We’ve reached a new moment of despair inside the American Jewish community/Israel lobby over the two state solution, and a recognition that the occupation and Netanyahu’s coalition are delegitimizing Israel in the eyes of the world.
First there was a letter earlier this week to Netanyahu from 40 American Jewish leaders, including Charles Bronfman, pleading with him not to accept the Levy report which says that the West Bank is Jewish land.
“our great fear is that the Levy Report will not strengthen Israel’s position in this conflict, but rather, add fuel to those who seek to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.”
Among the leaders is Daniel Gordis, a rightwing Zionist who told the AP that the crazy Levy report might be legal, but that it makes Israel look obstructionist.
I believe this goes under the heading of too little, too late. Though the good news is that it’s dawning on the Israel lobby that public opinion counts, and that Jews will need to break with Jews.
Then there’s Rachel Lerner of J Street, who says that the occupation is “killing Israel’s future,” and she wants the Jewish community to take action. Note in this op-ed in the New York Jewish Week that she is not reaching out to other communities to take action; no, she just spoke against any kind of action, divestment, to the Presbyterian gathering in Pittsburgh. By doing so she maintained her Jewish community cred. Now she wants to be heard inside the lobby, to have the lobby take action. Lerner:
My words, though – and even J Street’s voice – can only go so far without being backed up by voices and action in the rest of the organized Jewish community – and by voices and action in Israel.
Jewish community leaders must do more than simply say we believe in a two-state solution. There must be substance behind that language – and a major commitment by our community to make this work a critical priority. If we continue to fail to heed this call to action, the last and best chance to secure Israel’s democratic, Jewish future may well slip through our fingers, as movements like BDS will only grow stronger and more attractive to an increasing number of people.
If a “broad tent approach” is nothing more than a strategy to look as though we care about Jewish values like democracy, peace and social justice, then it will surely fail – and fail miserably. No one will be convinced for long.
The Jewish community cannot just look as though we are for a sensible, peaceful, and just solution to this conflict. And it cannot only include organizations like J Street and voices like mine on panels about combating delegitimization or in community statements condemning BDS — and then dismiss us as out of the bounds of community or as “anti-Israel” when we talk about the delegitimizing effects that the continued occupation in the West Bank have on Israel’s democratic character. At some point it will have to take an active stand. That time is now.
One week after the Presbyterian vote came down – one week after I told that room that there are more effective ways of moving Israelis and American Jews than BDS — the Levy committee’s recommendations became public in Israel, asserting that the settlements are legal. The report drove home the dire implications of an occupation that is killing Israel’s future.
I don’t think that will work. I think the Jewish community is too reactionary, and that any change must come from a broad-based coalition. A tragic situation has developed in the Middle East; and the American Jewish community has played a key part, by urging reflexive support of Israel, no matter what.
The continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights is ONE of the factors giving Israel a bad reputation. Another is Israel’s systematic racial discrimination against non-Jews, including the 20% of Israeli citizens who are non-Jews.
Another factor is that the Palestinians are finally getting their side of the story out: Israel’s “founding narrative” no longer has a monopoly but is now competes with the “Palestinian narrative”. The establishment of Israel entailed the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The growth of the Palestinian movement is an exciting development, and has real prospects for success.
“I think the Jewish community is too reactionary, and that any change must come from a broad-based coalition.”
Certainement. And this coalition doesn’t mean getting the gentiles to do what the “progressive Jews” want. Rather, the whole analysis needs to be upgraded also, from Jewish terms to universal terms. The left has advanced “Chomskyism” —“solutions” discourse/strategic asset/anti-occupation/ahistorical law and rights—in order to conceal Jewish agency in the US and Zionism itself. The answer is the legacy of the Enlightenment and emancipation, classical Reform, Marxist internationalism, the “modern secular Jewish tradition from Spinoza.” An update and application of the latter is urgently needed to overcome a decades-old political and cultural deficit.
Thus the US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel doesn’t draw the line at 1967, includes conditions of Palestinian citizens of Israel, and RoR. See
http://www.usacbi.org/mission-statement/
This contrasts with JVP and US Campaign to End the Occ, with their appeals to divest from “the occupation”, as if corporate marketing is the issue, rather than the Jewish state and the Zionocracy in the US. JVP and End the Occ are the left end of it, dominated by progressive Jews, with sharply limiting effects, whatever their undoubted commitment and critique of “occupation”.
This is so sad. The Israel Lobby thinks that the occupation sucks only because it harms Israel’s reputation, not because it harms Palestinians. They really don’t care about Palestinians, not one bit. Selfish bastards.
Oh poor Israel, it keeps doing things to hurt itself. Boo-frickin-hoo. You know, I am sympathetic to people who are addicted to drugs – but if someone is gonna do drugs on my front lawn, steal from my house and kick my dog, I am going to feel less sympathetic, I might even want something bad to happen to that person.
And before members of the “organized jewish community” start with the tribal self congratulations -“democracy is a jewish value”- they might do well to ponder the actions of the “organized jewish communities” over the years – they’re the antithesis of democratic.
“I think the Jewish community is too reactionary, and that any change must come from a broad-based coalition. ”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANPsHKpti48
The Wolf: You’re… the leadership of the Major Jewish Organizations , right? This is your house?
LMJO: Sure is.
The Wolf: I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.
LMJO: Good, we got one.
The Wolf: So I heard. May I come in?
LMJO: Uh, yeah, please do.
The Wolf: You must be AIPAC, which would make you the Presidents’ Conference Let’s get down to brass tacks, gentlemen. If I was informed correctly, the clock is ticking, is that right, AIPAC?
AIPAC: Uh, one hundred percent.
The Wolf: Your wife… AKA the goys of the US wake up from a very deep sleep at 9:30 in the AM, is that right?
AIPAC : Uh-huh.
The Wolf: I was led to believe that if she wakes up and finds us here in Kiryat Arba , she’d wouldn’t appreciate it none too much?
AIPAC : [laughing] She wouldn’t at that.
The Wolf: That gives us exactly… forty minutes to get the fuck out of the Occupied Territories including East Jerusalem Which, if you do what I say when I say it, should be plenty. Now, you’ve got a Zionist corpse in a car, minus a head, in a garage. Take me to it.