The Attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla

Update at 1 pm. The Israeli Foreign Minister and the IDF Spokesperson's Office have come out swinging, making all sorts of claims without presenting any proof. All the spin in the world fails to answer the main question, which is why military commandos were sent to take on an unarmed humanitarian flotilla in international waters. Whether the operation was a premeditated massacre, spontaneous IDF riot, or merely a ridiculously disproportionate use of deadly force, it clearly deserves an international and independent investigation.

This is the ninth attempt of Free Gaza to get its boats in. Reasonable people have to ask themselves the questions, why was there such a failure now? And the answer lies not with the commando unit, but with the Israeli Bibi-Barak-Lieberman government, which screwed up.

Haaretz is reporting that over 10 people were killed on one of the Free Gaza boats. Initial reports are contradictory, and until there is an independent investigation (not by the IDF, of course), we won't know exactly what happened. I assume that both sides will spin the story, and, judging from past performance, the IDF spin will be the least convincing. But from the story so far, it appears that IDF forces tried to board one of the ships from a helicopter, perhaps thinking that they would be meeted by bearded hippies singing, "Give Peace a Chance." Instead, they were met with resistance. The soldiers opened fire, and the rest so far is a blur.

I have been listening to the Israeli reaction on the radio here in Israel. I feel like I have been transferred to the mythical Chelm:

Oy, what will the world say…This is really awful…We had every right to do it…The whole thing is political…those guys are anti-Semites…we did what we had do…oy, what will the world say…boy, did we screw up…but we had to do this…they made us shoot on them….we lost the PR battle, we lost, again, we lost…oy...what could we do?

What could we do? What did Ehud Olmert do? He let the first boat in. He gave the Gazans some nahas/joy for a day. End of story. No diplomatic crisis. Exceptions can be made.

If weapons are not found on the ship (and if they are, how will we know that the IDF did not put them there) then Israel's overreaction (if the news reports stand) will be the latests in a series of overreactions that have characterized its dealings with Palestinians and Gazans, in particular. You elect a government that doesn't recognize us? We put you in siege. You kidnap our soldier? We tighten the siege. You send kassam rockets against us? We bomb you to hell. Hey, "Never Again"!

In order to have a humanitarian crisis, you have to consider people human. Israel for a long time has treated Gazans as animals that ought to be kept alive because Israelis are not cruel to animals. The Israelis will recite the daily totals of humanitarian aid that they let in (which, of course, they don't pay a penny for.) The jailer considers himself a "humanitarian" if he lets the inmates eat. So, as animals, the Gazans are allowed to eat. But humans need more than food in order to be human. As Amira Hass pointed out recently,

But what about a person's need for freedom of movement, a person's right to create, to produce, to earn a living and study, to leave for timely medical treatment and to travel? The spokespeople and PR professionals who try to prove things are fine reduce human needs to a graph containing only water, food and shelter. These graphs tell more about their presenters than they do about human beings.

Humans have the right to know what products will be available. But the Gazans are like caged animals who are entirely at the whim of their keepers. They are not told why chocolate is let in one month but not the next month; why some vegetables can come in one month, and not the next. And yes, the Egyptians are also to blame, and I, for one, blame them. But they clearly have much less responsibility than Israel.

We are still at the beginning of the story. Stay tuned.

A Shalom Aleikhem from Jerusalem to the Free Gaza Flotilla

As the Free Gaza flotilla approaches the shores of besieged Gaza (or, in the felicitous phrase of the Goldstone Report, "effectively occupied Gaza"), I can only wish a shalom aleikhem to the gallant captains, crews, and passagengers. The Israeli media coverage has been dismissive; the biggest chutzpah of a putdown was that if the organizers really wanted to get humanitarian supplies to the Gazans, they would give their cargo over to the Israelis, who would deliver it for them. That has got to be the joke of the week.

Is the point of the Free Gaza flotilla to make Israel look bad? Well, if that were the case, then the rational response of Israel would be to allow the flotilla and all ships through the blockade. But how long has it been since Israel acted rationally? Israel will try to think of some way of stopping the boats so that it looks as if they stopped themselves.

For some cynics, the Free Gaza flotilla may appear like a sideshow. After all, what can a few boats do? But I say to the organizers, "Thank you for caring," and I urge my readers to make a donation to their cause here

Where We Orthodox Jews Have Gone Wrong -- And How We Can Make Amends -- Take Two

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter has said that (at least some of) the men here are students at a well-known yeshiva for Americans in Beit Shemesh. I went to the yeshiva's website -- some of my students have studied there -- and identified (I think) two of the students. In this day and age, and with my contacts, I could find out who they are. But the story is not about these particular students. They were singing Hebrew songs to drown out the Palestinian woman who was clanging a plate. It was a disgusting display of insensitivity, hatred, and contempt for a woman thrown out of her home to make way for racist bigots. But I still say that it is not about this particular yeshiva, or these particular men. It is a bigger problem. So I am not going to pursue it. This is the same post as the one below, but the version for subscribers has been formatted better.

(Note to subscribers: if you don't see the picture here, you won't understand the post. Check it out here.)

Memo

To: The President of Yeshiva University, the Executive Vice President Emeritus of the Orthodox Union, and the Director of Public Publicy, Orthodox Union

From: Jerry Haber

RE: Recognizing the Sin of Bigotry, and Eradicating It

Gentlemen, I address this to you because I know you personally and admire you greatly. I have been members of the same synagogue as you, and one of you has been my rabbi.

Perhaps you saw this picture in the Wall Street Journal blog online The caption that the world read was, "A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers argued with Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the mainly Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, Wednesday."

But you knew that the caption was wrong. You looked at those faces. You knew that the laughing faces were not of Israelis, but of modern orthodox Jewish youngsters from the US, probably in yeshiva for their gap year. You may have even recognized some of them. You may know some of their parents.

So my question to you is very simple. It is the same question that Rav Aharon Lichtenstein posed a quarter of a century ago, when some of the best and brightest of Israeli religious Zionists were arrested as members of the violent Jewish underground. It was a title of an op-ed that Rav Aharon wrote for Haaretz:

"Where have we gone wrong?"

I remember how impressed I was by the question -- then. For I thought that, finally, an acknowledged leader of modern orthodoxy/religious zionism recognized that deep hatred and racist attitudes towards the Arab had been allowed to fester in religious Zionist educational institutionists. (Of course, racism and bigotry are not the exclusive properties of modern orthodoxy. But the "in-your-face confidence" of the group of hooligans in this picture has religious Zionism written all over it.)

At first I was exhilarated by Rav Aharon’s hakarat ha-het, his recognition of the sin and its vicious consequences, and of the need to correct it. But time passed, and nothing was done. Rav Aharon went back to his yeshiva, and every time some modern orthodox Jew stunned the world with his indefensible actions -- Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir -- we were witness to the same hand-wringing among the moderates, as well as the old defense mechanisms:"Who are you to criticize?" "We condemn their actions, but not their intentions." "Look at the hatred and bigotry of Islamic Fundamentalists."

So let me tell you why your children -- not all, but enough of them to get you worried -- will continue to be in pictures like the one above, or in movies like Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana's “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem.” Let me tell you why the bigotry will range from the not-so-genteel Islam-bashers that you find in every shul nowadays (when you were growing up, who knew from Islam?) to the "glatt kosher, mehadrin" bigots and hate-filled thugs in the picture.

The main source of Jewish hatred and bigotry against Arabs today comes from the orthodox, and especially the modern orthodox. This wasn't always the case. The orthodoxy that sprung from European soil absorbed the best of West civilization, culture, and morality. The earlier generations of religious Zionists, Rav Reines, Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, were European to the core. And the early generation of religious Zionists in America, though fed the prejudiced Zionist line about the Arabs, nevertheless was deeply influenced by liberal American values, and the American rejection of bigotry. Such moderates even convinced themselves that this was the message of the Torah.

No more. The Israeli religious Zionism that has produced the settler movement is unaffected by universal moral values. I don't need to go into details here. You are familiar with their rabbis, you have read the articles and parsha sheets; you have recoiled at the message. Israeli religious Zionism today is insular, parochial, fundamentalist, and deeply, deeply bigoted. I know many American orthodox Jews who have come on aliyah, Jews with moderate principles, proud of American and universal moral values. They are terribly uncomforable when their children return from the religious Zionist yeshivot and ulpanot as racist bigots who view the Arabs as animals and underlings, “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

Modern orthodox educators in America should have worried less about the color of their children's hats, and more about the color of their hearts. When they agonized over whether they would stay frum, they should have agonized over whether they would stay mentshen, humane individuals.

For modern orthodoxy to reduce the likelihood of more pictures like the one above, it should take the following steps:

1. Day schools should develop programs against prejudice, and I don't mean just prejudice against Blacks and Hispanics, although that is important, too. I mean programs to counter bigotry against Arabs and Muslims. Appropriate sources can be found in Torah sources to give this a Jewish cast, and the illiberal sources can be explained away, as they were explained away by the 19th and 20th century European rabbis. One can start with Rav Abraham Kook's view that the land of Israel can be sold to Muslims because they are not idolaters.

2. Schools should invite Palestinian refugees to speak to the students about their experiences. That would be a kiddush ha-Shem/sanctification of God’s name in its own right, and the educational value would be enormous. I am not saying that equal time must be given to Palestinian spokesmen on the conflict. This is not about politics. It is about humanity and decency. Oscar Hammerstein wrote, "You've got to be taught to hate," but in a particularistic, religious atmosphere, and in the middle of a conflict, you have to be taught to respect. I realize that taking any time away from the curriculum for "tikun olam" is controversial, and trying to humanize Arabs will be even more so. After all, it is not as if when you look over your right shoulders, you see any less bigotry and racism. But choose not to, and you will have more pictures like the ones above. And what decent human frum Jew would want that?

3. American Muslims should come to the high schools and talk about their religion -- or if that is too much for you, then find Jews, frum Jews, who will try to provide a positive portrait of Islam. It is easy to cherry-pick sources to portray another religion in an unflattering light. But that is where bigotry begins, and when it is "supported by the evidence" it gets harder to eradicate. Do to the Muslim sources what we do to the Jewish sources in day schools -- accentuate the positive while explaining away the negative.

4. Modern orthodoxy sees the Rambam/Maimonides as one of its great models. Make it known to your students that Maimonides was Islamic civilization's gift to the Jews. Without the Islamic environment, there could have never been a Rambam. The influence of the golden age of Islamic civilization is written on every page of his works, and I mean his legal works as well as his philosophical ones. And, as you know, it is not just Rambam.

5. Don't romanticize the history of Jewish-Arab relations, but don't demonize it, either. Yes there was Muslim discrimination against Jews, but it has been the bon ton of late to exaggerate it and to fail to understand the problems of any traditional religion dealing with other religions when it has political power. I wouldn't want to be a Christian living in the Land of Israel under a Jewish king, according to Maimonides' law that condemned them to death.

6. Always draw parallels from other people's bigotry to our own. Bigotry and xenophobia are universal phenomena. The same Jews who are revolted by what others have done to them should feel the same revulsion when they do it against others. Show zero tolerance for such bigotry.

7. Most important, give the proper preparation and training for students going to Israel in their gap year, a year with little supervision and with exposure to deeply racist and bigoted attitudes – all in the name of Torah. If they come back from Israel not wanting to talk to girls, you get nervous that they have fallen off the deep end. But what of their attitudes towards gentiles, especially Arabs? Aren’t you worried about that?

It is not enough to ask, where have we gone wrong. We have to take steps to stamp this out. Liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans – all of us should work to eradicate the central illness with frum Judaism today – hate-filled bigotry.

Where We Orthodox Jews Have Gone Wrong -- And How We Can Make Amends

(Note to subscribers: if you don't see the picture here, you won't understand the post. Check it out here.)

Memo

To: The President of Yeshiva University, the Executive Vice President Emeritus of the Orthodox Union, and the Director of Public Publicy, Orthodox Union

From: Jerry Haber

RE: Recognizing the Sin of Bigotry, and Eradicating It

Gentlemen, I address this to you because I know you personally and admire you greatly. I have been members of the same synagogue as you, and one of you has been my rabbi.

Perhaps you saw this picture in the Wall Street Journal blog online The caption that the world read was, "A Palestinian woman whose house has been occupied by Jewish settlers argued with Israelis who came to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the mainly Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, Wednesday."

But you knew that the caption was wrong. You looked at those faces. You knew that the laughing faces were not of Israelis, but of modern orthodox Jewish youngsters from the US, probably in yeshiva for their gap year. You may have even recognized some of them. You may know some of their parents.

So my question to you is very simple. It is the same question that Rav Aharon Lichtenstein posed a quarter of a century ago, when some of the best and brightest of Israeli religious Zionists were arrested as members of the violent Jewish underground. It was a title of an op-ed that Rav Aharon wrote for Haaretz:

"Where have we gone wrong?"

I remember how impressed I was by the question -- then. For I thought that, finally, an acknowledged leader of modern orthodoxy/religious zionism recognized that deep hatred and racist attitudes towards the Arab had been allowed to fester in religious Zionist educational institutionists. (Of course, racism and bigotry are not the exclusive properties of modern orthodoxy. But the "in-your-face confidence" of the group of hooligans in this picture has religious Zionism written all over it.)

At first I was exhilarated by Rav Aharon’s hakarat ha-het, his recognition of the sin and its vicious consequences, and of the need to correct it. But time passed, and nothing was done. Rav Aharon went back to his yeshiva, and every time some modern orthodox Jew stunned the world with his indefensible actions -- Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir -- we were witness to the same hand-wringing among the moderates, as well as the old defense mechanisms:"Who are you to criticize?" "We condemn their actions, but not their intentions." "Look at the hatred and bigotry of Islamic Fundamentalists."

So let me tell you why your children -- not all, but enough of them to get you worried -- will continue to be in pictures like the one above, or in movies like Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana's “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem.” Let me tell you why the bigotry will range from the not-so-genteel Islam-bashers that you find in every shul nowadays (when you were growing up, who knew from Islam?) to the "glatt kosher, mehadrin" bigots and hate-filled thugs in the picture.

The main source of Jewish hatred and bigotry against Arabs today comes from the orthodox, and especially the modern orthodox. This wasn't always the case. The orthodoxy that sprung from European soil absorbed the best of West civilization, culture, and morality. The earlier generations of religious Zionists, Rav Reines, Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, were European to the core. And the early generation of religious Zionists in America, though fed the prejudiced Zionist line about the Arabs, nevertheless was deeply influenced by liberal American values, and the American rejection of bigotry. Such moderates even convinced themselves that this was the message of the Torah.

No more. The Israeli religious Zionism that has produced the settler movement is unaffected by universal moral values. I don't need to go into details here. You are familiar with their rabbis, you have read the articles and parsha sheets; you have recoiled at the message. Israeli religious Zionism today is insular, parochial, fundamentalist, and deeply, deeply bigoted. I know many American orthodox Jews who have come on aliyah, Jews with moderate principles, proud of American and universal moral values. They are terribly uncomforable when their children return from the religious Zionist yeshivot and ulpanot as racist bigots who view the Arabs as animals and underlings, “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

Modern orthodox educators in America should have worried less about the color of their children's hats, and more about the color of their hearts. When they agonized over whether they would stay frum, they should have agonized over whether they would stay mentshen, humane individuals.

For modern orthodoxy to reduce the likelihood of more pictures like the one above, it should take the following steps:

1. Day schools should develop programs against prejudice, and I don't mean just prejudice against Blacks and Hispanics, although that is important, too. I mean programs to counter bigotry against Arabs and Muslims. Appropriate sources can be found in Torah sources to give this a Jewish cast, and the illiberal sources can be explained away, as they were explained away by the 19th and 20th century European rabbis. One can start with Rav Abraham Kook's view that the land of Israel can be sold to Muslims because they are not idolaters.

2. Schools should invite Palestinian refugees to speak to the students about their experiences. That would be a kiddush ha-Shem/sanctification of God’s name in its own right, and the educational value would be enormous. I am not saying that equal time must be given to Palestinian spokesmen on the conflict. This is not about politics. It is about humanity and decency. Oscar Hammerstein wrote, "You've got to be taught to hate," but in a particularistic, religious atmosphere, and in the middle of a conflict, you have to be taught to respect. I realize that taking any time away from the curriculum for "tikun olam" is controversial, and trying to humanize Arabs will be even more so. After all, it is not as if when you look over your right shoulders, you see any less bigotry and racism. But choose not to, and you will have more pictures like the ones above. And what decent human frum Jew would want that?

3. American Muslims should come to the high schools and talk about their religion -- or if that is too much for you, then find Jews, frum Jews, who will try to provide a positive portrait of Islam. It is easy to cherry-pick sources to portray another religion in an unflattering light. But that is where bigotry begins, and when it is "supported by the evidence" it gets harder to eradicate. Do to the Muslim sources what we do to the Jewish sources in day schools -- accentuate the positive while explaining away the negative.

4. Modern orthodoxy sees the Rambam/Maimonides as one of its great models. Make it known to your students that Maimonides was Islamic civilization's gift to the Jews. Without the Islamic environment, there could have never been a Rambam. The influence of the golden age of Islamic civilization is written on every page of his works, and I mean his legal works as well as his philosophical ones. And, as you know, it is not just Rambam.

5. Don't romanticize the history of Jewish-Arab relations, but don't demonize it, either. Yes there was Muslim discrimination against Jews, but it has been the bon ton of late to exaggerate it and to fail to understand the problems of any traditional religion dealing with other religions when it has political power. I wouldn't want to be a Christian living in the Land of Israel under a Jewish king, according to Maimonides' law that condemned them to death.

6. Always draw parallels from other people's bigotry to our own. Bigotry and xenophobia are universal phenomena. The same Jews who are revolted by what others have done to them should feel the same revulsion when they do it against others. Show zero tolerance for such bigotry.

7. Most important, give the proper preparation and training for students going to Israel in their gap year, a year with little supervision and with exposure to deeply racist and bigoted attitudes – all in the name of Torah. If they come back from Israel not wanting to talk to girls, you get nervous that they have fallen off the deep end. But what of their attitudes towards gentiles, especially Arabs? Aren’t you worried about that?

It is not enough to ask, where have we gone wrong. We have to take steps to stamp this out. Liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans – all of us should work to eradicate the central illness with frum Judaism today – hate-filled bigotry.

Further Thoughts on the "For the Sake of Zion" Statement

At the end of my critique of the "For the Sake of Zion" statement, I invited the authors to show me where I had misread its intent. I received responses from the authors, Steven Cohen and Leonard Fein, as well as from Doni Remba, who published a response to my critique on his blog. There ensued a fruitful and frank exchange of opinions, as the diplomats like to say.

I was asked by these three to give the statement a more charitable reading than I had given, and certainly not to parse it as a middle east peace plan. So I printed it out and read it a few times over Shavuot.  It does allow a broad interpretation of the final settlement, and is compatible with multiple scenarios, from a maximum withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders, along with the creation of a strong, militarized Palestinian state with its capital in Jordanian East Jerusalem, to a minimum withdrawal of Israel from Abu Dis (or some other Arab neighborhood in an expanded Jerusalem) and from the illegal outposts, with contiguity guaranteed by a system of bridges, tunnels, chutes and ladders. No doubt the authors intended something in the middle of the extremes.  As for the giving up the right of return, one of the authors assured me that despite the language of "Advancing towards a two-state solution" they had not intended to suggest that this was a demand in advance of a final settlement.

I am not a big fan of ambiguity in statements of this sort, deliberate or otherwise. When Richard Silverstein and I came up with a statement condemning Israel's conduct of the Gaza War, we decided to focus exclusively on the question of Israel's military conduct (jus in bello) and not on its decision to go to war (jus ad bellum), even though both of us thought that decision to be wrong and unjustified.  We knew that if we limited the statement we could get more signatories, because, frankly, Israel's conduct was so horrendous that no reasonable person could possible disagree with us, and in the intervening months no reasonable person has. I also think that it would have been wiser to keep the Cohen-Fein statement short and away from specifics, as the JCAL writers did.

But these are small points. Let's leave this as a dispute "for the sake of heaven" among people who share a lot in common values and aspirations.

Beinart and the Future of Liberal Zionism

Peter Beinart has written an interesting essay in the New York Review of Books, accusing the American Jewish Establishment of being stuck in entrenched positions, detached from reality, and not seeing the handwriting on the wall: Israel is becoming (has become) a rightwing, ultranationalist country supported by illiberal orthodox, Russian nationalists, and abandoned by liberals and progressives. Let's face it -- the only American liberals who support Israel today are over sixty. He cites the poll that says that 56 percent of Jewish Israeli high school students -- and more than 80 percent of religious Jewish high school -- would deny Israeli Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset.  Yet, as Beinart shows, none of this affects the American Jewish establishment who repeat the mantras of the hasbara crowd. He worries whether there will be any progressive Zionists left in the next generation (apparently, he has not heard of J-Street U, or he thinks it is insignificant.)

All this is not new to readers of this blog. And for those who live in Israel, the death of the Zionist left is ten years old. So while I am glad that somebody mainstream like Beinart is speaking out, and I am also glad he chose to do it in the New York Review of Books (the journal hated by what I shall call the A.K.Z or the Alte Kakke Zionists), he still gets some things wrong, and that is what I would like to focus on.

First of all, and most important, he accepts the liberal Zionist dogma that there was a humane, universalistic Zionism embodied in the State of Israel, via the Labor party and the Zionist left. This is false.  Yes, there was a humanistic Zionism -- the Zionism of Buber, Magnes, Einstein, Arendt, Kohn, Ernst Simon -- but it died with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Labor Zionism of Ben Gurion had the voice of Jacob but the hands of Esau, and that is why Israel became for its first sixty three years, an Esau represented to the world by Jacobs like Abba Eban. Oh, perhaps it is a bit more complicated than that; in fact, the Zionist left had both Jacob and Esau. But because he falls for this division, Beinart makes a huge mistake when he puts Barak on the side of Einstein and not on the side of Netanyahu.  He never asks the question why Barak joined a coalition with Bibi in the first place. Were Beinart to live in Israel, he would have placed the Labor party, and its Mapai predecessor, in the chauvinistic center a long time ago. After all, it was Oslo which put the settlement enterprise over the top; Barak, whose absurd offer to the Palestinians at Camp David (about 18% of historical Palestine, around 89% of the West Bank, virtually nothing in Jerusalem, and no return of refugees) should have been met not with a counter-offer by Arafat but with a show of disgust.) And most of all, Beinart doesn't realize, after criticizing those who criticize the Israeli human rights groups, that there is virtually no difference between Labor, Kadima, and Likud on that score. The man who effectively stopped an independent investigation of the Gaza War was the man who had the most to lose from such an investigation, Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

In other words, by not recognizing that the differences between right and center-left in Israel are miniscule, that the Old Left has fallen apart, not just because of demographic trends, but because once the consensus coalesced around certain principles, there was nothing for it to stand up for. 

This bring me to Beinart's second misreading. He sees hope in the younger generation of Israeli human rights activists, such as those who protest the eviction of Palestinian families (not family, as he mistakenly writes) from Sheikh Jarrah. He writes:

For several months now, a group of Israeli students has been traveling every Friday to the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where a Palestinian family named the Ghawis lives on the street outside their home of fifty-three years, from which they were evicted to make room for Jewish settlers. Although repeatedly arrested for protesting without a permit, and called traitors and self-haters by the Israeli right, the students keep coming, their numbers now swelling into the thousands. What if American Jewish organizations brought these young people to speak at Hillel? What if this was the face of Zionism shown to America’s Jewish young?

What Beinart doesn't get is that most of the young people who protest at Sheikh Jarrah either a) do not define themselves as any sort of Zionist; b) have no qualms in joining hands with activists who are non-Zionists, or simply pro-Palestinians; c) see themselves not as advocating a more humane form of Zionism, but as people protesting injustice. Has he seen the t-shirt of the activists? "Nothing can be holy in an Occupied City." Does he want those t-shirts sold at Hillel, with the message that the annexation of Jerusalem is illegal, that Jerusalem is an occupied city, and that East Jerusalem must be the Palestinian capital?" Or how about the chant, "From Sheikh Jarrah to Bilin, we shall liberate Falistin." And why doesn't he get it? Because the face of Sheikh Jarrah that he sees is the face of Yossi Sarid, David Grossman, Moshe Halbertal, all good old fashioned liberal Zionists, and all A.K.Z.'s who have been supporting the kids of the next generation.

If he does get it, then he will have to understand that it is no longer acceptable for the younger generation of progressives to take the A.K.Z. line, i.e.,  to be against the settlements or opposed to the Occupation, and yet give knee-jerk support to a government like the  Barak-Bibi-Lieberman government, or even Olmert-Livni.  If you are liberal and you support that Israeli government and demonize the Chomsky left, then you are no true liberal -- you are Zionist who has checked your liberalism at the door. The frummies won't bother with you, and  Israel doesn't need you (except to be the court Jews for Democratic administrations)

And this brings me to the last misstep of an article.  Israel doesn't need liberal Zionists any more. It said as much when it tried to marginalize J-Street. The truth is that Israel never really needed the American Jewish community, as long as it could have the US government. One of the great successes of Israeli Zionism was to convince American Jews that Israel was an American style democracy, instead of a Eastern European ethnocracy with some of the trappings of a liberal democracy. It was founded by Russians, and for the most part, Russians and their descendants have run it. And now with the Russian aliyah, it will be even more Russian. True, Bibi has always thrown in a few Americans, Oren, Gold, etc., as this generation's Abba Ebans. But there is nothing in common between the ethnic democracy of Israel and the liberal democracy of America. Beinart doesn't get this; he thinks that the shift rightward is a shift away from Israeli style democracy. He is still back in the eighties with Aharon Barak's constitutional revolution (he fails to realize the importance of former Chief Justice Barak as an architect of the Israeli occupation).

Still, Beinart gets enough to arouse the ire of the A.K.Z.'s  It is about time that they all realize that most progressive Jews, the ones who voted in droves for Obama, will not care about Israel, and bringing to Hillel the Sheikh Jarrah activists, or Breaking the Silence. or Combatants for Peace (who have gone to college Hillels) won't make the progressives more Zionistic -- especially when they see that this sort of liberal Zionism is so passe for the human rights groups.

In the next generation, if you are a pro-Israeli who stands for human rights, you will reject the chauvinistic center of Israel and ally with the next generations of Chomskys and Finkelsteins and Judts.  You will see that their anti-Israel sentiments are against that chauvinistic center, not against a more progressive Israel.  Beinart doesn't see this now.

But the next generation will.

Why "For the Sake of Zion" is Too Little, Too Late -- and Worse than the Bush Road Map

Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit has written a very interesting book called "Compromises and Rotten Compromises," which I hope to discuss later on this blog. I am reminded of it when I read the petition prepared by a bunch of credentialed liberal Zionists, who clearly had to compromise big-time in order to get agreed-upon wording for the petition, "For the Sake of Zion" which is circulating on the web. See here.

I also am reminded of Margalit's book because it opposes "sectarianism", the sort of ideological purity that banishes all deviants to the left and to the right. And I am very sympathetic to that opposition. Readers of this blog know that I am not a liberal Zionist as that phrase is generally understood. But I am a member of and a donor to the liberal Zionist organization J-Street. You see, I know that liberal Zionists are allies in the fight against the Israeli occupation and control of the West Bank and Gaza, although they will admit that have been no more successful in ending it than my non-statist Zionist crowd, or for that matter, anybody's crowd. Still, building coalitions is important, and while there are rotten compromises, compromises need not be lousy or rotten.

That is why there are petitions that I will sign even if I don't agree with all the sentiments expressed. There are petitions that although I will not personally sign I will urge others with whom I don't agree to sign. There are still other petitions that I won't sign but will shut up about.

And then there is "For the Sake of Zion," which, as liberal Zionist petitions go, represents several giant steps backward in American Jewry's understanding of what is needed to make some progress to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, it barely qualifies as a "liberal" Zionist document at all.

Of course, I have all sorts of objections to the tone and assumptions, the ritualistic bending-over-backwards to balance a fundamentally imbalanced situation, the by-now standard reference to Palestinian incitement, as if the Palestinians under a brutal occupation would be any more favorably disposed to the Israelis were they to be taught The Case for Israel (a book that has done more damage to support of Israel-Palestinian peace efforts -- especially since the Federations distributed that regurgitation of stale Israeli hasbara to Hillels and day schools -- than any schoolbook concocted by the PA). And although there are few certainties in life, the one thing absolutely certain to me is that Israel faces no external existential threat. Hizbollah? Hamas? Ahmadinejad? Are you folks serious?

But all right, all right, I can grit my teeth for the sake of finding some common ground in the spirit of bipartisanship that helped get health care through the Congress.

But not at the price of sekhel ha-yashar, "straight thinking." And there are sections of this petition that should be disavowed by anybody considering himself to be a liberal Zionist. At best, it is typical of liberal Zionism c. 1975, and it is no coincidence that most of the folks who signed it are retired or soon-to-be retired. Has nothing changed since then? As I have not spoken to the main authors, I don't know what they threw in to make more palatable to the Fox News crowd.

As a modern orthodox Jew, I naturally look over to the right, and I understand the pressures. Yet there are green lines that are not meant to be crossed.

Let me point to some passages that are deal-breakers in my eyes for any liberal Zionist. Consider the following paragraph with its tortuous syntax.

Advancing toward a two-state solution will require significant concessions and commitments by both sides. Among these: Terrorism must stop, and the Palestinians will need to set aside their claimed “right of return” to Israel, which would undermine the very notion of a Jewish state; they must vigorously oppose incitement against Israel. Israel, for its part, will need to dismantle the settlements considered illegal under Israeli law; protect Palestinians from maltreatment and violence by extreme elements of the settler community; set aside its insistence on exclusive sovereignty over all of expanded Jerusalem, including Arab neighborhoods, where, we anticipate, the designated capital of the new state of Palestine will be located."

Now what is this "advancing toward a two-state solution" business? Whatever it means, it cannot be plausibly read as closing the deal. And, indeed, there is no talk here of dismantling Israeli settlements beyond the "settlement blocs," with their (bizarre) privileged status, and which everybody agrees must occur in a two-state deal -- only settlements that have been recognized as illegal by Israel, i.e., outposts. Now removing outposts is already in the 2003 Bush road map. As Daniel C. Kurtzer wrote in the Washington Post:

Here are the facts: In 2003, the Israeli government accepted, with some reservations, the "road map" for peace, which imposed two requirements on Israel regarding settlements: "GOI [Government of Israel] immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001. Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."

So according to "For the Sake of Zion," Palestinians are required NOW, as they "advance towards peace," to renounce the right of return, despite the fact that Bush Road Map sees that as an end of conflict issue. What Bush did not require of the Palestinians, "For the Sake of Zion" does!

And while the Clinton bridge proposals suggested that Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the Haram al-Sharif would be under Palestinian sovereignty, the current petition already places the capital of the Palestinian State outside of Jordanian East Jerusalem -- into an Arab neighborhood in an expanded Jerusalem. Sheikh Jarrah or the Damascus Gate or Silwan are not in "expanded" Jerusalem (expanded by Israel); they are in Jerusalem. Of course, this comes under the rubric. "We anticipate". Well, amigos, I anticipate that this humiliating offer is the sort of lousy compromise that no Palestinian will accept. And that's why Bill Clinton, not exactly a stranger to liberal Zionism, didn't propose it.

And how seriously am I to take the call to immediately cease construction in the occupied territories, when that call was already made years ago by George W. Bush. This is what make you liberal Zionist?

When I saw that Bernard Henri-Levy and Alain Finkelkraut (with Daniel Cohn-Bendit) had coauthored an appeal calling for the Europe and the US to put pressure on Israel and the Palestinians (another word missing in the current petition) I initially dismissed it because of those gentlemen's track record. But then I read the appeal and I found it precisely the sort of appeal that liberal Zionists around the world should be writing. Short, to the point, without prejudging the end game except to emphasize a two-state solution.

"For the Sake of Zionism" is the opposite of that one. It does a disservice to liberal Zionism, to peace efforts in the Middle East, and ultimately, to the "state we hold so dear."

What a pity. My only consolation is that the petition will do little harm. And that the people who signed it, many of whom I know and like, will be embarrassed when they realize what they have signed.

I invite any of the writers of the petition to show me where I have offered an implausible reading of the petition.

Gideon Levy On What Israeli Jews Want of Israeli Arabs

I argued in some of my previous posts that the State of Israel's discrimination of Arabs is dug deep into his historical and legal foundations. I am pleased that both my left and right wing readers, to a person, have agreed with me. The right wing blame the Arabs; the left wing blame the Jews, but all agree that things are not getting better, and that they can't get better until the other side changes, which they know won't happen. Once the mantra of the Israeli Jews, right and left, was that when peace came, things would be different for the Israeli Palestinians. Israel is now more powerful militarily and economically than all the Arabs combined; it has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan; Syria is weak, and the Arab states have presented a peace plan that recognizes the state.  Were there to be a peace between the Palestinians and Israelis tomorrow, and were Iran and Syria to sign on it, the Israeli Palestinians here would still be viewed as a foreign entity and a potential fifth column. No, not because Israelis are irredeemably racist, but because the Jews in 1948, by forcing a state against the will of the local Arabs, and then declaring them to be outsiders in the structure of the state, entailed feelings of alienation that have only grown as an increasingly sophisticated population realizes what its position in Israeli society is.  Allowing Palestinian Arabs to attend Israeli universities has worsened the situation, not improved it.

The cycle of discrimination and alienation is to get worse, not better, and blame whomever you like, then the question will be: how much are Jews willing to pay in the coinage of systematic discrimination for a Jewish state? For some, the answer will be everything. I know people who would easily exterminate every Arab, man, woman, and child, if that was the only way to preserve a Jewish state. For these people, the existence of a state founded mostly by a group of Eastern European Jews in 1948 is identified with the survival of the Jewish people, and group survival trumps everything. Even were Israel to cease being a liberal democracy for its Jews, they would defend it. I understand where they are coming from.

But for those Jews who become convinced that Jewish survival can be ensured by other and different forms of Jewish self-determination (some looking very similar to the 1948 state), the problem of how much permanent discrimination will be acute. Already liberal Jews are asking this question. And, much to the befuddlement of the Commentary-crowd, vast numbers of Jews are still liberal. There is a lot of Jewish support for Israel as long as Jews consider it to be a liberal democracy. That support declines with age, as recent polls show, and it also declines when Israel acts illiberally.

I hope those Jews read the following column by Gideon Levy, which shows you how Israeli Jews, many of whom will live and die without meeting an Israeli Arab, much less becoming his friend, view a fifth of their state. 

The charge: Arabs

While it may be true that Israeli Arabs enjoy more rights than most of the world's Arabs, they are worse off than most of the world's Jews.

By Gideon Levy

No, this is not (yet ) a defense of Dr. Omar Sayid and Ameer Makhoul, who were arrested in the dead of night. No one knows yet what exactly they are accused of and on what grounds. Perhaps the Shin Bet security mountain will produce a mole hill, perhaps not, but in the context of another ugly and collective wave of mudslinging against the Arabs of Israel, it's time to reveal an indictment of a different sort: What can we possibly want from our Arab citizens?

The truth is, more than anything, we would like them to disappear, though not their hummus restaurants. A second choice would be to have them all crowd into their cities and villages - not to say their ghettos. There they'll soon be standing on top of each other, some unemployed through no fault of their own, outcast and discriminated against. They'll raise the Israeli flag, preferably two, and sing about the Jewish soul yearning from the national anthem - anything less would be considered a transgression.

We would like their MKs, if we still agree to let them have MKs, to visit the Jewish communities of the United States, prostrate themselves on the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and take part in the March of the Living at Auschwitz. Just as long as they don't visit their brethren in Arab countries. Let them stand at attention during the sirens on memorial day for the soldiers who fought against their people. Let them cheer the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces that eats away at them in the territories. Let their young people say thank you for their extensive and generous employment opportunities (1.3 percent of the Prime Minister's Office staff, 6 out of 469 Knesset employees, 2 percent of the workforce at the transportation and communications ministries, a total of 6 percent in public service ).

Let them take Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's loyalty test. Let them obey the Citizenship Law and not marry members of their people from the occupied territories. Let them obey the so-called Nakba Law and not dare mention the events of 1948, even in a whisper, ever. Let them not dare buy an apartment in Upper Nazareth or Carmiel, which were built on their lands, and let them not try to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv. Let them not even think of enjoying themselves at our clubs, though there's no chance the security guards would let them in. Let them adopt an Israeli accent, preferably Ashkenazi, so security guards at Ben-Gurion International Airport won't stop them. Let them continue to arrive at the airport, and without complaining please, four hours before their flight because they are Arabs.

Let their poets continue to need the Supreme Court to accept Arab literary prizes. Let them have fewer children because they are "multiplying too much" and turning into a "demographic problem." Let them not speak too loudly around Jews because we don't like hearing Arabic. And of course, let them not dare meet with "foreign agents," almost all of whom are citizens of neighboring countries.

If indeed the "minorities" or "Arab Israelis" - we also forced these titles on them, why should we call them Palestinians? - meet all these impossible conditions, maybe we will accept them somehow. Then we will continue to gobble up pita and hummus, coffee and baklava on the house, and let them build our homes - on condition that they don't listen to Arabic radio while working.

The parliamentary inquiry committee headed by MK Ahmed Tibi on hiring more Arabs in the civil service issued its interim report at the beginning of the year. This impressive report should have been an indictment of Israeli society. But the report was met with indifference. It reveals severe state discrimination. But the report is only part of the problem. The other part is political and national: We can't ignore that the debate about the "Jewish state" excludes Israel's Arabs by definition, shunting them into a corner from which there is no way out.

True, they may enjoy more rights than most of the world's Arabs, but that's irrelevant. After all, we're a democracy. In contrast, they are worse off than most of the world's Jews. With the two-state solution rapidly vanishing and the option of one state becoming the only one, the litmus test for the regime to be instituted in a country that is already almost binational will be its treatment of its Arab citizens. Meanwhile, let's admit it: Even if the suspicions against Sayid and Makhoul turn out to be true, Israel's Arabs are still loyal to the state, much more than it is loyal to them.

Why I Don’t Observe Jerusalem Day Anymore

Well, I will make this quick. I used to observe Jerusalem Day. I said to myself, "Whatever you think about the politics, at least you can admit that it's nice you can go to the Kotel. Isn't that worth being thankful for?"

Sure, I'm thankful that I can go to the Old City and to the holy places. But that gratitude doesn't trump my negative feelings about what has happened to Jerusalem since 1967.

Let us start with the annexation of Jerusalem, which nobody in the world recognizes. Let us then talk about the eviction of Palestinians from their homes to facilitate real-estate deals in the Jewish Quarter (which is legally segregated), an artificial construction that mirrors in a sense what Israelis have done to every place to which they returned: mulitiplied the area and call it by the same name. (Gush Etziyon and Jerusalem are good examples). Then let us talk about the years of neglect in housing and services for East Jerusalem. And of course, the Judaization of the city by encircling it with Jewish neighborhoods and Jews coming into the heart of Arab neighborhoods

And in Jewish Jerusalem, what do we have? The elimination of green spaces, the uglification of the city, the failure to preserve historical buildings, the crowded neighborhoods,, the adding of several floors to existing buildings, the poor municipal services,the absentee owners, the flight from the city, the poverty, the extremism, the neighborhood ghettoes. All this has gotten worse, not better, since 1967. Been downtown lately? Enough said.

When Zion is redeemed through justice, and when the word of the Lord goes forth from Jerusalem, then I will change my views.

Until then, three things keep me here: good food, good weather, and family/friends. Oh, and the National Library. Who can ask for anything more?

Alan Dershowitz Hammers another Nail into the State of Israel’s Coffin

There are few people who labor so intensively, day in and day out, to delegitimize the State of Israel as does Prof. Alan Dershowitz. With each passing year, he surpasses himself in defending policies that have made Israel a pariah state for much of the world. After calling Richard Goldstone a traitor and likening him to Dr. Mengele, the publicity-seeking Dershowitz was awarded an honorary doctorate by Tel-Aviv University – not in front of any graduating class, since it is unlikely that he would have been able to escape unscathed, but in front of the donors that Tel Aviv university needs to keep the university afloat, given that the State of Israel, and financial mismanagement, have already pared the university to the bone.

The Tel Aviv University administration is not stupid. It announced on Friday that Dershowitz would be responding on behalf of the other recipients, and gave him the award Saturday night in a closed meeting with the Board of Governors and other recipients. His one other speech at Tel Aviv university will not be open to the public.

And what did he say? You can listen to it here. First he gave a stirring defense of the rights of the professors at Tel Aviv University to be wrong, unpatriotic, and attack Israel. But – and here came the lawyer tricks – he maintained that there is an equal right of those who do not agree with them to express their views. (Who said there wasn't?) And there is also right of students not to be penalized by disagreeing with these enemies of Israel. (Who says they are being penalized?) He claimed, wrongly, that the protest early this year against Tel Aviv U Law School for hiring a legal apologist for the IDF involved suppressing her free speech. (To do this he relied on a particularly awful piece by Shomo Avineri; for more on that incident see here.)

And then came the "When-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife" line:

"Free speech for me but not for thee," as Professors Matar, Giora and others express every day, is the beginning of the road to tyranny. (applause)

Excuse me? Where did that come from? Not from anything those two professors said. Well, here is the back-story: Profs. Anat Matar and Rachel Giora support the academic boycott of Israeli institutions of higher learning for their role in the Occupation. Some Jewish donors to Tel Aviv University want them fired. Prof. Joseph Klafter, the president of the university can't do that. See the exchange between Klafter and a member of his board that appeared a few months ago in the Jerusalem Post here.

That is where Alan Dershowitz, Hired Gun, enters. He probably was invited by TAU to put on a show for the donors – explaining to them the importance of free speech, blah, blah, blah, and then satisfying their "blood thirst" by insinuating lies about Matar and Giora. Any idiot knows that calling for an academic boycott, whether you approve of the idea or not, has nothing to do with curtailing academic freedom or censoring speech or "McCarthy-like tactics" One might as well say that cutting off donations to the university curtails academic freedom (It doesn't.)

Fortunately, Dershowitz's performance was enough to arouse the ire of decent members of the faculty at Tel-Aviv University. Please read their letter below, signed, inter alia, by moderate, liberal Zionists. They appeal to Prof. Klafter to dissociate himself from Dershowitz's slander of Matar and Giora.

No way that will happen. TAU has too much money to lose.

Here is the letter, in Didi Remez's rough translation (thanks, Didi):

To Professor Joseph Klafter, President of Tel Aviv University

Dear Professor Klafter,

We the undersigned, members of the General History Dept at Tel Aviv University, heard in full the speech of Mr. Alan Dershowitz in the name of the Honorary Doctorate recipients as broadcasted live on video.

As Historians who know very well the periods of the past where the enlightened democracy declined into a dark regime, we are very concerned with some of the things said. Mr. Dershowitz viciously attacked academic members of the university criticizing the policy of the government, he specifically named some members of staff and accused them for leading narrow-minded thinking as they impose their opinions on students (and he compared it to sexual harassment).

As you know there is no scrap of proof that member of staff imposed his/her political opinions on students.

Mr. Dershowitz is allowed, of course, to enjoy the freedom of speech and to express his opinions, but the fact he named lecturers and accused them of hurting students and of hurting the strength of the State of Israel - These words are on the verge of defamation and may put those members of staff at risk.

We ask you, as the university administration to renounce the words of Mr. Dershowitz and to announce it will continue to protect the freedom of speech of all members of our academic community in any way. As you wrote in your article in the Jerusalem Post in 15th of February 2010, the university must protect the freedom of thinking and freedom of expression of members of staff and students.

Bad winds blow these days in Israel and in the West in general, which are anti-Intellectual and anti-Democratic. The universities are - as you said - the beacons protecting from them. Negation of some views or others and the attack on those expressing them, from the podium of the university destabilize such protective walls.

We are sure you will find a way for the university administration to renounce those words of Mr. Alan Dershowitz.

Sincerely,

Prof. Gadi Algazi, Dr. Nitzan Leibovich, Prof. Miri Eliav-Feldon, Dr. Gerardo Leibner, Prof. Benny Arbel, Prof. Ron Barkai, Yossi Malley, Dr. Michael Zakim, Prof. Eyal Naveh, Dr. Amnon Yuval, Dr. Rachel Feig Vishnia, Prof. David Katz, Dr. Alon Rachamimov

Since last night, the following faculty members have joined their signature (33 names are appended)

 

פרופ` גדי אלגזי ד`ר ניצן ליבוביץ

פרופ` מירי אליאב-פלדון ד`ר חררדו לייבנר

פרופ` בני ארבל

פרופ` רון ברקאי פרופ` יוסי מאלי

ד`ר מיכאל זכים פרופ` אייל נווה

ד`ר אמנון יובל ד`ר רחל פייג וישניא

פרופ` דוד כ`ץ ד`ר אלון רחמימוב


דבר מכתבנו נודע במהירות, ומאז אמש החלו אנשי סגל מחוגים אחרים בפקולטה למדעי הרוח ומפקולטות אחרות לבקש להצטרף לחותמים :

פרופ` ישראל גרשוני, החוג להיסטוריה של המזה`ת

פרופ` איימי סינגר, החוג להיסטוריה של המזה`ת

פרופ` ענת בילצקי, החוג לפילוסופיה

פרופ` מרסלו דסקל, החוג לפילוסופיה

פרופ` אלי פרידלנדר, החוג לפילוסופיה

פרופ` גליה פת-שמיר, החוג לפילוסופיה

פרופ` עדי אופיר, המכון להיסטוריה ולפילוסופיה של המדעים

ד`ר סנאית גיסיס, המכון להיסטוריה ולפילוסופיה של המדעים

פרופ` רבקה פלדחי, המכון להיסטוריה ולפילוסופיה של המדעים

פרופ` משה צוקרמן, המכון להיסטוריה ולפילוסופיה של המדעים

פרופ` ליאו קורי, המכון להיסטוריה ולפילוסופיה של המדעים

פרופסור מיכאל גלוזמן, החוג לספרות

ד`ר יעל לבוא, החוג לספרות

ד`ר אורלי לובין, החוג לספרות

ד`ר סמדר שיפמן, החוג לספרות

פרופ` ישעיהו שן, החוג לספרות

פרופ` מירה אריאל, החוג לבלשנות

פרופ`` אלחנן ריינר, החוג להיסטוריה של עם ישראל

פרופ` זאב הרצוג, החוג לארכיאולוגיה ותרבויות המזרח הקדום

פרופ` אבנר בן-עמוס, בית-הספר לחינוך

פרופ` דניאל בר-טל, בית-הספר לחינוך

פרופ` זהר איתן, הפקולטה לאמנויות

פרופ` בן-ציון מוניץ, הפקולטה לאמנויות

פרופ` ג`אד נאמן, הפקולטה לאמנויות

פרופ` חנה טרגן, הפקולטה לאמנויות

פרופ` פרדי רוקם, הפקולטה לאמנויות

פרופ` אורי הדר, החוג לפסיכולוגיה

פרופ` תלמה הנדלר, החוג לפסיכולוגיה והפקולטה לרפואה

פרופ` יהושע צאל, החוג לפסיכולוגיה

פרופ` דנה רון, הפקולטה להנדסה

פרופ` צבי מזא`ה, אסטרונומיה

פרופ` חיים גנז, הפקולטה למשפטים

ד`ר דניאל דור, החוג לתקשורת

   

   

More on Israel’s Foundational Discrimination against its Arab Minority

On my previous post there was a long anonymous comment that made two erroneous claims: first, that I attribute Israeli Jewish discrimination of Israeli Arabs to "natural bigotry" and racism; second, that this discrimination can be best explained by the dubious loyalty of Israeli Arabs, as evidenced by their political leaders, their identification with Palestinians outside Israel, etc.

My response was too long for a comment, so here goes:

Actually, the commentator misunderstood me entirely. My original post agreed with much of what he wrote. In my opinion, Israeli views towards Arabs for the most part are formed by the century history of enmity between Jews and Arabs. That is the main factor, Of course, there are also feelings of European/Jewish ethnic and cultural superiority over Arabs, but I really don't think that is a significant factor. Non-Arab gentiles are also discriminated against, but not to the same extent.

How do we best explain this official discrimination against Israeli Arabs? Let's perform an experiment; let's look at two sectors that share a lot In common for our purposes, the Israeli Arab and the Haredi. Both are ideologically anti-Zionist, both receive legal deferments from military service; both do not celebrate state holidays; both are vilified by the Israeli mainstream. Yet one has had representatives in virtually every governing coalition since the founding of the State, wields enormous political power beyond its numbers (often as a coalition partner) and controls important and powerful ministries. The other has political parties that never get to drink from the trough and no political power, despite their numbers in the population.

From this I infer that failure to do military service, possession of an anti-Zionist ideology, non-observance of national holidays, and -- this is important -- being the object of hatred by many mainstream Israelis are all PERFECTLY COMPATIBLE WITH WIELDING POLITICAL POWER.

So when Israelis give reasons for discrimination against the Arab sector as their lack of service in the military, or their lack of observance of national holidays, etc., said Israelis engage in deep self-deception.

For what about the Druze who serve in the military, die for the state of Israel, and observe the national holidays? Compare their lot with the Haredim. Strength in numbers, you will say? That is what explains it?

So we are left with the explanation of the distinction between the political power of Arabs and Haredim as the view that Arabs are actual or potential enemies, because they are Arabs (with a certain history) and haredi Jews are potential friends, because they are Jews (with a certain history.)

What created the view of the Arab as enemy -- for the first time in Jewish history, really, since Ishmael was understood classically as Muslim rather than as Arab -- was the inevitable consequence of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. Israel no doubt wanted to live in peace with its Arab neighbors, once it had a state and territory. But this desire was quite understandably viewed as a foreign invasion by interlopers. I am not denying that there were massacres of, or discrimination against Jews, by Arabs, before Zionism. But these were local events explained by local circumstances, and not indicative a deep antipathy towards Jews. Let us not forget that there were Jews who rose much higher in some Arab societies, then any Arabs have risen in Israeli society. And, indeed, the Zionists themselves did not make the assumption that the Arabs were natural enemies of the Jews. (Of course, there are those who believe that it is in the Arab blood or destiny or culture to hate Jews, and that explains their opposition to Zionism. This is rubbish. And leave religion out of this; no religion here is more tolerant than the next. Maimonides held that Christians are idolaters, and that idolaters must be forced to give up their religion or be put to death in a Jewish realm.)

Surely it is reasonable to expect that the Palestinian Arabs would resist the attempts of Polish and Russian Jews to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Many Zionist leaders themselves thought it reasonable; that is how they would have responded to the claims of a foreign invader. The Zionists simply felt that the Arab claims to Palestine were unwarranted, or that the Jews had a better claim. That is why I wrote that Israelis quite naturally expect the Arabs to be enemies, and understand why they are hostile; that is how Israelis would act in the same circumstances. It would have been racist for them not to have such expectations, because then they would have had to explain Arab hostility as something perverse (e.g., inbred cultural hatred of the Jew) or their lack of hostility as something unnatural (they are happy to live under other masters, Turks, British, Jews because of a servile mentality).

The new state of Israel, from the beginning, should have made an attempt to create an Israeli people with an Israeli identity that would include, as much as possible, Israeli gentiles, Arab and non-Arab. It should have retreated to the 1947 partition lines, offered full citizenship to the Palestinians and promised a new order in which Palestinians and Jews would be on equal footing as Israelis. It should have shown that its acceptance of the Partition Plan was not merely a temporary irridentist tactic in order to gain power and time (Ben Gurion expressed himself in that manner at least once) but was a principled compromise. Instead, it forgot about the partition borders as soon as it had increased its geographical area through conquest.

What did it do instead? It blocked the return of the Palestinians to their homes; took over territories that were not allotted to it under the Partition plan; secretly agreed with Jordan to a partition of Palestine that would thwart the partition plan and the establishment of a Palestinian state, resettled Jewish refugees in the homes of Palestinians, and placed the remaining Palestinians under a military government for close to two decades. (I could go on and on about how the Shabak used collaborators to spy on the Israeli citizens, rewarded "good Arabs" through patronage and bribery, split the Druze from the Moslem Arabs in order to divide and rule, etc., created Arab political parties that were part of Mapai, etc. All this is in Hillel Cohen's book about "Good Arabs.") So for the first 18 years of the state, the essential patterns towards the Israeli Arabs were established, despite the fact that during this time fewer Jews were killed by Israeli Arabs on nationalistic grounds than died last week in Israel in traffic accidents.

Now, the Arabs did not suffer such discrimination because of what their political leaders said, because those leaders were handpicked by David Ben Gurion and his Mapai party. Nobody was upset at the Arabs then for not serving in the military because they were informally BANNED from serving in the army as security risks. All this followed very naturally from the logic of statist Zionism, which said that good (for the Jews) Arabs would be rewarded with privileges; bad Arabs would not. Arabs would have what freedom of speech the Zionists would allow them, but if they started demanding things like educational autonomy, the sort of things given to the haredim, they would be viewed as separationists.

From Wikepedia:

"While most Arabs remaining in Israel were granted citizenship, they were subject to martial law in the early years of the state.[28][29] Travel permits, curfews, administrative detentions, and expulsions were part of life until 1966. A variety of legal measures facilitated the transfer of land abandoned by Arabs to state ownership. These included the Absentee Property Law of 1950 which allowed the state to take control of land belonging to land owners who emigrated to other countries, and the Land Acquisition Law of 1953 which authorized the Ministry of Finance to transfer expropriated land to the state. Other common legal expedients included the use of emergency regulations to declare land belonging to Arab citizens a closed military zone, followed by the use of Ottoman legislation on abandoned land to take control of the land.[30]

In 1965, the first attempt was made to stand an independent Arab list for Knesset elections, with the radical group al-Ard forming the Arab Socialist List. The list was banned by the Israeli Central Elections Committee.[31]

In 1966, martial law was lifted completely, and the government set about dismantling most of the discriminatory laws, while Arab citizens were, theoretically if not always in practice, granted the same rights as Jewish citizens." (This last line I don't agree with entirely, but it would be folly not to realize that there have been significant changes since 1966. Of course, there have been changes in the other direction, as well.)

In short, statist Zionism said that Israeli Arabs would be tolerated provided they lacked real political power. And this was ensured since no coalition government, including the "leftwing" Merez-Avodah government of Rabin, would ever invite them into coalition talks.

Now, most Israelis will read this and say, "Sure, why not? This is a Jewish state. They can stay here as long as they behave." And the liberal Israelis will allow them more leeway.

But the result of all this exclusion were powerful feelings of alienation among Israeli Arabs. And so they lose out both ways. It is not legitimate for them to be a powerful part of the state, since this is a Jewish state. On the other hand, it is not legitimate for them to identify with the Palestinian people, since they are the enemies of Israel. And their educational system forces them to be *Israeli* Arabs, which gives them this hybrid identity.

The Anonymous Commentator made the following statement to explain why there are so few Israeli Arabs in the foreign ministry.

After all, would you want a Geulah bochur in your Foreign Ministry going around the world undermining Israel, or for that matter would you want someone who cheered for Hezbollah in 2006 in the Defense Ministry?

Now, my short answer is no, I would not. But why would any decent person assume that a qualified candidate for a foreign ministry post who happens to be haredi or Arab must possess the views herein attributed? Note that I say decent person. Because a bigot believes that an individual is defined and determined by what the bigot believes to be the worse attributes of a group he is prejudiced against. So he will disqualify an Arab from being Israeli Consul in Atlanta say, because he cannot help but be a cheerer of Hezbollah, since he belongs to a group where some, even many, cheer Hezbollah.

In order not to be accused of racism against Arabs, the commentator threw in a bigoted remark about haredim yeshiva students from Geula. It used to be that an unconscious bigot would say, "Some of my best friends are Jews" to show she was not prejudiced. Now all she has to say is, "Some of my worst enemies are Jews" to prove the same thing.

Israel’s Foundational Discrimination against Its Arab Minority

Haaretz ran here a news item about the low percentage of Arabs in the governmental and public sector (around 6%) despite the government decision six years ago to raise it to match the percentage of Palestinian Arabs in the Israeli population (20%). It is not for lack of qualified candidates. The article sums up in a nutshell the complex of attitudes of Israeli Jews toward Israeli Palestinians. On the one hand they are citizens; on the other hand they are foundationally discriminated against. What do I mean by "foundational discrimination"? I mean the sort of discrimination that follows from foundational assumptions, in this case, the assumptions of the Jewish ethnic state established in 1948 against the will of the native Arab population.

You see, it is one thing to be discriminated against because you are a member of a minority, and no doubt ethnic minorities often suffer discrimination in states formed by ethnic nationalism. Israel's case is different, and in some respects unique – for in statist Zionism you have an ethnic nationalism that recognizes the importance of equal rights of ethnic minorities by virtue of citizenship – but is unable, for ethnic nationalist reasons, to put that principle into practice. This is the fundamental difference between, say, the discrimination against African-Americans in the United States and against Arabs in Israel. Statist Zionism inevitably casts Palestinian Arabs as enemies, for what normal people will not resist attempts to conquer its land? They *should* be a fifth column, thinks the Israeli, even if facts are to the contrary. So Palestinian Arabs are axiomatically viewed as one (or as a "potential" fifth column) by virtue of their being Arab. Of course, when they have harmless successes (as in football), or modest gains (as in education) they are to be boasted about. But when they assert their rights or when call for cultural autonomy, the fifth column business crops us. Foundational discrimination against Palestinians entails that despite official Israel's recognition of the principle of equal rights and genuine desire to improve their lot, official Israel must accord them inferior status. And, of course, the foundational assumption ensures that the Palestinians themselves will be excluded and will feel excluded from the Jewish state.

But it is not just Jewish suspicion of the Arabs that ensures their inferior status. It is also the tribal mentality of members helping each other. This mentality is fostered both by centuries of Jewish experience, and the smallness of the country, where who-you-know is often more important than what-you-know. Of course, this is true, to some extent, everywhere. But in other countries there is at least an assumption that if you are a citizen, you share values and a common identity. But in Israel, as I and others have said, there is a willing and conscious denial of a common Israeli identity that includes Israeli Arabs. So unless there is massive affirmative action, which would go against the ethos of the Jewish state, nothing can change.

Even if there were peace with the Palestinians, or if Israeli Palestinian were to serve in the army, this foundational assumption would not be altered. To put this point another way – the inevitable price to pay for a Jewish state along the lines founded in 1948 is foundational discrimination against its Arab minority. This foundational discrimination can only begin to be rectified by transforming Israel from an ethnic Jewish state to a state of all its citizens -- to transform it into a liberal democracy.

Every so often, usually following a crisis, there are well-intentioned attempts to improve the lot of Arabs. Intelligent Israelis realize that such an improvement would be good for the country as a whole. And so a sympathetic minister takes an initiative, or the government makes a decision. All these well-intentioned efforts are doomed to fail, because other priorities and needs will inevitably trump them

The Haaretz article tells an all-too-familiar story that brings together the standard elements: the good intentions to increase the percentage of Arab employees in government agencies and ministries, the failure to realize these intentions; the good guys bemoaning the failure; the bad guys justifying it.

Perhaps the most poignant position here is the one taken by Reuven Rivlin, long-time Likud politician, and about as decent a human being as an ultra-nationalist can be. I have no doubt that Rivlin genuinely believes that it is vital for Israel's national interest to reduce the gaps between Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews. This belief underlies the good intentions of all the various initiatives and decisions over the year. But what Rivlin doesn't get is not just that the gap won't be significantly reduced but that it cannot be, as long as he and others champion the values of the ethnic state. Like the obese man who perpetually intends to go a diet, but whose ingrained eating habits and cultural mores prevent him from reducing weight, Israel must discriminate against 20% of its population -- if it wants to remain Israel.

Must-Read: How the Palestinian Authority’s Road Building Projects are Cementing the Occupation

Every once in a while an article comes down the pike that bursts the bubble of all the cautious optimists. You know, the folks who say, "Maybe Obama will present a peace plan soon," or "Gee, the Palestinian (i.e., the West Bank Palestinian) economy is doing better" or "Fayyad's state-building may do the trick."

J-Streeters and J-Callers should change direction and do some jaywalking. For what if the moderate and benign Palestinian Authority were taking measures that, far from building the future Palestinian state, are dooming it to oblivion?

Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Washington office of the Insitute for Palestinian Studies, and Jesse Rosenfeld, a reporter based in Israel and Palestine, have written a stunning article in the Nation on the effect of the Palestinian Authority's road construction in the West Bank – especialy the effect on Palestinian life. In a word, the PA, with donor money (especially USAID), can only fund construction projects that Israel approves. And Israel approves only those projects which allow for the maximum amount of settlement expansion and bypass roads. As the authors write:

For decades Israel has carried out its own infrastructure projects in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. These include a segregated road network that, together with the separation wall Israel began building in 2002, divides Palestinian areas from each other while bringing the settlements--all of which are illegal under international law--closer to Israel.

Now, armed with information from United Nations sources and their own research, Palestinian nongovernmental organizations are raising the alarm. Their evidence spotlights the extent to which PA road-building is facilitating the Israeli goal of annexing vast areas of the West Bank--making a viable Palestinian state impossible.

You will have to read the article for the evidence.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100517/hijab_rosenfeld

But here is one statistic -- almost a third of the Palestinian roads that the Israeli government proposed to the donors in 2004 – in a proposal that was rejected by the donors because it clearly served Israeli and not Palestinian aims – are now being built by the Palestinian Authority.

Let me make something clear. When the system of settlement by-pass roads came to pass during the Oslo period, it was part of an interim agreement that expired in 1999. The idea then was that these roads would be temporary measures to ensure the safety of the settlers during a transition period, at the end of which, many of them would have moved back to Israel. When Netanyahu beat Peres in 1996, one of the few things he liked about the Oslo agreements were the bypass roads. He knew that a) they would strengthen the settlements and b) they would make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. The system of bypass roads is one of the reasons why it is an insult to apartheid to liken the situation in the West Bank to apartheid – for in apartheid South Africa, blacks and whites were able to use the same roads.

All this is not new. What is new is the extent to which the Palestinian Authority, for reasons known to only to itself, is willing to to make the lives of the ordinary Palestinians suffer. Well, maybe that is not new, either.

The important point is that were there to be an Israeli-Palestinian peace under the present circumstances, and with the status quo thinking, it would be an unmitigated long-term disaster both for Palestinians and the Israelis. As I have said here ad nauseum, none of the so-called two-staters I know really want two sovereign and independent states.

If Fayyad or Abbas succeed and the Palestinians get a state in the West Bank, then they will still be under Israeli Occupation, or some form of neo-colonialism, for they will still be under the effective control of Israel. The lives of the West Bank Palestinians would be only slightly less miserable than that of the Gazans.

I don't believe that Oslo was intended to kill a Palestinian state. But it has certainly hurt the chances for one.

 

The Magnes Zionist Takes a Haircut at Age Three

Tonight is Lag Ba-Omer, which, according to Jewish tradition, commemorates the cessation of a divine plague that afflicted the students of Rabbi Akiva because they failed to show each proper respect. Now wouldn't it be nice to have a holiday that celebrates respecting the other? But in fact, as observed today in Israel, Lag Ba-Omer is the holiday of air pollution, since children are encouraged to burn wood in bonfires, a nightmare for the fire department and the environment (especially when non biodegradables are thrown on the bonfire). I am breathing said pollution as I write this from Jerusalem.

Another Lag Ba-Omer custom, but this time less harmful to the environment, is observed in the Israeli town of Meron, where three-year old boys are given their first hair cut. I am not burning any bonfires tonight, but I have been cranking out posts for three years, and it is indeed time for the blog to get a "haircut."

So I am announcing that I plan to improve the look and feel of this website by replacing the old and boring Blogger template with something new. More on that in the weeks to come.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who have encouraged me over the past three years to continue cranking out a blog that cannot hope to compete with the big guys – I have a day job that is very time-consuming -- but can hope to earn their approval (and occasionally even to scoop them.)

Through the Magnes Zionist blog I have been able to connect to a coterie of like-minded individuals, bloggers, journalists, students, rabbis, human rights activists, progressives -- men and women, Jew and Arab, Israeli, Palestinian, and, indeed, folks of all nationalities and religions. The letters I most enjoy receiving are from people who express gratitude that the blog exists. But I also enjoy the critics, especially those who have the loyalty to keep reading the blog and commenting.

To celebrate the blog's third birthday, I revealed my alter-ego's identity on the profile for a week. But this was misconstrued by some readers as tantamount to suicide (i.e., Jerry Haber killing himself), and so I have taken the name off the profile again (It now appears elsewhere on the blog, giving the lie to those who accuse me of "hiding" behind a pseudonym.)

A word about the name "Jerry Haber": It began as the name of a character in a fictional dialogue on Israel-Palestine that awaits to be written. But it quickly became a pen name, and – much to my surprise – a bona fide person. As Jerry Haber, I have been invited to conferences, interviewed by the media, even received press credentials. Like John Le Carre, Ahad ha-Am, and (ahem!) Cary Grant, I am properly addressed by the professional name in those situations where my professional persona is relevant. I find it jarring to be called by the Other Guy's name in such situations. And I (both of me) find it rude to have that preference not respected.

Now that I have explicitly told folks how I like to be addressed, I hope that my preferences will be respected on this blog and other blogs.

After all, it is Lag Ba-Omer, the holiday that celebrates respecting the other.