Loving Fellow Jews, Loving Fellow Humans, Loving "Folks Like Us"

I suppose I should be pleased that Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, whose blog I occasionally read with pleasure, contrasted favorably the Magnes Zionist's posts with Avraham Burg's recent op-ed in the New York Times. Burg was indirectly admonished by the rabbi for criticizing Israel harshly to an external audience, whereas he singled out the  Magnes Zionist for his harsh criticisms of Israel to an internal audience. Since the subject of Rabbi Rosen's blog was "Ahavat Yisrael," love of one's fellow Jews, one can reasonably infer  that he thought that Mr. Burg was more deficient in that trait than is Jeremiah Haber.

I certainly hope that wasn't his point!

For one thing I write a blog that, while having a tiny fraction of the circulation of the New York Times, is addressed to anybody who can read it, and I have a lot of readers who are gentiles. True, I have a tendency to talk insider language, but that is just because blogs are "unbuttoned" affairs, with scads of spelling mistakes and punctuation errors.  I do want to address Jews, of course, but not just. At times I am very happy to be seen in other company.

For example, I just published an essay in an anthology called, After Zionism, ed. by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor. Among the other contributors were Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy, Diana Bhuttu, Jeff Halper, Joseph Dana, Ahmed Moor, John Mearsheimer, Phil Weiss. The audience of this book is not mainly a Jewish one, and I would not be surprised if those individuals  fail to make most people's Ahavat Yisrael list. (Some of them WILL make mine.)  I wrote in my essay that not all forms of Zionism are treif (there I go again), and that there is a place for a certain kind of Zionism in a transformed Israel/Palestine.  My essay sticks out like a sore thumb in this company, but the editors accepted it because they felt that this book is about trying to envision a more just Israel/Palestine than is the horrible state of affairs today.  

As for Mr. Burg -- well, I assume that he wished to publish his piece in the New York Times because he wanted to reach Americans (including more American Jews than all the readers of all the Jewish media outlets combined)  who consider themselves liberal and supporters of Israel. He has been carrying on a debate with Rabbi Daniel Gordis about Jewish fundamentalism on the pages of the Economist, even though the both of them work withing a five-minute walk of each other. Is this bad? To some it may suggest a lack of ahavat Yisrael to wage the wars of the Lord in the goyyische press.  I don't see it that way. I see Burg's writings as a kiddush ha-Shem, a sanctification of God's name. 

Re ahavat Yisrael, I once wrote:

When people ask me whether I am pro-Israel, I unhesitatingly and unabashedly say yes. I am for Israel, which is the classical name for the Jewish people, I believe in and practice, to the best of my limited capacities, the love of the Jewish people, ahavat Yisrael. But what does that phrase mean? Hannah Arendt pleaded guilty to Gershom Scholem’s charge that she lacked ahavat Yisrael, stating that she loves people, not “the people”, not an abstraction. But even if “Israel” is not taken to represent an abstract collective but rather each and every individual Jew, it is arguably impossible, not to mention undesirable, to love people you have never met, or worse, whose ideology or character revolts you, simply because you are a member of their tribe. (Do you love everybody in your family?)

And yet, for me, ahavat Yisrael means to accord members of the Jewish people a special place in my heart, because I view them as extended family. And that is why as a member of the family I feel worse when some of family act atrociously. 

The basis for the commandment of ahavat Yisrael is the rabbinic interpretation of the Biblical commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The philosopher of education Akiva Ernst Simon wrote an essay in which he showed (much to his dismay) that the rabbis interpreted "neighbor" not as one's fellow human being, but rather as one's fellow Jew. That much is clear; there is love for one's fellow Jew and respect for God's creatures. Still, one does hear the phrase nowadays, "ahavat ha-adam," love of human beings, if not as much in traditional rabbinic Judaism, than at least in the Judaism I admire and cherish.

But I propose here another reading of the verse, "You shalt love your neighbor as yoursefl" -- you shall love the neighbor who is like yourself, that is to say, you should love like-minded individuals, or what we Yanks call, "folks like us."

In my case, "the folks like us" are composed of what my mother-in-law, of blessed memory, would call kol ha-minim, 'all kinds': Jews, Christians, Muslims, lefties, righties. I will stand shoulder to shoulder with all of them provided that we share the same values. As the song goes, "We are family." True, the family may not be a traditional one, but it is family nonetheless. And if this non-traditional family can help members of my traditional family do the right thing...well, that's fine.

Of course it is also nice when members of your family are also "folks like us" -- in this case, folks like Rabbi Jeremy Rosen and Avraham Burg.

Bring Back Beinart

Recently, Forward contributing editor Jay Michaelson wrote a long piece challenging the leftwing critics of Israel to reveal their endgame. According to Michaelson, Jewish Voice for Peace says that it is agnostic but the JVP folks he has talked to are for one state. And a one-state solution involves nothing less than the "cultural genocide" of Israel. "There is no way that a binational state will be a safe haven for the Jewish people or that it will preserve Jewish culture." Well, so much for those benighted fools like Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Rabbi Benjamin. To quote Michaelson, "NO WAAYYY".

May I respectfully suggest to Michaelson that he stick to issues he knows about in the LGBT community, instead of spouting Hasbara 101, the sort of stuff that intelligent rightwingers would never demean themselves by doing

Let me just take thirty seconds or so to answer his main assertions.

JVP hides its endgame, which is the one-state solution. No it doesn't, and no it isn't.  Had Michaelson bothered to google that organization (he doesn't bring a single reference, or link, to anything he asserts) he could see that they have a whole list of principles including, "Israelis and Palestinians have the right to security, sovereignty, and self-determination within political entities of their own choosing." Now what Michaelson should have least argued was that that's what they say, but you can't believe those "cafe leftists" (his offensive dig).  Instead he writes that the JVP people he has talked with are one-staters. So what? The organization includes one-staters, two-staters, no-staters, etc. I, for one, am not a one-stater. I am not at all agnostic on what I want for the endgame, which is that Israelis and Palestinians will have security, soveignty, and self-determination. On Michaelson's logic, if there are gay-right activists in an organization  who prefer Obama over Romney that commits the organization to being a front for the Democrats.

The one-state solution is "anti-Semitic"  because it means that "every people on the planet, from Peruvians to Pakistanis, deserves self-determination — except one. This is where anti-Zionism slides into anti-Semitism. Why are Jews to be treated differently from every other nation on the planet? Is Jewish nationhood more dubious than others?" In fact, there are many nations that don't have a state, including the Palestinian nation, which was repeatedly  promised a state, but whose territory is under the control of the "Jewish nation." I never knew that peoples have a right to a state at the expense of another people's, or on that people's territory. And, let's face it, shouldn't a liberal have problems with any nation-state who accepts new members into the nation on the basis of  religious conversion alone? 

Israel is singled out for moral opprobrium by the left. Oh, how I wish that  were true  -- the left, including the Arab left, has spent enormous time in the last year or so on something called the "Arab spring" and "Arab civil society," the Syrian civil war. And, darn it, the human rights organizations are always devoting most of their time and resources to other countries besides my own. But Michaelson bizarrely insists that the left -- including the Jewish and the Palestinian left -- are anti-Semitic unless they show more concern about the plight of the native Americans than about the fate of the Palestinians. But that is nonsense and offensive nonsense at that. Michaelson himself cares more about the plights of US gays than about the genocide of the Native Americans. Does he really think that gay rights in the US is more important  than the fate of the Roma in Europe? And if he does,  should he be suspected of bigotry toward the Roma for that? For that matter, does he think that leftwing criticism of Israel is a greater tragedy than the Chinese suppression of Tibetan rights? So why is he writing about Israel and not writing about Tibet? (For more on this ridiculous hasbara point see my essay here.)

Michaelson and I write on Israel because we are Jews and stakeholders. Palestinians and their allies are also stake-holders. If I arrange for a family member who has committed a crime to be arrested, am I to be criticized because I didn't tell the cops to go after more serious killers?  Should I have merely tried to solve the problem within the family? Written a letter to the editor? Flaunt my liberal creds?

I have a lot to disagree about with Peter Beinart, but at least Beinart makes arguments, cites sources, and takes his subject seriously. When I read stuff in Jewish media outlets like Michaelson's piece here, I am reminded of Maimonides' point about the illness that afflicts experts in a certain field who feel that they can make pronouncements in areas outside their expertise.  

Had he lived today Maimonides may have called it "contributing editor syndrome." 

 

 

NGO Monitor Coins an Anti-Semitic Slur: "Jew-Washing"

It's perfectly kosher for a rightwing Jewish organization like NGO Monitor to disagree vigorously with a leftwing organization like Jewish Voice for Peace. But in a recent op-ed in the New York Jewish Week,  Yiktzak Santis and Gerald Steinberg use the trademark tools of their organization --lies, half-truths, and insinuations -- to smear an organization they don't like. 

Still, something that is worth noting is their invention of a new anti-Semitic slur: "Jew-washing."

Before I get to that, let's start with the facts. 1. The Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to boycott settlement goods by a whopping 71% of the general assembly's membership. 2. A decision to divest from companies that profit from the occupation was narrowly defeated (by two votes). 3. The assembly voted to accept a recommendation that would allow individual pension holders to invest their pensions in companies that do not profit from the occupation.

Now let's move on to the Santis and Steinberg lies and half-truths. They begin their op-ed as follows:

At the Pittsburgh General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) earlier this month, a motion to adopt a boycott of three companies for doing business with Israel was hotly debated and narrowly defeated.  At this Christian gathering, a group of “young Jewish activists” provided important “testimony” supporting the motion to isolate and demonize Israel 

Lie.  There was no motion to boycott any company for doing business with Israel. As reported in the JTA, the motion was to divest from companies doing business with Israeli security forces in the West Bank, i.e., that directly benefit from the occupation. Santis and Steinberg knew this, and one can assume that they wrote what they do in order to defame those who supported the motion.

Even if JVP supported a total boycott of Israel, which it does not, that would be entirely irrelevant to the authors' misreporting of the motion. (And while we are on the subject of "lies," JVP is not  an "anti-Zionist group." It  includes Zionists, non-Zionists, anti-Zionists, two-staters, one-staters, no-staters, etc.)

Slur. The authors have the right to believe that this the motion isolates and defames Israel. But there was no "motion to isolate and demonize Israel." 

Half-truth.  Note that Santis and Steinberg referred to the defeat of the divestment motion. They did not mention the approval of the settlement boycott or providing their members with a way to divest personally. That would have made Jewish Voice for Peace less "fringe" like.

And now for "Jew-washing":

These were the “Jew-washers” – very visible actors in many such political attacks on Israel, particularly in Christian frameworks.  They are influential beyond their actual numbers, providing a convenient means for cleansing such actions from the stains of double standards, demonization and sometimes anti-Semitism against the Jewish state of Israel, and even Judaism itself.

"Jew-washers"? I guess what the authors mean is that JVP and other Jewish groups presents a veneer of Jewish respectability, a hekhsher, for the anti-Israel activities of the BDS'ers. And this is the first slur of what I shall call the "Nu, anti-Semitism!" 

What is the "Nu,  anti-Semitism!"? It is saying to Jews, "Nu, you have no right to say or act upon what you think. because that aids and abets  the anti-Semites” (defined as "people who provide criticisms of Israel that  we at NGO Monitor consider to be unfair.")

The "Nu, anti-Semitism!" is occasionally charitable enough to believe that the Jews in question are self-hating, or naive, or have unreasonable expectations of Israel, etc., etc. As the authors say, their intentions are irrelevant (in other words, such Jews lack the basic human right to be judged on the basis of their intentions.) But by hanging out the dirty laundry of the tribe for all to see, and, worse, by joining with the tribe's enemies (e.g., Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc.), they are "Jew-washing."

And the "evidence" for "Jew-washing" provided by Steinberg and Santis?

In many cases (sic) Jew-washing is also used to whitewash the blatant theological anti-Semitism that accompanies the church-based BDS attacks on Israel.  One example is Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian group that is very influential in those mainline churches active in the BDS wars.  Its theology includes supercessionism – a reading of the New Testament that considers the Church to have superseded the Jewish people in God’s promises – and deicide – the charge that “the Jews” killed Jesus – that served as the basis for centuries of anti-Jewish persecution.

Giving Sabeel a thorough Jew-wash is JVP’s Rabbinical Council, which in its “Statement of Support for the Sabeel Institute” acknowledges “the more radical incarnations (sic) of some of [Sabeel’s] theological images.”

Yet, Sabeel’s frequent denigration of Judaism as “tribal” and “primitive” and comparisons of Palestinians to Jesus on the cross put there by the Israeli government’s “crucifixion machine,” does not seem to affect JVP’s rabbis, who assert that it is “a mistake to dismiss Palestinian Christian theology wholesale.”

Now, if I said that an organization "whitewashes the blatant theological anti-Semitism that accompanies the church-based BDS attacks on Israel' (Note that Steinberg and Santis just called a bit under half of the Presbyterian General Assembly "blatant theological anti-Semites" ), I would be prepared to show how Jewish Voice for Peace gives some Jewish cover for this.  Instead, the authors refer to a JVP statement that says as follows:

We are aware that many Jews point to the more radical incarnations of some of Ateek's theological images. We believe, however, that it is a mistake to dismiss Palestinian Christian theology wholesale. As Jews, we are much more troubled by the “End of Days” theologies of fundamentalist Zionist Christians such as Pastor John Hagee, who believe that Jews will either convert or go to hell when we've fulfilled our theological purpose. This is anti-semitism par excellence. 

In other words, JVP's rabbinical council, while not endorsing Ateek's theological images, say that they have to be understood in light of the ongoing suffering of Palestinian Christians at the hand of Israelis. One may consider this too forgiving on the part of JVP, but the point is that they are not excusing or whitewashing such images, but saying that they should not be allowed to get in way of the bigger picture.

Should we accuse rightwing groups of "Jew-washing" because they form coalitions with John Hagee's ministry? Or "Christians United for Israel"? Of course not.

For all I know, Christian Zionists  who eagerly await the mass conversion of Jews have contributed to NGO Monitor. 

I say, "for all I know" because the trademark smear of NGO Monitor has yet to come. Of JVP they write,

Their motivations, like their financing, are unclear and irrelevant – the fact that they provide a useful cover for non-Jews to justify gratuitous. Israel-bashing is what counts.

If their financing is irrelevant to the author's argument then why make the remark  that it is "unclear"? Oh, that's an easy one: This is NGO Monitor, which has made a career of insinuations about the "unclear sources of financing" of the organization it "monitors." In fact, even when the source of funding is entirely transparent, they either use the sources to delegitimize the organization or  raise the specter of secret funding.

In NGO Monitor-ese, "unclear funding" means "funding by donors whose identity we cannot discover, and therefore smear through association, no matter how much our staff Googles.”

This wouldn't be so bad were it not that NGO Monitor's own funding is no less "unclear" than that of Jewish Voice for Peace. Last spring  Haaretz published an expose showing how NGO Monitor hides the identity of its donors. That is in Hebrew, but a good account of it in English is here. NGO Monitor's funding is a lot more unclear than that of the NGOs the organization purports to monitor, whose transparency is mandated by law.

But rest assured, NGO monitor, most of JVP's budget is made up of individual donations. They lack the heavy guns that you have, but they would not demean themselves by saying that you provide cover for the anti-Semites.

The "Nu, anti-Semitism!" slur of “Jew-washing” demonizes, and in general, impugns the character of Jewish critics of Israel.  If you think that leftwing Jewish groups are not allowed to join coalitions with non-Jewish groups that criticize Israel's  existence as a Jewish state; then you target leftwing Jews  as Jews. If you believe that Jews are not allowed to make certain arguments or take certain actions because they are Jewish, then you claim that Jews are not allowed to possess the basic human right of expressing their opinions and acting on them in a responsible, non-violent manner.

That’s what makes "Jew-washing" an anti-Semitic slur. It unfairly singles out Jews by judging them by a double standard. And it denies them fundamental human rights.

 

National Service for Palestinian Israelis?

Every so often the suggestion is raised that Palestinian citizens of Israel, like Jewish citizens, should do some form of national service. Since Israel effectively bars them from military service, and since most of them have no desire anyway to fight in an army that oppresses Palestinians, the proposed alternative is some sort of non-military national service. The claim has been heard recently because of the work of the Plessner Committee, which is recommending military and national service for the ultra-othodox.

A state that defines itself as a state of the Jews, and only of the Jews, and then foundationally discriminates in a myriad of ways against its non-Jewish citizens, cannot morally demand equality of obligations. The answer is to transform the State of Israel into a state of all its citizens, with equal rights and obligations for all. With 5 1/2 million Jews, and with Israel's history, it would still very much be a state in which Hebrew and Jewish culture would be dominant in the public sphere, a state that would look like an ethnic democracy rather than an ethnocracy. And in that case, we could have the philosophical and practical argument about whether national service is a good idea.

Some of my liberal Zionist friends will demur, and it's for them that I write this post. Some, like Peter Beinart, will claim that while Israel is a flawed democracy, it is a democracy nonetheless. They will say that it is indeed unfortunate that there has been a systematic, inegalitarian distribution of resources that favor Jews at the expense of Arabs. But Israel has, at least, in principle, the resources that can make the system more egalitarian. Who knows? Were the Palestinian Israelis to accept some sort of national service, perhaps that would make it easier for them to be accepted within the society, and then they could make the case for a more equitable distribution.

Akiva Eldar, a man whom I respect immensely, agrees with me that under the present circumstances, Palestinian Israelis should not be required to participate in national service. But he also argues today in Haaretz that Palestinian Israelis have more political power than they they think. Instead of staying home in droves whenever there are national elections (only a bit over 50% vote), they could promise to vote for a center-left coalition if some of their political demands are met. After all, and here I return to Beinart, during the years of the second Rabin government, because of coalition arrangments, there were significant steps taken to bridge the gaps between Arab and Jewish citizens. It is, theoretically, possible -- if only the Palestinian Israelis would vote.

Sadly, Eldar's stance is typical liberal Israeli self-delusion. Discrimination against Palestinian Israelis is not just institutional, it is foundational. They are 20% of the population, yet they have virtually no political power. Why not? Because it's a Jewish state.

Beinart's invoking the second Rabin government is illuminating. . Rabin was elected in part because of the Arab vote. Yet even Rabin did not have the political will or ability to bring the Arab political parties into the government coalition. Why not? Because it's a Jewish state. So Arab Israelis could expect to get further funding if they supported the government outside the coalition, and hence not control any ministries, which is the main source of resources for all parties.

Even this was too much for many Israelis, who claimed that the Oslo process was illegitimate because it rested on Arab votes. Attempts to require a Jewish majority on major issues in the Knesset failed, but narrowly. The one time that an Israeli government made some serious gestures towards its Arab citizens, it lost its legitimacy in the eyes of those who had been brought up to believe that Israel was a state of the Jews, not of its citizens.

The lessons of Rabin's failure was learned well by the next Labour prime minister, Ehud Barak. In the 1999 elections close to 75% of the Palestinian Israelis voted, and over 95% of them voted for Ehud Barak for prime minister. When Barak won in a landslide, he promised to the be prime minister of "kulam," everybody. What he meant was that he was going to be the prime minister of all the Jews, left, right, and center, religious and non-religious. He did not want to be perceived as the prime minister of the Arabs. So despite the fact that no sector supported him more than the Arab one, he refused to meet with the Israeli Arab political leaders after the election, not even extending them the courtesy of being invited to informal coalition talks. After all, he thought, they were in his pocket; who else would they support? After the fiasco of Camp David, the beginning of the Second Intifada, and the October police riots against Palestinian Israelis, leaving 13 Palestinian Israelis dead, and despite Barak's attempts to placate the Arab citizenry before the election with Or Commision report (whose recommendations were not implemented), only 18% of Palestinian Israelis voted in the 2001 elections. And why should they? Wouldn't it be more convenient for them to simply flush their ballot down the toilet?

From 1948 until the present, Palestinian Israelis have been effectively "present absentees," people who dot the Israeli landscape but who are not seriously noticed by Israeli Jews. When they were under military government in the 1950s and 1960s, voter participation was very high. As Karin Schefferman of the Israeli Democracy Institute reported in 2009

In the 1950s and 1960s, the voting rate of the Arab citizens of Israel was very high - from 90% in 1955 to 82% in 1965. Neuberger (1965) suggests that the high turnout during these years was actually imposed by the dominant Mapai party, which took advantage of the clan social structure of the Arab population and used the military government to pressure Israel's Arab citizens to vote for Mapai's satellite parties: "The Israeli Arab Democratic List", "Agriculture and Development", "Cooperation and Brotherhood" and "Progress and Development". Therefore, the high voting rates during these years do not necessarily indicate a desire to participate, but rather fear of the Israeli regime

I suppose that there is a certain amount of progress if some of the citizenry doesn't live in fear of the government, and unlike their Palestinian brethren on the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian Israelis do not live in fear. As ethnocracies go, Israel is pretty enlightened and liberal.

But the idea that increased voter participation is going to significantly help the Palestinian Israelis is a liberal Zionist myth. A visiting professor of US Constitutional law recently asked me, "How many Knesset seats would it take for the Palestinians to be a member of the coalition?" I answered, "61, i.e., a majority -- because no Jewish prime minister will ever invite them into a coalition."

And why not? Because it's a Jewish state. The hand-wringing of the widening gaps between Jews and Arabs allow Israelis to sleep better at night.

But it is just more liberal Zionist mauvais foi

Progressive and Religious Zionist -- Part Two

Given the orthodox record of silence on the plight of the Palestinian Arabs, is it consistent for somebody who defines him or herself as religious Zionist to be supportive of the rights of the Palestinians to live as a free people in their homeland? Is it consistent for such a Jew to be concerned with the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people over the six decades of the State of Israel's existence, including expulsion, denaturalization, destruction of hundreds of villages, expropriation of property, pervasive legal discrimination, inequitable distribution of government funds - and all of this within the borders of what Peter Beinart calls "democratic Israel," without even mentioning the occupation and control of the West Bank and Gaza for over two generations?

Perhaps consistency in these matters is unnecessary. After all, people have conflicting intuitions, loyalties, etc., and even those who strive for some internal consistency may end up compartmentalizing. One can be progressive on Palestine and orthodox Jewish without the two having much to do with each other. But the orthodox are not fond of such an answer, for there remains the rabbinic directive to ensure that all one's deeds are for the sake of heaven. Even if we acknowledge that complex identities are formed from many conflicting and irreducible influences, we can attempt to see whether there is a common element that runs throughout them, sn element that can help others, should they desire, resolve some of the tensions within their own complex identities.

Fortunately, from the very beginning of religious Zionism until the present there runs a subterranean river of progressive thought that places rapprochement with the Palestinian Arabs at the center of binyan Eretz Yisrael, the building up of the Land of Israel. This "third way" of religious Zionism, a progressive religious Zionism founded on Torah and morality, is barely known to historians, and even less to those who consider themselves religious Zionists. It exists mostly in the publicistic writings of a handful of progressive religious Zionists thoroughly the twentieth century. Although most orthodox (and non-orthodox) supporters of Israel were indifferent to the injustices committed by Zionists against the Palestinians, there were voices in religious Zionism that regarded such injustices as violation of the Torah. These voices did not treat the Palestinians as "strangers among us" but rather as natives with national rights. They were willing to limit Jewish hegemony over Eretz Yisrael, or even curtail it, in the name of their progressive values. And they were orthodox Jews.

Some of their aspirations were not so distant from those of the mainstream Zionists in the 1920s and 1930s. Those familiar with the history of Zionism know that the Jewish ethnic-exclusivist state founded in 1948, and further crystallized through discriminatory legislations such as the Law of Return (1950), the Absentee Property Law (1950), the Nationality Law (1952), and the Land Acquisition Law (1953), differed considerably from most Zionist models proposed until World War II and the Holocaust. When Jews constituted a minority in Palestine, and especially after the Arab disturbances in 1929, mainstream Zionists floated several proposals for Jewish national self-determination, including binationalism, federalism, confederalism, etc. There were voices who recognized that Palestinian Arabs should have political rights, and that Palestinian nationalism was justifiable - and these voices included Vladimir Jabotinsky, who as late as 1940 wrote that

In every Cabinet where the Prime Minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered as an Arab, and vice-versa. […] The Jewish and the Arab ethnic communities shall be recognized as an autonomous public bodies of equal status before the law […] Each ethno-community shall elect its National Diet with the right to issue ordinances and levy taxes within the limit of its autonomy and to appoint a national executive responsible before the Diet.[1]

Others went further, but conventional Zionist historiography after the establishment of the state either ignored these plans or dismissed them as utopian or merely tactical. As the Zionists gained in numbers and strength, and certainly after the 1948 War of Independence, the recognition of rights of the native Palestinians, most of whom were barred from returning to their homes, lessened considerably.There were religious Jews, some of them quite prominent, who called for building a just society together with the native Arabs of Palestine, who despised the increasingly militaristic and aggressive tendencies of the yishuv, and who never ceased to cry out against discriminatory policies, practices, and laws of the new state.

Yehoshua Radler-Feldman, who wrote under the name of R. Binyamin, is remembered today, if at all, as one of the founding members of the Brith Shalom circle and as a literary critic. But Radler-Feldman was also one of the central figures in religious Zionism, a visionary and activist who founded and edited religious Zionist journals, served as the secretary of Mizrahi, worked towards the establishment of a religious university, and was accepted in all circles of the yishuv. Although he left Brith Shalom shortly after its founding, he was a member of all subsequent societies that preached Jewish-Arab rapprochement, and he became the editor of the journal Ner, published by the Ihud Association, which had been founded by the binationalist Judah Magnes. Like Magnes, Buber and most other binationalists, Radler-Feldman, accepted the decree of history after the founding of the State of Israel. But he continued to raise his voice in protest against the discriminatory measures against Israeli Arabs, the expropriation of their lands, and the refusal to let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes.
Responding to Prof. Hugo Bergmann, who had criticized the decision to launch Ihud's journal after the founding of the state, Radler Feldman writes:

My brother Bergmann: By providing "a platform for truth, love, and peace," we do not have the idiotic intention that these three values are our exclusive possession.…Rather we wish to say - and to repeat and drill it to ourselves most of all - that we consider these three to be foremost in rank. Other people bend their knee to other important values, such as nation, homeland, class, religion, party, and family. Whereas we place the aforementioned values first, and subordinate all the others to them. We subordinate even the Holy One Blessed be He, Himself to them, for, so to speak, the Creator of these values is also subject to them, and must justify His governance before them.[2] 

In 1939, after Jewish terrorists of the Irgun had conducted a series of attacks against Arab civilians, Radler-Feldman edited a collection of essays, addresses, manifestos, and publicistic pieces by Jews condemning the spilling of innocent Arab blood called, Against Terror. And already in 1907, while still in Galicia, he wrote the poem Masa' Arav ('An Arabian Prophecy') which begins

When you come to inherit the land,

Do not come as an enemy and an adversary

But bring greetings to the inhabitants of the land

Build not your generations' sanctuary in resentment, indignation, or enmity

But rather in love, grace, justice, and faith

Hatred will arouse strife, but love will allay wrath

It will bring brothers together, and make peace with the distant

You shall love the inhabitant of the land, for he is your brother, your self, your flesh

Do not avert your eye from him.

Do not hide yourself from your own flesh.

Radler-Feldman was an intense idealist, interested in literature more than in politics, but other religious Zionists associated with Ihud, like Prof. Akiva Ernst Simon and Dr. Simon Shereshevsky, also offered pragmatic and political considerations for their views, and in this they were closer to men like Magnes and Buber - though the question of the relation between morality and politics was always debated among them. Space doesn't permit reproducing here the publicistic writings by religious Zionists who were critical of the state for its crimes against the Arab natives. Typical is this passage from Dr. Shereshevsky, writing in Haaretz in September, 19, 1969.

…People are speaking of "Greater Israel" and God's promise to Abraham "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river" (Gen 15:18). Most of those who cite the verse are fascist unbelievers, or believers and God fearers with fascist opinions. What is the practical, real meaning today of the words, "To your descendants I have given this land,", when Arabs have lived for generations on a great part of this territory. Who and what will symbolize this "greater Israel"? The soldier who is armed "from the sole of his foot to the top of his head," the armored vehicle and the tank that strikes fear in the hearts of the citizens who live under a regime of "emergency regulations"?

Unlike contemporary critics of Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians under occupation, such as Gideon Levy of Haaretz, the religious Zionist critics often appeal to traditional texts. But their rhetoric also has a contemporary ring, and their voices, silent for too many years, may serve as an inspiration for new generations of religious Zionists who have plenty to cry out against in this religious and Zionist wilderness.

Today, religious Zionists can be found among the young men and women who protest the Judaization of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, the removal of the Bedouin from their lands in the Negev, the ongoing siege of Gaza, and the never-ending theft of Palestinian lands and resources for settlements under the guise of "security." They are the latest manifestion of the subterranean river of progressive religious Zionism that begins with Radler-Feldman, and which recognizes the rights of the Palestinian Arabs and Jews to live as free people in their land.

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[1]The Jewish War Front (London, 1940), pp. 216-218, cited in D. Shumsky, "Brith Shalom's Uniqueness Reconsidered: Hans Kohn and Autonomist Zionism," Jewish History 25 (2011): 339-353, p.346.

[2]Ner 1:5.

Religious Zionist and Progressive on Palestine–Part One

Dear Readers,

I have gone for around six weeks without posting anything. During those six weeks I have been very busy, but there’s another reason for my silence. After shouting for the last four years on this blog, I have grown hoarse. It’s not so much that I have lost my voice. It’s more the fear of endless preaching to the choir.   Does any of this matter?

So while I ponder my future, I will publish some stuff I had been working on. My last piece (below) was posted here and on Peter Beinart’s Open Zion blog on the Huffington Post. This post is part one of a longer article that Peter asked me to write on how one can consistently be modern orthodox and progressive on Palestine. If I get some good comments on these posts, I may write a version for him.

While researching the history of religious Zionism, I found out, much to my surprise, that not only could one  be modern orthodox and a supporter of Palestinian rights, but also that one could be religious Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinians – their human rights, their civil rights, and their right to self determination.

Sounds a bit like squaring the circle? Well, here goes:

Can a religious Zionist advocate the rights of the Palestinians to live as a free people in their homeland of Palestine? Can a modern orthodox Jewish supporter of Israel be concerned with the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people over the six decades of the State of Israel’s existence, including expulsion, denaturalization, destruction of hundreds of villages, expropriation of property, pervasive legal discrimination, and inequitable distribution of government funds – all within the borders of what Peter Beinart calls “democratic Israel,” not to mention the Israeli-controlled territories of the West Bank and Gaza? I will argue yes to both questions in Part Two of this essay. In Part One I will try to support the more modest claim that religious Zionism does not require attaching any special religious or theological significance to the state of Israel, certainly none that would influence religious Zionist attitudes towards the native Palestinians. Moral outrage at the trampling of Palestinian rights by successive Israeli government is certainly compatible with a modern orthodox position; but some orthodox have gone further to claim that Judaism requires concern for the rights of the Palestinians. The latter claim I will take up in Part Two

Few orthodox Jews, in Israel or abroad, have cared about the actions taken by the mainstream Zionist movement and the State of Israel against the native Arabs of Palestine. To be sure, individual orthodox rabbis, and rabbinical bodies have condemned Jewish vigilantism against Arabs. But rarely have they criticized the Israeli government and the IDF for its treatment of the Palestinians. In their silence, of course, they differ little from most secular Israelis.

Jewish law does not view the Palestinians as natives of Palestine but rather as “strangers and sojourners” in the Land of Israel. They are often categorized as Noahides with the legal status of “resident aliens,” with limited rights vis-à-vis Jews, or as Amalekites, who have no rights at all. A few religious Zionist rabbis are willing “in principle” to support Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, out of a concern more for the welfare of the Jews than for justice for the Palestinians.[1] And even those rabbis are increasingly few and far between.

Indifference to the fate of Palestinian Arabs can perhaps be illustrated by the classic of religious Zionist theology, Kol Dodi Dofek (translated into English as Fate and Destiny), by Rabbi Joseph Dov Solovetichik, the most influential figure in modern orthodoxy in America (and increasingly influential in Israel). Nowhere in the essay is there any acknowledgement that the so-called “miracle” of the birth of the State of Israel was accompanied by the Israeli government’s refusal to allow most of the Palestinian Arabs, the majority of the population of Palestine, to return to their homes after the war, in violation of the resolution of the very same United Nations whose diplomatic support for Israel had been cited by R. Soloveitchik as an example of Divine providence. Instead, the author repeats the myth of how the Jews returned to a desolate and barren backwater, and portrays the Arabs (“the mobs of Nasser and the Mufti”) as Amalekites, who are solely motivated by anti-Semitism.

And yet -- although most modern orthodox Jews today support the State of Israel founded in 1948, statist Zionism is not fundamental to orthodoxy in the way that other beliefs and practices are. Indeed, there is room in modern orthodoxy for a spectrum of opinions on the State of Israel, from the belief that it is the “beginning of redemption” to the belief that it does not advance the cause of Jews and Judaism. Zionism, non-Zionism, diasporism, anti-Zionism, or none of the above, are all viable options for modern orthodox. These options are compatible with the Jewish concern for the welfare of Jews and Jewish communities.

Orthodox Judaism can be characterized by three elements: the practical, the observance of Jewish law, the theological, the view that law as divinely revealed in the Sinaitic covenant; and the sociological, the affiliation with orthodox communal institutions. Add to this the elements of openness to influences from without the tradition, and a greater degree of personal autonomy in the interpretation of one’s obligations under the law, and you have “modern orthodoxy”, although, truth to tell, the dialectic between openness and insularity is a feature of Judaism throughout its history.

Of course, modern orthodox Judaism, like all orthodox Judaism, considers Eretz Yisrael to be the land promised by God to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jewish law discusses the sanctity of the land as well as the commandments whose observance is rooted in the land. Even those rabbis who spiritualized the Land of Israel in their writings never conceded the title of the actual land to the gentiles. But the Zionist decision to actively settle the Land of Israel, and push for Zionist hegemony, was a matter of dispute between Zionist and anti-Zionist orthodox rabbis, and it hardly helped the religious Zionists that the leaders of the Zionist movement were non-observant Jews. Disputes between Zionism and orthodoxy lasted even after the Jewish state was established because of its avowedly secularist and often anti-orthodox ideology.

For the devaluation of Zionism in the Jewish scale of values one looks again to the writings of Rabbi Soloveitchik. The “Rov” saw in the establishment of the State of Israel the unmistakable hand of divine providence, and he criticized himself and other orthodox Jews for not responding adequately to the Divine call. But as Prof. Yaakov Blidstein has pointed out, religious Zionism occupies a very small place in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, which focus mostly on individual, family, and community. Prominent religious Zionists appear to have exerted no influence on his thinking, Prof. Blidstein raises the question of whether it is even appropriate to call him a religious Zionist.[2]

This pragmatic religious Zionism can trace its roots to the thinking of Rabbi Yizhak Yaakov Reines, the founder of the Mizrahi movement and continued to guide the Mizrahi and its Israeli political wing, the National Religious Party, as long the movement was run by European-born and educated orthodox Jews. With the development of an indigenous leadership, raised and educated in Israeli religious Zionist institutions, religious Zionism accorded theological and mystical value to the state – as long as the state allowed it to pursue its agenda.

The first significant cracks in the relationship between religious Zionism and the State occurred in the evacuation of the Yamit settlements, and the fissures increased during the Oslo years, which ended with Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination by a religious Zionist. During the Oslo years there were religious Zionists who wondered whether it was appropriate to say the prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel, so disappointed were they with the acts of the government.

Rabbi Avraham Wallfish, though not willing to go so far as some of the disappointed, wrote in the wake of the Disengagement from Gaza:

Of the three core values of Religious Zionism, statehood is the one most deleteriously affected by the Disengagement. Not only were the organs of statehood utilized for purposes most Religious Zionists regarded as morally and religiously wrong, but serious question marks were raised about the way in which they function, and in particular about the way in which they were seen to be riddled with special political interests and corruption…I think we need at the present time to scale down our axiological evaluation of the state. [3] (italics added)

For both Rabbi Wallfish and me, the State of Israel should not be assumed to be an unconditional value for religious Zionists; its worth must be measured against the standards of Torah in both its particularist and universalist elements. The dispute between us will be over which values and which political model fulfills better the demands of Torah and morality, and how best to implement that model in an imperfect world. A state that repeatedly violates the rights of the Palestinian Arabs subject to its dominion cannot, in my view at least, be the state that the Torah desires.

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[1] For example, those rabbis who believe that saving Jewish lives supersedes holding on to greater Israel, and, hence, territorial compromise can be made.

[2] “Gerald Blidstein, Society and Self: On the Writings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (New York, 2012), pp. 19-35.

[3] Avraham Walfish, “Religious Zionism Post Disengagement: Future Directions, ed. Chaim I. Waxman. New York, 2008, pp, 57-92, esp. 80-81.

How Can Something That Was Never Alive Be Dead?

(Readers: this appears under a different headline, not mine, at Open Zion here)

Is the two-state solution for Israel-Palestine still viable? Perhaps it is time to admit, in the spirit of Voltaire, that the two-state solution was never about two states, nor was it a solution, nor could it ever be viable. 

It was not about a Palestinian state, because a state’s fundamental purpose is to provide security and a sense of security to its citizens. But even the most far-reaching of the two-state proposals did not allow the Palestinians to have a strong army. After a century of Zionism, security and the sense of security are what the Palestinians crave most. That is why in poll after poll, what Palestinians on the West Bank oppose most is “an independent Palestinian state that would have no army, but would have a strong security force and would have a multinational force deployed in it to ensure its security and safety.”

Ahmad Gharabli / AFP / Getty Images

That there are Palestinian leaders who were compelled, out of weakness and fatigue, to agree to a non-militarized Palestine is irrelevant, as is the very sensible belief that developing countries should not invest heavily in a military. A people that has always relied on the “kindness of strangers” must be able to defend itself. That is valid for the State of Israel, and it is equally valid for the State of Palestine. 

It was not a real solution, because it did not meet the minimum set of reasonable conditions for statehood.  For example, the proposed borders of the state, even after land swaps, would finalize the Judaization of the greater Jerusalem metropolitan area, providing Palestinians with a hole in a Jewish bagel. The settlement blocs would divide the Palestinian state from North to South and the Negev would divide the Palestinian state from  East to West. The other elements of the Clinton proposals or the Geneva Initiative, i.e. security arrangements, refugees, etc.,  all favor the Israelis at the expense of the Palestinians. 

Advocates of the two-state solution will respond, “Yes, but at least the Palestinians will have a state. Had they accepted the partition plan in 1947, they would have had a larger state without refugees.” Really? Had the Palestinians joined the Zionists in accepting the partition plan in 1947, it is more likely that neither side would have honored it. Even the Zionists, who accepted it, discarded it at the earliest opportunity.  Both sides years later failed to honor the Oslo Accords they signed, and Israel was quick to appeal to security concerns in order to justify territorial gain in 1956 and 1967.

What really determines the security of the Israelis and the Palestinians is, not surprisingly, the balance of power between the peoples. And, under any of the proposed two-state solutions, the Palestinians would be dependent to a large extent on Israel’s largesse. 

For the two-state solution to be a viable option, there must be a fair and equitable division of the land and resources of Israel/Palestine, a division that provides for a symmetry of power and resources between the two peoples, including room for immigrants from their respective  diaspora communities. The current two-state proposals, justified entirely by facts on the ground, and by a desire to solve the Jewish “demographic problem,” distribute land and resources in a grossly inequitable manner. This is a sure recipe for breeding terrorism, vigilantism, and irredentism. Even the accepted US formula for two states: “a secure Israel alongside a viable, contiguous Palestine” is humiliating. If you don’t understand why, just switch the two names.

How about a one-state solution? Or, to be more precise, how about a different “one state” from the current one state ruled by Israel, in which the Palestinians of Israel are excluded from the nation-state, rendering them politically impotent, and in which Palestinian subjects of the West Bank and Gaza, are under Israel’s control?  A more equitable binationalist state may be the solution for the future, but it is presently thwarted by opposing nationalist narratives, hardened by the occupation and by the Israeli policy of "hafrada" (segregation), which fosters mutual ignorance and distrust.

Instead of focusing on impractical political solutions, friends of Israel and Palestine should adopt more fundamental principles. Here are two:

Joint Struggle for Civil Rights and Self-Dermination. Recently, several prominent Israelis have called on Israel to withdraw unilaterally from parts of the West Bank in a move they termed, “Peace Without Partners.” Yet this return to Zionist unilateralism will achieve neither peace nor the minimum of justice required by both peoples for coexistence. Rather, people of good will from around the globe should become “Partners Without Peace” in a struggle for the civil rights and self-determination of Palestinians (and Israelis, who already have them.) 

Re-education and Fostering Understanding of the Other.  Both sides, as unequal in power as they currently are,  have to be re-educated to understand that at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict are conflicting foundational claims that can no longer be adjudicated. Their goal should be to work gradually towards a reasonably fair compromise between the parties that will allow both peoples security and flourishing. The ultimate goal should not a sanctification of the status quo, including the Israeli regime established in 1948, but rather a willingness to re-think how both the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples can have equal opportunities to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

This is a herculean task for more than one generation. But there are no short-cuts.  During the very long night ahead of us, the joint struggle of people from Israel/Palestine and from around the globe should continue to focus on civil and political equality, until more come to realize that the problems between the two sides are foundational. Non-violent tactics that exert pressure on both sides, including boycotts and sanctions,  should be considered and adopted if they will further the aforementioned goals. 

The “We-all-know-what-the-solution-will-look-like–we-just-don’t-know-how-to-get-there” attitude may be comforting to liberal Zionists—but it is just another messianic illusion that allows them to sleep soundly while the oppression and injustice continues. Indeed, the messiah will come before an equitable two-state solution is implemented. And Zionism is not about waiting for the messiah.

“Was the Arab-Israeli Conflict Inevitable”

Recently, Prof. Efraim Karsh gave a talk at my university, in which he claimed that – contrary to received wisdom, the Arab-Israeli conflict was not inevitable, that the Palestinian Arab masses were willing to live in peace among the Zionists, that they were betrayed by their leadership, the Arab states, and the British.

Part of what he said made sense, especially the betrayal business, since it is pretty close to what Rashid Khalidi says in the Iron Cage. But, of course, the Zionists indeed made the conflict inevitable when they came, as settlers, to a country and conspired with the mandate authorities to carve out a state for themselves. That many of the natives were fellahin who weren’t particularly nationalistic, or did not have a Palestinian national identity is irrelevant, just as it was irrelevant for the millions across Africa and the Middle East where colonial regions become states.

But the best refutation of Karsh (which he dismissed as “bullshit”) was provided by Hans Kohn in 1929, after the first Arab disturbances against the Jews. Kohn, a Zionist who had emigrated from Germany to Jerusalem, broke with Zionism after the riots. Here is some of what he wrote.

I cannot concur with [official Zionist policy] when the Arab national movement is being portrayed as the wanton agitation of a few big landowners. I know all too well that frequently the most reactionary imperialist press in England and France portrays the national movements in India, Egypt, and China in a similar fashion – in short, wherever the national movements of oppressed peoples threaten the interest of the colonial power. I know how false and hypocritical this portrayal is. We pretend to be innocent victims…

Of course the Arabs attacked us in August. Since they have no armies the could not obey the rules of war. They perpetrated all the barbaric acts that are characteristic of a colonial revolt. But we are obliged to look into the deeper cause of this revolt. We have been in Palestine for twelve years [since the British mandate] without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people. We have been relying exclusively upon Great Britain’s military might. We have set ourselves goals which by their very nature had to lead to conflict with Arabs…We ought to have recognized that these goals would be the cause, the just cause, of a national uprising against us. ..Having come to this country [as immigrants], we were duty bound to come up with constitutional proposals which, without doing serious harm to Arabs right and liberty, would have also allowed for our free cultural and social development. But for twelve years we pretended that the Arabs did not exist and were glad when we were not reminded of their existence (Hans Kohn, Letter to Dr. Feiwel, Jerusalem, 21 November 1929, cited in Paul Mendes-Flohr, ed. Martin Buber, A Land of Two Peoples.)

So Karsh was refuted already in 1929 by a far-seeing Zionist. Needless to say, when I confronted him with the passage, he dismissed it as “bullshit”. The more things change….

To the Delegates at the UMC General Conference in Tampa

 

To the Delegates at the UMC General Conference in Tampa

Dear Delegates,

Before I say anything, before I try to convince you of anything, I want to express my deep sympathy with you as you face a  dilemma concerning the divestment issue. As one who has believed in the importance of improving the relations between all faiths for my entire life, as a Jew who attended a Christian high school, and who then went on to study Islam and Arabic philosophy in college,  I do not envy your position.

Whatever your decision, you will make some people very unhappy. On the one hand, you may damage relations with many Jews, including Jewish organizations with whom you do good work. As Christians who are deeply aware of the troubled history of Christian-Jewish relations, that may be very, very difficult, a source of pain to Jews and Methodists alike. 

On the other hand, if you vote against divestment, if you amend the resolution, or substitute something “positive”, such as investing in Palestinian businesses, you will have caused enormous pain to those Palestinian Christians who are crying out for support in their struggle for civil and human rights, for the fundamental right to live a life of dignity.

I write you as an American Israeli, an orthodox Jew, a resident of Jerusalem, a professor of Jewish thought, whose children and grandchildren live in the State of Israel. For the last thirty years of my life I have observed almost first-hand the increasing oppression of the Palestinian, the settlements, the bypass roads, the eviction of long time residents from their houses, the destruction of houses, the expropriation of lands, public and private, the unjust allocation of natural resources – and the suffering that has resulted.

I have seen how some members of the Jewish community have allowed their hearts to be hardened to the ongoing suffering of the Palestinians, how they have justified it through appealing to Israeli security needs, or when that tactic fails, by diverting the conversation to some other catastrophe going on somewhere. It is no doubt true that on any day of the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, something worse is happening to some other people somewhere else on the globe. But I am hard-pressed to think of another people whose suffering has gone on for so long. And, as an Israeli Jew, I am implicated in that suffering.

Sadly, I have heard some members of the Jewish community question the motives behind the divestment campaign, given that today – and every day -- there is some other worse injustice elsewhere. The insinuation is there – “If you are singling out Israel for moral opprobrium, the only explanation can be that you are…” well, I cannot even type the rest of the sentence, so ashamed I am of the sentiment.

I have also seen how other members of the Jewish community have become aware of, and then involved with, the struggle for the basic civil and human rights of the Palestinians. That process will continue, as Jewish supporters of Israel free themselves of the indoctrination to which they have been subjected, as they witness first-hand the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, and the refugee camps, and as they reach out to people of good will of all faiths to help them help the Israeli government do the right thing.

For that is what this struggle is about. It is not a question of finding a middle way, a compromise, that will make both sides happy/unhappy. There is no symmetry of suffering here. Both sides have caused pain to each other. But only one side controls the life, liberty, land, and resources of the other.

Divestment is a symbolic act. Not a single Israeli will be hurt by it. And while some Palestinians will no doubt suffer economically, much less than did the South African Blacks during that divestment campaign, it will be for a cause and a tactic that all people of good with can rally around – the cause of justice and the tactic of non-violent protest.

The main question is not whether Christians from around the world should show solidarity with Palestinian Christians.  The main question is  whether people of good will  -- Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and others – will show solidarity with each other.

The injustice towards the Palestinian people is first and foremost my problem, as an Israeli Jew. I am not asking you to do the work for me. I am asking you to join hands with those Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and do the right thing.

If you do that, I assure you that members of the Jewish community will help you to explain your decision to the public, and to the Jews who will not understand – yet – your decision.

Vote yes on divestment, and you will be part of a worldwide effort to get Israel to wake-up to its obligations, to show the consequences of its actions. And you will also show the Palestinian people that they have not been forgotten and that there is hope for them – and for the Jewish people of Israel, as well

Thank you,

Jerry Haber

On Celebrating Israeli Independence Day 2012

Israeli Independence day came and went. Since the semester is not yet over, I am still in America, and there is little observance here. My synagogue had a special prayer service, but I wouldn’t go to that. If God didn’t have anything to do with the Holocaust – and He didn’t – He certainly didn’t have anything to do with the founding of the State of Israel. It is theologically shocking to attribute to Him a “miracle” that destroyed as “collateral damage” the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocents. I can understand how Jews can be happy about the founding of the state, but leave God out of it.

According to the Midrash, God complained when the angels started singing praises after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea: “My handiwork (i.e., Pharoah and the Egyptian army) is drowning in the sea, and you sing praises?”  Some commentators explain that while it was wrong for the angels to sing praises, it was at least human for the Israelites to do so.  But of course, Pharoah and his army were engaged in the attempt to kill innocent civilians – whereas in 1948 it was the innocent civilians who were  killed or exiled or not allowed to return to their homes. What moral person would sing the Hallel collection of psalms in those circumstances? Some say that one is not reciting the Hallel over the  Israeli victory, but over the restoration of political independence to the Jewish people. That sounds somewhat better, but even better is to leave God – and Hallel – out of it.

In Israel, I do celebrate Independence Day – by attending the Alternative Independence Day Ceremony organized by Yesh Gvul. This year my neighbor, Prof. Lev Luis Grinberg of Ben Gurion University, a prominent political economist and sociology, and a founder of Yesh Gvul,  lit one of the torches and gave a moving speech. I asked him to provide me with a translation and here it is:

Torch Lighting Speech, Yesh Gvul Ceremony, April 25, 2012

I, Lev Luis Grinberg, am happy to light this torch in honor of the members of Yesh Gvul Movement, who thirty years ago dared to object to the first war ever declared as a ‘war of choice’; and in honor of thousands of reserve and regular soldiers, and the high school kids (Shministim) who have since then obeyed the dictate of their conscience and refused to take part in wars, military operations and occupation beyond the sovereign borders of the State of Israel. In their willingness to serve their country in prison, they have marked the moral and legal boundary of the State of Israel.

I grew up under a military regime in Argentina, and after I arrived in Israel I had no difficulty to identify with the Palestinian people under military rule, or to object to illegal commands and the State of Israel’s anti-democratic conduct. Nevertheless, I did join the IDF because I saw that there was in Israel a sincere belief in the existential threat to the Jewish people, rooted in the traumatic memory of the Holocaust. It was only later that I realized that the governments of Israel are systematically using that truama and the basic insecurity of the Jewish people to conceal illegal activities of land and water theft, and exploitation of defenseless Palestinian laborers.

The act of objection and refusal is an individual’s declaration of independence, which is a prerequisite for the true independence of the collective. The conscientious objectors’ impressive achievement has been the de-legitimization of the war in Lebanon and the repression of the Intifada in the 1980s, which eventually led to a mutual recognition by the State of Israel and representatives of the Palestinian people. But since then, we have regressed into another round of violence, which swept the majority of the public, beginning with the repression of the second Intifada, through the second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead, to the planned imminent war against Iran. These are all wars of choice, which did not encounter the mass opposition they deserved. Yitzhak Rabin’s attempt to deliver Israel out of the mythical world in which it is entrapped, and his assertions that “Not the entire world is against us”, and that “We did not arrive in an empty country”, was brutally trampled upon in October 2000. The repression of the second Intifada has enabled the creation of a strong sense of insecurity which justifies Israel’s violence as if this was a war of no choice.

The memory of the Jewish people, persecuted for centuries by ultra-nationalism and racism, is being tarnished day by day by the utra-nationalism, racism and aggression of the State of Israel, which is in denial of its responsibility for its own actions. Done in the name of the Jewish people, these actions turn into the shame of the Jewish people. But there are still those who have not forgotten what it means to be a Jew: what it means to be a minority persecuted by a violent and aggressive majority. In the last thirty years, many important organizations have come into being, which spread and extend the reach of the original concept of selective conscientious objection upheld by Yesh Gvul. These include the Shministim and New Profile, Courage to Refuse and the Pilots’ Letter, Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace, women’s organizations and binational organizations against the occupation and the war. I am lighting this torch in their honor as well, and in honor of the democratic state that we must build, a state grounded in the Jewish universal tenets of justice and equality for all citizens

Goldberg Slipping on Grass

Günther Grass’s poem What must be said has been defended and attacked throughout the globe. The poem protests against the German sale of a nuclear submarine to Israel; appeals for international control of the Israel and Iranian nuclear program by an authority accepted by both governments; and, though by a German author, refuses to be silent about Israel’s nuclear power, despite Germany’s past crimes against the Jewish people (and humanity). Grass speaks as a German who does not want to be indirectly responsible for a horrific catastrophe, but rather, as he puts it,  wants to give help to Israelis, Palestinians, and others in the region – “and, finally, to ourselves as well. This part of Grass’s poem, the main part, is eminently reasonable. Only a twisted mind would find it anti-Semitic or even anti-Zionist.

The poem employs, however, rhetoric that is offensive to Iranians and to Israelis.  It calls the Iranian leader a loudmouth who keeps his people under his thumb and pushes them  to organized cheering. It imputes to the Israeli leaders the claim to have a right to a first strike capability that could “snuff out” or “annihilate” the Iranian people by using the nuclear submarine sold it by the Germans.Both claims belong more to the exaggerated bombast of living rooms (and blogs) than to a serious cri de coeur. They demean the poet, and they enable the poem to be easily dismissed by the partisans.

But suppose Grass had been more accurate in his description of the possible consequences of Israel’s attack? Suppose that instead of writing “a strike to snuff out the Iranian people” he had written  “a strike that may kill or maim hundreds of thousands of people”?

According to the Center for the Strategic and International Studies, a strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor alone “will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.”

Criticism of Israel on that score would not only not count as being anti-Semitic; it could even be advanced by those “sympathetic to Israel’s dilemma.” Or so says Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg:

The morality of a [pre-emptive Israeli] strike, which could cause substantial Iranian casualties, would be questioned even by those sympathetic to Israel’s dilemma.

Goldberg is astounded at the line that Grass did use and considers the poem anti-Semitic. But had Grass’s poem included the more “modest” claim of the possible hundreds of thousands of casualties, rather than the possible annihilation of the Iranian people, would Goldberg have dropped the anti-Semitism charge? In a post accusing Grass of anti-Semitism, Goldberg says that Israel is “contemplating targeting six to eight nuclear sites in Iran for conventional aerial bombardment,” which may be correct,though one retired American general thinks otherwise.  There is, to be sure, a clear difference between the nuclear bombing of conventional sites and the conventional bombing of nuclear sites. But what they share in common is the possible causation of  “substantial Iranian casualties,” to use Goldberg’s phrase. So why is Grass being anti-Semitic when he morally criticizes the consequences of an Israeli strike, whereas Goldberg is not?

If I understand Goldberg correctly, there are two distinctions between Grass’s standing vis-à-vis the moral criticism of Israel, and his own. First,  Grass is a German and a former member of the SS.  So he has to shut up – unless, perhaps, he proves himself to be one of those Germans who are “sympathetic to Israel’s dilemma.”

Second, Goldberg misreads Grass as saying that Israel seeks to annihilate the Iranians. This is nowhere stated or implied by Grass in his poem.  Instead, he says that Israel seeks the right of a preventative first strike which could annihilate the Iranian people. What’s the difference between the two? Well, it’s the difference between saying that Israel attacked Gaza in Operation Cast Lead in a way that could (and, in fact, did) kill fourteen hundred Gazans and between saying that  Israel sought to kill fourteen hundred Gazans.

Why does Goldberg read Grass in this way? He writes

To make yourself believe that Israel is seeking to murder the 74 million people of Iran, you must make yourself believe that the leaders of the Jewish state outstrip Adolf Hitler in genocidal intent.

Goldberg reads Grass as accusing Israel of outdoing Hitler in its evil “genocidal intent” – a reading that is interesting for what it says about Goldberg’s own mind,  but it is more interesting for what it says about the manner in which some Israeli advocates  think about criticism of Israeli military power, to turn one of Goldberg’s felicitous phrases.  What could be more anti-Semitic than accusing Israel of being more genocidal than Hitler? After all, to call for a nuclear embargo on Israel is to imply that Israelis cannot be trusted to act responsibly in the use of nuclear weapons, or in the bombing of nuclear facilities. It is to demean the Israelis, to place them on the same level, if not lower, than the Islamist regime in Iran. It is to claim that like the Iranians the Israelis are not to be trusted with nuclear weapons because we suspect them of genocidal intent. 

Goldberg writes:

On Iran’s threats to end the Jewish state -- which was built on the ashes of the German Holocaust -- Grass is tellingly silent.

If by “being built on the ashes of the German Holocaust” Goldberg refers to Benny Morris’s comment that some Jewish soldiers in Palestine, fresh from the DP camps, considered the Arabs they were facing as if they were Nazi soldiers, the point is well taken.

But allow me to point out that only one country, Israel, has threatened to carry out a first strike against the other.

The president of only one country, Shimon Peres, has implicitly threatened a military strike that could wipe the other country off the face of history.

President Ahmadinejad, like Khrushchev  and Reagan, should be criticized for inflammatory rhetoric. But not for military threats of a first strike.

And let’s not forget that Israel threatened Iran with a preventative attack in 2003, before Ahmadinejad was elected president.

Perhaps Mr. Goldberg will provide a link to Iran’s threats of military actions  to end the Jewish state in a first strike.  On this he is tellingly silent. 

(More than a hat tip to Marsha B. Cohen, whose indispensable post on the human costs of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities  should be required reading for anybody who cares about Iran, Israel – or humanity.)

Israel as Refuge for the Jews

Peter Beinart is the most recent of those who have claimed that  a Jewish state is necessary as a refuge for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism. “I am old enough to remember the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews,” he recently said. As long as there is anti-Semitism, there is a need to ensure that Jewish lives will be safe. But not just physically safe – for Jewish culture to flourish, indeed, for Jews around the world to feel proud to be Jewish, there must be a Jewish state that provides these things. After a look at the revival of Hebrew culture, for which, he claims, the state is responsible.

That the Jewish state serves as a necessary refuge for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism and a guarantor of the survival of Jewish culture  is a deeply-held belief by many. So is the conviction that the Jews were exiled from Palestine by the Romans over two thousand years ago. Both convictions have been fostered by Zionism itself. But as the latter belief is a myth, so is the former.

Let’s begin by repeating the obvious fact that the revival of Hebrew language and literature and its being placed on a sure footing long antedated the founding of Israel. I am not referring merely to the literary achievements of the nineteenth and early twentieth century maskilim, though they are proof enough. No, what was responsible for the great institutions and spread of Hebrew language, literature, and culture, was the Zionist and the Hebraist movements, not the State of Israel, and most of the chief institutions of Hebrew culture were established well-before  the State.  The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Hebrew Language Committee (later, renamed the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language), Hebrew novelists like Brenner and Agnon, Hebrew cultural institutions like the Palestine Orchestra (later the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra), the Bezalel Art School, the Habimah theater, and more and more – all these were the products of Jewish nationalism and their existence was neither due to nor ultimately guaranteed by  the State founded in 1948. True, the state has supported such endeavors (and recently has threatened to cut support from those institutions that would not perform in what Beinart calls “non-democratic Israel.”)

One may wish to argue that Israel provides a cultural center that has inspired a flourishing of Jewish culture outside of its borders. But that involves a Zionist reading of center and periphery that may not be even true. There was more of a Hebrew literary culture in the United States before the establishment of the state of Israel than afterwards, and while it would be wrong to blame territorial Zionism for that culture’s demise, it and the State of Israel bear some responsibility – just as the State of Israel has to bear some responsibility for the demise of Jewish communities in Arab lands, especially since it did everything within its power to bring those communities to Israel, and when they arrived, to melt them in the Israeli melting pot. To this day, official Israel looks askance at the growth of Jewish communities outside its because according to mainstream Zionism, one can only be fully Jewish in the Jewish State.

Which  brings me to the “place of refuge” dogma:  If Israel exists as a physical refuge to ensure the survival of the Jewish people, then it has failed miserably in that respect.  We are told by Israel’s leaders that the Jewish state is, or soon will be, under an existential threat from Iran, or from terrorism. If this is true, then will some one please tell me how Israel is a safer refuge for the Jews than, say, the United States, or even, Europe? More Jews have died because of the Israel-Arab conflict since 1945 than as a result of all other anti-Jewish behavior combined since 1945. And since much of the new anti-Semitism is correlated to Israel’s actions, not only is Israel a dangerous place for Jews living within its borders, it isn’t so good for the physical safety of Jews outside it either.

Beinart mentions the Jews of the Soviet Union and the Ethiopians. Those Soviet Jews who emigrated to Israel did so either because they were Zionist and wanted to live in Israel, or because they wished to live outside the Soviet Union,  and Israel was the only place available.  There was discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union, and certainly it was difficult for Zionist Jews to live there after Israel had defeated Arab armies supplied with Soviet weaponry. But we are not talking about Jews who fled Russia, or were expelled from it,  because of persecution, and who were forced to seek refuge in Israel. Especially in the 1970s we are talking about mostly Jews who already were Zionist-inclined, and who wanted to emigrate to Israel. In the 1990s fewer were Zionistically inclined; they were mostly taking advantage of the Gorbachev’s liberal policy.

As for the Ethiopian Beta Israel community, they only began to immigrate to Israel as refugees after Israel decided that they were Jewish and encouraged them. Had the decision gone the other way – and it is important to remember that it could have, since there was opposition to Ethiopian aliyah – many would have remained in Africa or made their way elsewhere. For them to come to Israel, there had to be Zionists initially convincing them that this was where they should be; there was no consciousness among them of the State of Israel as their homeland (unless they were Zionists.)

Having written the above, the Ethiopian aliyah still strikes me as closer to the intent of those who use the “refuge” argument to justify Israel’s existence. But that argument seems to say that unless there is a Jewish state of refuge, some Jews may die or suffer anti-Semitism. But with a Jewish state some Jews may die or suffer anti-Semitism. The real question is or should be, “Can Judaism and the Jewish people survive without a Jewish state.” And the answer is, so far, yes. In fact several thousand years of Jewish survival teaches us that.

The answer to the fate of Jewish refugees is not to insist that there be an ethnic state to which they can return, but to insist on an international policy that is concerned the rights of all refugees, regardless of race, gender, color, religion, etc. Neither solution is fail-safe, but so what?.

All of the above is valid had the State of Israel been located on the North Pole or the Moon. But even I am completely wrong, and a Jewish state is necessary to ensure the survival and thriving of the Jews and Judaism, that is not an argument for making room for that state in somebody else’s country. And let’s face it – the Zionists decided that in order to accept Jewish refugees in Palestine, they had to expel and denaturalize natives of Palestine. No country or people has that right.

How many times have the same people who say,  “If there was no Jewish state, where would the Jewish refugees of Hitler go?” also say, “The world should force the Arab states to accept the Palestinian refugees?”  Let me say this here loud and clear – the Postwar states had a responsibility to receive the World War II refugees, and that responsibility was first and foremost that of their native countries. But where repatriation was not possible, the refugees should have been allowed to go to countries where there settlement would not adversely affect the rights of the native population. The settlement of Jewish refugees in Palestine – of which they were not native – was not morally justified insofar as that settlement furthered the designs of Jewish statehood, since the majority of the Palestinians were opposed to Jewish statehood, and Jewish statehood would have adversely affected their rights. As it turns out, it adversely affected their rights in ways in which they would not have dreamed, since that settlement was coupled with the effective expulsion of the majority of the Palestinians.

But where would the Jews have gone? Many of them didn’t go to Palestine anyway, and many of those who did left Palestine when they could, much to the dismay of the Zionists.

I repeat – there is a moral distinction between settling refugees in lands in which they desire to live, and repatriating refugees to their own land. In the case of the Palestinian refugees, they have a right to return to their homeland, even if it adversely affects the rights of the Israeli Jews, because they were barred from returning to their homes – despite the calls of the UN. Had the Zionists said, prior to the founding of the state, that the only way a Jewish State can survive is through the forced transfer of most of its native Palestinians, nobody would have recognized the legitimacy of the state. And if somebody had, then that person, or state, would be wrong.

My position is that of the Zionist Ichud Association, which said that the Palestinians refugees should be given the choice where they wish to live, and that ways should be found to accommodate those choices, balancing the needs and rights of all concerned – but with the clear recognition that their return to their native surroundings carries great weight, even when what they are returning to is an imagined landscape, because of the crime done against them.

Are Extra-judicial Killings a Form of Tikkun Olam?

In an op-ed published today by Rabbi Donniel Hartman, we learn that killing “known terrorist leaders” who have “blood on their hands,” and who have expressed a desire to continue their killing, is not only permitted under Jewish law, is not only commanded as a form of self-defense, but should be  praised as an act of tikkun olam, of repairing the world.

Before I criticize this position, I would like to go on record that I know Rabbi Hartman, and I admire his leadership of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, where I have been invited annually to be part of  a “philosophers’ group.” So I am glad that his op-ed gives me the opportunity to commend his work, as well as to disagree vehemently with his position. Our dispute is “for the sake of heaven.” I also want to acknowledge that the point of the op-ed was actually to restrain the natural feelings of hatred and demonization for the other that people feel when under attack.

Let me start by saying that, contrary to what Rabbi Hartman writes,  the morality of extra-judicial killings is highly debated and not at all clear. On just war theory, as I wrote below, a pre-emptive strike against an enemy is permissible only when a) the enemy’s attack is imminent; b) the response is proportionate to the threat, and c) no other recourse is possible. I mention, as an aside, that it is possible to find parallels for these three conditions in the Jewish law of self-defense. In initially justifying Israel’s decision to assassinate Zuhir al-Qaisi, Rabbi Hartman assumes that all these conditions obtained. This in itself is a good sign. (Note that American’s assassination of Osama Bin Laden was not justified through an appeal to knowledge of an imminent attack he was planning. So if an attack wasn’t imminent, Rabbi Hartman could not consistently approve even Osama bin Laden’s assassination.) By declaring the necessity of the “imminence” requirement Rabbi Hartman distances himself from many of his fellow Israelis, to judge from the press reports.

But later on in the op-ed, Rabbi Hartman drops the “imminent attack” requirement

Targeted killings of known terrorist leaders, those with blood on their hands and the self-expressed desire and capacity to spill more blood, are not morally ambiguous

On the contrary, as is well known, there is a great deal of moral ambiguity here. Substitute, for example, “serial murderer” for “terrorist leaders”. Would Rabbi Hartman consider extra-judicial killings of such people “not morally ambiguous”? Remember, we are not talking about a ticking bomb, or somebody on the way to commit a heinous act, but rather somebody with the self-expressed desire and capacity to spill more blood. There are Israeli generals with blood on their hands who have the desire to bomb Gaza. Would Rabbi Hartman think it legitimate for Palestinian drones to take out those IDF generals?

Classical just war theory  may be wrong in assuming the equality of combatants. But it does. And if al-Qaisi is judged as a combatant, then he has the same rights, on just war theory, that an Israeli general has, with or without the uniform. There are many like Dick Cheney who claim that al-Qaisi doesn’t have the rights of a serial killer OR the rights of an SS army officer. But this claim is disputed, which makes his killing hardly “not morally ambiguous.”

But what is most disturbing to me – before I get to the ‘Jewish angle” – is the complete faith placed by Rabbi Hartman in the IDF army spokesman. After all, how does he know that al-Qaisi was preparing an imminent attack and that other recourses were not available? This is one of the problems of appealing to just war theory to provide you with moral cover. The slippery slope of moral righteousness is that it becomes self-righteousness:  each side accepts the version of events prepared by its side as Torah min ha-shamayim, the word of God. One side’s  legitimate army is another side’s terrorist gang, to paraphrase Michael Walzer. Where certain conventions have been observed by both sides – and in the case of Israel and Hamas, for example, cease-fires and conventions have held up over time, until one side (usually Israel) unilaterally breaks them – both sides assume the rights and responsibilities of legal combatants. Now it is true that al-Qaisi is not a member of Hamas, and so may not benefit from that consideration. But Rabbi Hartman seems to make his principle a universal one that would justify taking out all  legal enemies of Israel, from Ismail Haniyeh, to Nasrallah, to Ahmadinejad,

In short, Rabbi Hartman slides pretty quickly down the slippery slope that he himself cautions against – contra the dictates of international convention and just war morality.

So far I have been assuming a philosophy-class scenario in which killing a ticking-bomb ends the story. But it never ends the story. Is the assassination of al-Qaisi justified if it leads, inevitably, to the cycle of violence that we have seen? For consequentialists, at least, that is relevant to the morality of the issue. But if not to its morality, then at least to its prudentiality, and to its supposed lack of moral ambiguity. When I read

I hate to see 20% of Israel living under the threat of missiles. I am pained by the fact that they must bear the brunt of our actions. I am thankful that the Iron Dome missile defense system is able to mitigate somewhat the price that is demanded of them.

I ask myself, “What of the 25 Palestinians who lost their lives because of the cycle of violence?” What of the humiliating nature of all targeted killings of a people held under the control of the occupier for over forty years? After all, only one side, the occupier, has the power and control over the other side. I know this matters to Rabbi Hartman, since I know the man. My fear is that he doesn’t mention in his op-ed the Palestinians killed because he knows that most of his audience don’t really care about them, and that his “moderate” message will be rejected as too “bleeding-heart liberal” if he mentions them.

As for the “Jewish angle” of tikkun olam and extrajudicial killings. Even had I agreed with his analysis, which I do not, I would have preferred that Rabbi Hartman appeal to the principle of wiping out the seed of Amalek, which Maimonides sees as wiping out evil. Seeing extrajudicial killings within the framework of tikkun olam is wrong for two reasons. First, the phrase nowadays is used by many liberal Jews to denote social action in the service of liberal causes, often outside the Jewish community. So these Jews cannot but be offended by extending it to morally controversial issues such as extra judicial killing.  Second, in its original intent in the Jewish code of law, the Mishnah, the phrase tikkun olam was used to justify new edicts that provide for harmonious social relations where existing rabbinic law failed to do so. States that engage in practices that violate conventions and norms such as the law of war do not repair society but rip it apart. They provide justification for other states, and non-state actors, to do the same. Such practices place a state outside of the olam, the “world” it is purporting to repair – and, lowers it to the status of an outlaw state, a rogue state, a terrorist-state.

Finally, I appreciate Rabbi Hartman’s desire to restrain the all-too-human impulse for revenge and destruction and demonization of the enemy that Israelis – like all peoples –feel when they are threatened. Rabbi Hartman is following in the footsteps of Aaron, “who loved peace and pursued peace” among Jews. But we should also remember that Aaron desired Jewish peace so much that he was willing to help the Jews forge the Golden Calf. In doing so, he channeled their destructive impulses into something less destructive and bought time until Moses could return.  But that well-intentioned move also led to their rejection of God’s messenger for the sake of an idol.