One great thing the Palestinian statehood initiative is going to achieve, I believe: The American Jewish community is at last going to break out in bitter, open division over Israel/Palestine. Here are two important signs that this is happening:
1. There are more and more commentaries by Jews in the American press opposing the marriage of the Democratic Party to Israel’s racist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Here’s Robert Dreyfuss in the Nation:
the Times notes that Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who chairs the Democratic National Committee, is buzzing around Florida with Israel’s ultra-right deputy foreign minister.
Now you might argue that “liberal” Wasserman Schultz and the entire organized Jewish community that she is raising funds from has been kissing up for a long time to this supporter of “transferring” Palestinians out of Israel. And you’d be right, mostly.
But Dreyfuss is not alone. Peace Now can’t stand Lieberman. Peter Beinart took on Lieberman in the New York Review of Books last year. And this is a trend: In the Atlantic this week, the late Tony Judt described Lieberman as a “neo-fascist.” In the Times yesterday, they ran an op-ed by Haaretz’s Carlo Strenger that described Lieberman as an “enemy” of liberal democracy.
Those are mainstream publications. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is bound to get pushback at last from a small minority of American Jews who are staggered by what is going on. And those folks are going to get a larger and larger platform.
2. The Republican victory in the Brooklyn congressional race last Tuesday, in which winner Bob Turner used the Israel issue and fears of Palestinian statehood to pull Jews to his side in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, has sent shockwaves through the Jewish community.
Matthew Weinstein, who is on the board of Brooklyn for Peace, said it best the other night at a Brooklyn forum when he urged activists to reach out to our Jewish “brothers and sisters” in Turner’s district.
We lost that election. Did it take your breath away? It should have… How do we face our people in our communities? That’s a crucial question…. This is a very dangerous warning… Jews have traditionally been a bastion of progressive thought…. Despite all of the machinations of the right over the decades, they have consistently… been the most progressive section of our society. Are we losing that battle? I voted for BDS [boycotting Israel] on the board of directors of Brooklyn for Peace. But I want to say that we do have an obligation as activists to examine, How do we approach our communities? How many of us have offered to go to [District 9 in Brooklyn]… and speak to these people who must be spoken to?
With all the passion and the repulsion that we find we have about the occupation, and the abhorrence of it, and the opposition, we must find the proper tools to win those people back from the grips of the ultra right or we will face a disaster very soon.
As I play the tape of Weinstein saying this, I hear myself saying, “Forget about them.” These are ethnocentric people who have all the information they need about the occupation, and are happy to embrace Jim Crow. People like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jerrold Nadler and Barney Frank!
But that’s me talking.
And Jews who are more Jewish-community-oriented than I am are going to be making a stand now–Donna Nevel, for instance, who organized the forum at which Weinstein spoke, and who wrote on this site last week explaining why she thinks it’s important to spend energy inside the Jewish community.
Weinstein and Nevel are deeply compassionate people on the left who are trying to save the Jewish community from marrying Jim Crow. And just watch, their voices are going to get louder and louder.
So I thank the Palestinians for shaking my community up.
