by Kol Ra'ash Gadol [➚] · Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
We have already posted on the UN Human Rights Council’s endorsing of the Goldstone report, and of the mainstream arms of the Jewish community’s attempts to paint Goldstone as the anti-Semite par excellence (I’ve even seen several places where people use Goldstone as the measure of all things anti-Semitic -”Even Goldstone says….” and the like), as well as the conference call between Judge Goldstone and a group of American Rabbis to discuss the report, so I won’t again go into how appalling it is that a certain group of American Jews are continuing the business-as-usual attempt to try to turn the report – and its author - into a “poor us, everyone hates us” PR move.
J Street is new, of course, but it’s doing work that people in the Jewish community having been doing for a while. The “new” part is that “mainstream” Jewish organizations are just now taking notice that they might not actually represent as many people as they pretended to, and they’re starting to screech about it much more loudly. There is a new wave of attention being paid to Jews who aren’t so enthralled with the “mainstream” presentation of “facts” about Israel’s regional conflicts.
As MJ Rosenberg notes over at HuffPo:
The hits on J Street won’t stop after the conference. The goal is to shut it down in order to perpetuate the myth that the American Jewish community supports not only Israel but any and all policies of the Israeli government. This is a a strange idea considering that Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and tend to be well to the left of their own governments, including the Obama administration. (78% of Jews voted for Obama but 62% even voted for George McGovern and 80% for Walter Mondale).
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by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Monday, October 19th, 2009
In a week, the J Street conference will be in full swing with over 1,000 participants officially registered — and 160 members of Congress. Who’s on the list? Check it:
- National Security Advisor Jim Jones gives the keynote address
- Senator Chuck Hagel
- Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami
- U.S. Representative Robert Wexler (D-FL)
- Former Ambassador of the United States to Israel Martin Indyk
- Former head of Shin Bet Ami Ayalon
- Palestinian Minister of National Economy Bassem Khoury
- Members of Knesset Nitzan Horowitz, Shlomo Molla, Amir Peretz, Meir Sheetrit, and Yuli Tamir
- Jordanian Ambassador to the United States Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein
There is nary a Jewish progressive group not present on panels: Encounter, Just Vision, Americans for Peace Now , the Reform Religious Action Center, Ameinu, Progressive Jewish Alliance, Jews United for Justice, Jumpstart, the Ford Israel Fund, Nathan Cummings Foundation, the New Israel Fund and Meretz USA. Visiting from Israel are Breaking the Silence, the Settlement Watch project of Shalom Achshav, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Haaretz, NIF’s Shatil wing, B’Tselem, Peres Center for Peace… oh the list goes on.
And work proceeds apace to bring Brit Tzedek v’Shalom beneath J Street’s auspices with a grassroots program with professional, paid organizers and integration into J Street’s budding network.
For weeks now, the naysayers and establishment have been yaping and yawping about how J Street doesn’t really care about Israel, how they’re secretly Saudi foreign agents, how they’re misguided and not really Jewish, and or (in many places too numerous to link) irrelevant. They’ve been calling the 160 Congresspeople and asking them to withdraw their attendance (which Sens. Chuck Schumer and Gillibrand of NY did). They’ve been hooping and hollering about the sky falling if J Street gets their way.
But what’s amazing to me is that all the negativity — “J Street doesn’t care about Israel” — hasn’t managed to counteract the overwhelming excitement and hope among attendees. A better Israel, a freer Israel, an Israel not beset on all sides by hate and fear of violence. An Israel not rotting from within because of and distracted by the Palestinians and finally able to resolve stagnant domestic issues left unaddressed. I have rarely seen the right wing orgs, blogs and even the government of Israel spend so much time concentrated time attempting to exorcise one Jewish group. Despite their most ardent cries, the anticipation is electric.
This conference is about hope. Hope that after decades of mismanagement, new forces in the Jewish community attuned to a more modern age will lead Congress to Israel policies that actually have Israel’s best interests in mind: a cessation of violence, an end to occupation, and stability in the region.
Oh, and if you’re going, please tell us and come to a panel featuring Jewish and Muslim bloggers organized by Richard Silverstein.
by guestpost [➚] · Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Editor’s Note: The following is the third winner of four recent entries by individual who will be heading to Washington, D.C. at the end of the month for JStreet’s first national conference: Driving Change, Securing Peace. The following post was written by Moriel Rothman. Yashar Koach – and see you in DC! To everyone else: there’s still time to sign up – and if you can’t come, check back here for live blogging by our contest winners as well as some of our favorite Jewschoolers.
What keeps me hopeful?
Death ringing in deepest chasms of my ear.
What keeps me hopeful?
Each failure tapping
clawing
scratching
at that window in my chest.
What keeps me hopeful?
Scoff after
scoff after
heart wrenching
scoff:
An end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
What keeps me hopeful?
Hopelessness.
Why not give up?
The eyes,
ho, oh.
the eyes.
imploring hating pleading judging looking
Why not give up?
Privilege. Strength? American oxygen.
if my voice is silenced.
If my voice does not exist.
IF my voice is not real, then
Why not give up?
Ha. Ah.
Give up. Give up.
And then what?
I am hopeful because I have no other choice. I cannot give up because
peace is what I am.
by guestpost [➚] · Monday, October 12th, 2009
Editor’s Note: The following is the second winner of four recent entries by individual who will be heading to Washington, D.C. at the end of the month for JStreet’s first national conference: Driving Change, Securing Peace. The following post was written by Naomi Goldenson. Yashar Koach – and see you in DC! To everyone else: there’s still time to sign up – and if you can’t come, check back here for live blogging by our contest winners as well as some of our favorite Jewschoolers.
Like many American Jews, I traveled to Israel during my formative years to learn to feel an affinity for Israeli society. During those more optimistic years I witnessed a willingness to sacrifice for peace and complex discussions about secular and religious divides, amidst an uncomfortable ubiquity of firearms and casual reference to territories through which we would not drive directly. Many ideas filed away for future processing.
On one occasion, back home, I encountered an urgent action appeal about something happening in Israel. The week before there was one directed at the Palestinian Authority. But what was this? My mother’s reply: your father and I have been members of Amnesty for 20 years. Avoiding answering outright: sometimes it is okay to ignore these things when it relates to Israel.
The version of Israeli history I heard growing up was full of already-outdated myths the American equivalents of which would make most of us cringe. Despite America’s failings most of us take pride in what we can do to make it better, due in no small part to a sense of social justice informed by Jewish values. It will be through that redemptive process of working to make it better that we come to appreciate the true complexity of Israeli history as well. One day our community will teach the bad along with the good, without foregoing the possibility of a connection with the land, culture, or people of Israel.
As American Jews we are more removed from the conflict. Rather than strip us of the right to comment this endows a valuable perspective. We live, finally, in a political climate where we can begin to replace fear with an educated understanding of the complexity of the challenges ahead. Thus when so many in Israel have given up hope, we can point out that Israel is not such a special case. If peace has been possible in so many other places the world over, it is possible there.
Possible, but far from guaranteed. To enable the possibility of peace, and incidentally, to build a redemptive narrative of the future, we must continue advocating for justice. To that end, the question “Will two states really mean peace for Israel?” should not be the only question. We can’t lose sight of “What is truly in line with our values?”
An end to the statelessness and misery of the Palestinian people will be achieved eventually with either two states or one, with little or much bloodshed, with due haste or a further drawn-out conflict, with active Israeli engagement or without, with praise or ostracism for the Jewish state. Many American Jews who grew up with this bewildering dissonance of affinity for Israel would rather that the easier and less painful path towards justice is adopted, so that, as it happens, we might also preserve Israel as a venue to work out the important issues of how to be a Jew in the modern world.
by guestpost [➚] · Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Editor’s Note: The following is the first winner of four recent entries by individual who will be heading to Washington, D.C. at the end of the month for JStreet’s first national conference: Driving Change, Securing Peace. The following post was written by Mark W. Sniderman of Carmel, IN. Yashar Koach – and see you in DC! To everyone else: there’s still time to sign up – and if you can’t come, check back here for live blogging by our contest winners as well as some of our favorite Jewschoolers.
What keeps you hopeful and/or invested in a two-state solution for the future of Israel and Palestine?
What gives me hope? It’s the new institutions: inspired by prophetic voices, the new American Jewish institutions have the potential to change the terms of the debate over the situation in a substantial and positive way.
This hope is born of a relatively straightforward argument: one doesn’t need to go whole hog with Mearsheimer and Walt. Let us instead merely agree that American policy has had a substantial impact on Israel over the last fifty years. And, in turn, Jewish Americans have been important in informing American policy. What falls out of this? Perhaps only the idea that Jewish American opinions will have considerable weight in future debates.
And until now, the institutional voices have been the loudest. They are the most powerful, and claim a broad mandate. Attentive observers know these organizations. They were born of reaction and caution. And understandably so. Their positions have been consistent, and will likely continue along the same lines. We know, in other words, what we are liable to get in the future.
The mandate claimed by these institutions, however, has unraveled. On the descriptive front, polling demonstrates that American Jews hold a deeper commitment to peace and an enduring two-state than the institutions that claim to speak for them. Normatively, the institutional perspective has utterly failed: the asymmetry and events of 2006 and the Gaza War confirm what a few have known for some time, but the institutions never could admit: The Israeli government (of all governments) fails to acknowledge that the blood of its people is no redder than that of others.
Hope springs from the margins, as it must. But the advent of the internet has facilitated new institutions, inspired by authentic grass roots. Jewish blogs abound. Rabbis are online. Rabbi Brant Rosen, for example, inspires people around the world from a computer in Illinois. This dynamic allows mainstream opinion to be informed – and represented – by sources other than the traditional institutions. A congregant can consult multiple rabbis, and not just one or two. Unaffiliated Jews now affiliate online together. J Street flourishes in this new world.
There is, to be sure, no new monolith. Critical differences abound. But on one broad idea there is agreement: Today, we shall challenge those who claim to speak in our name. Today, we shall advance – publicly and proudly – our vision of a just state. And we will compete for the support of our sisters and brothers in a way that was unimaginable twenty years ago.
The frustration with the old institutions is palpable. At long last, enough is simply enough: Let us now aspire to be fair brokers, charged with a respect for all, dedicated to peace and justice, and an Israeli government that does the same. This is the broad aspiration of our new institutions and our new rabbis who lead the way. This is the voice of our most prophetic Jewish leaders: Let us, at the end, be peacemakers.
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