The Passion of Richard Goldstone

It is truly sad, though hardly surprising, how a Goldstone-basher coalition has emerged in the last week, a coalition made up of Israeli war crimes apologists, states opposed to international humanitarian law (except when it serves their own interest), and ultra-nationalists everywhere. Now the Obama Administration and the Congress, for reasons of political expediency , or because of a naïve confidence in the so-called peace process, have jumped on the bandwagon.

On human rights, the message of folks like Robert Bernstein, Natan Scharansky Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz, is clear: My side has human rights; the other side, my enemy, does not. That was the message of Helsinki Watch, the predecessor of Human Rights Watch, which as Helena Cobban has pointed out here, originated not out of a concern for the rights of humans everywhere, but in order to open another front in the Cold War. The Jews in the Soviet Union did not suffer a tenth of what the Gazans have suffered and continue to suffer in terms of the infringement of their basic rights to life, liberty, employment, movement, etc. But for these gentlemen, all men are created equal -- provided they are on our side.

And so it is not surprising that Elie Wiesel, who has repeatedly criticized the world for its silence during the Holocaust, and American Jews for not heeding the suffering of Soviet Jewry , has publicly attacked Human Rights Watch in a letter to the New York Times, which contains the following vicious lie:

In a region dominated by regimes that violate human rights in horrendous ways, Human Rights Watch has instead chosen to single out Israel for condemnation, often using highly unreliable witnesses to do so

It is a vicious lie because anyone with even a superficial knowledge of HRW knows that it focuses precisely on the Middle East regimes that violate human rights in horrendous ways, and devotes much more energy in reporting about them than it does about Israel, which for the most part violates human rights in less horrendous -- though still horrendous -- ways. Wiesel and his co-author Alan Dershowitz lob their kassams indiscriminately at Human Rights Watch, when they really want to hit the UN Human Rights Council.

But while the Israel Lobby is up in arms about Goldstone, and while sane voices from Israeli liberals and conservatives have called for an independent investigation, the best person to listen to is Goldstone himself, in this interview with Bill Moyers. Bill Moyers asks Goldstone sensible question and presses him when he should be pressed. Goldstone responds as one would expect a man of his stature, intelligence, experience, and character to respond.

How sad that one of the great men of our time, and certainly one of the great Jews, is maligned by such tiny men, who chucked their moral compasses long ago so that their tribe could survive.

Part One of the interview is here

Part Two of the interview is here.

Progressive Bloggers Lunch Held at Hotel Where J-Street Conference Will be Held

WARNING What you are about to be invited to is neither sponsored, nor supported, nor endorsed by J-Street. There may be left over food from the morning sessions, maybe not. And J-Street is not insisting on rent from the bloggers for the hotel room. In fact, the bloggers have absolutely nothing to do with J-Street, officially or unofficially.

When in DC on Monday come hear progressive I/P blogger/journalists speak briefly about the issues of the hour. I mean quite literally "the hour" since lunch at the second day of the J-Street Conference is from 12:30-1:30.

Here is some of the line-up

Phil Weiss (Mondoweiss)
Jerry Haber (Magnes Zionist)
Richard Silverstein (Tikun Olam)
Dan Sieradski (formerly of Jewschool)
Helena Cobban (Just World News)
Max Blumenthal (Daily Beast)
Laila el Haddad (Gaza Mom)
Matt Duss (Think Progress)
Joseph Dana (Ibn Ezra)
Ray Hanania
Jesse Hochheiser (Across the Border)

I am not entirely sure that all of the above will show; there has been extraordinary pressure from the far right for them to cancel their participation at the lunch.

(That was a joke.)

In fact, there has been a lot of pressure on Congresspeople not to show, and a lot of hot air about J-Street. And you know what? It doesn't seem to be working. After an initial minyan of folks dropped out, nothing new to report…except the good news that the smears against J-Street are from the usual smearers: ZOA, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and assorted West Bank settlers. Even the Jewish liberal hawks have been cutting the new kid on the block some slack.

And that's the way it should be. Because after the J-Street conference next week, AIPAC will be indelibly identified with the hard-core "pumped-by-Sarah-Palin-and-Rush-Limbaugh" right. If you are a liberal democrat, you shouldn't be backing AIPAC, or for that matter, the right-wing Netanyahu government.

 

Jonathan Sarna on Why Young American Jews Distance Themselves from Israel

In a recent op-ed in the Forward, Prof. Jonathan Sarna, the foremost historian of American Jewry, attempts to explain why American Jews, especially the young and non-orthodox, continue to distance themselves from Israel. In a nutshell, his answer is that many American Jews are disappointed that Israel has not fulfilled the utopian dreams of its founders and their parents' generation. Failing to understand that Israel's actions are necessary in order to survive in a dangerous neighborhood, American Jews hold Israel to an unreasonable, higher standard than any other state, including America.

Amicus Johannis vero, but I find his explanation unconvincing – and, surprisingly, anti-Zionist.

Why anti-Zionist? Because a central tenet of statist Zionism was that the Jews in the Diaspora were powerless, and that only in a Jewish state, would Jews become – collectively -- actors on the stage of history. The Zionist philosopher Emil Fackenheim called the establishment of the State of Israel, "the Jewish return to History". No longer would Jews sit around passively and wait for things to happen to them; they would act, for better or for worse, and their actions would have consequences.

But for Prof. Sarna, Israel is not really responsible for its actions, nor should it bear the consequences of its decisions. It is compelled to act in the way it does, because of self-defense, because it is in a bad neighborhood, because of Arab terrorism, and the collective Arab failure to accept as just the dispossession, or the partition, of their homeland. So the establishment of the Jewish State in the way that it was established, hastily and unilaterally, and culminating in Israel's refusal to let around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs return to their lands, which they later expropriated, along with the thousands of dunams of Arab citizens of the Jewish state, for the purpose of Jewish growth and settlement -- none of this, it seems, has an effect on Palestinian Arabs' attitudes towards Israeli Jews. The same can be said for the occupation and siege of the West Bank and Gaza -- the longest occupation in modern history. Millions of Palestinians are governed without their consent while their lands are confiscated in the name of Israel's security, or the settlement of Eretz Yisrael, or both.

Is it any surprise that Israeli and American Jews are starting to wonder whether the continued existence of the state set up in 1948 under these conditions is worth it? After all, no advocate for Zionism ever made the argument to the world that in order for there to be a secure, Jewish state, most of the Palestinian inhabitants would have to leave their homes, or that millions would have to be governed against their consent.

According to Prof. Sarna, Israel is acting the way any normal state would act under such difficult conditions. And so, idealistic young people with higher standards, are tired and upset with Israel.

Yet a closer look at his argument shows that Prof. Sarna is not describing the younger generation, but his own.

In place of the utopia that we had hoped Israel might become, young Jews today often view Israel through the eyes of contemporary media: They fixate upon its unloveliest warts.

Why should the younger generation, who did not have their consciousness seared by the movie Exodus, the Six Day War, and Jewish Federation "Missions," who have seen only a tiny bit of what Israel does in the Occupied Territories on the mainstream American media (was the Goldstone report even mentioned in the liberal MSNBC evening lineup?)—why should it feel disillusionment or disappointment that the Zionist dream has not come true? That may indeed by the case for those who were exposed to that dream, and disillusionment may indeed characterize the boomer generation of 67.

But what the younger generation has seen is a never ending cycle of "peace-processes," Jewish settlement, and suffering, both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian, but mostly Palestinian. And a gross imbalance and exercise of power which is as old as the State of Israel itself. Is it any wonder that, unlike thirty years ago, the young supporters of Israel today in the US are overwhelmingly Jewish orthodox or Christian fundamentalist, Republican, and neocon?

The same young progressive Jews who campaigned passionately for Obama, opposed the war in Iraq, and fight hard for civil liberty and equality, do not view Israel as a failed utopia. Rather, they view Israel as a failing state, one that offers to the Palestinians the shards of a state, a truncated, demilitarized, and powerless entity.

With Israel's Zionist left in disarray, and with a rightwing chauvinistic national consensus that is bolstered by religious fundamentalists and ethnonationalists from the former Soviet Union, who has distanced itself from whom? American Jews from Israel, or Israel from American Jews?

Still, while Prof. Sarna's explanation is not convincing, his call to action is:

The deepest and most meaningful of relationships, however, survive disappointments. By focusing upon all that they nevertheless share in common, and all that they might yet accomplish together in the future, American Jews and Israelis can move past this crisis in their relationship and settle in, as partners, for the long haul ahead.

Amen to that. The wrong thing for liberal Jews to do is to turn their back on Israel, to give up hope, to lose interest. On the contrary, liberal American Jews should apply at least the same energies to working for justice in Israel-Palestine, as they do in America. That means engaging with Israel, helping to transform the 1948 ethnocracy into a liberal democracy of all its citizens, fighting for justice for the Palestinian Israelis, the foreign workers, political refugees, and othe disadvantaged groups. Let there be a Birthright Human Rights, in which Jewish college kids join Israeli-Palestinian human rights groups like Ta'ayush, Yesh Din, B'tselem, and many others. There is so much that liberal American Jews can and should do. It is immaterial to me that they do it as Jews or simply as decent human beings, as yidden or as mentshen.

Who knows? Perhaps not only Zion, but also Zionism, can be redeemed through justice.

J-Street Strikes Back at the Smearers

A smear campaign against J-Street has been launched by – who else? The Weekly Standard, Commentary and the Standwithus crowd. They are telling their supporters to hound the members of Congress who are part of the J-Street Gala's Honorary Host Committee and get them to withdraw. So why not? Hey, it's a free country, isn't it?

Sure, and if they played by the rules, that would be fine. But their rules include smearing and guilt-by-association. Remember how they went after Obama? Now they are saying that because one of the many speakers at the J-Street Conference, Salam al-Marayati, made a remark on radio suggesting that Israel should be on the lists of suspects for the 9/11 attack. He did this on September 11, and then immediately apologized for it the next day and on the same radio show.

So why is Salam al-Marayati speaking at J-Street? Because of something which he does not apologize for – his support of the two-state solution. In an op-ed he wrote for JTA

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key issue of U.S.-Muslim world relations. My position on the conflict -- and that of MPAC -- centers on the two-state solution whereby Israel and Palestine exist side by side with security and opportunity. I believe also that the injustices that the Palestinian people have endured for more than 60 years, as well as the ongoing occupation that started in 1967, must be addressed and rectified through negotiation, not violence. Middle East wars have not resolved anything in the 20th century or in the first decade of this century"

In other words, the man is as extreme as…Barack Obama and Bibi Netanyahu!

Oh, did I tell you that al-Marayati's support for the two-state solution is not mentioned in the smear campaign.

Please read the appeal below, and contact the congresspeople. I am sick of the McCarthyite tactics of those who still worship at the feet of Joe McCarthy. You don't like al-Marayati? Don't go to hear him speak. Attack him publicly. But withdraw from the conference because of that?

Only a neocon could sink so low.

Yesterday, in a classic "Swift Boat" move, the Weekly Standard magazine - dubbed the "neocon bible" by The Economist - launched an attack on our conference and the whole pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. [1]

They're working the phones - calling the offices of every one of the 150-plus members of Congress on our Gala's Honorary Host Committee to frighten them away from associating with J Street. The most infuriating part is that their thuggish smear tactics are having an impact -- already 5 members of Congress have pulled off of our Host Committee.

This is exactly how the neoconservative far-right of the pro-Israel community has - for decades - imposed strict boundaries of acceptable political conversation on Israel in this country. Cross them and prepare to feel the full effect of their smear machine.

Enough. Not this time. Today, the mainstream majority goes on offense.

If you're getting this email, you've got a Senator or Representative on our Honorary Host Committee. Will you call them right now to thank them for signing on to our Host Committee before the Weekly Standard guys get to them?

Click here to call your member(s) of Congress using our easy-to-use call-in tool. We'll connect your phone directly for no hassle and no extra cost.

So what's causing our political opponents to become so totally unhinged?

It's the whole pro-Israel, pro-peace movement's growing influence.

We've got an exciting conference planned that starts in just 9 days, and over 1,000 people are slated to attend.

The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy profile on us, showing that even top national media outlets are recognizing the change that's coming to our issue. [2]

We're showing Congress that political support exists from those of us that believe supporting Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic homeland means supporting President Obama's balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Don't let these neoconservatives and their Swift Boat tactics win the day. Call your representative today and make sure they hear from the mainstream majority.

Click here to call your member(s) of Congress right now. Our easy-to-use tool will connect your phone directly for no hassle and no extra cost.

Thanks so much for all you do.

-

Isaac Luria

Campaigns Director

J Street

October 16, 2009

[1] "The Neocon Bible, The Weekly Standard." The Economist, September 2005.

[2] "The New Israel Lobby," by James Traub. The New York Times Magazine, September 9, 2009.

----------

The Goldstone Report is Accepted by the UN Human Rights Council

When Stephen Sondheim wrote "Have an eggroll, Mr. Goldstone" for the musical Gypsy, he was prescient. The Goldstone Report has now been formally accepted by the UN Human Rights Council, and will be referred to the UN Security Council. The report's recommendations were approved by a vote of 23 including China (hence the nod to Sondheim) to six, with 11 abstentions. Read about it here.

The Israeli knee-jerk response will be to talk about the "automatic anti-Israel majority" and the states in the majority that are human rights violators. Well, I guess it takes one to know one. Let's not forget that two weeks ago Israel was crowing about how it had buried the report with the help of the Palestinians. Israel was only able to get six states to side with it – and only two Western European states, Italy and the Netherlands. France and England did not vote. This is an achievement for the Palestinians, because what state interest is served by adopting a human rights report that limits the power of states?

The US rejected the report on three grounds: a) the resolution included matters not in the Goldstone report; b) adopting the report would hurt the Peace Process; c) "The report failed to deal adequately with the asymmetrical nature of the confrontation." This last one is disturbing because it smacks of the Bush-Cheney doctrine that says that when engaged in a asymmetric "war on terror" the enemy combatants (and those surrounding them) are not protected under the laws and conventions of war. And who gets to determine what is a war on terror and who are enemy combatants? You guessed it, the state that is at war.

But Gaza is not ruled by al-Qaeda or the Bader-Meinhof gang. Gaza is ruled by a Palestinian political party, Hamas, which Israel treats as the governing authority when it suits it and as a terrorist organization when it suits it. The only asymmetry is that Israel has virtually all the effective weapons – and the Gazans barely fought the IDF in the Gaza Op. Were the report to deal adequately with the asymmetrical nature of the confrontation, it would condemn Israel not only for the conduct of the war but for its decision to go to war – since other less belligerent options were open to it, given the nature of the Hamas threat to its own citizens.

This is not the US's finest hour. If it had not voted, the peace process would not have been affected at all.

When human rights become hostage to a nonexistent (or, for that matter, existent) "peace process," I say, "Enough of the carrot. Bring on the stick."

Beyond Chutzpah – Jewish Responses to the Goldstone Report

Jews worldwide are on the eve of the holiday celebrating the completion of the public reading of the Torah in synagogue. It is a lovely holiday, the Rejoicing of the Torah, and Jews are to supposed to be happy (whether they actually are happy while waiting for all the dancing to stop is something else.)

But I am writing these words on Hoshana Rabbah, the last day of the festival of Sukkot, which, according to tradition, is the last opportunity for Jews to repent their sins of the past year and make amends for it.

When it comes to Israel and its Jewish supporters, we are not in a repentance mode. On the contrary, self-righteousness , moral superiority, smugness, and condescension are the order of the days.

It used to be that the classic example of chutzpah was the man who murders his parents and then pleads for clemency on the grounds that he is an orphan.

Now the example of chutzpah should be the state that refuses to cooperate with the human rights committee and then criticizes its report as "one-sided" and "biased".

Is the Goldstone Report one-sided? Not as much as one would expect, given that Judge Goldstone was barred from entering Israel, not allowed to interview Israelis in Sderot, not allowed to speak with the Israel Defense Forces. That the investigating panel paid for Israelis to fly to Geneva to give testimony to his committee has not been mentioned in the hysterical Jewish reaction to the report. Or that the report was based also on the Israeli human rights organizations, and even on the testimony of Israeli soldiers who supported the operation. We hear a lot about the bias of the report of its original mandate, or that it took testimony from (gasp) Palestinians (and we all know how much Arabs exaggerate, right?)

I have not, I confess, read through all of the report. As I wrote before, what I read of it did not strike me as new; the incidents described were already described in real time, and we have had further confirmation of incidents from Palestinians and Israelis and foreign aid workers. I assume that there are errors, only because testimonies contain errors. The report called for both sides to do a serious investigation (and no military investigation can be a serious one), and that call has been echoed by voices of civil society. No doubt a sober examination of some parts of the report – as any report – would raise further questions. Nobody is perfect. But there is condemnation of Hamas rocket fire, and there is considerable examination of the destruction in Southern Israel (including the psychological trauma) that followed in its wake. And, of course, the report condemns Hamas and finds no justification for its actions.

So I am at a loss to explain the hysterical reaction of Israelis and American Jews who – I thought – were a tad more intelligent than ZOA and the Standwithus crowd.

Let's begin with Ambassador Michael Oren's hatchet job in the New Republic, "Deep Denial: Why the Holocaust Still Matters". After explaining the relevance of the references to the Holocaust by the Israeli Prime Minister (when will the Holocaust never be relevant to an Israeli prime minister?) he writes that the Goldstone Report portrays Israel as a Nazi state, and that it "takes up where Ahmadinejad leaves off"!

The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents--as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed

Ribono shel olam! Oy to the ears that hear such shtuyot (imbecilities)! This man is supposed to be representing the Jewish State in America? My God, I don't hear such narrishkeit in my shul; no, wait, that is unfair to my shul, I don't even hear it among the Hebron settlers!

I see nothing in the Goldstone Report that criticizes Israel for its decision to go to war, or that even hints that the military option was not justifiable. Everything that the report discusses with respect to Israel has to do with the IDF's conduct of the operation. So Oren is dead wrong on that point.

As for the report portraying "Jews as the deliberate murder of innocents," that is also a libel. The report claims that there is considerable evidence that Israel – not "Jews" – deliberately bombed civilian facilities. And Israel admits to this; it only claims that the civilian facilities were, in some cases, harboring terrorists or weapons, and thus proper targets. So the question is, did the IDF deliberately bomb such facilities, and if so, what was their justification for doing so? I would like to remind my dear readers that the IDF routinely impresses upon Palestinians its power. It is called "le-hafgin nokhekhut", to demonstrate the army's presence. In the Gaza Op we had the phrase, "baal-habayit hishtagea'", "the boss has gone berserk." There are times when the military can't pull its punches. It is called harta'a 'deterrence'.

Now it is perfectly legitimate for the IDF to dispute this or that incident; it has the obligation to do so. But who says that Israel or the IDF are immune from such criticism?

And as for the Nazi comparison… Puhleese. I guess Oren thinks that the Allies were Nazis when they carpet bombed Dresden.

So you think it is only Oren? Let's go to his neocon Israeli buddy, Haaretz's Ari Shavit. In this op-ed Goldstone isn't just accusing the Israelis of being Nazis, he is bringing about their destruction through the next war, the "Goldstone War"

Nobody knows yet when the next war will break out. Maybe in a decade, maybe in a year, or maybe even next month. It is also not clear where the next war will erupt - perhaps on the Gaza border, perhaps the West Bank, or maybe in Jerusalem.

But it is already clear what the next war's name will be - the Goldstone War. It will be the war brought upon us by the Goldstone report, Judge Goldstone and his Goldstoner followers

Now, let's follow Shavit's line of thought, which Is truly "Orenian." It goes like this: Israel, in the absence of peace, has to beat up the Palestinians every once in a while. The moral cost is "intolerable" but what to do, somebody has to teach those guys a lesson in deterrence (the magic word) and hope that the moderates will emerge.

But then comes along Goldstone and the human-righters and out goes the deterrence. Because – and here's the kicker – the Gazans know that after they are bombed to smithereens, they will be defended by the UN! And while this may be cold comfort to rational people, those terrorists might actually think that future Goldstoners will protect them. So they will terrorize Israel knowing that – even though they are condemned by the human rights people, at least the adversary Israel will also be condemned!

One wonders whether mainland China's newspapers has a spot reserved for Shavit?

And finally, let's not forget the liberal-minded American Jewish newspaper the Forward. Here, at least, you would expect less hysteria, maybe, even fair-mindedness?

Think again. Although it is the first in-depth Jewish journalistic account to actually look at the report, it is more one-sided than the report itself. At least Goldstone's committee took testimony from Israelis, and not just "Goldstoners" like the human rights organizations. And the committee was boycotted by Israel, as I mentioned above.

But, aside from getting reactions from Goldstone, the Forward's article bases itself entirely on Israeli sources, some of which are associated with the ultra rightwing think-tank, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, none of which are on the left of the spectrum. Not a single Palestinian is interviewed, nor are reactions to specific claims solicited from Israeli human rights groups.

But worse, the Forward (and most Israelis) seems to assume that it is permitted to kill summarily members of the Hamas organization because it is considered to be a terrorist organization. But in a war, there is immunity for fighters who are not actively contributing to the war effort, much less simply members of a militant organization. The fact that Hamas websites, for its own propaganda purposes, claims certain people to proud fighters in their organization (remember the competition between Hamas and Fatah over the suicide bombers?) does not mean that they can be killed with impunity.

For if you think it does, then you are justifying the murder of the Israeli soldiers at the Beit Lid intersection, when they were waiting for a bus.

From a moral point of view, merely putting on a uniform doesn't mean that you are a legitimate target. And if you don't put on a uniform, and simply join an organization, even a military one, then you are certainly not a legitimate target.

And of course, there is no mention in the Forward of the white phosphorus use, the killing of civilians reported by Israeli soldiers in the Breaking the Silence testimonies.

From Gal Beckerman's article, it seems that the real problem of the Goldstone panel was that that it did not listen to all the evidence from Israel but rushed to judgment.

And that, considering Israel's boycott of the committee, is beyond chutzpah.

 

 

Throwing Judge Goldstone (and the Gazans) Under the Bus – Who Won and Who Lost

It took about a week to finish off Richard Goldstone and his Gaza Report. You have to give a lot of credit to the Netanyahu government. They get better at killing the messenger each time they do it. This time a few days of Israeli phone calls to the European capitals, intensive public relations, and a lot of help from the US government, did the trick. Hillary bought the Israeli line that acting upon the Goldstone Report would damage a (non-existent) peace process. As if the war crimes in Gaza had anything to do with any sort of peace process.

But an honorable mention and a big yashar koah goes to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, which buckled under "intense pressure" from the US, and agreed to delay deliberations on the report until March.

So who are the winners and losers in l'affaire Goldstone?

Well, the winners in no special order are the rightwing Israeli government and its rightwing supporters, the American administration, and Hamas. The first two are obvious; for Bibi and Hillary (and her boss), the Goldstone Report was a "distraction" from the main issue, which is how to pretend there is a peace process and to juggle at the same time.

And why Hamas? Because at the same time that the PA was capitulating to the Israelis and the Americans, much to the crowing of the Israelis, Hamas managed to exchange a videotape of Gilad Shalit for Palestinian prisoners. Moral of the story: kidnap Israeli soldiers, and you get a prisoner release. (It didn't take Khaled Mashal a long time to figure that out.) Collaborate with the Israelis, and you get bubkes, although I would like to think that at least some people of Ramallah will be well-rewarded for their efforts.

And how is this going to play in the Palestinian street? Do I need to spell that out for you? Just read the wise analysis by Amjad Atallah here.

The big losers, again in no special order, are Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which have been quick to spin their decision as only a delaying tactic. Believe that, and I have a security fence you may be interested in.

Of course, their patrons, the Israelis Dons, spun the Palestinian surrender their own way. According to Haaretz

The Palestinian decision not to push the report was "proof that Israel was right not to cooperate with the investigation and that it was a political tool that can be blocked through diplomatic activity," a source said.

Good to see that the PA has joined the Coalition Forces.

Other big losers are the human rights organizations, the folks who care about little things like the death, dismemberment, and trauma of innocent civilians, and the destruction of their lives and property. What Israel, the US, and the PA proved today was that power trumps justice, that war criminals are held to account when and only when they are not friends of the big boys.

But the biggest losers, aside from the Gazans, are good people everywhere. We are taught that crime doesn't pay, that the bad guys will be punished, that pride goeth before a fall. It's doesn't get easier to learn that the bullies often get their way.

Of course, Torah teaches that the ledger is open, and that there is a hand that records the deeds and misdeeds. The ray of hope in all this is that nobody opposed to the Goldstone report, or for that matter, any of the human rights reports, disputed the facts therein. (I exclude the hardcore right-wingers and the Israeli government, which always dispute the facts.) The claims have been that the original mandate was biased, that the report lacked context, that its conclusions were over the top, that the UN hates Israel, yada, yada, yada. Discrediting the messenger is a good short-term tactic, but a lousy long-term one. So while I don't share the optimism of the last optimist in Israel, Gideon Levy, who thinks that the Goldstone report will affect future Israeli behavior, I am hopeful that a lot of people out there know a rat when they smell one.

And let's not forget a VERY BIG winner of throwing Judge Goldstone under the bus – the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions people. For we now know that the way to get results out of the Israeli government is through public action – and that action cannot be left to government actions, especially when the governments are serial human-rights violators such as the US, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.

Will the Goldstone Report Force an Israeli Commission of Inquiry into IDF War Crimes in Gaza?

When the Goldstone Report was published, the initial reaction of the Israeli government and the IDF was to push back hard. After all, last summer they had managed to silence "Breaking the Silence," the IDF veteran group that published testimonies from IDF soldiers in the Gaza Op. Had Israeli society reacted to the BtS testimonies by establishing a Commission of Inquiry then, as called for by distinguished Israeli writers, intellectuals, Haaretz, and Nahman Shay, there would have been little fuss in the world over the Goldstone report. On the contrary, the Goldstone report would have been significantly altered, since Goldstone's recommendation was for Israel and Hamas to set up Commission of Inquiries. But Israel, like Hamas, is incapable of engaging in any significant self-criticism and has been incapable for decades. The Winograd Commission was forced upon the Olmert government by an unruly public; the Or Commission was set up to heal Labor's relations with potential Palestinian Israeli supporters. Nothing at all came of the interminable discussions of the latter; the former simply embarrassed Olmert. The last serious Commission of Inquiry dealt with the first Lebanon War, especially Sabra and Shatila. Sharon was burned by that one, but only temporarily. No, the only commission that managed to set into motion a political sea change was the Agranat Commission after the Yom Kippur War, and the conclusions of that commission, initially, were quite tame.

So why would the Israeli government – a very rightwing government, whose "leftwing" fig leaf (Ehud Barak) was almost detained in London this week for his responsibility for Israeli war crimes, and which feels no pressure by the Israeli electorate -- set up a commission to investigate Gaza? The answer is simple: to whitewash, to head off international repercussions, to rap a few knuckles, to buy time – in short, to kill the Goldstone report. With the US representative on the UN Human Rights Council calling for a commission of inquiry, and with European countries being able to hold court proceedings for IDF officers, there is growing pressure for Israel to do something on its own.

That is why even Bibi is considering setting up a commission, according to Haaretz. Or maybe not; the story was written by Barak Ravid, who is notorious for publishing spin and rumors.

My hunch is that if Bibi goes with a Commission of Inquiry, it will be one with a limited mandate and appointed by the government, and not an independent, judicial commission. Yet a commission is not likely and a serious commission is impossible. Bibi, who generally crumples under pressure, will feel the greatest pressure from his right. And I believe that he is genuinely upset, shocked, and amazed, that anybody questions the morality and the adherence to the code of ethics of the IDF. So even though there will be international consequences, it makes more sense for him to continue to conduct an international campaign against the report

In the meantime, Judge Goldstone told Christiane Amanpour that Israel intentionally targeted civilian building and installations. Israel, of course, argued that those installations were used to house weapons. But according to Goldstone, there was no evidence of weapons. Of course, had Israel cooperated with the Goldstone Commission from the beginning, the final report may have been somewhat different. Or not, after all, from what I have seen, much of the Goldstone report was known in real time back in January – there were few surprises. Still, the tone may have been a bit different, and Israel's version of the story may have had some effect. But Israel boycotted Goldstone, and now it may have to open its own commission.

More likely, it won't. And for those who think that the only way Israel can come to its senses is through external intervention and pressure, that has to be good news. I, for one, am grateful that Israel is sticking close to the script. Israel is a systematic violator of human rights, but unlike many other systematic violators, it is intensely sensitive to its international reputation. That is why the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment campaign is so attractive. There is no other violator of human rights in the world that is more sensitive to world public opinion (and governmental opinion) than Israel.

And Judge Goldstone will not be silenced. I have now heard him speak several times. Listen to him speaking with Christiane Amanpour here He is an eloquent and persuasive spokesman against Israel's war crimes, and against the world's double standard of only punishing weak countries with no powerful friends, for human rights violations.

Thursday Update: I was right. Haaretz now reports that Bibi's strategy for dealing with the Goldstone Report is to argue that the report hurts the war on terror and the peace process.

Since there is no peace process, and the war on terror died with the Bush administration, that may prove to be a tough sell.

“The Times They Are A Changin’” I -- Rabbi Asher Lopatin’s One-State Solution

When a young modern orthodox pulpit rabbi in Chicago calls for an unlimited right of return of Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel, and proposes a bi-national Israel-Palestine, conjuring up the ghost of Magnes, you know that "the times, they are a changin'."

Rabbi Asher Lopatin published in June on the moreorthodoxy blog an essay entitled, "What Netanyahu Should Have Proposed." Here are some of his proposals, which he calls, in a nod to Muslim sensibilities, the Five Pillars of the One Democratic State from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

1)      All citizens – Jews, Muslims, Christians and others – can live anywhere in the land.  Jews will return to live all over Jerusalem – Muslim quarter, Christian quarter, Silwan, City of David – and all over the promised land: in the ancient Israelite cities of Hebron, Bethlehem, and Shechem, and all over Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.   Just as in America restrictive covenants are illegal, so, too in the One State: Jews and Palestinians can acquire property anywhere in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Gaza, West Bank, etc.  Property rights will be respected, and returning refugees will be accommodated through new housing in or close to their original housing.  All Jewish settlements that are legal by current Israeli law will remain, with compensation where necessary.

2)      New constitution – needing a super-majority to change –  establishing a full democracy, with full separation of church/synagogue/mosque and state, with both a Jewish Bill of Rights and a Palestinian Bill of Rights guaranteeing that the state can be both a Jewish state and a Palestinian state

3)      Law of Return for Jews; Law of Return for Palestinians

4)      The IDF and internal police and security services will stationed everywhere in the One State – there will be no "no go" areas; and these forces will be slowly integrated, at a pace consistent with the security needs of the new state.

5)      Demographic issues will be negotiated with at least three possible solutions: increasing Israel's Jewish population radically by admitting millions of Jewish identifiers from Africa, Asia and South America before the One State is implemented; returning Palestinians based on an equal admission of Jewish identifiers – perhaps limited to a certain time period; allowing for a natural growth of Jewish or Muslim – or other – populations, while the constitution guarantees that the One State remains compatible as a Jewish state as well as a Palestinian state, perhaps guaranteeing a majority representation for a certain number of years.

Rabbi Lopatin goes on to explain some of the initial steps to be taken, mostly confidence-building measures for a one-state solution.

Now Rabbi Lopatin is not the first modern orthodox, or even religious Zionist, Jew to propose a one-state solution. In fact, I know of few religious Zionists who favor two states, certainly not the settlers. Usually the point of their proposals is to ensure that the settlers won't be moved from that part of Eretz Yisrael over the Green Line. The novelty of Rabbi Lopatin's plan is to accord Palestinian refugees the ability to return to areas near their former homes, if they so desire, and to provide for equal rights for the two communities. One may say that in exchange for Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Lopatin is willing to transform the Jewish ethnic state that was founded in 1948 into a secular, binational state. He will have few Jewish allies, but a whole bunch of Palestinian ones.

There are, of course, weird elements in the proposal, like the wholesale conversion of "Jewish identifiers" in order to keep a demographic balance. This is especially weird for an orthodox rabbi, who seems to drop all traditional criteria for conversion just so he can count Jewish heads. What other western democracy grants citizenship automatically after a religious conversion, a kind of "naturalization via circumcision and mikveh"?

"Millions" of unskilled third-world immigrants flooding any society carries grave social consequences. But a deeply racist and tribalist society like Israel could become unhinged. And, anyway, the counting heads business is not only silly but unnecessary, given the proposed constitutional structure.

One also wonders whether the settlers and Israel should be rewarded for illegally settling in the West Bank. Why allow Israel a sixty-year head-start on settlements at the expense of the Palestinians?

But the point of this post is not to examine in detail Rabbi Lopatin's proposal. It is to congratulate him with a great yasher koah for having the courage to think way outside the modern orthodox – nay, the American Jewish -- box.

Once again we have evidence that some of the younger generation, which doesn't have the hang-ups of the Jewish baby-boomer generation that lived through the traumas of 1967 and 1973, recognize that the two-state solution leaves much unsolved, and that it's time to go back to 1948.

Israel vs. Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law

Remember the time when Israel was praised as a beacon of democracy in an undemocratic region, when the world cheered tiny Israel fighting a sea of hostile Arabs? Now that the Goldstone Report has come out – the last in a series of reports criticizing Israel's Gaza Operation -- Israel is supported by all the usual suspects – rightwing Jews, rightwing Israelis (Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres on the moderate nationalist right to hyper-fascists like Ayalon and Lieberman), and, I suppose, Christian evangelicals and some conservative goyyim. Not a single liberal or progressive will rise to Israel's defense, because let's face it – when Israelis, Jews, and the rest of the world rise to criticize the bully's actions, when the person accused by the prime minister of Israel as conducting a "kangaroo court" is one of the most respected judges and scholars of international law (and a Jew and a Zionist to boot), when all the evidence against the Goldstone report is linked to research done by the rightwing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, or the rightwing NGO Monitor (which itself does not do fact-checking but instead a lot of googling to dig up dirt on its opponents), then you know that Israel has already lost.

The real issue is not whether the human rights NGOs or whether the Goldstone Commission made this or that mistake, or relied erroneously on this or that testimony, or had biased members.

No, Israel's battle is not against the human rights NGOs but rather against the whole concept of human rights and international law. If Israel could point to a single human rights NGO that supported Israel's claim, or, for that matter, a single, unbiased expert in international human right law – this rules out strident Israel-apologists such as Irwin Cotler – then its defense would have some credibility. But because this is not possible, Israel's only recourse, after it violates the rights of Palestinians, is to deny that such rights exist.

Now, it Is not self-evident that there are human rights. Philosophers have debated the question. And international law does indeed restrict the unrestrained power of states to as they see fit. That is why conservative legal authorities in the US (and nationalists everywhere) do not like international law. They deem the use of international law against its violators "lawfare". They have no problem when lawfare is used against their enemies. I didn't hear any complaints against Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International in the Israeli media when the published reports critical of Hizbollah and Fatah (except, perhaps, that they were too little, too late.)

When Israel is accused in report after report of gross violations of human rights, and now, war crimes and perhaps crimes against humanity, its knee-jerk reaction is to accuse the organizations of bias, anti-semitism, holding kangaroo court. And this is precisely the response of rogue states like Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or Bashir's Sudan to critical reports by the same human rights NGOs against them.

And why? Because Israel – at least its government –simply doesn't get human rights or just war doctrine. It assumes that it discharges its duty to minimize civilian casualties by dropping leaflets and telling civilians to leave areas. By that reasoning, Hamas could blow up civilians legitimately if they simply warned them (like the IRA) to leave areas where they have planted bombs.

I don't want to minimize the complexity some of the issues. Just war theory, for example, is notoriously tricky when dealing with unlawful combatants. And, as I have written here before, it Is not without its detractors, and not necessarily on the right.

Let me take one example: the bombing of the police graduation that started the Gaza War. A report prepared by the rightwing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs argued that there were not innocent traffic cops but members of militant organizations.

Granted – but so what? Under the Geneva Conventions, one cannot kill even soldiers when they are not engaged in hostile activity, or supporting it. If Hamas were to bomb an IDF graduation ceremony, that would be a violation of military convention. Now, it may be true that this is a protection only extended to regular armies. But from an ethical standpoint there is no difference. Every state sees its own army as just and peaceful and the enemy's army as barbaric and unjust. The point of conventions is to limit military action to the battle-field as much as possible. Even if military forces are located in civilian areas, such as the location of the IDF Kirya in the heart of Tel-Aviv, that does not give carte blanche, to an attacking army to wreak havoc on a civilian population.

In short, can anybody take Israel seriously when the evidence collected by Goldstone, and by NGOs – many of them Israeli -- is so overwhelming that the Gaza Op violated international humanitarian law? To argue otherwise is to accept the testimony of the IDF as infallible and to dismiss the testimony of eyewitnesses – Israeli and Palestinian – as inherently biased.

Israelis congratulate themselves that they did not nuke Gaza. After all, if they really wanted to, they could have killed hundreds of thousands, and not 1,400.

The world doesn't buy it. And Israel's isolation is growing. When an Israel's deputy foreign minister can compare the Goldstone Report to the Zionism = Racism UN, you know that Israel is grasping for straws.

Shalom, Dad

It's been two and a half weeks since my last post. During that period, I was pre-occupied with my father's final days and death, followed by his shiva, the traditional seven-day mourning period. And now I say kaddish in shul/synagogue three times a day. So it has been hard to think of anything else.

I try to keep my personal life and my blogging life separate. But last year I could not resist blogging about my father's support of Obama during the primary battles with Hillary here. Suffering from depression, he was thrilled when Obama took time out from a busy campaign schedule to inscribe for him one of his books, with a message of encouragement. Throughout his illness, until he was too far gone for coherent conversation, Dad asked me how Obama was doing.

How does one explain this 94 year-old's passionate support? My brother summed it up in his eulogy:

Dad, you were not only liberal with your time and energies for your children, grand children and great grandchildren and for the greater communities to which you belonged; you were an old-fashioned Jewish liberal, an FDR or Kennedy liberal. This commitment to liberalism accompanied you throughout your life and has been embraced by your children and grandchildren. The only republicans you ever supported were those you thought were sufficiently liberal. And well into your nineties, while a few members of our family were still supporting Hillary, you jumped onto the Obama bandwagon, having been impressed by Obama's intelligence and core values, and being excited by the prospect of an African-American president. You showed how one can be a loyal and proud member of one's community while at the same time, defending the rights of other communities.

Even now I find it difficult to write about my father, who contributed so much to his family, his community (Jewish and non-Jewish), and to his religion.

Last Shabbat, the haftarah (the portion from the Prophets read weekly in the synagogue) was from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 62. It was the last of the seven "consolation" haftarot that mark the period from Tisha B'Av to Rosh Hashanah. That consolation is the rebuilding of Jerusalem to its former glory. And yet Isaiah does not revel in the restoration of political sovereignty or the building of the Temple, or even the ingathering of exiles. No, this is how he begins…

For Zion's sake I will not hold My peace,

And for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest,

Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,

And her salvation as a lamp that burns.

 

Until Jerusalem's righteousness, her Zedek, goes forth as brightness, her salvation will not be effected. And until that day, the prophet will not remain silent. Jerusalem will be redeemed not by armies, not by crazies, not by sacrifices, but by justice and righteousness– Ziyyon be-mishpat tipadeh ve-shaveha bi-tzdekah. Zion will be redeemed through justice and its returnees through righteousness. (Isaiah 1.27) Without justice and righteousness Jerusalem is only of historical interest, a quaint little Williamsburg (New York or Virginia, take your pick.) Without justice and righteousness there is nothing Jewish or holy about Jerusalem.

My Dad loved the State of Israel, and during the 1973 war he served as the chairman of the Baltimore Jewish Federation's Israel Emergency Campaign. He supported Israel without being a card-carrying Zionist, and he visited Israel on numerous occasions. But I cannot say that Israel was central to his life the way the pursuit of justice was. It was a question of priorities. Israel's actions against the Palestinians disappointed him and confused him. He never spoke publicly against Israel, but he was disturbed all the same. And he was a fervent believer in pursuing a just peace.

The generation of the old-fashioned Jewish liberal is fading fast. Maybe organizations like J-Street can rekindle the flame for a new generation.

We need such a flame in these dark ages.

 

 

 

 

Los Angeles Jews Respond Positively to Neve Gordon’s Call to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions

This has got to be one of the funniest stories of the dog days of August. Never Gordon, a leftwing professor at Ben-Gurion University, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, supporting the BDS movement (that's boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel. In other words, Gordon called for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel here.

Some Los Angeles Jews have responded by threatening to cut-off donations to Ben-Gurion University.

which is, of course, what Gordon was calling for!

So maybe this should now be the tactic of supporters of BDS in Israel: Get leftwing academics from all the universities to call for boycotts, and then angry Jews will response by cutting off funds from their university.

I know, I know. Gordon is not the first Israeli academic to join the BDS movement. Let's not forget Ilan Pappe when he was still at Haifa, and the late Tanya Reinhart, who did the same while at Tel Aviv. And there are others.

But Gordon is the first Israeli academic to get an op-ed in a major metropolitan newspaper with a major Jewish community, and the largest concentration of Israelis outside of Israel (I think). If the LA Jews don't give their money to BGU, maybe they can be convinced not to give their money to any of the Israeli universities.

Except to Bar-Ilan and the pseudo-university, the College of Judea and Samaria.

"Why the Two-State Solution Solves Nothing"

My favorite pair of analysts, Hussein Agha and Rob Malley, have published an important Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled, "The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything." I will print it in full below. But before I do, here are some comments:

Agha and Malley point to an Oscar Wildean irony in the Israel-Palestine mess. Since there is an international consensus for a two-state solution, and that includes the parties to the Israel-Palestine dispute, the likelihood that there will be an agreement on two states is close to zero. You know this must be the case when both Israel's Bibi and Hamas' Khaled Mashal agree.

This has nothing to do with the question whether three hundred thousand settlers can be moved back to the State of Israel (or whether 80% of them remain in settlement blocs). Let's assume that there is absolute agreement on the issue. (There, you see, I said that the settlers are not the major obstacle to peace. Please make a note of that.)

The real problem is that the core problems remain, not only from 1948, but from before.

In diplomatic language, and without using the "Z-word", the last paragraph of the article says it all:

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This does not seem a promising opening for the policy-driven, 'where-do-we-go-from-here' folks. Like the New Englander who said, "You can't get theyah from heyah" I read Malley and Husseini as saying that we may have to go way back in order to get to where we want to go. And that is not going to make supporters of the 1948 state happy.

Malley and Agha see that the conflict is now, as it always was, about one thing – how to define a Jewish state in Palestine. They are not raising the question how an outmoded ethnic-nationalist state can liberalize into a state of all its citizens. I think they are raising the core question of what it means to have a Jewish state in Palestine. Heck, they are not going back to 1948, they are going back to the 1930's and 40's. This is a breath of fresh air for the liberal Zionist New York Times, both its editors and its readers. Times readers take the State of Israel as a given and then ask, "What sort of Palestinian state can accommodate that given"? And that is the wrong approach.

I have some caveats about the article I would have, indeed, liked less "balance" between two totally imbalanced sides, and more focus on the problems of compromise when one side has all the power. But this is, after all, the New York Times, where dogma dictates that there are two sides to every question. Henry Siegman would have done it differently, and I would have liked him better. But I think the duo's approach is not bad, given the venue and its readership.

August 11, 2009

The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything

By HUSSEIN AGHA and ROBERT MALLEY

THE two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas's political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.

As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding?

As for Hamas, recognition of the state of Israel has always been and remains taboo. Until recently, the movement had hinted it might acquiesce to Israel's de facto existence and resign itself to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. This sentiment has now grown from hint to certitude.

President Obama's June address in Cairo provoked among Hamas leaders a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. The American president criticized the movement but did not couple his mention of Hamas with the term terrorism, his recitation of the prerequisites for engagement bore the sound of a door cracked open rather than one slammed shut, and his acknowledgment that the Islamists enjoyed the support of some Palestinians was grudging but charitable by American standards. All of which was promising but also foreboding, prompting reflection within the Hamas movement over how to escape international confinement without betraying core beliefs.

The result of this deliberation was Hamas's message that it would adhere to the internationally accepted wisdom — a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, the year Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas also coupled its concession with caveats aplenty, demanding full Israeli withdrawal, full Palestinian sovereignty and respect for the refugees' rights. In this, there was little to distinguish its position from conventional Palestinian attitudes.

The dueling discourses speak to something far deeper than and separate from Palestinian statehood. Mr. Netanyahu underscores that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state — and recalls that the conflict began before the West Bank or Gaza were occupied. Palestinians, in turn, reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, uphold the refugees' rights and maintain that if Israel wants real closure, it will need to pay with more than mere statehood.

The exchange, for the first time in a long while, brings the conflict back to its historical roots, distills its political essence and touches its raw emotional core. It can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 — Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.

Both positions enjoy broad support within their respective communities. Few Israelis quarrel with the insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. It encapsulates their profound aspiration, rooted in the history of the Jewish people, for a fully accepted presence in the land of their forebears — for an end to Arab questioning of Israel's legitimacy, the specter of the Palestinian refugees' return and any irredentist sentiment among Israel's Arab citizens.

Even fewer Palestinians take issue with the categorical rebuff of that demand, as the recent Fatah congress in Bethlehem confirmed. In their eyes, to accept Israel as a Jewish state would legitimize the Zionist enterprise that brought about their tragedy. It would render the Palestinian national struggle at best meaningless, at worst criminal. Their firmness on the principle of their right of return flows from the belief that the 1948 war led to unjust displacement and that, whether or not refugees choose or are allowed to return to their homes, they can never be deprived of that natural right. The modern Palestinian national movement, embodied in the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been, above all, a refugee movement — led by refugees and focused on their plight.

It's easy to wince at these stands. They run against the grain of a peace process whose central premise is that ending the occupation and establishing a viable Palestinian state will bring this matter to a close. But to recall the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian clash is not to invent a new battle line. It is to resurrect an old one that did not disappear simply because powerful parties acted for some time as if it had ceased to exist.

Over the past two decades, the origins of the conflict were swept under the carpet, gradually repressed as the struggle assumed the narrower shape of the post-1967 territorial tug-of-war over the West Bank and Gaza. The two protagonists, each for its own reason, along with the international community, implicitly agreed to deal with the battle's latest, most palpable expression. Palestinians saw an opportunity to finally exercise authority over a part of their patrimony; Israelis wanted to free themselves from the burdens of occupation; and foreign parties found that it was the easier, tidier thing to do. The hope was that, somehow, addressing the status of the West Bank and Gaza would dispense with the need to address the issues that predated the occupation and could outlast it.

That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees' rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

Hussein Agha is a co-author, with Ahmed S. Khalidi, of "A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine." Robert Malley, the director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group, was a special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001.

 

   

 

Adam Kirsch’s Problems With Cultural Zionism

Literary critic Adam Kirsch has made a career of taking potshots at cultural Zionists like Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein. Like the Mapai-niks of old, he dismisses the more humane Zionism they represented, or to be precise, he insinuates that they were Zionists manqués.

So before I get to his Zionist "take" on Einstein, let's recall the standard statist Zionist criticisms against cultural Zionists like Magnes and his circle.

They were naïve intellectuals.

They could not find an Arab partner for peace.

They foolishly believed that the Arabs would agree to Jewish immigration if the Jews promised not to have their own state.

They were assimilated Jews who worshipped Jewish powerlessness.

They assumed, wronglyת that the declaration of the Jewish state would provoke a war that would eliminate the Jews in Palestine.

And my favorite:

They didn't understand that a Jewish State could live in peace with the Arabs and provide equal rights for their Arab citizens, were it not for blind Arab intransigence and anti-Semitism.

This is the view of the Magnes-circle that is dominant in Zionist historiography. It places Magnes on the left and revisionist Zionism on the right, with the Mapai, statist labor Zionism taking the moderate center. This view was eminently reasonable for the first few years of the state. After all, the Jews were not thrown into the sea; on the contrary, they actually conquered more land than allotted to them by the UN Partition Plan – and their state was more independent of the Arabs than provided for in the Partition Plan. True, there was the problem of the refugees, but it was only natural that the Arab countries accept their brothers and sisters. And the mass exodus of Arabs provided opportunities and housing for another exodus, that of the Jews from Arab lands. An Israel that was Jewish and democratic would offer great opportunities for its citizens, its neighbors, and the region.

History has proven otherwise. After sixty years, Israel is considered, in the eyes of much of the world, a pariah or failed state – and if not a failed state, then one in danger of becoming one (according to Foreign Policy's 2009 Failed State index.) Far from living in peace with the Palestinian Arabs, it has made their lives miserable, reducing some of them to second-class citizens who are forbidden to learn their own history, and much of whose land was taken away from them; the others to stateless subjects without basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Thank God, there was not a massacre of Jewish Palestine in 1948, but there was a War of Independence that claimed many Jewish and Arab lives, and created the Palestinian refugee problem. And since that date, many more Jews have died in Israel and because of Israel, than all other places combined; the "new" anti-Semitism, from which Jews around the world, and especially in Europe, suffer, is really anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism in disguise.

But none of this fazes Kirsch, an America Jew raised on classic Zionist dichotomies of "power vs., powerlessness," "assimilationists vs. proud Jews," "realists vs. dreamers." Kirsch sticks to the standard Zionist take on the Magnes circle in his review of Einstein on Israel and Zionism, an anthology of Einstein's writings published in Germany and translated into English. Now, Einstein was a cultural Zionist, who, like other cultural Zionists, became increasingly disenchanted with the brand of Zionism that took over the Zionist movement. Since Einstein was a liberal nationalist, he found many problems with the idea of a Jewish state, and he also knew that such a state would inevitably clash with the native Arabs of Palestine. Like others of his kind, including Buber, Magnes, Scholem, and Simon, and mostly because of the Holocaust, he became reconciled with the state as a fait accompli. But this did not turn him into a statist Zionist.

All this is beyond Kirsch's intellectual ken. He does not see how somebody can be a Zionist, and deeply committed to the cause of Jewish nationalism, and yet not support the idea of a Jewish nation-state. So he really doesn't know what to do with the book or Einstein. Rather than try to understand Einstein's position, much less attempt to justify it, he argues with him, as he did with his New Yorker piece on Hannah Arendt. Kirsch writes:

As a result, [Einstein] is totally unable to face the truth, which is that Arab and Jewish visions for Palestine were incompatible. Einstein insists, for example, that the Jews then languishing in European DP camps be allowed to enter Palestine, contrary to British policy. One British expert asks Einstein, "What would you do if the Arabs refused to consent to bringing these refugees to Palestine?"—as, of course, they did, just as they had violently resisted Jewish immigration since the 1920s. "That would never be the case if there were no politics," Einstein replies. There is Einstein's fallacy in a sentence: his response to a desperate political problem is to wish that there were no politics, which is to say, no conflicting desires, no clash of rights, no power.

Note that Kirsch, himself a statist Zionist, identifies statist Zionism as the Jewish vision for Palestine, thus delegitimizing other competing Jewish visions as not Jewish. Note also that he views the conflict as a case of a conflict of national rights. But Einstein did not wish away politics, nor did the greatest scientist of modern times commit a fallacy. Einstein was implying that that it was politics, i.e., precisely the desire for political independence and control on both sides, that destroyed the possibility of the increased immigration of Jews. And Magnes, because of this, was willing to restrict Jewish immigration rather than to plunge Palestine into war.

Kirsch's polemic continues:

But surely the lesson of Jewish history is that powerlessness is not a solution for the Jews, but the most dangerous problem. The same conclusion can be drawn from another valuable document in this book, an account of Einstein's 1952 meeting with an Egyptian journalist, Mohamed Heikal. Jerome interviewed Heikal in 2006, and he remembered his long-ago visit to Princeton to see Einstein. There the great man spoke with anguished sincerity about his desire to make peace between Jews and Arabs, and tried to use to Heikal to open up back-channel talks with Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's new ruler. Clearly hoping to find common ground with Heikal, Einstein said that "when it comes to people like Menachem Begin and his massacre of Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin … these people are Nazis in their thoughts and their deeds."

And what was Heikal's response? "Ben-Gurion is no less a Nazi than Menachem Begin." Here we see the ugly reality behind Einstein's dream of a binational state, and Jerome's present-day anti-Zionism. There was, in 1948, no way to ensure the survival of Jewish Palestine without a Jewish state, which meant an army, a flag, borders, and all the insignia of sovereignty that Einstein detested. Likewise, there is no way to establish a true peace in Palestine today as long as so many Palestinians, elite and ordinary, are committed to Israel's destruction. Still, Einstein has one advantage over his new editor: his reservations about Israel were voiced from the standpoint of his unquestionable commitment to Zionism. For that reason, he makes a less useful ally than [editor] Fred Jerome appears to think.

The Magnes circle indeed had a particular animus towards Begin, who was a Jewish terrorist, but they disagreed no less strongly with Ben-Gurion. But so what? The real issue is whether there was, as Kirsch claims, no alternative to the survival of Jewish Palestine besides the declaration of the Jewish State? How would he know this? Because the Arabs had declared their intention of driving the Jews into the sea? But wasn't that because they knew that what the Jews wanted was a Jewish state and control over Palestine?

And here is the real question that Kirsch never considers. Had the Zionist movement not adopted statist Zionism, had it been willing from the beginning to struggle for national group rights within a secular Palestinian state, would indeed the existence of a Jewish cultural center in Palestine been endangered? Of course, the question is unanswerable; some will point to Arab massacres of Jews during the Mandate and others to the close friendships and relations between Jews and Arabs during this period of Zionist settlement.

But at the very least, one would expect Kirsch to grapple with the claim that the very concept of statist Zionism endangered Jewish Palestine because it set the yishuv on a collision course with the nationalist aspirations of the native majority. This Kirsch cannot do, because he, like so many other Zionists, accepts the myth of Jewish powerlessness – that the actions of Jews do not have an effect on the actions and views of others, and if they do, the effect should only be benign because the Jewish agents are benign.

Kirsch cites Einstein's remark, "I believe that the existence of a Jewish cultural center will strengthen the moral and political position of the Jews all over the world, by virtue of the very fact that there will be in existence a kind of embodiment of the interests of the whole Jewish people" and then comments, "The case for Israel has seldom been better put." But Einstein was not making the case for Israel, not for the Israel of 1948, with the Jewish cultural giants of that time (all European), and certainly not for the state that is currently slashing budgets for the humanities and Jewish studies and funding settlements – and where the average age of the World Congress of Jewish Studies participants in Jerusalem (which I am attending) seems to be over sixty.

Einstein was making the case for something that never came to be – "a cultural center that would strengthen the moral and political position of the Jews all over the world." The statist Zionists, of course, claim otherwise; the moderates among them see no contradiction between the two sorts of zionism, and claim that, on the contrary, only a strong Jewish nation state guarantees the possibility of cultural Zionism. Yet there was a thriving Jewish cultural center in Palestine before the establishment of the state, and nothing would be lost to that center would the State of Israel become the nation state of all its citizens.

A final note: Kirsch begins his review by noting that the book is at war with itself because it paints Einstein as anti-Israel and yet refers to his Zionism Ironically, it is Kirsch's review that is at war with itself. The title of the review is "Relatively Speaking, a Zionist" and yet Kirsch refers to Einstein's "unquestionable commitment to Zionism".

How abolutely committed was he, Adam?

Palestinians Out, Jews In

Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein have made a must-see video about the expulsion of the Palestinian families from their homes (see below) in Sheikh Jarrah, where they have lived for over fifty years, and the entrance of the settlers. For an explanation of the situation see my post below on Israel's Hamas, and their post at the ibn ezra blog here. Please wait until the end of the video to hear the reaction of the Israeli religious woman to the expulsion. We'll see how the apologists try to dismiss here.She's not drunk, she's not American, and she's not shouting obscenities. Nor are the others in the video.

Landes on the Blogosphere as a New Terrain in the Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israeli Battle

The World Congress of Jewish Studies, currently held in Jerusalem, had a session cosponsored by the rightwing think-tank, the Jewish Center for Public Affairs. Richard Landes, professor of medieval studies at Boston University, and rightwing blogger at the Augean Stables, was to talk on the "Blogosphere as a New Terrain in the Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israeli battle". Of course, I got very excited. Like any blogger, I was hoping for my few seconds of fame, ok, maybe a mention, or if not me, then at least my buddies, ok, if not my buddies, then at least somebody I had heard of.

So I actually went to the session, sat through a talk by Manfred Gerstenberg, and got my little tape recorder ready.

What a disappointment. Instead of a talk on the blogosphere, Prof. Landes trotted out the same talk on Mohammad ad-Durrah's death and its cynical manipulation by those pesky Pals and their anti-Semitic (Jewish and gentiles) buddies that he has been peddling on college campuses for the last few years.

My first reaction was that this is a disgrace to the field of Jewish Studies. Why is this session being held here? There is no new research, there is nothing that you couldn't get off the web.

But then Landes ends with the thesis that the blogosphere today is like the print medium in the sixteenth century. Bloggers pose a challenge to the established print media, and this makes him optimistic that truth will out via the bloggers. Just as the bloggers pushed the "truth" with ad-Durrah, so too they can win the war against the anti-Israeli media.

Ah, the delusions of the academic-in-his-pajamas-blogging- at-2-am! How well I know the syndrome! Sure, bloggers can make a difference. But it cuts both ways, Prof. Landes. There is a progressive blogosphere out there, and an Arab blogosphere out there, and all bunch of bloggers who are speaking their own truth to power.

The name of the game is not the blogosphere, but the connections that the bloggers can forge with mainstream media. Already you have mainstream journalists who blog and vice-versa. Presumably, those folks will be on all sides.

But far be it from to dampen the optimism of a rightwing blogger. Usually, those guys are full of doom and gloom.

 

 

Israel’s “Hamas”

On the Voice of Israel this morning there was a news item about the eviction of the al-Ghawi and al-Hanoun families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in order to make way for Jewish settlers.

The item ended as follows:

"Jewish families entered the two houses after the Palestinians who had squatted there were evicted. The eviction was done on the basis of the High Court's ruling."

לשני בתים בשיח ג'אראח נכנסו משפחות יהודיות לאחר שפונו מהן פלסטינים שפלשו לשם. הפינוי נעשה על פי פסיקה של בגצ.

That one line contains in a nutshell the lies and moral rot of the current Israeli regime, and the thinking behind it. And some would say, though I am not yet ready to, the lies and moral rot of the Zionist enterprise – or, more precisely -- of the thinking that became dominant within the Zionist enterprise with Ben-Gurion.

Let us start with the characterization of the families as "squatters".

Would you call a squatter somebody who was resettled in houses that were legally purchased by the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency to resettle refugees, and who lived there for over FIFTY YEARS? And why? Because disputed deeds were produced that claimed that prior to 1948 the Jews had owned the homes? If you would, then for God's sake, thousands of Jews living in South Jerusalem, and throughout the country, are squatters. For what is the difference between the UNRWA resettling Palestinians in Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, who had been driven from their homes in West Jerusalem, and the ILA resettling Oriental Jews in Arab homes in West Jerusalem who had driven from their homes in Arab countries – besides the obvious one that the Jews were indoctrinated to think that they were returning home. If the Arabs are squatters then the Jews are squatters.

And in this case, the families who were evicted are precisely the ones who fled their homes in West Jerusalem. So they have been thrown out of their homes by Israel twice.

But, we are told by our prime minister, Jews should be able to live anywhere in Jerusalem because East Jerusalem Arabs can live anywhere in Jerusalem. Haaretz sets the facts straight.

According to Israel Land Administration rules, residents of East Jerusalem cannot take ownership of the vast majority of Jerusalem homes.

When an Israeli citizen purchases an apartment or house, ownership of the land remains with the ILA, which leases it to the purchaser for a period of 49 years, enabling the registration of the home ("tabu"). Article 19 of the ILA lease specifies that a foreign national cannot lease - much less own - ILA land.

Attorney Yael Azoulay, of Zeev and Naomi Weil Lawyers and Notary Office, explains that if a foreign national purchases an apartment they must show the ILA proof of eligibility to immigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return. Non-Jewish foreigners cannot purchase apartments. This group includes Palestinians from the east of the city, who have Israeli identity cards but are residents rather than citizens of Israel.

Most residences in West Jerusalem and in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are built on ILA land. All the neighborhoods built after 1967 - Gilo, Pisgat Ze'ev, Ramot, French Hill and Armon Hanatziv - are built on ILA land. Even in the older neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel, Katamonim and Beit Hakerem, tens of thousands of apartments are built on ILA land and cannot be sold to Palestinians. In the ultra-Orthodox central Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim, as well as in Rehavia and Talbieh, there are homes built on private land - mainly owned by one of the churches or purchased in the past by Jews.

It goes without saying that a Palestinian seeking to purchase an apartment in a Haredi area would be rejected out of hand, and Rehavia or Talbieh would in any event be out of the range of most East Jerusalemites' budget.

The worse thing about the secrets and lies is that the liars begin to believe their own lies. So the rightwing reporter, Nadav Shragai, writes,

In Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem such as Armon HaNatziv, Neve Yaakov, Tzameret HaBira, and Pisgat Zeev, the fringes of the neighborhoods have many Palestinian Arab residents, either through purchase or rental of apartments. In some of the buildings along Rehov HaHavatzelet in the center of the city, a similar change is taking place. Jews and Arabs also live together in the neighborhood of Abu Tor, and there are several streets in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, such as Rehov HaGai, where a similar situation is gradually developing. In short, as certain parts of eastern Jerusalem have become ethnically diverse, it has become impossible to characterize it as a wholly Palestinian area that can easily be split off from the rest of Jerusalem.

The "Jewish neighborhoods" to which Shragai refers here are all over the Green Line. In other words, to show that Jerusalem has ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and hence there cannot be a simple division, he cites cases where Jews "squatted" in territories over which they have no legal rights. That is a good trick: occupy territory, transfer (illegally) your citizens there, and then claim that no withdrawal is possible because of the ethnic diversity.

One blatant example of injustice is the Old City. By law, no Arab is allowed to purchase, or rent an apartment, in the post-67 Jewish Quarter. The law was upheld by the High Court and Haim Cohen, one of Israel's great "liberals," defended the discrimination by using an affirmative action argument – Jews had not been allowed to live in the Old City under Jordanian rule. Well, and good. But if Arabs cannot live in the (vastly expanded) Jewish Quarter, and some were actually evicted from their homes for that), then justice requires that Jews cannot live in the Muslim Quarter. But Jews are allowed to live and own property in the Muslim Quarter? And why? Well, why shouldn't Jews be allowed to live there, blah, blah, blah.

The injustice of all this shrieks to high heaven. Look, if you are a Jewish fundamentalist, then you have no problems. All of the land belongs to the Jews; let the others go to Hell. If you are a good old–fashioned nineteenth century nationalist, you also have no problem: to the military victors belong the spoils.

But if you are a decent human being, you cannot but shout, My God, how long will this robbery – or to use the Biblical Hebrew word, this Hamas—continue?

Isn't what we stole after 1948 and 1967 enough?

The Foreign Ministry Releases Its Version of the Gaza Op

The Israel foreign ministry has released a hundred and fifty page defense of the IDF's "Operation Cast Lead".

You can read about it here.

But I can tell you basically what it says in a few lines about any accusation, 'X'.

1. We didn't do X.

2. If we did X, it was legal.

3. If we did X, and it wasn't legal, then we are investigating those cases.

4. In any event, we will try not to do X again, if we can.

Just take your favorite war crimes – use of human shields, white phosphorus – and substitute it for 'X'.

I am not exactly sure of Israel's strategy, if it has one. It has now made its definitive case before the Goldstone Commission publishes its report, thus giving Goldstone ample time to examine the Israeli report. If Goldstone makes extensive mention of the report, then Israel will not be able to say that Goldstone ignored its side of the story. Of course, there will be those who say that this is not enough (a replay of the ICC verdict on the so-called security fence, where Israel only made its case in writing, which gave American Judge Thomas Burgenthal enough of a rope to partially exonerate Israel.)

This story "broke" yesterday. Since then I haven't seen it in any of the world media outlets. Ynet and Haaretz and Jerusalem Post. C'est tout.

Compare that with the sensational and instantaneous effect of the Breaking the Silence testimonies two week ago.

Ah, but as we Israelis like to say, the world is against us. Interesting that Israel can lose the hasbara war outside Israel to a small organization of IDF veterans.

That must drive the Israeli government nuts.

Reflections on the Ninth of Av, 2009/5769

 

Gaza scene, January 2009

 

My eyes shall flow without cease

Without respite

Until the Lord looks down

And beholds from heaven …

(Lamentations 3:49, JPS trans.)  

1. On the Hurban of Gaza

For three weeks we rained bombs and fired artillery shells on an helpless civilian population. We punished them for their rocket fire, which was their punishment for our siege, which was our punishment for their election results, which was their punishment for Fatah's corruption, and so the story goes one. What should we have done? We should have negotiated – a cease fire, a prisoner exchange, a withdrawal from Gaza. We should have talked with them. Instead, we treated them like flies, whose lord we were. And so we bombed, killed, and maimed, using them as human shields, raining down phosphorus as weapons, finishing only when we were forced to stop. At the end of the nightmare, in additional to the tens of thousands of lives ruined, there were over 1400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, and 13 Israelis dead, mostly soldiers.

The death and destruction should have been unbearable for all decent human beings. But with deep sadness I can only say that relatively few in my country of Israel were disturbed. "They started it." "They deserved it" "What would you have done?" As if what Israel did was the last resort.

Every Ninth of Av as long as I live will remember the latest in the Jewish catastrophes that have befallen the Jewish people – when our hearts were Cast into Lead.

 

2. On the Hurban of Jerusalem and al-Quds

For thirty-five years I have lived in Jerusalem, the so-called "United Jerusalem." I have seen it grow into a sprawling and overbuilt megalopolis where the building never stops. Part of the development is based on developer's greed; part is based on Israel's never-ending struggle to de-Arabicize Jerusalem (which now includes banning the Arabic word for Jerusalem from street signs). So rightwing Jewish groups join hands with Jewish bingo moguls and government officials to buy up, legally and fictitiously, parts of East Jerusalem, or when that fails, to get tracts of land zoned for "archaeological parks" run by rightwing settler groups, despite the intervention of the High Court.

Jews should be allowed to live anywhere in East Jerusalem, we are told, and Arabs should be allowed to live nowhere in West Jerusalem.

Not a day goes by without more revelations, for which one can read the Ir Amim website here. The idea is clear – to surround the Old City with as many Jews as possible – and to convince the Israelis that East Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem, is part of the Jewish state.

Let us not forget that according to the UN and the world, the State of Israel is not sovereign over West Jerusalem, and let us hope that, speedily in our days, Jerusalem will be internationalized. Till then you will see the continual sprawl and growth that has choked the city, destroyed its center, and, together with the inflated prices of real estate due to absentee owners, sent many of its educated young people into exile.

 

3. On the Hurban of the Jews.

"The Jews, as a majority in their state, will be judged by how they treat their own minorities." Well, judging from the present situation, I give my state a D-. Consider the plight of foreign workers. They are imported to Israel, work often under horrible conditions, and then expelled. If they marry Israelis they may or may not become citizens; it is up to the decision of the Minister of Interior. But even if they don't, then they and their children born on Israeli soil, are liable to be deported. Now the press, politicians, and an impressive list of intellectuals and religious leaders (with only one orthodox rabbi, of course, Rabbi David Rosen) are trying to avert the decree of deporting the children, who have known no other homeland besides Israel.

What other country deports children in this way? And why Israel? Because, you see, it has no real process of naturalization for non-Jews. I would like to know what other state besides Israel does not have a process for naturalizing eventually children of foreign workers born on their soil. Even Germany now has one,and think of all the foreign workers there.

"Do not afflict the stranger for you were a stranger in the Land of Egypt." Well, how quickly we have become hard-hearted Pharaohs. And don't think for a moment we are going to stop importing new foreign workers. And what will be with their children? For a cry of decency, read Haaretz's editorial here

And here's another minority, this one much smaller – asylum seekers from problem areas in Africa. Israel cannot turn them away, but it can make life miserable for them and subject to unfair restrictions and discrimination. And why? Because we are Jews and we have our hands full taking care of our own. And don't throw the "boat people" at me, either. Because you do a mitzvah years ago – a mitzvah that any civilized country would do – you never have to act like a mentsh again? From Haaretz's editorial here:

The Interior Ministry's newly created Immigration Authority is a vital mechanism. To this day Israel has not drawn up an immigration policy, because anyone who isn't a new immigrant under the Law of Return is seen as a temporary visitor whom the state has no interest in naturalizing. The entrance of hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, only some of whom have left, has brought the state to its senses.

It is regrettable that the authority's first step was to round up a few hundred asylum seekers from Africa in south Tel Aviv, in what appeared to be a senseless demonstration of ostentatious bullying. Most of the detainees had been brought into Israel by the army at the Egyptian border. They met the representatives of the United Nations refugee agency and have been granted temporary protection due to the danger and persecution they were subjected to in their countries of origin, such as Eritrea and Sudan.

These detainees are protected from deportation, so one must assume the Immigration Authority intended to intimidate and deter other asylum seekers from coming to Israel, in addition to enforcing the problematic procedure forbidding them from living and staying in the area between Gedera and Hadera. Instead of engaging in intelligence activity to find people staying in Israel illegally, the authority's inspectors chose the easy route and filled the prisons with fugitives from disaster and massacre areas.

It is no credit to the Jewish state that only around 400 asylum seekers who entered its gates have been recognized as refugees by the Interior Ministry. The status of refugee entitles its holder to rights, mainly medical insurance and a work permit. The authorities' slow handling of the refugees' applications for this status is immoral in a country that was established by refugees. So is incarcerating asylum seekers in Ketziot Prison for months. The Immigration Authority was not set up to persecute the persecuted

I will discuss the Palestinian Israeli minority in another post.

On my way to shul I heard A. B. Yehoshua say, once more, that one can only be a Jew in the full sense of the term in the State of Israel. I once believed that.

But this Tisha B'Av, when we read about destruction and exile, I ask the question that was the title of Akiva Ernst Simon's last book: "Are We Still Jews"? And to Buli Yehoshua I ask, how can one still be Jewish and live in Israel 2009 – unless one lives in constant despair and depression?