We’ve reached a new moment of despair inside the American Jewish community/Israel lobby over the two state solution, and a recognition that the occupation and Netanyahu’s coalition are delegitimizing Israel in the eyes of the world.
First there was a letter earlier this week to Netanyahu from 40 American Jewish leaders, including Charles Bronfman, pleading with him not to accept the Levy report which says that the West Bank is Jewish land.
“our great fear is that the Levy Report will not strengthen Israel’s position in this conflict, but rather, add fuel to those who seek to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.”
Among the leaders is Daniel Gordis, a rightwing Zionist who told the AP that the crazy Levy report might be legal, but that it makes Israel look obstructionist.
I believe this goes under the heading of too little, too late. Though the good news is that it’s dawning on the Israel lobby that public opinion counts, and that Jews will need to break with Jews.
Then there’s Rachel Lerner of J Street, who says that the occupation is “killing Israel’s future,” and she wants the Jewish community to take action. Note in this op-ed in the New York Jewish Week that she is not reaching out to other communities to take action; no, she just spoke against any kind of action, divestment, to the Presbyterian gathering in Pittsburgh. By doing so she maintained her Jewish community cred. Now she wants to be heard inside the lobby, to have the lobby take action. Lerner:
My words, though – and even J Street’s voice – can only go so far without being backed up by voices and action in the rest of the organized Jewish community – and by voices and action in Israel.
Jewish community leaders must do more than simply say we believe in a two-state solution. There must be substance behind that language – and a major commitment by our community to make this work a critical priority. If we continue to fail to heed this call to action, the last and best chance to secure Israel’s democratic, Jewish future may well slip through our fingers, as movements like BDS will only grow stronger and more attractive to an increasing number of people.
If a “broad tent approach” is nothing more than a strategy to look as though we care about Jewish values like democracy, peace and social justice, then it will surely fail – and fail miserably. No one will be convinced for long.
The Jewish community cannot just look as though we are for a sensible, peaceful, and just solution to this conflict. And it cannot only include organizations like J Street and voices like mine on panels about combating delegitimization or in community statements condemning BDS — and then dismiss us as out of the bounds of community or as “anti-Israel” when we talk about the delegitimizing effects that the continued occupation in the West Bank have on Israel’s democratic character. At some point it will have to take an active stand. That time is now.
One week after the Presbyterian vote came down – one week after I told that room that there are more effective ways of moving Israelis and American Jews than BDS — the Levy committee’s recommendations became public in Israel, asserting that the settlements are legal. The report drove home the dire implications of an occupation that is killing Israel’s future.
I don’t think that will work. I think the Jewish community is too reactionary, and that any change must come from a broad-based coalition. A tragic situation has developed in the Middle East; and the American Jewish community has played a key part, by urging reflexive support of Israel, no matter what.
The continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights is ONE of the factors giving Israel a bad reputation. Another is Israel’s systematic racial discrimination against non-Jews, including the 20% of Israeli citizens who are non-Jews.
Another factor is that the Palestinians are finally getting their side of the story out: Israel’s “founding narrative” no longer has a monopoly but is now competes with the “Palestinian narrative”. The establishment of Israel entailed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The growth of the Palestinian movement is an exciting development, and has real prospects for success.
Israel’s systematic racial discrimination against Israeli citizens who are non-Jews
Nevada Ned, could you or anyone else please give me some examples for this?
link to haaretz.com
Police intelligence officers have been told to collect information about Israeli Arabs who join the social justice protests, Channel 10 reported last night. Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino issued a directive to the police top brass ordering them to document every “involvement of the Arab community in the protests.”
Unlike the directives about Jewish demonstrators, which focus on rioters and anarchists, the section about Arabs does not specify which type of demonstrators police should watch out for, referring only to Arabs in general.
link to mondoweiss.net
When Mr Abdel Fattah exited the plane in the early hours of May 3 he was pulled aside for interrogation and detained for more than two hours without his passport. When repeated requests for its return were ignored, and he was not given a reason for his detention, he told the security staff to keep the passport and headed towards baggage reclaim.
It was the third time in a month that he had suffered such treatment at Ben Gurion airport.
link to badil.org
Today, the struggle continues under the banner of the Jaffa Popular Committee for the Defense of Land and Housing Rights (also known as the Popular Committee against House Demolition in Jaffa) which was established in March 2007 as a direct response to the hundreds of eviction orders issued to the Palestinian residents of the Ajami and Jabaliya neighborhoods of Jaffa. The importance of the Committee’s work soon became clear to its members when their preliminary research revealed that 497 Palestinian homes in Jaffa were under threat of eviction and/or demolition by the Israeli Lands Administration, which had also put up many of these properties — all of them “absentee” properties — for auction.
“I think the Jewish community is too reactionary, and that any change must come from a broad-based coalition.”
Certainement. And this coalition doesn’t mean getting the gentiles to do what the “progressive Jews” want. Rather, the whole analysis needs to be upgraded also, from Jewish terms to universal terms. The left has advanced “Chomskyism” —”solutions” discourse/strategic asset/anti-occupation/ahistorical law and rights—in order to conceal Jewish agency in the US and Zionism itself. The answer is the legacy of the Enlightenment and emancipation, classical Reform, Marxist internationalism, the “modern secular Jewish tradition from Spinoza.” An update and application of the latter is urgently needed to overcome a decades-old political and cultural deficit.
Thus the US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel doesn’t draw the line at 1967, includes conditions of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and RoR. See
link to usacbi.org
This contrasts with JVP and US Campaign to End the Occ, with their appeals to divest from “the occupation”, as if corporate marketing is the issue, rather than the Jewish state and the Zionocracy in the US. JVP and End the Occ are the left end of it, dominated by progressive Jews, with sharply limiting effects, whatever their undoubted commitment and critique of “occupation”.
This is so sad. The Israel Lobby thinks that the occupation sucks only because it harms Israel’s reputation, not because it harms Palestinians. They really don’t care about Palestinians, not one bit. Selfish bastards.
I think it’s also the fact that some of them are having a hard time explaining to younger Jews, including younger Jewish relatives, and maybe themselves deep down why Israel is acting so fascist. Israel has long said it’s the only democracy in the region. It’s not really the case, if it ever was, anymore. And also Israel is an ethnocracy.
Oh poor Israel, it keeps doing things to hurt itself. Boo-frickin-hoo. You know, I am sympathetic to people who are addicted to drugs – but if someone is gonna do drugs on my front lawn, steal from my house and kick my dog, I am going to feel less sympathetic, I might even want something bad to happen to that person.
And before members of the “organized jewish community” start with the tribal self congratulations -”democracy is a jewish value”- they might do well to ponder the actions of the “organized jewish communities” over the years – they’re the antithesis of democratic.
They should have done this 40 years ago. It is too late now.
They thought the Holocaust magic would excuse anything. Welcome to the real world, schmucks.
YESHA is a booby trap. Anyone who tries to dismantle it gets a Jewish civil war. The IDF will be rent asunder like that temple that Samson destroyed.
of course, any israeli civil war will be the fault of those crazy A-rabs and anti-semites the world over.
When i saw finkelstein and rabbani last winter, a kid wearing a IDF yarmulke asked norm, “how does your “solution” not lead to jews killing jews?” (if settlements were evacuated etc)
I wanted to slap the shit outta that kid. Lets worry about the current killing, there, tiger- ya know?
@ seafoid: True. I have always been of the belief zionist leaders lacked foresight (besides having delusions and probably a screw or two loose in their grey matter).
“I think the Jewish community is too reactionary, and that any change must come from a broad-based coalition. ”
link to youtube.com
The Wolf: You’re… the leadership of the Major Jewish Organizations , right? This is your house?
LMJO: Sure is.
The Wolf: I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.
LMJO: Good, we got one.
The Wolf: So I heard. May I come in?
LMJO: Uh, yeah, please do.
The Wolf: You must be AIPAC, which would make you the Presidents’ Conference Let’s get down to brass tacks, gentlemen. If I was informed correctly, the clock is ticking, is that right, AIPAC?
AIPAC: Uh, one hundred percent.
The Wolf: Your wife… AKA the goys of the US wake up from a very deep sleep at 9:30 in the AM, is that right?
AIPAC : Uh-huh.
The Wolf: I was led to believe that if she wakes up and finds us here in Kiryat Arba , she’d wouldn’t appreciate it none too much?
AIPAC : [laughing] She wouldn’t at that.
The Wolf: That gives us exactly… forty minutes to get the fuck out of the Occupied Territories including East Jerusalem Which, if you do what I say when I say it, should be plenty. Now, you’ve got a Zionist corpse in a car, minus a head, in a garage. Take me to it.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Perfect ex.:
“Among the leaders is Daniel Gordis, a rightwing Zionist who told the AP that the crazy Levy report might be legal, ”
How stupid do you have to be to think the Levy report represents anything “legal’ in regard to settlements? Huh, how stupid do you have to be? The whole world, including the US, has said the settlements are illegal.
So stupid for leadership is going to rally round and produce a solution?…I don’t believe it.
the liberal zionist call for a broad tent certainly is appropriate, but only when the tent extends well beyond the jewish community, so as to include the general public will there be a rupture of the u.s-israel special relationship, without which, what chance is there for the liberation of palestine?
1. There are many in the Jewish community who feel that the occupation “isn’t so bad.”
2. There are many others who feel that the turmoil of the Arab Spring makes this a “stupid” time to hand the West Bank to those who will just be swallowed up in the turmoil. Instead of turmoil in Damascus, turmoil in Ramallah?
3. There are some who feel that progress towards peace must come sooner rather than later and time is not on Israel’s side.
I would label #1 as reactionaries. I would label #2 as cautious. I would tell those of #3 “you will have a hard time selling #2 that now is the time.”
So let Israel and the Zionist continue with their self immolation, I personally wish they could do a u-turn and make things right for themselves and the palestinians but i know their arrogant personality types leaves no room for this option, they know it all, and think that their legal minded ways can always pull it off, they are accustomed to having things their way…Big money and power has them deluded, it’s called hubris and they are soaked in it.
The ones i feel sorry for are those that will be left holding bag, the everyday mom and pop jew of the modern world who are clueless as to the shenanigans that is being perpetrated on them by Zionism.
Why would it be any different this time for the jews, just because they have a nuclear armed country with madmen at the helm…this sounds like the recipe for an armageddon if such a thing were possible, but we know such things are only myths written by religious fanantics and fundamentalists.
In the meantime i can only watch as the storm approaches and inform those who will listen.
Good one.
Stating the obvious, the problem is that #2 is defined around “anything,” real or imagined. There’s always a #2.
Will a democratic government of Syria tolerate Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights? What does our State Department think?
Syria is not going to get a democracy.
Yeah but, I wonder if Lerner called them back and apologized for promoting a now obviously misleading PoV. Heck, I wonder if she has even changed her mind at all. Would she make the same spiel tomorrow?
She seems so terribly worried about how Israel looks, ignoring how duplicitous she made Israel look (to many very reasonable people).
As I understand it, the key argument of the Levy Commission is that the principles of belligerent occupation, including Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, do not apply to the West Bank and East Jerusalem because prior to June 1967, Jordan was not their legitimate sovereign. In fact, the Levy Commission is legally out to lunch. This argument is not new and was dealt with by the Legal Adviser of the Department of State years ago when it advised the Congress that in its opinion “…those principles [of belligerent occupation] appear applicable whether or not Jordan and Egypt possessed legitimate sovereign rights in respect of those territories. [At the time, Israel still had thousands of settlers and its armed forces inside the Gaza Strip which had been adminstered by Egypt prior to the 1967 war]. Protecting the reversionary interest of an ousted sovereign is not their sole or essential purpose; the paramount purposes are protecting the civilian population of an occupied territory and reserving permanent territorial changes, if any, until settlement of the conflict.”