On Sunday there's a conference of Jews in New York seeking to recover the progressive anti-war tradition in Jewish life. I'm planning to attend. Rabbis Ellen Lippmann and Arthur Waskow. J.J. Goldberg, Amy Goodman. Register here. Oh, also: Michael Ratner (who has helped on the lawsuit against Caterpillar), M.J. Rosenberg, and Jeremy Ben-Ami, of J Street, Tammy Shapiro of Union of Prog Zionists. Strange that Ralph Seliger, who sponsored Shapiro's work once, is attacking the conference in the Forward, and singling out the statement by one of the speakers at the conference, Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, that "Occupation is Wrong in Iraq and Wrong in Palestine." Seliger: "[B]oth [occupations] defy the simplistic solutions that this slogan would suggest." Oh my God, why is a Progressive Zionist wasting any words defending the occupation? When will Seliger bluntly condemn the horrifying conditions that both occupations have produced? And Seliger attacks Cagan for not supporting the two-state solution, and attacks Amy Goodman for "extreme anti-Israel bias."
Maybe these people represent a real strain in Jewish life today?
The organizers are angry at Seliger and the Forward for "persisting in the kind of fear and paralysis about the war that has silenced many Jewish voices for nearly six years." It reminds us that when push comes to shove, many progressive Zionists line up with the Alvin Rosenfelds of the world, who said that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism. Seliger, who supported the Iraq war plans, is trying to block the important work that might take place here: a recognition in the progressive Jewish community that members of their own communal family, including neolibs and neocons, pushed the Iraq war in some measure out of concern for Israel's security, meanwhile pooh-poohing the Israeli occupation. There won't be progress till that recognition is achieved, and the apologetics for the occupation cease.
