Sectarianism in the Middle East is a big issue in the news. BBC had a report on sectarian tensions in Syria yesterday, and NPR aired a good report the other day by Kelly McEvers on the destruction of Shia mosques across Bahrain.
“Bahrain society generally is made up of a lot of moderate people,” Staci Haag, the regional director for the National Democratic InstituteHaag says. “But if you create divisions, then you also have moderate Sunnis who are pushed more toward the government side, because this creates a sense of fear between the two communities, and people are quite frankly forced to pick sides.”
The question now is if a national dialogue planned for next month will bring Bahrain back to the way it was, when Sunnis and Shiites didn’t pick sides and lived together in peace.
Sectarian conflict in Iraq eventually turned brutal and violent, and the uprising in Syria is beginning to take on a sectarian tone that many worry could spill into deeply divided Lebanon.
Undoubtedly, social unrest strips away the cohesive tissue that prevents ethnicities from battling one another. But my question is, what about the sectarian issues in the U.S., are Jews likely to be affected by them? And I think the answer is yes, because of the deep unexplored divisions that Zionism has created in American culture and inside Jewish life too.
Here are two items that touch on the issue.
1. From Haaretz:
Jewish Federations of North America officials met today at the White House with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The meeting, coinciding with the announcement of the Federation movement’s new partnership with DHS, was dedicated mainly to the state of threats posed to American Jewish institutions.
I think that’s about Zionism at heart And, 2. A piece in the Jerusalem Post about Jewish political giving and the dual loyalty issue:
Republicans are hopeful, [Jeffrey] Goldberg explains, that they will be able to chip away at the millions of dollars and political activism that American Jews bring to the Democratic Party.
And that is making some Jews distinctly uncomfortable.
Marta Wallant, 53, a lawyer from New York City, describes herself as a “liberal Jew” who has “recently had serious doubts about President Obama’s policies towards Israel.”
She explains it this way: “I was not happy with his speech, either. But when I read a headline in ‘the Wall Street Journal’ [on May 19], ‘Jewish donors warn Obama on Israel,’ I became very anxious. When Jews are talked about in terms of their financial control, when influential newspapers are openly making connections between Jews and money – no matter in what context – I fear that anti- Semitism cannot be far behind.”
The specter of accusations of dual loyalty, which arises when American Jews see their leader at odds with an Israeli leader, may not be far behind, either. American Jews therefore try, at almost all costs, to avoid even the appearance of such differences. At the AIPAC conference, says Goldberg, participants went out of their way to show that loyalty to Israel and loyalty to the US are inherently the same, because of their joint interests.
…[Peter] Beinart agrees, saying that the narrative of dual loyalty appears only in the “crazy blogs. It’s not in the mainstream.”
Wallant is not persuaded. “This is an issue of emotional tone as much as it is an issue of substance,” she explains. “And as we all know, emotions have an important role in both partisan politics and in racism.
[Brandeis professor Shai] Feldman agrees that the tone and tenor of Netanyahu’s response to Obama were out of line. “To say that he ‘expects’ the president to do something or to say ‘peace based on illusion’ while he stands next to the president – that’s not language to use with the president or the way to conduct these matters,” Feldman warns.
My own answer to this is to be stir debate within the Jewish community over Zionism, so that Jews are not associated overwhelmingly with support for Israel, which can spur dual-loyalty charges when American and Israeli interests are so different. And yes, let’s be honest about Jewish giving in the political campaigns. Everyone knows it, let’s talk about it. I don’t think Americans object to elites, there is a recognition in our society of the role of elites; it’s unaccountable elites that stir resentment.
