Abba Solomon finds a historical parallel between a recent “misadventure” at an anti-BDS conference where members of J Street attended and were called “anti-Semitic” by a speaker from the stage, and “the American Jewish Committee (AJC) [who] felt it must cooperate with the Zionist movement, in order to be within the tent when decisions were made. It participated in the formation of the Jewish Agency for Palestine on the understanding the Agency would be a joint Zionist/non-Zionist enterprise.”
From the beginning, Zionists regarded Palestinians as primitive natives– “2,000 or 3,000 years behind the Jews in civilization,” as one Jewish leader put it.
Abba Solomon’s two nights in the U.S. with emissaries from Modi’in, Israel, urging Jews to immigrate there, and nearby Bil’in in occupied Palestine, describing beatings and land confiscation, convince him that the Nakba for Palestinians has never ended.
At Seattle’s Temple de Hirsch Sinai, Sunday night there was a mournful gathering to respond to the election of Donald J. Trump. Speakers promised the organized Jewish institutions will be in solidarity with Seattle minorities and new immigrants, amid fears for us all.
Mitchell Plitnick of the Foundation for Middle East Peace told a NY audience last week that he sees little prospect of the United States government shifting from its firm support for Israeli policies.
Antisemitism echoed by Trump supporters is felt as a threat by Jews. We have been able to make a life in the United States, with no limits except those internalized, but reawakened Christian hostility has always been a consideration. Israelis are more used to racism.
U.S. Jewish support for the civil rights struggle has sometimes been patronizing to blacks; and the growing identification of Jews with a state perceived as colonial and racist, Israel, has often strained the bonds of the relationship, as exemplified by the anger over the Black Lives Matter platform’s support for the Palestinian struggle.
An Israeli leader once promised the UN that the existence of so many “Jewish hostages throughout the world” would be a guarantee of the good behavior of the “Jewish” state towards Arabs. As it turned out, Israel has caused Diaspora Jews to be responsible for its conduct, and Jewish organizations deny that responsibility by playing the anti-Semitism card.
The new documentary “The Occupation of the American Mind,” narrated by Roger Waters, asks when US public opinion will shift on Israeli treatment of Palestinians and what it will take for the media to shift from reflexive pro-Israel reports.
Israel now is selling tested police technologies and methods to the world, an ironic development for a movement founded by members who knew well of the Czar’s and the Bolshevik secret police, and who feared the Cossack’s sword. A review of Jeff Halper’s new book.