This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
At times, New Year’s resolutions become manifestos. In the Middle East manifestos are important, if sometimes dangerous. After all, one person’s manifesto can become another’s call to arms.
Robert Cohen, the British blogger, has issued a New Year’s manifesto. As a Jew, his involvement with Israel-Palestine continues to deepen. Cohen offers five points of view for the year ahead with their counter-argument as well: Challenge the deniers, Pursue peace with justice, Support BDS, Occupy Judaism, Keep a sense of proportion and a sense of humor.
Overall, Cohen is upbeat within defeat. Cohen believes that 2016 is liable to be worse for Israel-Palestine than it was in 2015. The downward spiral is obvious. Still, he doesn’t want defeat to overwhelm the possibility of remaining sane and ethical. Jews have a “storehouse” of ethical values and prophetic action. Cohen counsels Jews to keep their heads high for the year ahead.
Is there another option?
When the abyss of injustice opens wide and is about to open wider, the small victories Cohen counsels us to celebrate seem small indeed. Defeat can overwhelm us. Then what?
Should we celebrate the recently-leaked revelation that President Obama ordered spying on Prime Minister Netanyahu during the Iran negotiations as part of US national and global interest to prevent a nuclear war? Few believe the “leak” of spying was happenstance. For this to become something more substantial to celebrate, however, spying would only be the beginning. If Israel doesn’t change its behavior, US aid has to be at risk. In 2016, the US-Israel special relationship has to be tested in concrete ways. Consequences for bad behavior have to follow.
The real issue is Israel’s ongoing assault against the Palestinian people. On this, Israel continues to be protected. In 2016, for example, aid proposals for Israel will continue to expand. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, will argue for that increase. Would Bernie Sanders do otherwise? Likely, Congress will be on board. The defeat continues.
In 2016, then, what can Jews do beside draw on our storehouse of ethical values and prophetic action? Years of small victories within an overall defeat will, at some point soon, take its toll. The storehouse will become depleted.
In 2016 Jews need to contemplate at a deeper level that depletion and what it means for the future of Israel-Palestine, for Judaism and Jewish life itself. Are there other views and visions that need to be added to the Jewish storehouse? Or should the Jewish storehouse, once full and expanding, be abandoned, closed down, moved elsewhere, and joined with other storehouses that are also being depleted?
Perhaps we live in a world where religious, cultural and political traditions of justice and peace are being depleted.
In past years, we have had theologies and ideologies of liberation and relinquishment as spurs to action for justice and peace. Do we now need a a theology of depletion?
Surely, our Jewish New Year manifesto has to include this depletion as call to action. Cohen is there, no doubt, but the situation, I think, is more dire in the long run. In the short run, too.
RE: “Cohen believes that 2016 is liable to be worse for Israel-Palestine than it was in 2015. The downward spiral is obvious.” ~ Marc Ellis
SEE: “Israel’s Moral Erosion” | By Alon Ben-Meir | ConsortiumNews.com | December 10, 2015
• Amid global anger over militants citing the Koran as a defense for terrorism, less attention gets paid to Israel citing God’s will as expressed in the Bible as the moral justification for stealing Palestinian land, an ethical crisis that is eroding Israel’s world standing, writes Alon Ben-Meir.
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/10/israels-moral-erosion/
Is the USA-Israel special relationship unravelling? If so, is that a good thing? Well, it always seemed to me a form of slavery, where the dog was wagged by the tail, the enormous slave did as it was told by the tiny slave-master. Israel cannot control the USA by threatening to cut off $3B/yr or by threatening to stop exercising its UNSC veto. But it can and does control the USA through thye USA’s misguided but deeply ingrained system of governance by oligarchy/plutocracy/deep state. Adelson, Saban, AIPAC, et al. With the help (as I presume) of other centers of oligarchic control, such as the military-industrial-complex, America is the helpless pawn of Israel. And as no-one likes to give up power, one expects the American pro-Israel oligarchs to keep at it, and to keep American Jewry prisoner as well through their control of Jewish organizations, synagogues, and American media generally.
Obama must therefore be highly praised for seizing such opportunities as presented themselves to let some “daylight” shine between Israeli and American interests. (And thanks too to Snowdon et al. for helping expose much dirt.)
If Jews only had a richer set of political organizations through which to express dissidence, it would make things easier. J-Street is still AIPAC-lite (for me). JVP is still too Zionist to suit me. Polling is so cautious that important questions about Jewish attitudes toward Israel never seem to get asked. And thus silent Jews (who might be less silent if they knew they were in large company, as I hope they are) stay silent on the whole.
Different people have different timetables for hope and despair. There used to be a lot of “not in my lifetime” jokes about I/P with punchlines involving God’s lifetime. I don’t hear them anymore. I guess they are not so funny now. And now, I suppose, there could be (if not jokes then) comparisons between the time it will take to get useful motion on I/P as against the time to deal usefully with global warming.