Roll over Ben-Gurion and tell Jabotinsky the news: The Forward, which has been fiercely pro-Israel, ran two pieces yesterday that are sharply critical of the Zionist establishment.
First, here is a piece defending Students for Justice in Palestine chapters from the ongoing university punishments– SJP “is one of the few campus groups pushing for a just peace in Israel and Palestine”– written by a member and former member of SJP chapters (respectively, Joey Morris at Brandeis and Gabi Kirk, formerly of University of California Santa Cruz). Notice the complete lack of hysteria in this rendering of the argument:
Everyone has the right to criticize a foreign government when it breaks international law, even if others have deep emotional ties to it. …
SJP’s actions are, at their heart, meant to bring the Palestinian narrative to campus. If telling history from a Palestinian point of view makes pro-Israel students feel uncomfortable, that’s not anti-Semitic on our part. It’s denial on theirs.
While pro-Israel groups have filed many Title VI discrimination complaints with the Department of Education, not one has been found in their favor. Pro-Israel students have alleged anti-Semitic harassment and have failed to provide objective evidence, yet administrators still cave to their demands. In contrast, when Northeastern Law SJP student Max Geller received death threats, the university’s response was tepid. The administration applies a double standard to Palestine solidarity groups, delaying the response to their harassment claims while taking decisive action when Israel lobby groups complain.
And then this excellent attack on Hillel, in which Jay Michaelson of the Forward staff tells young Jews just to leave the organization rather than try and reform it from within. Notice how Michaelson goes right to the funding question. “Institution Is Beholden to Donors, Not Students,” is a headline, and he scores “Jewish philanthropists” in the piece. Michaelson explains that the Hillel guidelines shutting down intelligent conversation about the conflict aren’t about institutional ideology or love of Israel but about money.
Remember back in 2009, when the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco issued one of the first gag rules regarding Israel-Palestine? Why do you think they did that? Because they felt like it? No, because two major California-based foundations said that if one dime of their money went to support or endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, however indirectly — a film at a film festival, a speaker on a panel, anything — they would pull all their money. That’s why the policy was put in place, and that’s why it was mimicked around the country.
This is not to say, dear Hillel students, that you shouldn’t be outraged. On the contrary: you should be more outraged. The community institutions which pretend to involve your participation are a sham. Your Hillel “officers” are like student government: They can make petty decisions, but when the rubber hits the road, money talks and they walk.
So direct your outrage in a meaningful way: leave.
The only way these institutions will listen to you is if they begin to fail at their core mission. Their donors will then have to choose between their support of that mission, and their desire to maintain a particular kind of political purity. There is no point in arguing with your Hillel director, or Eric Fingerhut, Hillel’s president and CEO, or the Jewish Museum’s staff. You are clearly right. But if they listen to you, they will lose their jobs.
This is of course the reason that Vassar and Swarthmore have declared themselves Open Hillel’s and Harvard and Berkeley have failed to do so. Because the Harvard and Berkeley chapters are large and too embosomed in the local Jewish establishment to disentangle themselves financially. Michaelson is telling the students to break out now and form their own tabernacle in the desert.
Notice that both these pieces address the Israel lobby. So a progressive Jewish publication that sought to marginalize that analysis is now embracing it. You simply cannot understand the primacy of the special relationship in our politics without talking about the money of the Israel lobby.
The Forward’s apostasy underscores my mainstream political analysis: Not till Jewish progressive culture splits will American political culture break on this issue. You cannot get the Democratic Party unless you transform American Jewish attitudes; Jews are simply too important in the blue state liberal consensus. I’m all for organizing inside the rightwing of American life, with Rand Paul and the National Summit to Reassess the Special Relationship. But that just gets us back to a traditional opposition of the 40s and 50s, Harry Truman versus the State Department. And we saw how that worked out. You have to break down this powerful ideology in its own burrows.
Hat’s off to Forward editor Jane Eisner for having the journalistic integrity to take on these stories.
Forward: Mazel Tov.
Except that we don’t live in the 1950s, the Holocaust isn’t something a recent event and Israel is today a regional superpower. The Nakba had taken place, but from afar it looked a lot like refugees switching places. Of course, that’s not how it was, but it was the 40s and the 50s.
I also think the Truman vs State dept analogy is misguided. But I do agree with you that you need a break within the progressive Jewish community, which is why I am here and I think a lot of readers are on this site. It’s not like we can organize from this place, but it is a keystone of information, of where the current battles are at.
Nevertheless, I think a better analogy is opposition to the drug war/war on drugs.
Both establishments of both parties were for it a long time, Clinton was actually the worst on it, but the grassroots of both parties organized away from their establishment cores and we’re already seeing the beginning of the end of 20-year sentences of marijuana possession.
I have a personal interest in reforming the progressive Jewish community, and I can see progress every day. But like you said, this community is deeply embedded within the Democratic establishment. And establishments can be defeated when they are doing foolish policy, whether domestic or otherwise(and on Israel, I’d say it’s as much, if not more, a domestic issue in a sense, since Zionism is so tightly linked to Jewish identity).
So I don’t share your deterministic assessment, nor your historical analogy. But I’d lie if I said that reforming the progressive Jewish community wasn’t a key goal for me, because Zionism isn’t just a foreign policy issue, it’s deeply intertwined with Judaism in America and in the wider Western world. Even if you’re an anti/non-Zionist, you have to grapple with it as a Jew, or else you are hiding from reality. But that doesn’t mean that if we won’t get reforms fast enough, that we should tie our hands. That’s an essentially Norman Finkelstein-esque argument.
@Phil
I rarely get to say this but… I may disagree with your cause but I 100% agree with your analysis here. :) American Liberalism will not break with an important constituency over a policy issue that doesn’t have a corresponding gain. Those factions that try would not have the backing of Democratic moderates. Democratic moderates will not be willing to lose critical states (especially Florida and possibly Pennsylvania), a major source of activists and a major source of financing over Palestinian rights. I’ve always believed there are two huge battles that American BDSers/anti-Zionists will have to win to win the moral fight: Jewish Zionism on the left to become the consensus view among Democrats and then Christian Zionism on the right to become the consensus view among Americans.
So we agree. I don’t see how you can win this but I agree that’s the first crucial battlefield.
”You cannot get the Democratic Party unless you transform American Jewish attitudes; Jews are simply too important in the blue state liberal consensus. I’m all for organizing inside the rightwing of American life, with Rand Paul and the National Summit to Reassess the Special Relationship.”
The Dems are a lost cause as far as Isr is concerned. We have a much better chance of getting Isr and the I-lobby out of US politics with the conservatives and libertarians than with the liberals.
Even if Rand Paul were to swing the pendulum too far on both FP and domestic policy it is necessary imo to go to that extreme in order to bounce back to ‘balance.’
Just a couple of decades too late . Why so shy and retiring ?