As any regular visitor to this site knows, I have conflicted feelings about my relationship to the Jewish community. Though I am always proudly Jewish, I announce that I am assimilating, anti-Zionist, non-Zionist, realist, leftist. I have a love-hate thing about Jewish organizations and the Jewish community; and truthfully, I am only truly comfortable (can let my hair down socially) in the company of Jews like those in Jews Against the Occupation, who many years ago asked, Are we for the right of return? and some voted Yes and some voted No, and those who voted No left the room. I would have stayed in the room. I know many of those people now, and depend on them. When I'm around other more-communal types, I tend to feel guilty about my views, and embarrassed, and even try to hide them.
I begin with my alienation because it helps to politically frame the event I went to last night, called "Why We Need a Liberal Israel Lobby," at the 92d Street Y, which is a Jewish space. There were five Jews on the stage, most of them on "the left," and yet I felt my views were only partially represented. The person who voiced my views most was Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, and the lesson of this story is what a difficult job J Street will have if it confines its efforts to Jewish communal life. It can't, and it won't; and last night demonstrates why it can't do so.
The hall was crowded with about 300 people, and the discussion was remarkable for three statements. One, Ben-Ami's sense of isolation from the organized Jewish community. Two, Eric Alterman's profession of dual loyalty. And three, the panel's agreement that the Chas Freeman case has had a large effect.
One. The speakers were liberal lobby supporters Alterman of the Nation, Ben-Ami of J Street, and Michelle Goldberg, a writer on religious themes. Their opposition came from Rabbi Steve Gutow, who was representing the ancien lobby, as the director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The panel was moderated by Jane Eisner of the Forward, who I found to be largely supportive of Gutow, though this may have reflected her responsibility as moderator; in general, though, I was surprised that she seemed blindered to the spiritual crisis that Israel is in today.
The general thrust of the night was that liberals are deeply disturbed by the new face of Israel and feel unrepresented by American Jewish organizations, meaning AIPAC. In a word: We want peace, and they support the Israeli right wing. Goldberg summed this up best. She identified herself as a Zionist and said she is horrified by what is happening to Israel. "This is the last chance to save Israel." The left's "invidious" claim that Israel is South Africa may become "apt" in years to come, she said, because you can't reconcile democracy with a government comprising Avigdor Lieberman. And if American Jews had only spoken out more forcefully against Lieberman, they would have had an effect.
After confessing his own apprehension about even stepping into the room, Gutow said that he didn't recognize the lobby these folks were talking about. It's a big tent, he said: just like the Talmudic commentaries, everyone is invited to speak out. That means everyone from J Street to AIPAC in the middle to the David Project on the right. "I've never seen the hegemony [you describe] where people can't speak out." There have been dissident voices in the Jewish community forever. "We're all pro-peace. We may have different ideas of how to get there."
It was at this point that Ben-Ami gave a speech about his own isolation that was very moving. I did not record the event so I can't give it verbatim. He said that Gutow reminded him of Claude Rains being "shocked" by the gambling in Rick's Cafe. "Very large numbers of unaffiliated American Jews and very large numbers of non-Jews feel that they cannot speak their mind when it comes to Israel." And when Ben-Ami meets these people, they say, "Thank god you're here." On issues like pressuring Israel, ending the settlements, even the two-state solution, these people feel they can't speak up.
Subsequently, Ben-Ami said that he gets invited to very few official precincts of American Jewry. He has not been invited to speak at any Jewish Federation meeting and while he spoke at Gutow's organization, the JCPA, there was pressure to disinvite him. Leading Jews are told he's undermining the Jewish community. "This is real."
Alterman promptly echoed the point by challenging Gutow, Why did the Polish Embassy disinvite Tony Judt from speaking about Israel after pressure from the ADL?
Two. Alterman has a bracing style. Halfway thru the event he said that the Jewish community suffers from hypocrisy around the issue of dual loyalty. "I find this very confusing." Of course there's dual loyalty to Israel. He was raised with it. In Hebrew school, they were told they had to be supportive of Israel. At 14, on his first trip to Israel, at the behest of the ZOA, it was drilled into him that he should always do what was best for Israel.
And while complaining that he gets quoted by Walt and Mearsheimer for making the point, Alterman cited the maxim of foreign policy that the strategic interests of two states inevitably will diverge and said, "Sometimes I'm going to go with Israel" when its interests and the U.S.'s interests diverge. Because the US can take a lot of hits, but Israel can't.
You heard that right, boss. To her credit, Eisner asked Alterman to name a situation in which the two countries' interests diverge. Alterman offered: that bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorists were "to some degree inspired" by the U.S. relationship to Israel. The general environment of "terrorist attacks" and their "pool" of supporters in the Arab/Muslim world obviously draws on the the U.S.-Israel relationship.
"Dammit, if that's the price we have to pay [for the special relationship], let's pay it… But let's be honest about it."
I wonder: how many Americans would share that view? (And where's the dual?)
Gutow then said that he's never really denied the dual loyalty thing. He's argued with rabbis who don't want to fly the Israeli flag. And if Palestinian-Americans want to fly their flag next to an American flag, "they have that right to dual loyalty too."
Three. Eisner wisely brought up the Chas Freeman case. It engaged the panel for 15 minutes.
Jeremy Ben-Ami took the soft J Street line: We didn't speak out on the guy, we didn't know who he was; but we're upset that there might be a litmus test for mid-to-senior level presidential appointments, that they can't be critical of Israel. I find this line weaselish: you could learn all you needed to know about Freeman in a day and understand that he was a pro who fits the model–blacklisted for heterodox ideas on this subject. Michelle Goldberg said that alas the Freeman case tended to vindicate Walt and Mearsheimer, whom she had earlier accused of "gallivanting" into The Issue and not getting their facts straight. When Jewish organizations say they had nothing to do with the destruction of Freeman, Goldberg said, "Honestly, are they going to insult our intelligence to that degree?"
Alterman offered the following analysis: Freeman's views are not that different from his own. He wasn't getting a policy position. The "organized Israel lobby" and the neocons went after him because of the danger to Iran policy. "AIPAC wants a US bombing of Iran's nuclear capability." It fears that it won't get that if Freeman got into intelligence.
"Secondly, they needed to show the rest of the world that you're not allowed to hold these views if you want to advance." It was like when the lobby took out Sen. Charles Percy. "You couldn't have a senator who called for an evenhanded policy in Israel and Palestine." After AIPAC took him out, "They basically put his head up on a pole…. And they did that with Chas Freeman. They win ugly on purpose…. because it intimidates people." Go anywhere in Congress and you will find, there's no percentage in taking on AIPAC.
Ben-Ami said that this was unfair. "AIPAC gets a bad rap." The problem was bigger. It was the "whole constellation of bloggers and groups" who presume to speak for Israel and who got traction on the Hill on Freeman. As soon as they had traction, it was all over.
Now I want to say why the evening left me alienated and gave me sympathy for Ben-Ami.
To begin with, here you have a leftish community and there was virtually nothing said all night about the horrors of Palestinian existence. The Gaza slaughter, unmentioned. White phosphorus, nothing. The checkpoints. The shooting of Tristan Anderson or the killing of Rachel Corrie–a whole universe, unmentioned. I felt unreflected. I sensed that an awareness of these realities was behind many of Ben-Ami's statements, but the liberals, Alterman and Goldberg, did not speak for me. The crisis for them is that Lieberman gets so many votes and maybe shatters the dream of Israel. I say the dream was shattered in Hebron and in Gaza and in Ni'lin. When Goldberg says that apartheid may one day become an apt analogy, I think, It's apt now. You've seen the videos of the Israeli army destroying olive trees in occupied territory, destroying a traditional way of life, opposed by international freedom riders, one of whom was brutally injured by that army. This is the moment.
There is, at bottom, even in the liberal Jewish community, a refusal to see Israel as others see it, an ethnocentric resistance to licensing non-Jewish critics of Israel. Both Alterman and Goldberg took shots at Walt and Mearsheimer. Gallivanters. Eric, if you are going to ever bring pressure on Israel, you need gentiles. You need Walt and Mearsheimer and the realists. How many Americans would Alterman trust to reach the same conclusion he has: that 9/11 was worth it for Israel's sake? I think fewer than half, especially if you told them about the checkpoints and the second-class status of Israeli Palestinians. No wonder Alterman and Goldberg seem to want to reform the lobby from within.
If you're stuck in the Jewish community, then you're really stuck in ethnocentrism and indifference to Palestinian suffering and, as Alterman says, dual loyalty. At one point when Eisner mentioned Avigdor Lieberman, there was a smattering of applause for him. His Amen corner out of Brooklyn–the same people who supported the Irgun during the Nakba. I don't want to be in community with those people, nor share a tent with the anti-Arab David Project.
The only way to lose that crowd is to get one foot out of the Jewish community. Jeremy Ben-Ami seems to understand this. He's a Zionist but he knows that his only hope to hold on to a Jewish state, of some non-pariah description, is through efforts at justice. Looking back on it, the most meaningful phrase in the evening was when he spoke of the great numbers of non-affiliated Jews and non-Jews who are afraid to speak out. They weren't speaking last night either. That's who you have to work with if you're going to have any political effect.
