Total number of comments: 10 (since 2009-08-11 07:32:04)
Danielf90
Medical student at Oxford University. Jewish with a love/hate relationship with Israel. Would probably call myself a zionist because I believe 2-states is the only solution that gives both sides a minimum of what they want. Despite my 'zionism' I really have quite massive ideological(/humanist/moral etc.) problems with Israel's behaviour and policies both inside and outside the greenline!
When IDF soldiers themselves admit that most of their work is protecting palestinians from nutjob settlers, there's no way that anybody in their right mind can defend it.
FYI, it was the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) in the UK that took us to Hebron - oh how different the US and UK organised Jewish orgs are....
I spent 1 day in Hebron during the Summer (spent the afternoon with 'Breaking the Silence') and I can honestly say that I've never, ever felt more ashamed to identify myself as a Jew. We got back to Jerusalem in the evening and we just started crying and despairing at an awful situation. I just cannot believe that anybody could support the Hebron settlers. :(
But the British government really is NOT in the hands of the Israel lobby and this is quite a formidable anti-Israel lobby in the UK too. You also have balance this with the fact that even with the BBCs generally neutral reporting, most of Britain supports Israel (in general) and so policy is generally going to be in that direction.
80% of conservative MPs and a similar proportion of Labour MPs are part of their 'Friends of Israel' groups probably because they see themselves as friends of Israel. The 'Friends of Palestine' parliamentary groups aren't exactly tiny either and many MPs are members of both.
I was just dissapointed because the programme was just quite badly made and came to rubbish conclusions.
The programme was a bit rubbish. As a Brit, who lives in Britain. I was dissapointed. It showed that some Jews are Rich. It showed that some rich Jews support Israel. It showed that some rich Jews support political parties. and that was pretty much it.
They said that 1 or 2 jews decided to stop funding a political party possibly because of their comments about Israel which is far from illegal.
Every piece of evidence they got for the program was in the public domain, transparently and easily available. The ending was quite telling when the (right wing, daily mail writing) presenter essentially said: 'We tried really hard to find a conspiracy but there just isn't one there....'. Well, FFS! I just wasted an hour of my life watching a programme that could have been really investigative and uncovered all sorts of shocking rubbish about the pro-israel lobby and the best they can come up with is that a few rich jews happen to support both Israel and political parties and there's no conspiracy. Well great, thanks for getting my hopes up channel 4!
The most shocking things they had to say was about US-based organisations (HonestReporting and CAMERA), so much for the UK Israel lobby....pah!
Nope, it ain't working. There must be something in my post that's filtering it out....hmm....I've really not said anything that i can think would set off the filters: rich, jews, conspiracy, dual loyalty, israel lobby, hmm.....
That's what I was trying to do. Luckily I saved my most recent reply. Currently on the move, so will reply when I get near my laptop.
I tried post a comment 3x last night and it submitted fine and never up on here. Was it pre-moderated?
Admittedly, being from Britain I can't comment on the specifics of American Jewish politics and views towards Israel.
However, do you really think that your marginal (which i don't mean as an insult, merely a matter of what i see as fact) fact are there because people just don't agree with you? Every jew has access to the internet, has access to al-jazeera, has access to the massive amounts of documentations of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, gross human rights abuses, blogs like this one, etc. etc. There's no way you could possibly claim that the insidious 'pro-israel lobby' stops Jews from seeing this stuff because it can't.
Many jews that I know in the UK are somewhat critical of Israel (to varying degrees) and many, even conservatives, have either mooted or actually practice the idea of a boycott of settlement goods (i certainly do). BUT to call for academic and cultural boycotts is a step too far for most people, as is being anti- the notion of a Jewish state. I think you might have to accept that really IS a line too far for most Jews.
ALSO: Did you even think that maybe the reason that the 'Jewish Community' doesn't have many big movers'n'shakers on your part of the left is because most of those jews choose not to associate with the jewish community? I know that in the UK, of all the (non-haredi) anti-zionist jews (of which there aren't many, maybe 1000-2000 max.), hardly any get involved with mainstream jewish life, AT ALL. Thus, even though they're Jews they would never be included in 'The Forward' because they don't contribute? [of course, it may well be that they don't contribute because they're not welcome in the jewish community, but that doesn't invalidate my point].
For you to imply that AMERICAN people who happen to be jewish must have an opinion on AMERICA is one thing but for you to imply (which I believe you have, apologies if you didn't) that AMERICAN people who happen to be Jewish must have an opinion on ISRAEL is another.
Regarding the 'scale'. Jewish leaders are most likely (again feel free to elaborate if you think I'm wrong) people that the 'Jewish community' see as their representatives. Since no pro-boycott or actively anti-zionist jews are there it suggest that these pro-boycott and anti-zionist views are pretty marginal when compared to the concensus of the 'American Jewish Community'.
I wasn't judging pro-boycott or anti-zionist views, I was merely adding a comment to explain why nobody with these views are in that list.
a) Do you believe all jews are REQUIRED to have a public opinion about Gaza?
b) Did you ever think that maybe pro-boycott views are so radical and fringe in the Jewish community that they're not really on the scale?