Leading rabbi says AIPAC-J Street squabble is ‘dangerous for the Jewish people’

A leading rabbi says the public fighting between J Street and AIPAC, two branches of the Israel lobby, is “dangerous for the Jewish people.”

Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean of the rabbinical school at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, said:

I’ve been disheartened by the way that J Street and AIPAC have been assaulting each other, and I think that’s dangerous for the Jewish people. I think they have strong points of disagreement and I think they should have shared platforms where they argue with each other, but the way they’ve taken to insulting each other on the public media is just harmful to all of us who love Israel.

Jews must be very careful when criticizing Israel publicly, because Israel is “family” and American support is “existentially” important for the country, the rabbi said, during a lecture at Sinai Temple in L.A. on January 8 (published this month by Jewish Broadcasting Service).

AIPAC, a rightwing lobby group, and J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobby group, have been battling over Netanyahu and Trump and Israeli policies. J Street has called out AIPAC for endorsing Republican election-deniers just because they are pro-Israel; and for being too soft on Netanyahu’s fascistic government; while AIPAC has said that J Street is not a pro-Israel organization, because it endorsed Congresspeople who now call for conditioning aid to Israel.

Artson, a rabbi in the Conservative movement, echoed a concern in the Jewish establishment that the Israel lobby is only effective so long as it is unified, and when the lobby breaks along partisan lines, it politicizes support for Israel. That allows Democrats in Congress to openly criticize the country, undermining American backing.

Artson said that he personally never criticizes Israel publicly, because it could wind up in the papers and will be used against Israel.

I will never publicly criticize Israel and when I have something critical to say I try to find an Israeli with some clout to say it to. So I have spoken to ministers of the Israeli government and I’ve said, why are you not doing this, or every time I see a picture of that, you’re causing harm. But I’m never going to say that to a newspaper. Because the way that gets used out in the world is, See even Rabbi Artson admits that Israel is a murderous state that should to be eliminated and there’s no way for me to say something that won’t be put in that context.

The dean went on to say that other Jews must not follow his policy but they must exhibit great care: Before you say a critical word about Israel, you must say that you love Israel, and Israel is family, and you believe in the Jewish right to “national self-determination” in Israel (Zionism).

Here are Artson’s rules for the road to Jews:

What I would say is Any Jew who’s going to say something about Israel has to start every single statement with the list of how they love Israel, they believe Israel has the right to exist, the Jewish people have the right to national self determination, I have a difference about this policy, and here’s how I think it should be corrected. And they just can’t start with the last two, they have to go through the whole litany every single time.

You may not like some of the politics– but my rabbi Sharon Brous never gives a sermon critical of an Israeli policy without 20 minutes of all the ways she loves Israel, and she and her family have made aliyah and are attached to it, and then comes the policy criticism, every single time.

And I think there is a need for us to express our views on Israeli policy choices and those will be diverse. And we won’t agree with each other, and Israelis are free to ignore them. But what I don’t think they can do any more is to say As American Jews we have to be existentially connected to Israel and have no opinion. That I don’t think is in Israel’s best interest. I think sometimes, someone far away is able to see something that you need to see. But the context has to be, We are family, we love each other.

He instills these Zionist convictions in his students:

And I think my students have been by and large pretty good about, There’s a range of ways that we support Israel and we nurture each other to be Zionist in the way we each understand it. And that has to be a role model for them to then take out into the world and share with their community…

Israel’s racist ministers trouble Artson but they won’t stop him loving Israel.

There have been people making statements recently about how their love of Israel is up for grabs. Nothing will stop me from identifying with Israel, no political choice of any Israeli government will ever stop me from loving Israel. But it will make me need to speak out about policies they are following. If there are people who advocate what I see as intolerable racism or other policies, that is going to get a reaction.

Artson’s comments show how strong the red lines still are in the organized Jewish community with regard to Israel. The rabbi he praises, Sharon Brous, is a liberal Zionist who has dared recently, and mildly, to criticize the idea of Jewish supremacy in Israel. Brous obviously feels accountable to Zionist ideologues like Artson (and not to anti-Zionists like Jewish Voice for Peace). And this is why many idealistic Jews have chosen ostracization rather than participating in a community that simply won’t talk about Palestinian human rights.

In Artson’s extended dialogue on Jan. 8 with Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, neither rabbi ever talked about Palestinians’ conditions– their documented experience of apartheid, their lack of freedom of movement, their wholesale killings and maimings by Israeli forces in Gaza, etc. The rabbis cannot encompass Palestinian humanity, even as they talk about Jewish “chosenness” and the civil rights struggles of black Americans.

Most of Artson’s lecture was about why Jews are the chosen people, whether we like it or not, in view of our long tradition of social justice. “We have been teaching humanity what it means to be human from the day we started as a people.” David Wolpe chimed in about Jews winning one-third of the Nobel Prizes. (I’d note that I am very proud of Jewish culture myself, but I think culture is more mutable and transferable than the rabbis do.)

“Chosenness gets filtered through supremacy, but I don’t think that’s what it’s about,” Artson said. He cautioned about the ways that the ultra-orthodox in Israel wields power to negative effect. “These people are no longer the out people, they’re holding great power. I’m O.K. with [chosenness] when we are weak and oppressed… When we become powerful and dominating then it becomes really deadly… to non Jews around us who are under our power, it becomes really deadly.”

The rabbi, a professor of philosophy, also expressed a traditional view of the U.S.: “I believe in American exceptionalism. We carry liberty for humanity. If we don’t carry that torch, no one will… There’s a reason why this country has been uniquely welcoming to its Jews.”

And saying that he is “not white” but Jewish, Artson praised the political role of black Americans: “I think African Americans are heroic. They were ripped out of a place, their identity was taken from them and they they found resources of spirit to continue and survive in a consistently hostile and bloody terrorist regime. And they’ve emerged to be the most avid defenders of democracy that there is. When democracy is assaulted, black Americans are at the forefront of every resistance.”

If only a little of that compassion would rub off on Palestinians.