so sure about France anymore! I’m not sure they will push the right way on this one. Over Iran for instance, it was said that the “ministère des affaires étrangère” was taking advice from US neocons on how best to influence Obama to pursue the most hawkish policy. Chirac’s days are long gone and the government here is very responsive to local pressure from Jewish organizations. For instance they had a debate over BDS cancelled at Ecole Normale Supérieure (State owned) following pressures from the minister who had been contacted by Richard Prasquier, the President of CRIF (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France). They said the debate was not adversarial enough as there were no one to argue on Israel’s side. For a moment I thought it was happening on a US campus with Dershowitz manning the deck and Campus Watch in the background!!! Scary stuff.
But the French, too, are supposed to be raving, foam-flecked, anti-Semites these days.
Yep!
link to jewishworldreview.com
Well, another dedicated US lawyer for Israel, Hillary Clinton, made the US stance clear this afternoon:
————
Washington – The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be resolved through direct peace negotiations, not by submitting resolutions to the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlements, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.
The United States has opposed a move by Arab countries to bring a resolution condemning the settlement, but has not said it would use its veto to block passage.
Clinton told reporters the issue needs to be resolved through direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, even as the United States has also condemned continued settlement construction.
‘We don’t see action in the United Nations or any other forum as being helpful in bringing about that desired outcome,’ she said, before adding that the United States is ‘working to keep the focus where we think it needs to be, and that’s not in New York.’
link to monstersandcritics.com
————
So cynical — anything the Palestinians can do which actually might be effective, the US opposes.
The message is always the same: go back and negotiate under duress with an opponent who feels time is on its side, and is content to stall indefinitely while it continues grabbing more land at armed gunpoint.
It’s like dialing 911 to report a home invasion in progress, and being told, ‘It wouldn’t be “helpful” for us to send a squad car. You need to directly negotiate with the armed invaders. Let us know how you make out. Ta-ta for now.’
I think you raise a major point: the battle over effectiveness. There is a huge struggle to control discourse but on the discourse, the Jewish community is quite divided.
When it comes to effectiveness, the “J-Street” type activist is uncompromisingly joining strength with the hardened likudnik to shield Israel from consequences (though in this particular case “J-Street” type would be a poor choice of word since they finally seem to grow a pair). Chomsky for instance with his opposition to BDS seems to fall in this category. “Speak out” but don’t “act out” seems to be the guiding principle of this type of militant. In doing so they are objective allies of this extreme right government. It is quite obvious right now that the world is not simply going to sweet-talk the Israelis out of the settlements.
I understand why a liberal zionist would be very conflicted in taking really potent measures against Israel but I don’t think they should necessarily support those measures. They can choose to remain neutral on the issue so that they don’t hinder the movement as they are not actively promoting as well. Opposing BDS for the likes of Chomsky is quickly becoming a huge problem.
Ah yes, to be ‘subjectively’ in favor of Palestinian rights but to be ‘objectively’ against them. I do miss my years in the CP! Only, the CP is for two states….
So cynical — anything the Palestinians can do which actually might be effective, the US opposes.
I don’t think it’s cynical. Coming from a world superpower, it really is a decleration of American impotence in regards to Israel.
Pressuring Israel is another matter. The US has powerful leverage, more so than any other state in the world, to bring about the two-state solution. But in the absence of any action which supports American opposition to settlements, what the US is really doing is giving Israel ample opportunity to make its facts on the grounds, and through “direct negotiations,” make the Palestinians sign up for their Bantustan state.
American impotence in regards to Israel.
Impotence or complicity?
Impotence implies that part of the US government has the desire to make a difference but is unable to do so. But who is to blame for this inability? The elements in the US government that put Israeli interests above those of the US.
We don’t see action in the United Nations or any other forum as being helpful in bringing about that desired outcome
Then what the hell is the United Nations for? It partitioned the damn land to begin with.
J Street!!
France is responsive to local jewish pressure…
President Sarkozy is part (half?) jewish, his mother was a greek jewess.
Theo,
The current French government is indeed responsive to pressure or influence or lobbying or whatever you want to call it from local Jewish organisations.
Sarko however, is neither Jewish nor “(half?) Jewish”, and his mother is as French as Marianne and as Catholic as the pope. His “mixed” origins are quite beside the point.
Well Sarko is a quarter Jewish (paternal grandfather from a prominent Greek Jewish family who had a significant role in his education). That means nazis would have considered him Jewish and that his family hid in rural France during the occupation.
Sarko is Roman Catholic according to wikipedia.
Also on a more anecdotal note, his son married the heiress of a French Jewish family owner of “darty” (the local Best Buy) and converted to judaism to that effect. His son is on record saying that he is much more to the right of his father on topic like Iran for instance.
I was worried Sarko might be a real neoconservative once elected. In fact he remained relatively neutral on Israel from a French standpoint. It is said that he bowed to French organized Jewry in not selecting Hubert Védrine as Foreign minister and by chosing Kouchner instead. The fact that he considered Védrine in the first place kind of shows he is not a dyed in the wool neocon. He did not support the Iraq war (knowing full well this could put an end to his presidential ambitions). He knows that there is only so much the French public can take when it comes to neoconservatism.
My two cents…
Also for context: some guy wrote a book called “Sarkozy and the Jews” and could not be published in France. He got published in Belgium and one cannot find his book in a French bookstore. I’m not sure if there is anything in it that would describe Sarkozy as more responsive to Organized Jewry than the average French politician.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is Jewish. He only had Jewish spouses (two I think). He’s on record saying that one reason for a Jew to go into politics is to defend Israel. That was at the time of the Oslo accords and it will certainly come back to haunt him if he is the socialist presidential candidate. He surely would not say that now. Given that 10% of French are Muslims and usually support the left.
What does “a quarter Jewish mean” – apart from the obvious Nazi definition, which does not actually make one Jewish, fractional or otherwise. Sarko’s maternal grandmother was Catholic, his maternal grandfather – although born into a Jewish family in Greece – was a naturalised Frenchman, who converted to Catholicism before Sarko’s mum was born. That sounds like a pretty tenuous connection to me. It also describes a large number of Europeans of various nationalities. If I had a euro for every time an Italian told me about their Jewish ancestry …
I don’t like your tone.
I don’t like your tone.
I apologise. I did not mean to offend.
Fair enough but people say all the time “I’m half Jewish” etc… I’ve even heard “I’m 1/8th Jewish”. So I don’t think saying Sarkozy was 1/4th Jewish was over the top.
Besides, you can be a catholic convert but if you have to hide because of your ancestry, don’t you think that this would matter to you? Plus I’m not the one who decided on “scientific” analysis about who is Jewish or not. The “law of return” does that all the time!
It was not over the top, JG. People do say it, although I was sincerely wondering what it means in the case of someone who does not consider himself Jewish and whose Jewish-born forebear didn’t even seem to have been too keen on that part of his identity.
In Italy, people with Jewish ancestry (and there are lots of them) don’t usually refer to themselves as being part Jewish, but usually refer to the last Jewish-born (but converted or non-identifying) member of the family as being “of Jewish origin”, e.g. “my mother/grandfather/great-grandmother was of Jewish origin”. The child of someone who identifies as a Jew in some way might say “my father/mother is Jewish”. I don’t know how people refer to such things in France, but I do know that Sarko does not consider himself Jewish in any way.
I don’t know if or how the fact that some of his relatives were forced into hiding because of their Jewish ancestry affects him.
I certainly did not mean to imply that the “scientific” definition was yours.
BTW, Sarko is not eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, because his “Jewish” grandparent “voluntarily changed his religion”.
Fair enough.
So basically you were saying I was not expert enough in how “the law of return” works? I’ll give you that…
Last July, I petitioned our Eugene Human Rights Commission to draft a strong statement condemning the flotilla massacre. Since I had to limit my time to 3 minutes, I also gave them a stack of informational resources so they would have most everything they would need to write such a statement.
The local Israel Defense Network found out and wrote about it here, pg. 10:
www.jewishfedlc.org/newsletter/JFLCNewsletterJan11.pdf
(Justice advocacy is not for the faint of heart…)
Of course the meeting was indeed flooded by pro-Israel lobbyists and all comments strongly condemned the EHRC proposed statement with the J Street representative heading the lineup. Deceptively sweet, reasonable-sounding J Street advocates represent one of our biggest obstacles to effective justice advocacy in Eugene, Oregon and I suspect throughout the U.S. Their (in my opinion, racist) concerns focus on preserving Jewish majority in Israel and institutionalizing segregation in the two-state model, which would forever abrogate the right of return for Palestinians. The R-O-R would then be confined to that Israeli-approved entity. I cannot even bring myself to call it a state. J Street is not about human rights, freedom, justice or equality.
The EHRC meeting was all quite disgusting. Here is the Register Guard write-up of the event:
link to tinyurl.com
Please wish us luck as the struggle continues.
Most people here probably know there are Jewish organizations which do support Palestinian human rights. One of my favorites is the IJAN. Here are their points of unity for those new to the issue or this blog. Compare this to J Street.
Points of Unity link to ijsn.net
While we all come from diverse organizing and activist experiences, and have diverse relationships to our Jewish histories and identities, we share the following points of unity:
* Solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian self-determination, including full political, economic, cultural, social and land rights for all those living in the historic Palestine, and the right of return for its refugees;
* Rejection of the Israeli apartheid state, premised on Jewish supremacy and Zionist ideology, and support for all struggles for legal and economic equality against it;
* Support for the building of just societies in historic Palestine, the larger region, and the other places in which we live;
* A commitment to the values of democratic self-determination, social justice and solidarity, gender equality and cultural rights, and to assert the same values in our own organizing and political practice;
* Commitment to the call from Palestine for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel;
* Challenging the current use of Islamophobia as a strategy for defending and justifying an imperialist US-European agenda;
* Challenging white racism, including its manifestations as Ashkenazi racism against Mizrahi Jews;
* Challenging the privileging of Jewish voices in conversations and negotiations about Palestine;
* Rejection of the ways in which the Zionist movement and Western governments exploit the Nazi holocaust to justify the historic and current actions of the State of Israel; and
* Rejection of alliances with anti-Jewish racists, white supremacist and Nazi holocaust deniers in our Palestinian solidarity work.
I agree with HHM that the primary effect of J Street’s activity is to deflect effective criticism of Israel by insisting on ineffective.
I must take issue with JStreet’s comment that they “hope never to see the state of Israel publicly taken to task by the United Nations.” Why on earth not? And if the UN ever rises to the occasion of adhering to its own Charter, it will publicly take the United States to task as well – long before Israel, which is a small-time gangster compared to the Mafia Don it is beholden to. How nice that JStreet can object to a US veto of a resolution against settlement building; but how pitifully naive, even cowardly, it looks when one comprehends the brutal realities of US power in the region over the last half century at least. Contrary to what the JStreet statement reads {“For over forty years and across eight Presidential administrations, the United States has made it crystal clear that Israel needs to stop building settlements over the Green Line”} the fact is that for over forty years and across eight presidential administrations US policies and direct actions have unambiguously promoted that settlement building. Indeed, US actions in general contradict the vast bulk of its many claims about promoting freedom, democracy and the rule of law– and not only with regard to Israel. A brief summary of its military, financial and political backing for some of the most despised regimes in the region quickly clouds over the ‘crystal clear’ policies JStreet has imagined. Had the US ever sought to halt the construction of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land it could have done so with muted opposition in a matter of hours. The truth is, the US long ago gave – and is still giving – a green light to Israel not only for settlement construction in the West Bank (and formerly Gaza) but also for its occupation & annexation of East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and, most recently, the Jordan Valley. It has never lifted a finger to stop the illegal expropriation of West Bank or Gazan resources, or the sadistic demolition of family homes, agricultural lands, and businesses; nor has it ever intervened seriously to stop the daily, on-going humiliation, oppression & virtual imprisonment of the 4million+ Palestinian people living under Israeli control. A US veto of a UN resolution against further settlement construction by Israel is wholly consistent with US policy. It is telling, in fact, that only in the US do people actually believe otherwise. The other 94% of the world’s population knows better – and has had first hand experience with the unique way in which subsequent US administrations ignore, bypass, or otherwise circumvent international law so that ‘what we say, goes’. I can understand the hope and the desire for change among Jewish Americans and many others that an organization and its supporters will come along to challenge US-Israeli policy. JStreet, so far however, has a long, long way to go.
we urge the Obama administration to work to craft language, particularly around Jerusalem, that it can support condemning settlement activity and promoting a two-state solution.
Obama has already conceded defeat in opposing settlements, Clinton has declared Jerusalem, like every other issue, to be resolved through “direct negotiations.” The US can play no other role now but to act as Israel’s lawyer, issuing a weak condemnation of the latest Jewish settlement or Palestinian purge, while rejecting any action (whether significant or minor).
I am glad that J-Street is finally taking a stand, but it is too little and too late. J-Street has the principled stand now, but it wasted too much time in building its pro-Israel credentials to have any influence or power on American governments, which AIPAC has thoroughly monopolized.