January 31, 2007
Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor
Patricia Cohen in the New York Times:
The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.
An essay the committee features on its Web site, ajc.org, titled “ ‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist.
In an introduction to the essay, David A. Harris, the executive director of the committee, writes, “Perhaps the most surprising — and distressing — feature of this new trend is the very public participation of some Jews in the verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish State.” Those who oppose Israel’s basic right to exist, he continues, “whether Jew or gentile, must be confronted.”
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 06:00 PM | Permalink
Comments
Confusing those who disagree (even vehemently) with Israeli foreign policy with those who are genuinely anti-semitic has been having, is having, and will continue to have an adverse effect on international opinion regarding both Jews and Israel. There's a clear distinction between opposing policy and hating an entire people. And if the American Jewish Committee and others like them are hellbent on erasing that distinction, it won't be the case that people will stop opposing the policy; people will just additionally start hating the people.
Posted by: ghostman | Jan 31, 2007 7:50:54 PM
comment aboive:
"...people will jujst additionallhy start hating the people." Wow. That would be something new
Posted by: fred lapides | Jan 31, 2007 9:04:28 PM
On a closely related topic, I've been following the blog feud between Matt Yglesias et al and Marty Peretz et al with some interest. Most recently, Martin Peretz seems to have decided that George Soros isn't *really* Jewish. This led a couple of commenters at the Yglesias blog to suggest that the right wing should develop an American Idol type show to hire replacement Jews.
Posted by: Levi | Feb 1, 2007 7:23:31 AM
This kind of thinking is truly sick and astonishingly pervasive in the Jewish community, even in the left-leaning NJ-NY area that I am familiar with. It is identical with the quasi-fascism of the Bush state prior to this past November, with its banner of "if you're not with us, you're against us."
The difference is that this fascism isn't going to go anywhere once Bush and his cronies are mercifully sent on the lecture circuit. Israel seems to have largely exterminated its own left, leaving the country divided between right-wing, psycho religious lunatics and largely apolitical Euro-types. The end result is that Israeli policy rarely goes challenged (the recent and utterly disastrous "war" with Lebanon being an exception).
Then we have the American Jewish community, which is probably at an all-time level of paranoia and denial. The fact is that no matter which party in the United States is in power, Israel will be free to do as it likes-- to commit human rights abuses, to practically deny the existence of a vast population of people living within its own borders, to warmonger with surrounding countries.
Of course, this poses the interesting question-- why are a handful of liberal Jews such a concern? I have my own guess about this. I argue that because of the fundamentalist stance of most Jews with regard to Israel (that its policies cannot be questioned or one is an anti-semite) creates an extraordinary repression of obvious problems and misdeeds that even the most psychotically nationalist Jew is, on some level, aware of.
Posted by: Dan Quiles | Feb 1, 2007 8:14:15 AM
Israel has a far more active and influential left than the US does, and it in some ways more active than the left in places like France, which couldn't even muster enogh votes to put Le Pen in third place. In fact, the right in Israel is in something of a quandary right now, and it still isn't totally clear whether Kadima will become a right-wing party or not.
My suspicion is that Dan Quiles has no idea what he is talking about.
Posted by: Hektor Bim | Feb 1, 2007 9:41:16 AM
"couldn't even muster enogh votes to put Le Pen in third place"...
By this, I take it that you mean the French left wasn't able to have Jospin defeat Le Pen, who came in second over Le Pen.
Posted by: Robin | Feb 1, 2007 10:06:13 AM
Isn't this essay by Alvin H. Rosenfeld--just about anti-everything and including antisemitic?
Posted by: maniza | Feb 1, 2007 3:44:05 PM
What's "new" about the alleged New Anti-Semitism?
There is no New Anti-Semitism
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
The N.Y. Times reported on January 31 about the most recent attempt by the American Jewish Community to conflate intense criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. In a neat little example of slippery slope, the report on "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism" written by Alvin H. Rosenfeld moves from exposing the actual anti-Semitism of those who deny Israel's right to exist—and hence deny to the Jewish people the same right to national self-determination that they grant to every other people on the planet (the anti-war group International Answer is a good example of that, though Rosenfeld doesn't cite them)—to those who powerfully and consistently attack Israel's policies toward Palestinians, see Israel as racist the way that it treats Israeli-Arabs (or even Sephardic Jews), or who analogize Israel's policies to those of apartheid as instituted by South Africa.
The Anti-Defamation League sponsored a conference on this same topic in San Francisco on Jan.28, conspicuously failing to invite Tikkun, Jewish Voices for Peace and Brit Tzedeck ve Shalom, the three major Jewish voices critiquing Israeli policy yet also strong supporters of Israel's security.
Meanwhile, the media has been abuzz with stories of Jews denouncing former President Jimmy Carter for his book Palestine: Peace or Apartheid. The same charges of anti-Semitism that have consistently been launched against anyone who criticizes Israeli policy is now being launched against the one American leader who managed to create a lasting (albeit cold) peace between Israel and a major Arab state (Egypt). Instead of seriously engaging with the issues raised (e.g. to what extent are Israel's current policies similar to those of apartehid and to what extent are they not?) the Jewish establishment and media responds by attacking the people who raise these or any other critiques--shifting the discourse to the legitimacy of the messenger and thus avoiding the substance of the criticisms. Knowing this, many people become fearful that they too will be labeled "anti-Semitic" if they question the wisdom of Israeli policies or if they seek to organize politically to challenge those policies.
Yet there is nothing "new" about this or about this alleged anti-Semitism that these mainstream Jewish voices seek to reveal. From the moment I started Tikkun Magazine twenty years ago as "the liberal alternative to Commentary and the voices of Jewish conservatism and spiritual deadness in the organized Jewish community" our magazine has been attacked in much of the organized Jewish community as "self-hating Jews" (though our editorial advisory board contains some of the most creative Jewish theologians, rabbis, Israeli peace activist and committed fighters for social justice). The reason? We believe that Israeli policy toward Palestinians, manifested most dramatically in the Occupation of the West Bank for what will soon be forty years and in the refusal of Israel to take any moral responsibility for its part in the creation of the Arab refugee problem, is immoral, irrational, self-destructive, a violation of the highest values of the Jewish people, and a serious impediment to world peace.
What the Jewish establishment organizations have done is to make invisible the strong roots in Judaism for a different kind of policy. The most frequently repeated injunction in Torah are variations of the following command: "Do not oppress the stranger (the 'other'). Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Instead, the Jewish establishment has turned Judaism into a cheer-leading religion for a particular national state that has a lot of Jews, but has seriously lost site of the Jewish values which early Zionists hoped would find realization there.
The impact of the silencing of debate about Israeli policy on Jewish life has been devastating. We at Tikkun are constantly encountering young Jews who say that they can no longer identify with their Jewishness, because they have been told that their own intuitive revulsion at watching the Israeli settlers with IDF support violate the human rights of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank or their own questioning of Israel's right to occupy the West Bank are proof that they are "self-hating Jews." The Jewish world is driving away its own young.
But the most destructive impact of this new Jewish Political Correctness is on American foreign policy debates. We at Tikkun have been involved in trying to create a liberal alternative to AIPAC and the other Israel-can-do-no-wrong voices in American politics. When we talk to Congressional representatives who are liberal or even extremely progressive on every other issue, they tell us privately that they are afraid to speak out about the way Israeli policies are destructive to the best interests of the United States or the best interests of world peace—lest they too be labeled anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. If it can happen to Jimmy Carter, some of them told me recently, a man with impeccable moral credentials, then no one is really politically safe.
When this bubble of repression of dialogue explodes into open resentment at the way Jewish Political correctness has been imposed, it may really yield a "new" anti-Semitism. To prevent that, the voices of dissent on Israeli policy must be given the same national exposure in the media and American politics that the voices of the Jewish establishment have been given.
We hope that the creation of our INTEFAITH Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP at www.spiritualprogressives.org) can provide a safe context for this kind of discussion among the many Christians, Muslims, Unitarians, Hindus, Buddhists and secular-but-not-religious people who share some of the criticisms of Israel and who will eventually try to challenge the kind of anti-Semitism that might be released against Jews once the resentment about Jewish Political Correctness on Israel does explode. Even better if we could succeed in creating a powerful alternative to AIPAC. Unfortunately, that path is not so easy. When we approached some of the Israel peace groups to form an alliance with us to build the alternative to AIPAC we found that the hold of the Jewish Establishment was so powerful that it had managed to seep into the brains of people in organizations like Americans for Peace Now (NOT the Israeli group Peace Now which has been very courageous), Brit Tzedeck ve'Shalom and the Israel Policy Forum or the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement--and as a result these peace voices are continually fearful that they will be "discredited" if they align with each other and with us to create this alternative to AIPAC. Meanwhile, while they look over their right shoulders fearfully, the very people that they fear will "discredit" them for aligning with each other and with us are ALREADY discrediting them as much as they possibly can.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun (www.tikkun.org), author of the 2006 NY Times best-seller The Left Hand of God (Harper San Francisco), and national chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org). RabbiLerner@tikkun.org
Posted by: Rabbi M. Lerner | Feb 3, 2007 6:07:17 AM
Question to 3 Quarks Daily editors. Can the Rabbi's statement be promoted from comments?
Posted by: Levi | Feb 3, 2007 9:40:30 AM
The Forward
The Case for Carter
Opinion
Yossi Beilin | Tue. Jan 16, 2007
Looking at the controversy that has erupted over former President Jimmy Carter’s book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” I have to say I am a little envious — envious of a national culture in which a book, or just a book title, can stir such a debate.
I cannot recall when the publication of a book has generated such a debate in Israel. And even though we are talking here about a book that was published in the United States and has yet to be translated into Hebrew, the quiet way in which “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” has been received in Israel is nevertheless noteworthy, not least because it is Israel itself that is the object of Carter’s opprobrium.
Part of the explanation for why Carter’s book did not set off any public outcry in Israel lies in the difference in literary culture. For better or worse — and I, for one, certainly think that it is for worse — books just don’t matter here in the way they still do elsewhere. Yet perhaps a larger part of the explanation lies with the difference in political culture, and with local sensitivities (or perhaps insensitivities) to language and moral tone.
It is not that Israelis are indifferent to what is said about them, but the threshold of what passes as acceptable here is apparently much higher than it is with Israel’s friends in the United States. In the case of this particular book, the harsh words that Carter reserves for Israel are simply not as jarring to Israeli ears, which have grown used to such language, especially with respect to the occupation.
In other words, what Carter says in his book about the Israeli occupation and our treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories — and perhaps no less important, how he says it — is entirely harmonious with the kind of criticism that Israelis themselves voice about their own country. There is nothing in the criticism that Carter has for Israel that has not been said by Israelis themselves.
Of course, Carter is not just another media pundit or a leftist Israeli. A former president of the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he has been one of the world’s most accomplished statesmen in the past three decades, a public figure of enormous moral clout.
His words weigh heavier than those of others, and his actions make a difference in the real sense of the term.
In the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict, moreover, Carter has secured his place in history as the man who brokered the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab nation. The Camp David summit he convened in September 1978, which resulted in the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, was a historical watershed for the entire region. It inaugurated the Arab-Israeli peace process, without which the Oslo peace process would not have been possible, nor the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan.
In light of the failure of the second Camp David summit of July 2000, Carter’s successful mediation between such starkly different leaders as Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat is all the more impressive, and his achievement — which was a truly personal achievement — all the more remarkable.
Every Israeli, and every Jew to whom the destiny of Israel is important, is indebted to Carter for breaking the ring of hostility that had choked Israel for more than 30 years. No American president before him had dedicated himself so fully to the cause of Israel’s peace and security, and, with the exception of Bill Clinton, no American president has done so since.
This is why the publication of Carter’s recent book, and perhaps more than anything else, the title it bears, has pained so many people. And I must admit that, on some deeply felt level, the title of the book has strained my heart, too. Harsh and awful as the conditions are in the West Bank, the suggestion that Israel is conducting a policy of apartheid in the occupied territories is simply unacceptable to me.
But is this what Carter is saying? I have read his book, and I could not help but agree — however agonizingly so — with most if its contents. Where I disagreed was mostly with the choice of language, including his choice of the word “apartheid.”
But if we are to be fair, and as any reading of the book makes clear, Carter’s use of the word “apartheid” is first and foremost metaphorical. Underlying Israel’s policy in the West Bank, he argues, is not a racist ideology but rather a nationalist drive for the acquisition of land. The resulting violence, and the segregationist policies that shape life in the West Bank, are the ill-intended consequences of that drive.
Of course, there is no appropriate term in the political lexicon for what we in Israel are doing in the occupied territories. “Occupation” is too antiseptic a term, and does not capture the social, cultural and humanitarian dimensions of our actions. Given the Palestinians’ role in the impasse at which we have arrived, to say nothing of Arab states and, historically speaking, of the superpowers themselves, I would describe the reality of occupation as a march of folly — an Israeli one, certainly, but not exclusively so.
But if we are to read Carter’s book for what it is, I think we would find in it an impassioned personal narrative of an American former president who is reflecting on the direction in which Israel and Palestine may be going if they fail to reach agreement soon. Somewhere down the line — and symbolically speaking, that line may be crossed the day that a minority of Jews will rule a majority of Palestinians west of the Jordan River — the destructive nature of occupation will turn Israel into a pariah state, not unlike South Africa under apartheid.
In this sense, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is a stark warning to both Israelis and Palestinians of the choice they must make. That choice is between peace and apartheid, for the absence of one may well mean the other. Carter’s choice is clearly peace, and, for all its disquieting language, the book he has written is sustained by the hope that we choose peace, as well.
Yossi Beilin, a member of the Knesset, is chairman of the Meretz-Yahad Party.
Posted by: Yossi Beilin, non-American Jew | Feb 3, 2007 3:19:29 PM
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