Last week a former Israeli security official urged American Jews to restrain Israel’s “unjust” war in Palestine because it fuels anti-Semitism around the world. The statement is remarkable because that view is generally seen as anathema: saying that Israel’s actions have any role in the growth of anti-Semitism.
Ami Ayalon, a Navy commander and former head of the Shin Bet, spoke at J Street last week and said that Israelis believe they are fighting a just war of defense for their existence, and that the world refuses to acknowledge that. But in fact Israel’s existence is established, and American Jews can see that Israel is engaged in an unjust war. (Emphasis mine)
What you see from the outside is us fighting two separate, totally different wars. The first is indeed a just war, a war to establish Israel within the 1967 borders based on international resolutions. You correctly say that we have won that war….
We continue to fight a second war, a war in order to expand our border to the east, to build more settlements, and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state next door. That second war is not a just war. It denies the Palestinians the right to self determination, which was recognized by the international community. As a former commander of the Navy and director of the Shin Bet, as a person who fought in too many wars, as someone who represents the views of a vast majority of the IDF top command, past and present, I tell you today that the second war, the unjust one, cannot be won with force alone. There is no military decision in this war. That is why unless we choose a totally different approach, this war will continue for generations to come, it will lead to more violence and terror. After we beat Hamas and Islamic Jihad, we will face ISIS. And after that, who knows what will come.
But I can assure you it will definitely be more extremist. This second war to expand our borders will isolate Israel even more and increase anti-Semitism around the world, but the most important thing, the most dangerous thing, is that this war will be the end of Israel as the founding fathers of Zionism envisioned it. I’m here to tell you that the question of which war we are sending our young men into is tearing Israeli society apart…
You see that reality. We in Israel refuse to see it. We cannot see it. We are too close to the events, we are in too much pain to see clearly. We still use the language of guilt, not of responsibility. We need you by our side on this long and hard road. We need you to tell us the truth the way you see it. So when we say [Hebrew phrase] which means, All Israel are responsible for each other, we are in a way saying, You have the right, and in times of crisis, like today when you see the writing on the wall and we do not or cannot, you also have the duty to stand up and tell us your truth. This is the real meaning of mutual responsibility.
Ayalon’s comments are similar to those of the former Episcopal chaplain at Yale, Bruce Shipman, for which he lost his job five years ago. In the wake of the 2014 Gaza slaughter, Shipman wrote to the New York Times and said there was a “relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.”
[Growing anti-Semitism] parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.
Shipman was lambasted for blaming the victim and making Jews responsible for Israel’s actions. “If, according to Rev. Shipman’s view, the antidote for anti-Semitism is a solution to the Palestinian question, then he should share with us the antidote for the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms of Eastern Europe, and Hitler’s Germany,” Yale graduate Michael Katz wrote to the school paper. While Mark Oppenheimer wrote in Tablet that Shipman was blaming American Jews in a bigoted way. “Next time an innocent Jewish man or woman is shot in Brussels, rather than complain about anti-Semites, I will ring up Prime Minister Netanyahu and complain about his war policy. And next time 1,400 children are abducted, beaten, raped, and sex-trafficked in England, rather than decry sex-trafficking and child-rape, I will demand that you [Shipman] ring up the Queen.”
Ayalon said just that: that in the spirit of one Jewish people, American Jews should tell Israel to stop making wars.
H/t Adam Horowitz and James North.
Disclosure: The Rev. Shipman has been a contributor to our website.
Thanks for picking up this powerful statement by a top Zionist general.
One objection:
“… that in the spirit of one Jewish people, American Jews should tell Israel to stop making wars”
The above is not a quote from Ayalon or any of the persons cited in the above paper; it seems to be the personal conviction of Mr Weiss “(H/t Adam Horowitz and James North)”.
“American Jews” (both those who are so by religion and those who wrongly believe that religion is transmitted biologically), have standing to do that by virtue of:
-being overwhelmingly supporters and financers of the colonial Zionist entity –while a few of them are the owners of it;
-being part of the people who vote and pay for the imperial predator government that keeps the Zionist entity alive.
He should, in other words, be told to stop making up a “one Jewish people” when the only discernible people he might mean is the utterly Americanized heirs of the East-European Ashkenazi ethny. Supporting the “one people” concept is feeding murderous Zionist propaganda and recruitment. Censorship instead of discussion does not make the problem disappear.
Mr. Ayalon should have urged all Zionists to disavow Zionism and to embrace justice, accountability and equality in I-P.
But he is a Zionist, so instead he merely urged Jewish Americans to support kinder, gentler Jewish / “Jewish State” supremacism (incl. “necessary evil”).
To a Zionist, that is “the real meaning of mutual responsibility”.
“That second war is not a just war. It denies the Palestinians the right to self determination, which was recognized by the international community”
Says the general and spymaster.
He had just said, though: “two separate, totally different wars. The first is indeed a just war, a war to establish Israel within the 1967 borders based on international resolutions”
Well, well. Establishing his shitty Crusader kingdom within any borders, and the “international resolutions” that are used as a pretext, deny “the Palestinians the right to self determination, which was recognized by the international community”, a right that had firmly been established prior to that (that in fact is the basis of simple human decency and fairness even if there were no treaties.) So it’s very simple; it’s all pure and simple invasion and genocide.
But of course, to recognize that he dedicated all his life to committing a high crime against humanity, in fact directing and managing that single, endless, “unjust” war of aggression against the helpless owners of the land he invaded might be too much to ask from the much-decorated General…
Anyone who thinks that Israel’s brutal illegal occupation of the Palestinians for over 70 years, doesn’t increase anti-Semitism around the world is living in cloud cuckoo land.
“But the key stain on Israel’s reputation is its brutal treatment of the Palestinians and the fact that it has become an apartheid state. Until recently Israel and its supporters were able to maintain the fiction that there would eventually be a legitimate Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, but it is now clear that there is virtually no chance that will happen and Greater Israel is here to stay. That Greater Israel, as Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley make clear in an important new UN study, is already an apartheid state. Israel and its defenders vehemently deny that fact, but even among Israelis it’s not unusual to hear Israel described as an apartheid state. For example – two former Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, have said that if there is no two-state solution, Israel will – to quote Olmert – face a South African style of struggle. Well, there is no two-state solution. Because of time constraints, I will focus exclusively on the first of those operations – Cast Lead – which took place in the weeks before President Obama was inaugurated in 2009. Israeli forces killed about 1,400 Palestinians of whom roughly 1,200 were civilians; 350 of those civilians were children. In contrast, 13 Israelis were killed. The ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in that operation is 108:1. That’s not a war in my lexicon. That’s a massacre. I might add that 6,300 Palestinian homes were destroyed contributing to the 600,000 tons of rubble that littered Gaza when the shooting ended.”
John Mearsheimer.
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2017/03/31/john-mearsheimer-what-has-changed-since-publication-of-the-israel-lobby-and-what-the-new-administration-can-do-differently/
The Zionist idea, to welcome all Jews into the Jewish state, regardless of what kind of state they wanted it to become; meant, inherently, that the state, eventually, would become precisely what the founders didn’t want. Zionism originally included some progressive, socialist and democratic ideals; and maybe could’ve figured out some way to fairly incorporate the Arab community; but there’s nothing inherently democratic about ethnic, tribal Judaism. The Jewish state isn’t really a Zionist state. Zionism today is primarily a Diasporic ideology; it’s about world-Jews supporting the Jewish state, for their own status and identity. Ayalon is a classic old Zionist, who has some democratic ideals, along with political realism. But his kind are on the way out; their time has past. Yes, he’s telling us the obvious: Israeli injustice is generating a worldwide growth in (Left) antisemitism. But, in case anyone hasn’t yet grasped another obviousness: Israelis don’t care, about generating worldwide antisemitism. They need more warm Jewish bodies to occupy as-yet-unannexed territories; so, the more antisemitism on the streets of the world, the better. Our struggle isn’t really with Israelis, as they’re simply acting in their own interest, as they see it; however limited may be the timeline of their vision. You know, one more ‘scumbag country,’ as our genius leader could say. No, our true fight is with Zionists of the Diaspora, who love sending our tax-money in support of the crippling of children. It’s those heartless Americans, whom we should be boycotting.