The Jewish Advocate in Boston has a surprisingly fair piece on a boycott debate at a synagogue in the city earlier this week, featuring Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace. Vilkomerson is quoted at length in the article and comes off as sincere, completely engaged with the Jewish community (and its fears, which I find self-absorbed– but there they are), and unapologetic about liberal values.
The report by Leah Burrows is behind a fire wall, though the lead is up:
Something unusual happened on Monday night: An organization normally shunned by the mainstream Jewish community was offered a platform to explain and defend its controversial position on Israel.
Very true. Here are some excerpts:
Sandwiched between two lions of Boston’s Jewish community, Leonard Fein – columnist and founder of, among others, Moment magazine and Mazon – and Larry Lowenthal – former head of the American Jewish Committee – Vilkomerson was given an opportunity to explain her organization’s stance [on boycott]….Some 250 people attended the panel discussion, which was organized by Boston Workmen’s Circle.
…“BDS has become the subject of such fear in the Jewish community, and really what it is is a set of tactics for individuals and communities to express their values and to use their powers as citizens and consumers to effect change,” Vilkomerson said…. “As Jews, to systematically cut ourselves off from the BDS movement or worse condemn it, is to separate and segregate ourselves from the Palestinians…When the movement gets demonized, it renders calls for equality and respect [from the Jewish community] rather empty to their ears.”
Fein likens boycott to carpetbombing– in the Jewish psyche that is:
“Nothing plays into the Jewish malady of traumatic stress disorder more than reminding Israel how isolated it is,” Fein said. “The notion that a faltering BDS movement will have more success than carpet bombing did in either Vietnam or in Europe during the Second World War is nonsense. It raises the morale of the people, it does not lower morale.” The only way to end the occupation is to support Israel’s left wing and lobby the US Congress, Fein said.
Right of return:
Both Lowenthal and Fein condemned the BDS movement’s support of the right of return for Palestinians living outside of Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace takes a softer approach to the right of return than other affiliates to BDS movement, Vilkomerson said. While the organization supports Palestinians’ right of return, it states that a resolution on the issue can only be achieved through compromise. That compromise would have to include, “a combination of compensation, resettlement and other mutually agreed upon ways through negotiations,” Vilkomerson said.
More Vilkomerson, being administered her Zionism test:
“I’m uncomfortable, personally … with rights and statehood based on ethnicity or religion,” said Vilkomerson, who is Jewish. “I certainly support a Jewish homeland. I support the individual and collective rights of the Jewish people in Israel, and I believe they must be protected. I also support the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian in their homeland. I have a problem with the word sovereignty because it implies that people who are not Jewish living in the Jewish homeland or who are not Palestinian in the Palestinian homeland will not enjoy full rights. I can’t support a concept of statehood on the basis of religious or ethnic divides.”
Lowenthal said that by taking such a stance groups like Jewish Voice for Peace are excluding themselves from the mainstream Jewish debate over Israel. … “All I can suggest at this point is that any challenge of the right of the Jewish people for self determination and sovereignty in their traditional homeland crosses the line and will not be accepted in the Jewish community.”
“All I can suggest at this point is that any challenge of the right of the Jewish people for self determination and sovereignty in their traditional homeland crosses the line and will not be accepted in the Jewish community.”
Note that its self determination AND sovereignty. I have no idea what “traditional homeland” means. But if it means ancient historical homeland, I would agree with Lowenthal, I think that “the jewish people” definitely HAD a right to self determination and sovereignty in their ancient historical homeland; getting back to reality, to say that “the jewish people” a.ka. international jewry has a right to sovereignty in Palestine – a sovereignty based solely on religious affiliation- is one of the more disgusting and racists statements not containing slurs of epithets one will ever read.
The “traditional homeland” of Jews is also the traditional homeland of a majority of Palestinians: 5+ million in Palestine, and and roughly the same number in the Palestinian diaspora. An amazing statistic when you consider that Israel was supposed to have originally been a land without people.
JVP is indeed excluding itself from the mainstream Jewish conversation — with the hopes of shifting that conversation and BECOMING MAINSTREAM.
She (and we) should work on lifting Jewish fears and seeking allies among Jews, young (and often idealistic) and old (and often fearful).
I disagree with JVP (or Vilkomerson) taking the position that RoR for Palestinian involuntary exiles must be “negotiated”. If it is a right, it should be enforced, and not negotiated away by people who did not create the right and cannot destroy it.
Similarly, the right of people living under occupation should be whatever the law says, and not negotiated away either by the PA or by the USA.
When you stand up to oppression, it should be FAR EASIER to get a cohesive statement of policy if the goals are clear and universalistic. Support for international law (and for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares a right of return) is far simpler and more obviously correct than support for something as wishy-washy as “negotiation”.
If I’d been on the panel, I’d have asked Leonard Fein this one multi-part question:
Rebecca Vilkomerson, if you’re reading this, thumbs up for going into that dungeon. You’ll be viewed as enlightened in a decade or two after these cretins are denounced.
All I can suggest at this point is that any challenge of the right of the Jewish people for self determination and sovereignty in their traditional homeland crosses the line and will not be accepted in the Jewish community.”
but it is not their traditional homeland. it is their newfound homeland after centuries of living elsewhere.