Here is StandWithUs appropriating J Street’s rhetorical positioning– “pro-Israel, pro-peace”– in a call to buy goods from the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The pro-Israel, pro-peace community urges you to join a counter campaign. We are making November 30 a BIG (Buy Israeli Goods) Day….When you go holiday shopping, choose presents from the wonderful array of Israeli-made items, from fine Israeli wines to the high quality Ahava beauty products, Israeli jewelry, shoes and clothing lines, and of course, food. Select Sabra or Tribe hummus, great Israeli wines and Osem cookies to grace your holiday party.
Meanwhile, notice that J Street, sensing the threat to the two-state solution, has called on the U.S. to delineate borders for a Palestinian state– and thereby give up on the settlements issue, accepting 3/4 of the West Bank settlers as part of Israel. Facts on the ground. J Street is inside the Jewish community, and as I said a year ago, American Jews largely support the settlements. Barney Frank, in probably the second most liberal district in the country, said that it was “political suicide” (per Jeff Halper’s report) to come out against settlements unless he could get 5000 Jews in his district to line up behind him. Well, they haven’t. And J Street was lately tossed from a Reform temple in Frank’s district as being too transgressive. The community has spoken. I admire J Street for reviving the tradition of dissent, taking on the Establishment, and suffering excommunication. But the ground is shifting under all our feet…
Thanks to Nancy Kricorian of Code Pink’s Stolen Beauty campaign, which opposes the illegal occupation hammer and tongs, for the tip.
Oh and here is the Associated Press, picked up in the New York Times, suggesting that Har Homa, an illegal settlement that sheared off a mountain south of Jerusalem, overlooking Bethlehem, to populate with Jews, was somehow a “neighborhood” of Jerusalem and settlers moved there unaware of the encroachment.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have moved to sprawling Jewish areas in east Jerusalem believe they are ordinary residents of their capital who will never be asked to vacate their homes….
“Israel’s attempt to deceive the international consensus, and to redraw that consensus, has not been successful,” said Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian spokesman. “These are not neighborhoods. They are illegal colonies, extraterritorial entities on occupied territory.”
But AP’s not buying the lesson:
If Israel has lost international understanding where the east Jerusalem neighborhoods
…
Har Homa was considered an outrage by the Palestinians when it was built, and still is. Any fool knows that these are not neighborhoods. As an undergraduate at NYU said of her plans to make aliyah, at an aliyah conference there a week back that I attended, “I want to strengthen the Jewish presence across the Green Line.”
When I say my people, I mean American Jews. They are the tribe I grew up with, we had a lot going for us. God save my people from our ethnocentrism.
