There is a powerful opinion piece in this morning’s Haaretz, “Diaspora Jews Want to Be Israel’s Partners–Not Only Its Donors,” by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. It is worth quoting at some length, before I comment on it:
“In January, a group of rabbinical students spending the year in Israel showed up at the Prime Minister’s residence with a stack of 725 letters from North American rabbis, cantors, rabbinical and cantorial students from all denominations of Judaism, and from throughout the United States and Canada, asking Prime Minister Netanyahu to cease plans for a new settlement that has roundly been criticized as an obstacle to long-term peace.”
“The Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem declined to send even a low-level staff person to speak with the future leadership of the North American Jewish community, or to accept letters from many hundreds of its current leaders. To date, we have received no response from the Prime Minister…. a mistake that reflects a broader trend of dismissing the concerns of North American Jews.”
“We are increasingly disturbed by the settlement project…We have seen the human rights crisis created by these settlements. Settlers steal Palestinian land in order to expand their holdings. Restricting certain roads to Jews only prevents children from attending school, parents from traveling to work, and families from visiting one another. We are outraged when we see pictures of violent settlers, wearing kippot, vandalizing mosques, destroying olive trees, and assaulting Palestinian civilians. Images of segregated buses in the West Bank prompt ugly flashbacks of the pre-Civil Rights era in the United States.”
“We believe that Israel must continue to exist as a safe and secure Jewish state. But we’re not willing to stand by as the current Israeli government destroys the chances for peace, isolates itself from the world, and angers the United States—its closest ally….[We] must explain to members of other communities, members of our own communities, and even our children why a state built on Jewish values perpetuates a military occupation of another people….We are increasingly unwilling to give the Israeli government a pass on the standards to which we hold the rest of the world.”
Excellent points, all of them–but delivered to the wrong address. Netanyahu–and most Israelis, it must agonizingly be admitted–are impervious to such arguments. The much more important audience would be Congress and Obama.
There’s no chance for an end to the Israeli occupation and an Israeli agreement to allow the creation of a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state, in the absence of serious and sustained US pressures on Israel. And there’s no chance of such pressures unless the American Jewish community educates and yes, pressures Congress and the president to end the traditional American policy of near unconditional support for Israeli policies.
In short, the letters, the protests, the lobbying of concerned American Jews must be focused not so much on the Israeli government, but our own. Now there would be a true “Jewish Lobby” worthy of our support.
A version of this post first appeared on Jerome Slater’s site today.
Slater – “no chance of such pressures unless the American Jewish community educates and yes, pressures Congress and the president to end the traditional American policy of near unconditional support for Israeli policies.”
That “American Jewish Community” thing is ridiculous. You want 1 per-thousand of 2% of the population to “pressure” the administration? What about the general public? That’s knowingly marginalizing ever more the need to get rid of the Zionist cancer. Or do you want to propose some important body that effectively controls US “democracy” to pressure the administration in stopping support for Ishghael? Like AIPAC?
I also object to that “near”. The Obama administration never gave any sign of being less than totally loyal to its owners.
I agree that heavy American pressure is essential if Israel is to be forced out of the West Bank.
Motion at debate at Oxford University last month: “Israel should withdraw immediately from the West Bank”.
This entire argument is meaningless for the following reasons:
1. Both Obama and Congress get their marching orders from the Netanyahu and from the Israel Lobby. Twenty-seven standing ovations.
2. The majority of Jews in the US and in Canada couldn’t care less about the occupation or the abuse of Palestinians. As such, both they and the Lobby are obstacles to justice and peace.
Thus the only effective way to resolve this is to boycott Israel and make it clear to Jews outside Israel that they are no longer part of the debate, they are irrelevant and ineffectual. They are aiders and abetters who cannot be swayed.
If you want to change them, you’ll have to change the way Judaism is taught in every household in the US, where Israel is seen as an intrinsic part of every Jew’s identity.
Seeing as you cannot do that without waiting generations and spending countless resources on education and de-programming, it is far more cost-effective to ignore Jews in the US, exclude them and explain to them that this is no longer an internal Jewish conversation.
On a seriousness scale of 1 to 10, your suggested solution rates at a poultry 3, whereas mine is far more serious, coming in at a solid 9.
Clearly, you need to give your ‘solutions’ more serious thought.
Jerome Slater:
Thanks for posting this piece.
You write that the rabbinical students, rabbis, cantors, etc. are wasting their time appealing to Netanyahu, and instead ought to be appealing to the US Congress.
Maybe. But why not urge them to talk to the Palestinians directly? I’ll bet very few of the rabbinical students (and rabbis, cantors, etc.) have had a serious talk with Palestinians. Ever.
It’s a VERY segregated situation over there. I think it’s much more segregated than the Old South (pre-civil rights), when southern whites often had black servants inside their homes for many hours every day. (How many Israeli Jews have Palestinians domestic servants? Hardly any).
What would the Palestinians get out of person-to-person talks? They might be regarded as human beings by Israeli Jews. And that would be a step forward.
The situation now is that the Palestinians are so thoroughly ghettoized, so exclusively closed off, that many Israeli Jews don’t think of Palestinians as human beings. And that gives the Israeli ruling class a blank check to kill Palestinians (e.g., Operation Cast Lead).
“In short, the letters, the protests, the lobbying of concerned American Jews must be focused not so much on the Israeli government, but our own. Now there would be a true “Jewish Lobby” worthy of our support.”
They would have to demand the US cease ‘all’ support of Israel for Israel to have any incentive to change…that’s the truth.
Are they willing to do that?
I don’t think so.
I’ve said this before….the US Jewish Lobby demanded US support of Israel…they asked for it and they got it……now they’ re stuck with it and so are we.
They never should have started this, it’s been a disaster for the US, for Palestine, for everyone involved, and I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a disaster for Israel in the end.
”Principiis obsta, Finem respice”—‘Resist the beginnings, Consider the end.’