The ADL’s Selective Sensitivity to “Sensitivities”

The Anti Defamation League has been pummeled by nearly everybody, including the liberal hawk Jonathan Chait in the New Republic and Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, for supporting the demand of Newt Gingrich and some rightwingers to move the Cordoba Islamic Center from its proposed lower Manhattan site. Under the guise of sensitivity to the victims of the 9/11 attack, it signs on to the religious bigotry of the Christian right.

But when it comes to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's building the Museum of Tolerance on the oldest and largest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, the ADL has no problem backing the legal rights of the Wiesenthal Center and turning a deaf ear to the sensitivities of the Palestinian Muslims.

It wasn't always like that. When the Jerusalem Mammilla Cemetery controversy came up, the ADL first proposed suspending the construction of the Museum

The ADL believes that a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem can be an important institution for educating against bias and for respect and understanding. We trust that the same tenets that undergird [sic] the museum's mission will be applied to finding a resolution to address the concerns of the Muslim community and the families of those whose graves have been discovered…To do less would weaken the foundation upon which a museum of tolerance stands.

This sensitivity was at the time hailed by opponents of the Museum and was criticized, of course, by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Consistent? Not exactly. The ADL later reversed its position. According to its website,

Update: Following discussions in Israel, ADL withdrew its call for halting construction on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.

So why is it ok to be sensitive to the feelings of some victims of al-Qaeda Jihadists (not Muslims, and, by the way, Muslims were also killed in 9/11). But it is not ok to be sensitive to the feelings of Palestinian Muslims?

Apparently for the ADL, the value of support for Israel trumps the value of religious tolerance.

Of course, the cases themselves are not comparable. One consists of building a Jewish museum (let's face it: the story of the Jews will play a big role in the Museum of Tolerance) on the top of one of the last visibly Muslim Palestinian landmarks in West Jerusalem, expropriated from the owners against their will. The other consists of building a mosque near a site that has nothing to do with it.

Perhaps some Christians are offended when those they consider to "Christ killers" wish to build a synagogue nearby? This sort of sensitivity we have to pay attention to?

I am waiting to see the following retraction on the ADL website.

Update: Following discussions in America, ADL withdrew its call to move the Islamic Center in lower Manhattan

What Do the Palestinians Really Want?

What do the Palestinians really want? I get asked that question a lot. Actually, I get the answer a lot, not from Palestinians, but usually by Jews, who introduce their answer with the line, "You know what the Palestinians really want, don't you"? The answer is, "No, I don't." Palestinians society, like any society, is composed of many voices, and there is no one answer. And what people want changes with time and circumstances.

A June 2010 poll of Palestinian attitudes towards the Clinton parameters and the Geneva Initiative was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (Khallil Shikaki's outfit). Recall that the six main features of the two-state plans are a) borders based on the 1967 "Green Line" with land swaps; b) most Palestinian refugees resettled in the Palestinian state; c) Jerusalem divided with Arab neighborhoods under Palestinians sovereignty, and Jewish neighborhoods under Jewish sovereignty; d) a nonmilitarized Palestinian state; e) Israel retaining security arrangements in the West Bank; f) the compromise constituting the end of conflict with no sides having further claims.

So here's a quick quiz. Which of the above six received the least support among the Palestinians?

If you guessed "refugees" or "Jerusalem," you would be wrong. If you think that the Palestinians have adopted a strategy of stages, in which they will get some of what they want now and continue to press for further demands later, guess again. A greater percentage of Palestinians supported the "end of conflict" feature than any other.

No, the correct answer is "nonmilitarization". A whopping 70% of the Palestinians polled opposed the creation of a nonmilitarized Palestinian state. 49% opposed the compromise on refugees, and 62% oppose the compromise on Jerusalem, where the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter would come under Israeli sovereignty. 57% opposed the security arrangements.

The authors of the survey took note of this and write:

[Nonmilitarization] receives the lowest level of support by Palestinians. Unlike the refugees and Jerusalem components, this issue has not received due attention in public discourse, as it should, since it may become a major stumbling block in the efforts to reach a settlement.

 

The percentages are slightly more favorable to the two-state compromises on the table than in a poll taken a year ago. So that may give some comfort to the Geneva folks. But they still very far from supporting the Geneva parameters. That is also true of the Israeli side.

Why do so many Palestinians oppose nonmilitarization? I don't think the answer is the limiting of Palestinian sovereignty, though that is an important feature. It is more likely the damage to their national security and dignity. The Palestinians have suffered for close to a century, with important deteriorations in their position in 1948, 1967, 1988, and 2000. A multinational force may provide some security, but past experience shows that this is questionable. A multinational force would certainly rob Palestinians of their national dignity.

I presented the case against Palestine's nonmilitarization here. The response I received (from Benny Morris, among others) was that the Palestinians had already agreed more or less to a light police force, implying that I was being more Catholic than the Pope. But pace the critics, none of whom was willing to contemplate a nonmilitarized Israel, it was not the Palestinians who had agreed to a light police force but only the PLO leadership – just another instance of the PLO brass being out-of-sync with ordinary Palestinians, and the latter being in sync with ordinary Israeli Jews.

If you support a nonmilitarized Palestinian state, you are opposed to a genuine two-state solution. You are locked in an internal contradiction. Perhaps we should start calling such compromise proposals the "Jew-state solution" where the Jews get their own state and decide on how much of a state to give the Palestinians.

So what do the Palestinians want? I imagine that they want nothing less than what the Israelis want: a sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital, with control over its destiny, security from its neighbors, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizens.

Avrum Burg’s New Party-Concept

Political parties in Israel usually crop up prior to elections, and then the parties are launched with a press-conference in which principles are stated and members are introduced. Avrum Burg, former MK from the Labor Party, Speaker of the Knesset, and head of the Jewish Agency, decided to launch his new party (does it exist yet?) with an op-ed in Haaretz. You have to wade through two-thirds of the piece before you get the money passages:

The time has come for an Israeli party, a Jewish-Arab party, that will carry the banner of total commitment to equality, without a trace of discrimination and racism. It will be without Meretz's complications and Hadash's baggage. A party that will sail far beyond the paradigms of classic Zionism, which to this day ignores the place of Israel's Arabs. A party that will demand full equality for all Israel's citizens, the kind of equality we demand for the Jews in the Diaspora wherever they live.

The party Israel Equality (Shivyon Yisrael -- with the acronym Shai in Hebrew, gift -- will fight for a state that will be a total democracy; everything else will be either personal or on the community level. The party will wrestle with the sanctimonious internal contradiction of "a Jewish and democratic state," which means a great deal of democracy for the Jews and too much Jewish nationalism for the Arabs. It will be the party of those who are committed to the supreme universal and Israeli cultural values of human dignity, the search for peace and a desire for freedom, justice and equality.

Those who vote for it and its candidates will accept the definition of Israel as "a state whose regime is democratic and egalitarian, and which belongs to all its citizens and communities. The state in which the Jewish people have chosen to renew their sovereignty and where they realize their right to self-determination." The practical expression of this commitment will be a supreme effort to change the social balance of power, which is unjust, to give equal opportunities to the entire population in Israel, regardless of national background, ethnic origin, race, sex or sexual preference.

Hats off to Avrum Burg for thinking outside the box. Politically, this is very different from the Jewish parties that trace back to 1948. And he talks the language of liberal democracy unapologetically.

Most Zionists will label Burg's party as "post-Zionist" but it is Zionist, since Israel is described as "The state in which the Jewish people have chosen to renew their sovereignty and where they realize their right to self-determination." But Burg and his party need to elucidate more here, and I have some questions:

1. Exactly how is Jewish sovereignty realized in a state of all its citizens? What is the relationship between Jewish sovereignty and Israeli sovereignty, between the Jewish nation and the Israeli nation? A people can have self-determination in an ethnic state, or as an ethnic majority in a multiethnic state, or even as an ethnic minority in a multiethnic state. But sovereignty? That sounds odd, unless Burg is referring to sovereignty over the Jewish people, not the Israeli people.

    

2. Why does Burg use in his op-ed the old-fashioned term "Israeli Arabs" rather than "Palestinian Israelis," which is preferred by many of them? Sometime in the late sixties, American blacks starting calling themselves, "Afro-Americans" or "African Americans" rather than "Negroes" or "Colored." That decision was respected by the white majority. Is he using the old Zionist term to appeal to a traditional Israeli electorate?

    

3. Is the new party a Jewish party with a sprinkling of Arabs, or a genuine Jewish-Arab party? If the latter, then wouldn't it have been better to have a roll-out with a Jew and an Arab? Once again, my fear is that sensitivity to the electorate's ethnic biases and paternalism will doom the partnership from the beginning.

    

4. In the op-ed Burg says the party will be free of the "complications" of Meretz and the "baggage" of Hadash. To what "baggage" is he referring? To its origins as the Israel Communist Party? Surely that means nothing nowadays to its electorate. Or does he mean the "baggage" associated with an Arab-Jewish party that has been regularly demonized by the Jewish electorate and permanently in the opposition? I suspect that Burg's new party is intended to be a hybrid of both Meretz and Hadash without the associated stigmas in the eyes of the Israeli Jewish electorate. Ideologically, however, it appears closer to Hadash. And so then the question becomes, why add a new party? And the answer presumably will be pragmatic; even though many more Jews vote for Hadash than ever before, the party's attractiveness to Jews is limited. So we now need a Jewish version of Hadash to appeal to a progressive Jewish electorate (and its supporters) who cannot bring themselves, for ethnic reasons, to support Hadash. If that is the case, then the party will not hurt Hadash as much as it will hurt Meretz.

If this party is really a new and improved version of Meretz, a Meretz, "re-Gifted," as it were, then that would indeed be interesting, but not sufficient. Meretz was combined originally from the parties of Mapam, Ratz, and Shinui. I would be happier with a party combined of Hadash and Shay – a "New Gift", as it were. That would be not just interesting but exciting

But it is still much too early to form a final judgment. Welcome back, Mr. Burg, to Israeli politics.

The Company I Keep

I have tried very hard in my blog not to go after bloggers on the right side of the aisle. Needless to say, there are a lot of people out there who don't agree with me, some on the left, most on the right, and many people who agree with some but not all of the things I say. If I have a criticism to make of Israeli policy, doesn't it make more sense that I focus on the policy than on the bloggers who defend it (unless they have arguments that deserve to be answered)? True, I went after Alan Dershowitz when he incited against a good man and honorable Jew like Richard Goldstone. (Compare his screed with the recent response of the IDF MAG to the UN to the report, which although it disagrees with the main conclusions of the report, treats it respectfully, and does not dismiss any of the testimonies therein.) But I also gave him the courtesy of responding to his (rather bizarre) brief against Goldstone.

But some people I admire and respect have been repeatedly slandered and smeared by rightwing bloggers, and common decency requires that I not be silent and rise to defend them. Of course, they don't need my defense, and who knows, maybe if I were on the radar screen of the smearers, their slime would be directed to me. But I have a feeling that some of the smearers may be treating me with kid gloves because of my so-called credentials, credentials that are irrelevant to the arguments, but which they themselves lack.

And what may those be? Well, the fact that I a modern orthodox Jew, an American Israeli who has raised his children in Israel (all four of them veterans of the IDF, two officers), and a Jewish studies academic, makes me a less obvious target than a Chas Freeman or a Steven Walt for the "anti-Semite" slur or than Phil Weiss or Richard Silverstein for the "self-hating Jew" slur. Or maybe it is just the primitiveness of my blog (or the infrequent posts, or the numerous typos, as one uncharitable critic pointed out) that protects me. In any event, a rash of smears against my fellow bloggers, culminating in a particularly disgusting smear by association published in Tablet – in this case, the association is between the bloggers and some of their commenters, ribono shel olam! -- drives me to speak out.

I am very familiar with the writings of Stephen Walt, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, Jim Lobe, and Phil Weiss on Israel, and I can tell you that not only are they generally spot on in their analyses, but their criticisms, if taken seriously by the US and Israel, would only advance the cause of peace and justice in the region, and the security of Israelis and Palestinians. Nor are they significantly different in their views from a host of Israeli journalists, commentators, and politicians, not to mention human rights activists.

By contrast, the writer who published the scurrilous attack in Tablet, and a certain journalist/blogger who writes for the Atlantic, and who is increasingly known more for his ad hominems, which are cited in the aforementioned Tablet article, than for his arguments, advocate policies that lead, in my humble opinion, to undermining the existence of the state founded in 1948, and to any form of Zionism. Now even if this effect is appreciated by anti-Semites, that doesn't make the Tablet writer or the Atlantic blogger an anti-Semite.

I don't need to respond to the charges brought without a scrap of evidence in Tablet; Steven Walt does that well, if a bit too charitably for my taste. But I hope that Tablet gives space to the smeared bloggers to respond. So far the webzine seems to represent a center right status quo position on Israel, with a token nod (rarely) to progressives like Daniel Luban. If I am right, then its Israel opinion pieces will be read by young orthodox Jewish Republicans and by nobody else.

IDF’s Report to the UN: We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, But We Will Try Hard Not to Do It Next Time

The above title basically sums up the response of the IDF to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the UN, which you can read here. The response is getting headline news because of the IDF's pledge to take more care "next time" to minimize damage to civilians, despite the fact that it took so much care this time. This is the sort of lawyer's report that only an Alan Dershowitz can love. The report goes case by case over the major allegations of war crimes and, with a few well-publicized exceptions, accepts the soldiers' version of events each time. In almost every case where an action has "collateral damage," we hear both that the action was a military necessity, but that steps will be taken to reduce the collateral damage next time. In the case of the bombing of the mosque, we are told that the soldiers were not aware that it was a mosque; ditto for the market, etc. You mean to tell me that the IDF can know when a Hamas operative is going to the bathroom, but they can't trouble themselves to know (except too late) when a building is a mosque because it is "lacking a tall minaret." What is the IDF's solution? Better maps next time. I mean, if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

As for the Goldstone Report inference that the IDF deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, which is a war crime, it will come as no surprise that no IDF personnel admitted to this.

By the way, remember the debate between Judge Goldstone and Dore Gold at Brandeis – when Judge Goldstone claimed that the mosque was damaged by IDF shrapnel and Gold denied that the IDF had anything to do with it? How many supporters of Israel in that room would have unhesitatingly accepted Gold's position, despite the fact that, unlike Goldstone, he had not been to Gaza and seen the shrapnel? They would have followed him into the wilderness simply because he was defending Israel, and because it is a dogma that one accepts as true what any Israeli defender is saying. And yet later, the IDF changed its story on the mosque, just like it changed its story on the use of white phosphorus. Here, too, it claims that the use of the latter was legal and necessary; once again, it now promises not to use it in similar circumstances in the future.

Doesn't anybody in the MAG's office see the contradiction between claiming military necessity on the one hand, and suggesting that less lethal measures will be taken in similar circumstances in the future?

Nevertheless, despite the elegant whitewash, the MAG should receive two cheers for its ongoing investigations, which is already getting members of the IDF angry. In the report we are told of the measures that will be taken in the future to minimize civilian casualties. Of course, we are not told of the measures that will be taken to curtail the number of MAG investigations; stay tuned for that. After all, we all remember the response to the Second Lebanese war, in which the fear was that the every soldier would have to be accompanied by a lawyer. Now commanders are grumbling that the MAG investigates for the sake of the United Nations. What's the point, since the UN will reject the report, and rightfully so.

Nine Reasons for Fasting on the Ninth of Av

Haaretz writer Anshel Pfeffer argues here that it is "wrong" for a Jew today to fast on the Ninth of Av (Tisha b'Av). He claims that Jews traditionally mourned either the exile from the Land of Israel, or the destruction of the Temple. Mourning the Jewish exile is not relevant since nowadays that exile is voluntary; mourning the destruction of the Temple is also not relevant since most Israelis, including religious Israelis, don't really want to see it rebuilt. Both arguments are based on standard Zionist myths and misunderstandings of history and Judaism. For example, Pfeffer writes:

If Tisha B'Av is meant to mark the exile of the Jewish people, then it's no longer relevant. For a decade now, there has not been one Jew around the world who was not free to return to Zion. Ever since the quiet exodus of the last Jews of Syria, in the late 1990s, there has not been a country anywhere that has forbidden its Jewish citizens to leave. Even the 20,000 Jews in Iran can emigrate; they choose not to for financial reasons. They cannot receive a fair price for their homes, property and businesses should they leave.

The argument fails because a) Tisha B'Av was never meant to mark the exile of the Jewish people, and b) the "exile" that Zionists like Pfeffer refer to is a myth whose origin postdates the institution of the fast day. According to all serious historians, Jewish and otherwise, the last mass exile from the land of Israel was in 586 B.C.E., and that lasted approximately 70 years. When Jews returned in 516, many, if not most, preferred to stay in the diaspora. During the time of the Second Temple, according to the foremost historian of the period, Menachem Stern, "the total Jewish population of the Roman Empire outside Palestine and of the Parthian Empire…considerably exceeded the number of Jews living in their homeland." (The Jewish People in the First Century, 1:122).

In other words, since 516, whenever massive numbers of Jews left the land of Israel/Palestine, they did so voluntarily. (Even a Zionist historian like Anita Shapira says flatly that "historians don't deny" that there was no Roman exile. See her review essay of Shlomo Sand, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented here) And when they returned, they also did so voluntarily…well, at least until the Zionists tried to arrange that they could immigrate only to the State of Israel. Jews were prevented from immigrating to the Land of Israel after the Zionist enterprise was launched – considerably after the institution of the Ninth of Av Fast.

If the Ninth of Av Fast was not instituted with a mythical exile in mind, it also has nothing to do with the desire to rebuild the Temple. True, that desire is ubiquitous in rabbinic Judaism. But nowhere is the Jew told that he fasts on the Ninth of Av because he has been prevented from building the Temple.

It is surprising that Pfeffer doesn't refer to the events associated with the Ninth of Av cited in the authoritative code of rabbinic law, the Mishnah. On that day, it was decreed that the Hebrews liberated from Egypt would not enter the Land of Canaan; the first and second Temples were destroyed, Beitar (the stronghold of Bar Kokhbah) was captured, and Jerusalem was devastated. And, according to Jewish tradition other disastrous events occurred on the Ninth of Av, such as the expulsion and exile (a real one, this time) of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

Pfeffer ends his article with the following challenge:

The only ideologies that can justify continuing this observance are those that see democratic Israel as a heretic entity defying the majesty of God on earth. But if you are not a member of the Eda Haredit or a settler from Yitzhar, how can you mourn on Tisha B'Av in good conscience?

All right, Mr. Pfeffer, here are 9 reasons why a Jew today in "democratic Israel" should fast on Tisha B'Av. They may not impress those Zionists – religious or secular – who appeal to ideology in order to throw off the yoke of halakha (Let's face it: fasting is a pain). But at least some of the reasons may appeal to people of "good conscience," whether secular or religious.

First, for religious Jews Jewish Law mandates mourning practices on the Ninth of Av, including, but not limited to, fasting. Whether one is in a mourning "frame-of-mind" or not, one is halakhically obligated to observe these practices. Even God, much less his prophets, cannot change Jewish law; for that. there are mechanisms within Jewish law. So if by "reason" one means motivation for observance, then religious commitment to observance is reason enough.

Second, although the Jew is obligated by Jewish law to observe these practices, he or she also should also try to find them meaningful. And while Pfeffer belittles historical commemoration (one wonders what he thinks of Israeli Independence Day or Yom Ha-Shoah), he gives no reason for his devaluation. An historical dimension – or, if you like, the dimension of collective memory – is part and parcel of almost every Jewish holiday, with the possible exception of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And these too, while they do not commemorate any particular event, certainly commemorate religious practices in the life of the nation on those days. Why single out the Ninth of Av, unless feasting for an irrelevant historical reason is better than fasting for one.

Third, beyond the historical dimension of the actual horrific events, there is the religious/moral dimension. The Second Temple, we are told, was destroyed because of greed and baseless hatred. We read of the tragedies described in Lamentations, and in the religious elegies from the time of the Babylonian exile to the present. Should these be forgotten? And if they are tied to religious and moral failings, how can one not mourn our failings "in good conscience"?

These reasons are more than sufficient, in my opinion. But here are a few more that will appeal to folks of my ilk.

Fourth, how can one not mourn in good conscience the daily hamas/injustice perpetrated in Jerusalem by Israeli Jews against the Palestinians? Think of Silwan, where Palestinians, who are not allowed to build legally, see their houses and their history destroyed, replaced by Jewish settlement and an "archaeological park" commemorating – only – the Jewish past (real and invented)?

Fifth, how can one not mourn in good conscience the hamas perpetrated against the Palestinian families evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah quarter of Jerusalem? (An event on Tisha B'Av organized by the Sheikh Jarrah activists will take place at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem on Monday night. For details, see here).

Sixth, how can one not mourn in good conscience the discriminatory laws against the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in housing and in the freedom of movement caused by the accursed land-grab wall, may it be speedily destroyed? (For a refutation of the myth that the wall saves lives, see here.)

Seventh, how can one not mourn in good conscience the daily destruction of Jerusalem through the greed of overdevelopment, through failing to preserve buildings slated for preservation, through grandiose projects such as the Holy Land development, the closing of the Jerusalem Swimming Pool, the German Colony hotels, the elimination of green spaces, etc., etc.?

Eighth, how can one not in good conscience mourn the death not only of Jerusalemite Rabbi Yehuda Amital, z"l, but of his sane and pragmatic version of religious Zionism – and the temporary triumph of a religious Zionism that worships stones and trees, makes a fetish of the Temple, and sacrifices so much of what is good and just in Judaism on the altar of racist and fascist nationalism? (NB: I realize that many religious Zionists who did not support Rabbi Amital politically do not fall in this heretical category.)

Ninth, how can one not mourn in good conscience the mental and spiritual state of a people that has no qualms about fulfilling its own self-determination at the expense of, and continuing oppression of, the native people of Palestine?

Maimonides teaches that when troubles come upon the Jewish people we are obligated to fast. If this is true when we are victims, how much more so when we are perpetrators? "On account of our sins we were exiled from the land". That religious-spiritual exile is no myth, and it is not over, either.

It is not hard for me to mourn on Tisha B'Av – even when I recognize that, from the personal and Jewish standpoint, there is a lot to be thankful for. I hope my fast will be an easy one. It certainly will be meaningful.

And the same I wish for you and for Anshel Pfeffer.

Length Matters

One of the classic arguments against critics of Israel' human rights record is that other countries do worse, so why pick on Israel? There are many responses to that argument, and I have given some of them in this blog.

But one response is to bite the bullet and say, "Of all the major players on the scene since WWII, Israel has become the greatest human rights violator."

On the face of it, that response seems absurd. Genocide in Darfur? Massacre in Rwanda? Even if one allows that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is bad, does it come anywhere near in scale to what others are doing?

So how can one even begin to argue that Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world, at least today?

It seems to me that one would need to make several assumptions.

First, that there are worse things than death, and the deprivation of liberty is one. The Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza are not free people. They are not citizens of their own state; they are not masters of their destiny. They have little freedom of movement and no possibility of movement between the two largest concentrations of Palestinian. They are entirely dependent on the charity of others, including the benevolence of those who control their life. If they behave, they will be rewarded. If they are naughty, they will be punished. Their inalienable human rights are sharply diminished. Of course, not all of the problems are due to Israel, but most are.

Second, one needs the assumption that human autonomy is a supreme value, and that a happy, well-fed slave is morally inferior to an unhappy free man. If you are a utilitarian, it is hard to trump genocide as a maximier of pain. And, of course, genocide often implies the dehumanization of the victim. But my point is that even if the Palestiians are better off economically than others, this does not mean that the crime against the Palestinian people is a less one. That depends on one's moral outlooks and values.

Third, and most important, is the assumption that when making moral assessments, the duration of injustice shoud be taken into account. Length matters. Those who are not absolutists will tolerate a temporary infrigement of liberty, or at least see it as justifiable. But what happens if that infringement, though relatively minor in its own right, continues over generations? What happens if the Japanese American citizens, who were placed in camps during World War II (a crime in its own right) had to stay there for over forty years?

It is a no-brainer that murder is to be considered more immoral than slapping someone in the face. But what is worse – death or being continually slapped in the face without respite for over forty years? Or repeatedly raped? Or systematically humiliated?

Israel's control over the Palestinians' life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is by no means genocide, either physical or spiritual. But at what point does it become a rival to extreme immorality? In the Nazi war against the Jews, millions of Jews lost their lives in ways that attempted to dehumanize them. It was an extreme of suffering over a relatively short period of time. But within 10 years of the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish people had a state of their own for the first time in centuries. For many Jews this was a source not only of pride but of dignity, self-worth, of being masters of one's destiny. All those who love the State of Israel, who are proud of its achievements, indeed, of its very existence, were raised from the pits to the summit in a dizzying short period.

But what of those who have been stuck in much shallower pits for a much longer period of time, and with no end in sight? And what if our staying at the summit necessitates their remaining in the pits indefinitely – unless they prefer to commit national suicide or accept a demeaning and humiliating surrender in the guise of "peace".

I don't think we are at the point yet but we are converging on it. If moral intuitions are notoriously tricky, moral theories are even more so. What we all should guard against is the use of moral theories to rationalize our biases and preferences. Is the IDF more moral than Hamas because it claims that it doesn't target civilians? Or is Hamas more moral than the IDF because its militants kill much fewer civilians? Can we decide this question by having deontologists slug it out with consequentialists?

It is far better to insist on fundamental human rights (or capacities or capabilities) for all, and to distribute goods (and justice is one such good) in a fair and equitable manner to both peoples. Whatever your own solution to the Israel Palestinian mess may be, you should evaluate it according to those two parameters.

Let a Thousand Gilad Shalits Go Free

Note to readers: I wrote this late last night, and then I woke up and saw that Israeli novelist David Grossman, in a front page "over the headline" article in Haaretz, has called Israel to change its attitude towards Hamas, to move beyond the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" crap that it has been dishing out for umpteen years, in fact, to make the switch that it made with the PLO. Grossman certainly is not a fan of Hamas (neither am I) but he is a fan of dealing with bona fide representatives of the Palestinians and getting out of the deep freeze. When it is translated into English, I will give you the link.

There should have been a prisoner exchange a long time ago for Gilad Shalit. In fact, it would have been better had Israel freed Palestinian prisoners as part of a general amnesty in order to improve the chances for a comprehensive settlement. I say this because, as Gideon Levy points out here, even if all Palestinian prisoners are freed, Hamas will do its best to kidnap more Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips, as Israel has kidnapped Lebanese civilians to use as bargaining chips. Let us face it; the only difference between Shalit and many of the Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails is that the latter have better prison conditions than the former. Both Israel and Hamas are guilty of throwing people into jail who should not be there, although only Israel is guilty of jailing an entire population. Until there is a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians the sides will be throwing each other in the clink to pressure the other side.

The reason why Bibi does not do a prisoner exchange with Hamas has nothing to do with the fear that Jews will die as a result – that is the line that he says to play to his base -- but because he wants to do everything he can to demonize Hamas, so that it help keep the Palestinians divided and makes it easier to control Gaza (and concentrate on the West Bank) A prisoner exchange will be viewed as a victory for Hamas, and while Bibi seems to like giving them victories (witness the gradual easing of the blockade), it is the sort of victory that will make them look like reasonable partners and not al-Qaeda terrorists.

What is interesting, though not surprising, is the number of Israelis who are opposed to the exchange of prisoners, despite the fact that Israel can always "round up twice the usual suspects" and has done so many times in the past. Haaretz published a very interesting article last Shabbat in which it was suggested that a sharp rise in the number of youths arrested for throwing rocks in the Hebron area can be correlated to the introduction of police software that rewards the police for taking the initiative to make arrests. (I will be grateful to the reader who provides a link to the article.) Some of the youths arrested are beaten and abused, according to their testimony, the testimony of human rights groups, and of sources within the police themselves. Yet, as is the case in totalitarian societies, investigations, when conducted, invariably support the versions of the police. Naturally, most Israelis don't care about any of the Palestinians beaten. But a hardened heart is a hardened heart. And so it is not surprising to hear how many don't care about the death of Gilad Shalit – for failure to release him will almost certainly doom him -- because they have convinced themselves that letting Palestinian prisoners go will encourage more kidnappings – as if Hamas hasn't tried to kidnap soldiers throughout this whole period, or as if Israel didn't itself effectively kidnap Palestinians – fingered by sometimes unwilling collaborators, always appearing before a military court.

What should be done? Well, without any relation to the Shalit business, Israel should a) recognize Hamas as the elected representatives of the Palestinian people and b) free their politicians and legislators from Israeli jails and let them take their rightful positions. Of course, Israel may want to get something in return for this, but the important thing is to take two steps. And, most important, Israel should express a willingness to sit down and talk with the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, whoever they may be. All of these measures will be partial until a final settlement.

The Hamas leader Abu Tir is being expelled from Israel after having served time in jail. And what was his crime? He won an election that Israel authorized. It is not because he is a member of Hamas that he was jailed and will be expelled, because he was a member of Hamas before the election, and Israel did not do anything about him. He won, so he is jailed and expelled.

Now what will motivate Hamas more to kidnap IDF soldiers? A prisoner release? Or Israel expelling Palestinian elected officials like Abu Tir?

Alexander Yakobson on the One-State Solution

There are some good arguments against creating a binational state in Israel/Palestine, but you wont find them in Alexander Yakobson's op-ed in today's Haaretz.

Instead, Yakobson uses the same tired-old arguments that the statist Zionists gave seventy years ago against Magnes and his cohorts. That was when there were around 650,000 Jews, who formed a third of the population, and who did not have a state. Now there are five and a half million Jews (!) who control all of mandatory Palestine (minus the Kingdom of Jordan). And yet Yakobson still says that inevitably the Jews will be a minority in a secular democratic state. Why? No argument is given. I suppose the assumption is that no Jews would want to share power with -- yuk -- Arabs, and that they would rather go back to Brooklyn where they will share power with - yuk- goyyim.

So what are some of the arguments that Yakobson brings? Here's one: If there were one state, then it would be swamped with Palestinian refugees demanding the right of return. But if there were two states, then Palestinian refugees would only return to Palestine. Now, in my view, Israel should recognize the right of the refugees to return to Israel proper. But let's leave that aside and ask Yakobson the simple quesiton,  "Why would five and a half-million Jews agree to their state begin swamped with Palestinian refugees? Because their "golus" mentality doesn't alow them to assert their rights?

Here's another argument: There is no Arab state in the Middle East where there is binationalism, and where the dominant culture is Arab. Ergo, any binational state in the Middle East, even if it is based on constitutional agreement, will not last.

Is it conceivable to assume that the Palestinian people will, over time,
agree to be the only Arab people whose state does not have a clear-cut
Arab character and is not considered a part of the Arab world? Is it
logical to presume that this concession, which no Arab people has agreed
to undertake for the benefit of a non-Arab minority population that is
indigenous to the land, will be granted to the Zionist "alien presence"?


The champions of the "one-state solution" pledge that all the legal
arrangements that will safeguard the binational character of the state
and protect the rights of all ethnic groups in the country will be
spelled out in advance. The problem is that written guarantees cannot
determine what will happen in practice. Does the world - especially the
Middle East - not have enough examples of the discrepancy between the
content of state constitutions and the true nature of those states'
governments?

Let's call this the argument from lack of precedent. Not exactly the sort of argument that one would expect a Zionist, of all people, to advance. What precedent is there for a viable Jewish ethnic state in the Middle East? Ergo, such a state is doomed to fail?

The assumption running through all this is that nothing has changed since Magnes debated Ben-Gurion, that the Arabs are the same Arabs and the sea is the same sea,. The fact that Israel has great cards to play; that t is a in a position of strength in negotiations -- none of this means anything to conventional-wisdom folks like Yakobson.

Were Yakobson to propose a serious two-state alternative to the one-state scenario, at least he would have some positive arguments for that. But, no, his two-state differs little from the consensus Israeli position, which is one state plus (Israel) and one state minus (Palestine).

Yakobson's arguments only are valid if you supply some suppressed premises, e.g., "The Arabs cannot be trusted," "They are a mendacious lot," "They will wait for the first opportunity to break their agreements." If you are a tribalist, there are good reasons for opposing any scenario that empowers the Palestinian people. If you are a liberal tribalist, you will claim to be in favor of two-states but you will still want to control the other state.

What are good arguments against the one state solution? Well, the best so far is that neither side wants it.  That may change -- it is changing on the Palestinian side -- but majorities are for two states. And since we are talking about self-determination, that is pretty decisive.

What the one-staters should do is to flesh out, more than they have done already, just how binationalism will work. In particular they will have to convince both sides that binationalism is in their interest. And since the one state solution is favored mostly by secular intellectuals, they should also deal with the position of religion in that state.

In any event, people would to be educated, and education requires among other things, hammering out details. Of course, the idea has no chance of gaining traction now. But who knows what will happen in the future, as Israel sinks further in the moras

The New Orthodox Jewish Left in Israel

Nir Hasson wrote a long article in Haaretz's Weekend Supplement on the young orthodox (and formerly orthodox) Jews involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protest movement. I have reproduced some of it below.

There is a sort of "man-bites-dog" quality to the article; after all, young modern orthodox Jews are assumed to be ultra nationalistic racists, whether implicit or explicit, and that assumption is mostly correct. So we are not talking about large numbers, though the leadership role of these activists is interesting. Readers of this blog are quite aware of the phenomenon; I have counted kippot among the activists before. But there is no global explanation for it. Why do some orthodox Jews protest injustices against Palestinians? Why did some gentiles risk their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust? Explanations must be local. In the case of these particular activists, many of them come from academic families; their parents are thoughtful moderates; some were associated with the religious dove groups like Oz ve-Shalom, Netivot Shalom, of blessed memory. With some exceptions, these young people are sophisticated enough to know that "Judaism" is (almost) a tabula rasa that can be filled with (almost) anything from the tradition. The same religion that "produced" a Hermann Cohen "produced" a Meir Kahane, which just means that both are the products of more than just "Judaism."

What distinguishes them from their parents? Their discourse is a discourse of justice, not peace. They are not afraid of linking arms with Palestinians, and I don't mean just the kosher academics like Sari Nusseibeh. Some of them are Zionist; some of them are post-Zionist; all are Israeli, and all care deeply about universal values. And while it's nice to quote verses, they don't have to do it to justify their basic moral values.

What we have yet to see, however, is whether the new orthodox left will translate their social action into political action. This is a problem in general in Israel; talented young activists don't want to be caught dead in politics, and for understandable reasons. But activism without a political base is limited. I hope some of these activists get their hands dirty in politics, perhaps in Hadash.

The Orthodox Jews fighting the Judaization of East Jerusalem

Leading the demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah are some young Israelis with a religious background. They explain their activism and how it correlates to their conception of the true meaning of the Torah

By Nir Hasson

 Not long before Hillel Ben Sasson attended his first demonstration in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Aryeh King − perhaps the person most identified with Jewish settlement there − declared that in the battle over the capital of Israel, the left had been defeated.

"In the past they organized demonstrations," King told Haaretz last November, "but now we have made them understand that they have lost the battle. They can't even recruit 20 people, and if there is a demonstration it's Europeans who take part. Israelis don't show up anymore. We have won."

But King was wrong. A few days later, Ben Sasson and his friends joined the demonstrations in support of residents of Sheikh Jarrah, and thus launched a rearguard battle not only on behalf of the residents' rights, but on behalf of both the status of the left in Jerusalem and their own identity.

"From my point of view, being in Sheikh Jarrah is the full and supreme realization of my religious existence," Ben Sasson says, as he walks on a recent day through the neighborhood. "When I don't show up on a Friday, I feel as though I have not put on tefillin [phylacteries] in the morning. When I am here, I am fighting against the expulsion of people who will become refugees for a second time, but also against the settlers − because they are trying to expel me from the boundaries of legitimacy. They are double enemies: They are trying to plunder the homes of the Palestinians and, by contrast of course, also the religion to whose God I pray."

The eviction of a few families from Sheikh Jarrah last summer spurred one of the most intriguing protest movements in Israel in recent times. Like the weekly demonstrations against the separation fence in the West Bank villages of Bil'in and Na'alin, there is no single body behind this movement. A few dozen activists, in partnership with the residents, are its driving force. They have been joined, every Friday afternoon since last November, by between 200 and 300 people, only a few of whom are Palestinians or are not Israeli citizens.

It is possible to estimate cautiously that about half of the 30 key activists in Sheikh Jarrah are now or were in the past religiously observant. Most are young people in their twenties and thirties, and they represent an entire spectrum: religious, datlashim ‏(formerly religious, but usually people for whom religion and tradition are still important to some degree‏), datlafim ‏(sometimes religious‏), "transparent skullcaps" ‏(bareheaded people who describe themselves as religiously observant‏), secular, and those who do not want to specify their position along this continuum. In any event, nearly all consider Judaism and their religious education and background to be important elements in their political thinking and activism. They also wonder if their presence in Sheikh Jarrah spells the advent of a new phenomenon in religious society, or whether they represent a disappearing breed of the religious left.

The most veteran beard and skullcap in Sheikh Jarrah probably belong to Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights. For years the Reform rabbi, who speaks Arabic with a pronounced American accent, has fought shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and many other locales.

"I think this is a new phenomenon," he says. "Something that crosses religions is emerging in Jerusalem today. [These are] young people who are not bound to their parents' conventions and don't care whether their partners in the struggle are religious or not, but all of them share the feeling that our future is in danger."

'Symbolic capital'

"I can imagine one of my cousins saying, 'Again those leftists are identifying with the other side and not with the unfortunate people among us,'" Ben Sasson says. "But in Sheikh Jarrah there is no mistaking the good guys from the bad guys. No matter how you look at it or describe it − there is no way the settlers living there can be considered the good guys and the Palestinians the bad guys. Maybe in other places you can consider Palestinian suffering to be somehow relative, but here it's so clear. And it doesn't matter how what additional data you factor in or even if you 'recruit' Herzl [in your arguments]: It won't make a difference."

A few dozen Palestinian refugee families have been living in Sheikh Jarrah for the past 60 or so years. Of late, a company called Nahalat Shimon, an operative arm of settler organizations, has started to evict them, based on Jewish ownership documents from the end of the 19th century which have been validated by the courts ‏(See box‏). The settlers have already taken permanent possession of three homes. Many more Palestinian families are in danger of eviction.

Israeli law permits people to claim Jewish property abandoned almost a century ago, but does not permit Arab families to claim ownership over property they abandoned during Israel's War of Independence. Thus, refugee families of 1948 are liable to become refugees again, in 2010 − and this asymmetry is nourishing the struggle in East Jerusalem.

Ben Sasson, son of the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, historian Menahem Ben-Sasson, is currently writing his doctoral dissertation in Jewish studies. The subject: the explicit name of God. He describes the Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations as "worship of Hashem [the Hebrew name for God]" and is very eager to engage his settler-adversaries in theological debate. It's clear he has already rehearsed these arguments in his mind many times.

"If you take away their Uzis and kick out the police, sit us down and remove the media − they will leave with their tail between their legs," he says emphatically. "In the Middle Ages disputations were held between learned Jews and Christians. Sometimes the Jews won, in which case they had to escape to avoid being killed. If you bring [the settlers] for a disputation now, I will win. All the Jewish sources are on my side. Their whole activity is twisted. What they are doing is desecration of God's name, in the most explicit way."

Asked to illustrate his thesis, he recites rapidly: "Ezekiel 33: 'O mortal, those who live in these ruins in the Land of Israel ... and you shed blood, yet you expect to possess the land!'"

Another longtime activist who has been prominent in the struggle, Assaf Sharon, 35, is less assertive in this regard. "There is no such thing as [one form of] Judaism," he says. "There are many ideas and streams and motifs − some of them on our side [politically], others not. Unfortunately, the latter are more dominant in the society I grew up in."

Sharon, now secular and a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Stanford University, attended a hesder yeshiva ‏(combining religious studies with army service‏), studying at Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc south of Bethlehem and Otniel Yeshiva, also in the West Bank.

"In one of the left-wing actions in the southern Hebron Hills, we escorted Palestinian children to school, with about 100 settlers surrounding them and the Jeep," Sharon recalls. "They started hitting us and in the midst of all this I heard my name called. It was a friend of mine from high school, who was with them. In the middle of everything there were hugs, and the Border Police removed all the left-wingers, but took no notice of me, because I was with the settlers.

"I was alone facing 40-50 guys, who started to engage in a theological debate. 'Plunder is plunder,' I shouted at them, citing verses from here and there. It was interesting and enjoyable to argue, and it's important for me to feel that Judaism is on my side, not theirs. I really do think that the right and beautiful parts of Judaism are with me, but there is also a great deal of racism and violence in Judaism. Roughly speaking, they are still with the early prophets, at the stage of the conquest of the land, and I am in the era of late prophets, building society. I say we have finished conquering the land, the War of Independence is over and the question that remains is what type of society we will have."

Like most of his friends in the protest movement, Sharon is from a liberal religious family, a relative anomaly in the religious-Zionist landscape. One of the turning points in his political thinking and on the path that ultimately led him into the secular world was November 4, 1995 − the night Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

"It wasn't done in my circles, but I went to the square that evening [for the peace rally] and after the murder I stayed until almost dawn. In the morning I went to the yeshiva. I was very religious then. That day the rabbi of the yeshiva told me that people from [the left-wing youth movement] Hashomer Hatzair wanted to meet with us.

"Just think what a crazy reversal it was," he continues. "Rabin's body wasn't yet cold, and instead of us looking for a way to reach them and ask them for forgiveness − they come to us, on top of which the rabbi approached me because he knew I was considered left wing and that most of the students would not agree to meet with them. In the end, we met, but not in the yeshiva; in an apartment, so people wouldn't see. The Rabin assassination became a 'lever' for the settlers: Not only did they not back down, but since then they've gained key positions, influence in the media, in politics and in culture. Most important, they seized control of the 'symbolic capital' of Israeliness. They are now identified as owners of the Jewish cargo. They constitute the hegemony."

Activist religion

Some members of the Sheikh Jarrah group associate themselves with the remnants of a liberal left-wing religious community which once existed in Jerusalem, but disappeared within the nationalist currents of religious Zionism.

"Sociologically, Jerusalem religiosity is far more pluralistic," says Amos Goldberg, 44, who teaches in the contemporary Judaism department at the Hebrew University and is a major activist in the struggle. "The Jerusalem left is far less anti-religious and contains many more people who are now religious or were observant in the past."

Sharon proposes a different explanation for recent left-wing religious activism: "Maybe it's precisely because we did not come up through the intellectual left, but through Gush Emunim [Bloc of the Faithful], where the principle is that politics must be manifested through activity − you have to be where things are happening and not only where it's convenient to be. The idea is that political activity means action, not persuading someone you are in the right. Maybe from this point of view we are a lot closer to the 'Zambish' types [nickname of Ze'ev Hever, a settler activist] than to others. We also learned from them how to confront the state's mechanisms."

Goldberg mentions a "formative moment," when he experienced the change that led him to Sheikh Jarrah − and even to a detention cell. A few years ago, he joined an escort group provided by peace organizations for Palestinian farmers who were being harassed by settlers.

"I was always left wing, but also a soldier. Suddenly I saw an elderly Palestinian who wanted to plow his field being chased away by a soldier. You identify instinctively with the old man, and you say, 'That soldier is a brute,'" says Goldberg, a doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on Holocaust survivors.

"Suddenly you're in reverse mode: My solidarity is unequivocally not with the state, not with its symbols and not with the police. I consider them ... I hold myself back from saying 'the enemy.' After that you can no longer see things as you did beforehand. I have not switched sides, but one's map of identification changes and once it does, there is no going back."

As a researcher who deals mainly with the Holocaust, Goldberg lets history direct his conscience: "At the personal psychological level, this is a matter of moral duty, the duty of those who are bystanders. It might be a large or a small injustice, but there is no need to wait until the situation becomes so extreme. When one sees injustice and racism such as we have here, you have to intervene."

Goldberg ceased being religiously observant years ago but refuses to define his status today. His children are religious and he wears a skullcap. "It's for protection against the sun and does not make it possible to define me. It's also convenient, because I am getting bald," he quips.

Indeed, he still sees hope in the thinking of some members of religious society, even settler circles: "The discourse of large swaths of the religious public is saliently racist. Their conceptual world resonates with ideas espoused by folk movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. But at the same time, we have to remember that the greatest wrongs against the Palestinians were perpetrated not by the settlers, but by secular nationalism. To pin the blame on the settlers is a type of internal cleansing process that you find in Israeliness. It's precisely within the religious-settler discourse that the potential exists for a different type of political discourse − one that is far more egalitarian. I am referring to ideas that spring from a religious worldview that will sanctify the entire region, because the land is God's and not a nation's. That is where ideas of equality can spring from."

Goldberg draws the ire of his fellow protesters by not rejecting the name Simeon the Just, as used by the settlers, the Jerusalem Municipality and the police to denote the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, because the Second Temple high priest's tomb is there. The debate around the name is the symbolic manifestation of the struggle for the neighborhood.

Goldberg: "The tomb of Simeon the Just was there for a great many years and did not bother the Palestinians. Jews came and there was no violence," he notes. "I want to believe that a joint struggle should also give rise to new language. We have to find a way to say that it's both Simeon the Just and Sheikh Jarrah." Religion, he says, can be helpful in this regard.

To which Ben-Sasson responds, "If only the day will come when the name Al-Quds [the Arabic name of Jerusalem] will also appear at the entrance to the city. If only we will be deserving of this."

Practice and belief

"To grow up in religious society means to translate your beliefs into deeds," says Elisheva Milikovsky, a 27-year-old social worker who was raised in a national-religious home in the settlement of Efrat, near Bethlehem. "You don't just sit at home and cogitate. You put into practice the things you believe in."

Milikovsky gained fame a few years ago, when she became a one-woman institution looking after the African refugees who reached Israel. The standard operating procedure was for the army to leave the refugees it had rounded up crossing into Israel from Egypt on a street in Be'er Sheva, after which someone from the army would call Milikovsky and inform her. She did all she could to help the refugees get through their first days in the country. Since then she has continued to work with refugees, and this, she says, is what eventually brought her to Sheikh Jarrah as well.

"In Efrat it's very obvious that the Palestinians are transparent people. You live in the settlement and don't have the slightest notion of what's going on around you. As a teenager I viewed myself as left wing, but the true change was fomented by my activity with the refugees. I made an effort to see the other side."

Gil Gutglick, 44, production director at Keter Publishing House in Jerusalem, was not a political activist before joining the Sheikh Jarrah protest movement. He has long been secular, but admits that his religious past is one of the reasons he demonstrates in the East Jerusalem neighborhood.

"My Jewish identification is very strong. I feel ashamed that the Jewish settlers are entering the homes [of the Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah] while the beds are still warm. That feeling of shame was the first thing that induced me to participate. Amos [Goldberg] sent me an email saying they needed people to be with them. I went after work that day and since then I have been in the neighborhood, whenever possible."

Gutglick is one of 14 activists who are under court order to stay away from the neighborhood for five months, after being arrested in a demonstration on May 14.

"I am religious, but there was a period in which, even though I did not stop believing, I did not want to walk around with a skullcap," says Netanel Warschawski, 27, who also works at Keter. "I was a bit ashamed that in the name of the beliefs of the settlers, and in the name of the skullcap, as it were − people say and do terrible things. I did not want to identify with that society, did not want them to think that I was like them, that we share the same views. Eight years ago I had an argument with friends, during which one said I was 'shaming' the skullcap on my head, and since then I decided that it is precisely an opposite symbol. I am proud to be religiously observant and I represent the religion better than they do. That is why I still wear the skullcap and go to demonstrations with it."

The group of religious and formerly religious activists in Sheikh Jarrah includes young adults as well as people in their mid-forties. Their life stories are illustrative of the changes religious society has undergone in recent decades. Years ago, Goldberg and Gutglick participated in peace demonstrations of religious youth. Sharon, 35, attended the rally after which Rabin was assassinated. The young women in the group, Milikovsky and Shira Wilkof, 29, an M.A. student in town planning at the Technion − Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, are amazed to hear that such activities even existed.

"What I remember from the sixth grade, three years before the Rabin assassination," Wilkof says, "was a rabbi who taught us Gemara in a special girls' class. When he arrived for the first class he wrote on the blackboard, 'A good Arab is a dead Arab.'"

On the night of the assassination she was in the Ra'anana branch of the national-religious Bnei Akiva movement. "I remember the spontaneous cheers of joy of children in the ninth grade when they heard about the murder," she relates. "There were very few left-wingers where I grew up. That probably has something to do with the difference between Jerusalem and Ra'anana. In Jerusalem you had the liberal intellectual elite. But I am from the intermediate generation, in which there was a facade of open religious Zionism. An atmosphere of 'You are either with us or against us' has now taken over, so I suppose it's 10 times harder these days."

In contrast to Ben Sasson, Wilkof considers her activity the opposite of "worship of Hashem": "My experience is totally different," she explains. "There is no dimension of religiosity in my going to Sheikh Jarrah. On the contrary: It constitutes a very clear decision between the particularist, isolationist messages of religious society and messages of universalism."

Gutglick, who until three years ago lived in the Galilee, has a distinctive take on the whole process: "I lived in a bubble and am missing 14 years of acquaintance with the changes that have occurred in Israeli society. Since I moved back, I have not been able to understand the hatred. I grew up in a right-wing society; we were taken on trips to Judea and Samaria, but there were other things, too. I don't remember hatred like there is today − of Arabs, left-wingers, Tel Avivans, of the other."

It seems that there is no simple answer to the question of what will be considered a victory in the Sheikh Jarrah struggle.

"It's not the kind of thing where if you just solve something, everything will be all right," Sharon explains. "What is happening there is a reflection of the foundations of the Israeli regime: the race-based privileges. So in a profound sense, success in the struggle will be almost a revolution."
 

Chaim Gans’ Distinction Between the Injustices Committed Against the Palestinians in ’48 and ‘67

Liberal Zionists believe that Israel committed injustices against the Palestinian people in 1948 (and its aftermath) and in 1967 (and its aftermath) – but they try to distinguish between the two, and to find some moral mitigation for the former. Right-winger and left-winger intellectuals like Yosef Ben-Shlomo and Yehuda Shenhav don't buy the distinction. For them, the West Bank settlements are no different from the post-1948 settlements within the Green Line – and it is hypocritical to attempt to make a distinction.

Tel-Aviv university professor Chaim Gans published an op-ed in Haaretz this week that tries to make a moral distinction between the two sets of injustices. His argument is based on the distinction in just war theory between jus ad bellam and jus in bello, between the questions whether a war is just, and whether its conduct is just. According to Gans, the declaration of the state in 1948 was just because the Jewish people needed a state to ensure its survival and its prospering after the Holocaust. But this does not mean that the decisions taken during that war were ipso facto just; on the contrary, a just war can be waged unjustly (e.g., the carpet bombing of Dresden by the Allies.) So although some injustice to the Palestinian was required for establishing a state, that injustice should be viewed as a necessary evil, the impact of which should be reduced. This does not, according to Gans, include the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes, which was a war crime and unjustified.

By contrast, argues Gans, the settlements created after 1967 have nothing to do with the survival and flourishing of the Jewish state, but only with claims of ownership and historical rights over the Land of Israel. Gans rejects all such claims as irrelevant to the justice of Zionism (although he admits that they may serve to help locate the Jewish state in Palestine). If Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is based solely on the historical claim that the Jews owned the Land of Israel and never lost that sense of ownership, then the State of Israel has no right to exist, according to Gans.

The post-'67 settlements (in contrast to an Israeli military presence in the territories) cannot be justified on the basis of the needs of a persecuted nation. The settlements are the bases for the continuing injustices committed by a powerful state. These wrongs are being carried out many decades after the persecution of the Jews ended. They are in effect acts of persecution committed by Jews against Arabs with the backing of the Jewish state. So the Zionism in whose name they are carried out cannot be considered just.

Some have claimed that the West Bank is vital for Israel's security. Fine, says, Gans, but that only justifies military control, not settlement.

Gans' argument rests inter alia on the empirical premise that the Jewish people needed a state in order to survive and flourish, that their self-determination required a state. Or, to use the just-war theory language, the establishment of a Jewish state, with the inevitable injustice to the indigenous people, was historically a "last resort." But this premise is highly questionable, and for a Zionist to assume it begs the question. Many peoples anchored to a land failed to survive over the course of human history; ditto for the more recent phenomenon of nation states. Some have suggested that the Jewish people's survival was due, in part, at least, to its dispersion among other nations: or, to be precise, because it fostered a historical memory and common consciousness of being a nation, despite the development of different Jewish communities, bearing a family resemblance, on different soils. There are Jews who feel threatened by Israel's actions, and there are Jews who feel shame because of them. Herzl's utopian vision didn't take that into account. For the hardcore Zionist, of course, the Jew living in the Diaspora was like a comatose patient on life-support – barely surviving, with no autonomy, and with no dignity. But this is a debatable proposition (the annals of Zionism are full of such debates) as are the propositions that a Jewish state best enables Jewish culture to survive and flourish, or allows the Jewish people to be masters of their fate, or that it gives Jews outside that state a feeling of dignity and pride. So it seems to me that Gans' distinction assumes too much of the Zionist ideology as true to be helpful (Of course, this was only an op-ed, where space is at a premium.)

How do the Palestinians fit into all this? They are the innocent bystanders, the collateral damage of the Zionist project. The Zionists would have been happy for them to go away, and indeed, they ethnically cleansed Palestine of most of them for the sake of the Zionist project. They knew that the establishment of a Jewish state would involve injustice towards them, but both Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky argued that the injustice suffered by stateless Palestinian Arabs was considerably less than the injustice suffered by a stateless Jewish people, since the nationalist aspirations of the former could be fulfilled in one of many Arab states. (Neither of them recognized Palestinian Arabs as a people). Gans does not make this argument, but on the contrary, argues for the desirability of the Palestinian state, for limiting Jewish hegemony, in short for a smaller, "gentler" Zionism than proposed by the likes of Ben-Gurion. He does all of this in the book on the right of my blog, and in a forthcoming book in Hebrew.

 

Bernard Avishai: Targeted Sanctions, Yes; Boycott and Divestment, No

Bernard Avishai is one of few consistently interesting writers on Israel/Palestine On the left, yet a fervent capitalist, he is a strong advocate of transforming Israel from an ethnocracy with liberal trappings to a truly liberal democracy. So when he writes against the Boycott and Divestment movement (in the Nation, no less, and on his blog), using economic considerations upon which he is expert, his arguments deserve serious consideration.

He argues that divestment campaigns are counterproductive, just as they were counterproductive in the fight against apartheid in the 1980s. Citing an interview he once conducted with an anti-apartheid South African CEO, he comes to the conclusion that they undercut progressive forces in business and in education. These progressive forces include not only Israeli Jews, but, increasingly, members of the Palestinian sector who are secular and educated. If I understand Avishai here, boycott and divestment makes even less sense in the case of Israel than in the case of South Africa. For one thing it slows the globalization of Israeli commerce and industry, which will be to the detriment of the secular forces in society. He asks:

Who gains from economic decline and the inevitable consequence of most educated Israelis fleeing to, well, the Bay Area? Wouldn't the rightists, also about 40 percent, be most satisfied to see Israel become a little Jewish Pakistan?

Boycott and Divestment would accomplish driving Israel into an even greater siege mentality

How will B and D do anything but make all Israelis feel demonized and prone to apocalyptic thinking and ethnic cleansing? Already, polls suggest that the Israeli center, which is skeptical of the settlers, feels "the West" does not appreciate what it is like to live with suicide bombers and missile attacks.

Targeted sanctions, on the other hand, are something that Avishai supports:

Foreign governments might well ban consumer products like fruit, flowers and Dead Sea mineral creams and shampoos produced by Israelis in occupied territory, much as Palestinian retail stores do. The EU already requires Israel to distinguish products this way. If Israel continues building in East Jerusalem, and the UN Security Council majority sanctions Israeli tourism, the US government might well choose not to veto the resolution. The Pentagon might sanction, say, Israel Aerospace Industries if, owing to continued settlement, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations break down.

What's the difference between divestment and targeted sanctions? Divestment hurts the growth of the private sector, globalization, and the vision of a secular, liberal society. Targeted sanctions make maximum noise without really hurting the Israeli economy, at least not those necessary for progressive forces.

Bottom line:

Sanction the Israeli government for activities that obstruct peacemaking. Hurt the settlements. But boycott and divest from the private sector, and you may
create an economic implosion. Israel's ratio of debt to GDP looks eerily like that of the weakest EU economies. Unlike Greece, Israel has a rising class of cosmopolitan entrepreneurs who have been politically complacent, especially during the second intifada and Bush administration. But only they can lead the country out of political crisis—and only if they can hold on to their prestige, which is itself rooted in international commerce. This prestige, after all, is what diplomatic "engagement" aims to achieve—does it not? We want the soft power of global markets to encourage the formation of more worldly business and professional classes everywhere, from Russia to Syria

End of piece.

My first reaction is that the global BD movement must have been a lot more successful than I thought for Avishai to get so worked up about it. He seems to think that the movement has the potential of truly emulating the South African BD. But I think that this is highly unlikely. Or perhaps he is gazing into a crystal ball and I am assessing the here and now. But the one effect today of the BDS movement is to serve as a wake-up call to the Israelis who always view themselves as moral exemplars. Or to put it another way, the BDS movement is there to embarrass Israel, to point out its flaws, to keep it in the news, and to reveal its nakedness. That it could seriously damage its economy is, at this stage, anyway, preposterous. Here's an analogy: thousands of Jews put pennies into the little blue charity-boxes of the Jewish National Fund in order to redeem the Land of Israel for the Jews. To this day I know Jews who think that a state was purchased through those pennies! Those boxes had as much effect on getting a Jewish state as BDS has on Israel's economic and intellectual resources – very little.

Yet that doesn't mean that BDS is ineffectual. On the contrary, to an Israeli populace that agonizes daily over its image in the world BDS is enormously important. And not just BDS. One boat with nine dead managed to do what thousands of rockets could not do – force Israel to life the economic embargo on Gaza.

Far from undercutting progressives, BDS – or if you will, BDS Lite -- emboldens them to stand up and say, "Hey, look we are really becoming something like apartheid; we are losing the human rights war; we have to do something."

Avishai talks like the economist that he is. I could agree with him that serious damage to Israel's economy in areas that are important to Palestinians and Israelis alike are not helpful. I also agree that mild US sanctions may have a greater impact than all the student governments on American campuses voting for divestment from Caterpillar.

But as I have written before, the global BDS movement, though economically symbolic, has psychological effect on Israel, and is sufficiently flexible that you can choose B with D and S, or S without B and D (as Avishai has done.) In fact, what he calls sanctions against settler companies I call boycott of settler companies.

That's enough for me to see Avishai and us on the same side of "smart BDS." Three hours before I read his piece in the Nation, I signed a petition calling for TIAA-CREF, my pension fund, to divest from certain companies that "benefit from the Occupation". The importance of this right now is not the divestment, which, I believe will not happen.

It's the petition itself.

 

A Thought Experiment

Many philosophers like thought experiments; ethicists really like them. You know, the "say-you-are-on-a-desert-island-with-enough-water-just-for-you" variety of thought experiment.

So here's one:

In going through the confiscated tapes and videos of the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, you see the video of an execution of a Turkish passenger. The execution, on the face of it, not only contradicts the IDF's official verson of what happened, but it pretty clearly shows a serious violation of IDF code of ethics reports. If you release this video, however, you undermine the credibility of Israel's hasbara attempts, and you invite international condemnation, that could be construed as a threat to Israel's security. Lying ot the public for the sake of security is a time-honored tradition in many, if not all, countries.

What would you do?

It won't do to answer,"The scenario is impossible," because there is well-documented and undisputed evidence of such behavior on the part of all soldiers, including Israeli. One doesn't need a Breaking the Silence handbook of testimonies for that.

Nor will it work to say, "Such a cover-up will be discovered" because many cover-ups are never discovered; sometimes they are revealed by a historian fifty years later.

So what would you do?

Dont’ Buy Golan Wines…and Sue Me

American Jewry is only beginning to wake up to the idea that Israel has marched much farther to the right than it ever imagined possible. Peter Beinart noted it, but Abe Foxman didn't get the message, and Beinart called him on that. See here. Every other week, it seems, the Knesset proposes another bill violating civil liberties. And these bills are not just the brainchildren of ultra-nationalists – well, until you realize that all of Israel to the right of Meretz is "ultra-nationalist"

Sydney Levy of Jewish Voices for Peace wrote up the latest travesty on the Only Democracy in the Middle East website. (This, by the way, is a very good website for monitoring the decline of Israeli democracy.)

What is Israel's reaction to the growing nonviolent movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions? Well criminalize it, of course!

We just learned that a new bill has been introduced in the Israeli Knesset by 25 Knesset members that would criminalize all BDS activities or even BDS advocacy inside or outside Israel. You can find info about this in English here and with more detail in Hebrew here.

The proposed bill would target those that initiate, encourage, or provide assistance or information about boycotts against Israel.

1. Israeli citizens or residents of Israel could be sued by whoever was harmed by the boycott and would have to pay up to 30,000 shekels in restitution and an additional amount according to the harm established by the Israeli courts.
   This provision would endanger the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, New Profile, Boycott from Within, among others.
2. Those that are neither citizens nor residents of Israel would lose the ability of entering Israel for at least ten years and would be forbidden from economic activity in Israel (holding an account in an Israeli bank, owning Israeli stocks, land, or any other good that requires registration.)
   It is not clear whether this provision would apply also to entry into the West Bank, although Prof. Noam Chomsky's denial of entry may be a sign of things to come.
3. A group in a foreign country would also be forbidden from economic activism in Israel. This would apply to the Palestinian Authority as well.

   In the case of the PA, Israel would freeze transfer of money it owes and would use it to pay restitution to those harmed in Israel.

For example:

If, as an Israeli citizen, I sign a petition calling for a boycott of Golan Wines, I can be sued by the Golan wine companies for losses. If I publicize and support Gush Shalom's list of settlement goods to boycott, I can be sued. I suppose if I convince Elvis Costello to cancel his appearances in Israel, I can be sued by irate ticket holders.

If, as a foreigner, I call for a boycott or divestment I can be barred from Israel for that reason alone.

The worse, of course is no. 3 The Palestinian Authority is now urging Palestinians to boycott goods manufactured by the settlers, i.e., the guys who stole and live off their land. This is hurting the settlers' economy. So the settlers had the bright idea that some of the Palestinian tax money that is collected for the PA by Israel will compensate for that loss. You guys don't want to pay money for our products? You will pay money for them even without getting them.

When Israel feels its security threatened by the Palestinians, it has a vast array of economic weapons at its disposal, from boycotts, to closures, to intimidations. But when the Palestinians feel threaten, what can they do?

What is the answer? Not peace. For a peace between Israel and Palestine with the present imbalance of power, in which one is still in a very vulnerable position, will invite this sort of economic warfare. No, what is necessary is strengthening the Palestinian side so that its power will be on a par with Israel's – economically and militarily. Then neither side will find it to its advantage to hurt the other side. (And presumably, the benefits of cooperation will also be felt.)

I should not that this bill is supported by the ultra-nationalist centrist parties and will pass. I heard it reported on the radio with nary a note of criticism.

But…far be it from me to end before Shabbat and Rosh Hodesh on a bad note. Today's Haaretz carried a petition criticizing the Israeli demonization of human rights NGOs, both inside and outside Israel. Many of the signatories were the usual liberal Zionists, but some, like Prof. Yedidya Stern of Bar Ilan University, are straight in the center of the political map.

The Turkish Doctor Who Treated the Israeli Commandos on the Marmara

In my last post I featured a picture of an Israeli commando being treated by a passenger of the Marmara (you know, the ship where the passengers intended to kill the commandos, according to the IDF Spokesperson office.) I took that picture from Ali Abunimah's blog, and he had it from a Flickr site.

So when I saw that Robert Mackey of the Lede NY Times blog had not posted the picture with other pictures released to news agencies, I called him on it, as did others. At first he said he wasn't sure the picture was genuine, and he referred me to doubts expressed by Noam Sheizaf in his Promised Land blog. But all Noam had said was that he didn't know whether it was genuine or not, not that he doubted its authenticity.

In the meantime, Mackey did some important leg work, and tracked down the passenger, a Dr. Hasan Huseyin Uysal. He and Sebnem Arsu conducted an interview with Dr. Uysal here.

Some excerpts from the interview:

In a telephone interview conducted in Turkish, Dr. Uysal said that he had treated three Israeli commandos and argued that this proved that the passengers had no intention of killing them:

First of all it's against logic that these soldiers would not be killed but instead be taken to the medical center if the intention of the activists was to kill them. If people on board were so eager to hurt them, why would they not just shoot them to death once they had taken their guns? Why bother carting them inside for treatment? It just doesn't add up.

I am a doctor, and the Israeli soldiers were brought to me to check their medical situation and treat them properly. I had our dead bodies and injured people lying in front of me and I was treating the soldiers that actually killed and wounded them. None of our friends in the center approached to harm or hurt them. Our injured people were lying on the ground, but I rested the soldiers on our chairs.

Asked about the wounds the commandos suffered, the doctor said:

None of the soldiers had any fatal wounds that would cause organ loss or defects. There were scratches on their faces, but since facial skin is sensitive and very likely to bleed in any trauma, there was blood on their faces — which I cleaned carefully to see what kind of injuries they had. In the end, they happened to be only scratches.

The third soldier, however, suffered a cut in his stomach that reached his stomach membrane but not the organ itself. It was nothing fatal. As a doctor, I wouldn't want to guess the nature of this injury but it could have been caused by either landing on a sharp pole from the helicopter or a blow from a pipe with a sharp edge. I couldn't tell.

In either case, it was not fatal but it had to be stitched. However, since we did not ever expect such a confrontation, we had not brought any stitching equipment on board. All we had was simple medical material to dress simple wounds, or drops to ease burning in case tear gas was used. If I had stitching material with me, although I am an eye doctor, I would have treated the boy properly in accordance with my general medical knowledge. I couldn't.

Dr. Uysal said the commandos "were very startled and very scared." He added:

With my broken English I tried to tell them that I was a doctor and there was no need to be afraid and that nobody was going to hurt them. They relaxed after a while and watched us running around, jumping from one patient to another in tears, faced with our friends bathed in blood. I also asked our assistants to keep an eye on them so that they would not be threatened.

We could have as well left them to their fate, but this is not the humanity that we act with. We asked photographers not to film in the medical center and I have no idea how and when that picture was taken but God never leaves good deeds unheard. That picture shows the difference between the Israelis and us.

Asked if he could tell how long after sound grenades were thrown at the ship, at the start of the raid, that the gunshots were fired, Dr. Uysal said: "I was in the lower deck, but could hear all the explosions and gunfire. There was no way I can differentiate the gunshots or other sounds — I am only a doctor, after all."

After the Israeli military took control of the ship, the doctor said that he was treated no differently from the other passengers:

They handcuffed all of us with plastic bands so tightly that they could easily cause irreversible damage to our shoulder tissues. They made us kneel on our knees with hands handcuffed as the helicopters caused sea water to splash on us for three hours. I was shouting that I was a doctor and that my shoulder hurt in a very serious way. They pretended not to hear me. I wanted to go to the toilet; they didn't let me. After I kept yelling about my shoulder they let my hands loose but not those of my friends.

According to Mackey, the other man in the picture was also interviewed in the Turkish media

On Tuesday, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet published an interview with Murat Akinan, the man seen standing next to Dr. Uysal in the photographs of him treating a commando, and bringing the Israeli inside the ship in another photograph.

Mr. Akinan said that the captured soldier had been entrusted to him by Bulent Yildirim, the director of the Turkish aid organization I.H.H., who said: "Murat, take him and make sure that he'll be safe. Be careful, don't allow anyone to touch him."

So, Mr. Akinan said, "I took him downstairs yelling, 'Stop! No one will touch this man entrusted to me.' "

He added: "I called the doctor on board and asked him for treatment. Two more soldiers came. People were reacting. I had all three treated. I said to two to three wise people around me that we would not allow anyone to touch them."

According to Mr. Akinan, during his subsequent interrogation in Israeli custody, he was shown a photograph in which the soldier he was leading inside the ship was hit despite his efforts.

"I told them that I couldn't stop everyone," he said. He also claimed that the interrogator admitted that photographs showed that he had acted "with goodwill" toward the Israeli captive in his care.

Back to Jerry. Cynics will say that the commandos were more valuable to the Turks alive (as hostages) than dead. But that flies again in the face of the IDF Spokesperson remarks above.

And according to Haaretz, an Israeli intelligence and terrorism NGO reporting that according to intelligence reports, the troublemakers on the deck were about 40 Turkish “security guards” associated with the IHH, and that the rest of the passengers were not involved. That’s a bit less than 10% of the boat.

The report said while most of the Mavi Marmara's 500 passengers were humanitarian volunteers who underwent security checks before boarding the ship at Antalya in Turkey, a group of 40 IHH activists had boarded the ship in an Istanbul port beforehand, keeping apart from the rest of the passengers throughout the journey. If these reports are correct (and they have all sorts of problems with them, which I won’t go into now), then that would not conflict with the behavior of good people like Dr. Uysal.

But once again, how can we believe Israel until an independent investigation is launched?

The IDF Spokesperson's Detachment from Reality

Ali Abunimah reproduced some of the Turkish pictures from the Mavi Marmara on his blog. (If you are a subscriber and don't see the pictures, go to Ali's blog.)

On these and other pictures the IDF spokesperson responded, "This is clear proof of Israel's repeated claims, that the boat was carrying mercenaries, whose sole purpose was to kill the soldiers."

Now when I look at the picture -- no, when any normal, sane person looks at the picture -- I see a soldier being treated for wounds. Even if the wounds were inflicted by some of the Turkish passengers, does this scene look the effect of people "whose sole purpose was to kill soldiers."

So I can only conclude that either the IDF Spokesperson's Unit is made up of babbling idiots -- and I know that not to be true, from personal acquaintance -- or that it simply assumes that most people will not bother to look at the pictures and that it can say what it likes.

The scariest possibility is that some people look at this picture and see the bald-headed fellow trying to kill the commando. If such people exist, then they make holocaust deniers seem eminently reasonable in comparison.

Why isn’t the Israeli commando talking about how he was treated, as portrayed in the picture?