Today, May 14, 60 years since the founding of the State of Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights – North America (RHR-NA), placed an ad on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times in support of the rights of Israelis and Palestinian and launching a year long campaign, In Pursuit of Justice, to support the work of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel .
The ad begins, “On this day, 60 years ago, the founders of Israel declared the State of Israel …will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel “, a quote from Israel ’s Declaration of Independence . More »
You can follow our co-blogger Chorus of Apes and go all Nakba on us. You can go all “neo-Zionist” instead and lose yourself in congratulatory paroxysms of pride and militaristic extremism. See here for example. Or finally, you can waffle and prevaricate between the other two alternatives, watching any tribal joy you once felt drain out through myriad cuts of national guilt and historical revision.
The last option seems most popular in progressive Jewish circles these days. My roommates objected to my proposal for a Yom Ha-Atzma’ut House Party by saying they wanted to avoid propaganda or the appearance of it. “Maybe we should have something about the nakba too.” “We don’t want to look right wing.” “How about we go to a Brit Tzedek talk instead.” Something about Independence Day made us uncomfortable.
Yom Ha-atzma’ut looks a little funny these days. Between the alliance of Electronic Intifada and Kahane Chai to forever tarnish the word “Zionism,” and the casual abuse of patriotism by fear-mongering Republicans in the US, the idea of “national pride” has become suspect. Every 60th Birthday congratulation needs a “but..”, and every praise of the Jewish State re-born in the Jewish Homeland comes with a “however..” We’re cynical and jaded, and don’t want to buy into anything that smacks of conservative forces or creeping 21st century totalitarianism.
So we want to kill the myth of the Third Comonwealth, scuff the shine on the Zionist dream, give us nothing-but-the-facts-ma’am and add another social justice cause to the bottom of the list.
But I’m thinking that Yom Ha-atzma’ut is not something to do half-assed. Righteous foundation myths and tribal pride aren’t just kids’ stories: they’re the moral stories that give us our ideals.
Remember (if you’re American) when you first learned what really happened when the Pilgrims hit Plymouth rock. When that cartoon fantasy of harmony and shared wealth dissolved into the broken treaties of the colonists, and the cold hard earth they dug into to rob Native graves. I think that a large part of that sting, that rage, (that righteous indignation, if you will) was the disappointment that the reality did not live up to the myth.
People we’d been taught to honor had let us down. The founding parents of institutions we’d be taught to respect and identify with had behaved in despicable ways. Which is sort of ironic, I guess. Or at least depressing.
But the real, glorious irony is that the myths never did let us down. These lies are the tales that taught us what to believe in. The myths are the prosecutor’s finger. When we hear about Israeli crimes and mistakes, whether during the War of Indepedence or today, it’s the myths that shout loudest “this was wrong. This must be remedied.” It’s the Declaration of Indepedence which was never fulfilled which kicks us in the gut and demands more effort on our part.
Our myths are our moral foundation, and I believe, something to celebrate whole-heartedly. So this is a (slightly belated) Yom Ha-Atzma’ut Same’ach from me to you, with no ifs, ands, or buts. Happy Independence Day. Make the dream a reality.
What is a “third rail” anyway? Do subways and trains even have dangerous “third rails” anymore?
Regardless of its modern day relevance, the “third rail” is an often-heard political term for the undiscussable, unapproachable topics - the ones that are too “charged” to deal with.
In the U.S. Congress, engaging Hamas is one of those “third rails.” Nobody wants to talk about it, think about it, or deal with it - unless it’s just to bash Hamas and condemn rocket attacks (which deserve to be condemned).
So, it shouldn’t go unnoticed when a serious Congressional sign-on letter begins circulating Capitol Hill that argues for a number of solutions to the ongoing crisis in southern Israel and Gaza — including a Hamas-Israel ceasefire.
Led by Representatives David Price (D-NC) and Ray LaHood (R-IL), the Price-LaHood letter to President Bush urges him to reinvigorate Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and pursue efforts to end the crisis in southern Israel and Gaza, in light of the President’s upcoming visit to the region, where he will be celebrating Israel’s 60th. It urges solutions including: exploring a ceasefire, ending the Gaza blockade, addressing the smuggling of weapons, and, of course, condemning rockets.
The Price-LaHood letter is the first Congressional initiative to seriously and comprehensively deal with the crisis in Gaza and southern Israel. Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, Americans for Peace Now, and the new J Street all support the letter.
JTA reports on Rabbis for Human Rights, North America’s new initiative, the In Pursuit of Justice campaign, launched today, Israel’s 60th birthday, in Central Park.
A number of initiatives are included in the campaign. More information as to how you can get involved is available at the website. Also, those who loved the fabulous Human Rights Conference of two years ago, keep your eyes peeled.
Action alert by Brit Tzedek v’Shalom calls on Bush to get off his ass. BTVS takes it to Congress’ doorstep on June 21-24, register here.
Yediot Achronot covers Israeli Fred Schlomka’s alternative tours through Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank in “Alternative Tourism Comes of Age in Israel.” Tours are even designed to be legal for Israelis who otherwise are restricted to Area C of the territories.
Day schools grapple with teaching Israel — how much do we decide to brainwash our kids? To be fair, both right and left-leaning communities get their way on how to teach about Palestinians, the Israeli national myths, and the balance of blame in the peace process. Which means that the politics of the next generation of Jews will be even more divided between Jews taught to think critically and openly, and those openly brainwashed…
Right-wing smear-machine CAMERA launches Wikipedia-editing campaign — gaaaaa. I am infuriated of course, but when I thought about it, sure, let ‘em waste their time on Wikipedia. I’m working on prying their like out of Congress.
Did you know the majority of American Jews aren’t Zionist? It shouldn’t be surprising, but if 35% of American Jews don’t identify as “Zionist” but 90% identify as “pro-Israel,” I think we’ve got to rethink our labels. The same labels for young Jews drop to 24% and 70% respectively. Check the facts.
Yad LeAhim, an Israeli anti-Christian group (though they call themselves anti-missionary), despite losing in court for persecution rights (denial of citizenship) against Messianic Jews making aliyah, are now picking on a 13-year-old world Bible quiz contestant. Warned Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a leader of the national religious movement, “Once they used to wage crusades in order to bring us closer to Christianity. Now they work by other means.” At first I was going to appeal for perspective until I realized, yes, I might consider a Crusade over embarassing reality TV any day.
…Which transitions perfectly into the reason some Jews won’t boycott China. I couldn’t help but notice who is and isn’t supporting the boycotts: Do boycott: JCPA, Reform movement, American Jewish Congress, a dozen leaders of the Conservative movement and liberal Orthodoxy, American Jewish World Service. Don’t boycott: Agudath Israel of America, Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel, ADL, American Jewish Committee. This list has a few surprises, but I think it says a lot.
Between 1 and 2 am on Tuesday, April 29, I stood guard at an orphanage run by the Islamic Charitable Society in Hebron. An order for closure was put on the orphanage, to go into effect yesterday; the military has visited the site three times already, and have said that anyone (Palestinian) still in the building starting April 28 could be arrested and held for five years in prison.
Standing guard consisted of sitting near the door with my laptop, playing a computer game, with music coming out of the the headphones around my neck; about four or five times, I paused what I was doing to mute the music, and listened more closely to the sounds of the Hebron night, which never amounted to anything much. There were plenty of night dangers to imagine in the wind which blew through the courtyard, islamic prayer flags flapping against the building.
It’s not necessarily funny, but it is a President talking about Israel-Palestine relations to a Jew.
As to Stewart’s question — I’ve always wondered the same thing. It doesn’t get the Palestinians anything to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state (i.e., the occupation won’t end) but why the hell not?
I got this e-mail from a good fried of mine this morning. Tyson Herberger is a well-travelled, multilingual, Orthodox Jew. He’s married, lives in Jerusalem, and is pretty hard to pin down politically. You must read
Some of you may already now from reading the morning papers, but I am under house arrest for being a journalist.
Earlier this week Israel’s communications ministry and israeli police raided the Jerusalem studios of the radio station I work at. They seized all of the equipment in the studio itself, though left the rest of the offices intact. Everyone present at the time of the raid was taken into police custody for questioning. They released the secreatary after about 7 or 8 hours, and took the other 7 of us to
jail for the night as we were being detained.
More specifically, he explains how the notion that Israel is a Jewish democratic state is like baklava. When you first taste it, its feels sweet, but after a few minutes, things get sticky, and you are left with a lump in your stomach.
Burg says a lot more than that. The interview is 90 mins long. He talks about love conquering hate, the place of the holocaust in the Israeli psyche, the place of minorities in Israel, and the end of the zionist myth.
I have no time for extended commentary except to say that the two views here explicitly endorse violence. We can applaud the complaints of the retired commander who complains that the PA acts too much to meet demands of Israel’s security needs, longing instead for the days when Palestinian terrorism had some sense of accomplishment towards a political goal. We can applaud the PA for, as the commander laments, protecting Israel’s security interests, unlike the good ol’ days when the PA coordinated successful terror efforts. And we can wince at the hypocracy of the Hamas rocket maker who claims sympathy when his missiles hit children, “If we kill soldiers, then we are more than happy. If it hits a child, then naturally we are not happy.”
But into these worldviews is a lack of sterotype of the mindless fanatic aiming to drive Jews into the sea. In both cases, we see political activists bent on violence as a tool for political progress, coldly calculating and aware of costs and benefits. The glory of Allah is rarely under discussion here; a political end to the occupation (in vague terms) is definitely.
Much of the writing I do here is not to claim that terrorism doesn’t exist, but instead to argue that our understanding of Palestinian terrorists is a bit outdated. And that the right-wing views of intrasigent, forthing-at-the-mouth Islamists is laughably simplistic. It is time to update our grasp of the political stalemate in the West Bank and Gaza, so that when we discuss Palestine and Palestinians, we understand with whom we’re really dealing.
I highly recommend a read through both articles and the iconic views they provide into a young Hamas on one side and an aged Fatah on the other.
Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak (ret.), a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, has responded to his critics.
In 1976, then Col. McPeak published an essay in Foreign Affairs entitled “Israel: Borders and Security,” where he argued that it was “territorial return which constitutes Israel’s chief bargaining” power, and that Israel ought to cede much of the territory it won in the 1967 war in exchange for Arab world concessions.
The American Spectator’s Robert Goldberg wrote that the article was in keeping with McPeak’s general ” anti-Israel and anti-Jewish” outlook…
In an brief response just posted on Foreign Affairs’s website, McPeak flatly denies that either he or Obama is “anti-Israel.”
“I am a long-time admirer (and think myself a friend) of Israel. In the early 1970s, I played a key role in getting advanced weaponry released to the Israeli Air Force– capabilities it later put to active use. During that period, I made many official visits to Israel and established close relationships there. These contacts turned out to be useful during Operation Desert Storm, when, as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, I worked with my Israeli counterparts to help defend Israel from Iraqi Scud missile attacks…”
The obvious questions here is: How many Iraqi Scud missiles did Robert Goldberg deflect while he was safely penning away at the American Spectator? My guess, a lot fewer than Gen. McPeak did while teaching Israelis about defense systems and getting them high-tech US weaponry.
All this to say, suggesting granting sovereignty or returning historically Arab lands to Arabs seems a far cry from being anti-Israel. In fact, it strikes me that Goldberg stubborn position seems a lot worse for Israel. If you buy his argument you next have to denounce Rabin as anti-Israel. Go ahead Goldberg. I dare you.
Please tell me yes! It may well have been true in the past that the Arab nations missed opportunities for peace with Israel, but now the ball is more and more in Israel’s court. How does the oft-parroted line about Israel being the beleaguered peace seeker amidst the Arab warmongers survive since the Arab League in 2002 offered Israel full recognition throughout its 22 member states in exchange for a peace settlement? The offer was renewed yesterday by a re-ratification of the Arab League’s assembly of foreign ministers.
But I shouldn’t be eager to condemn any side for perceived intransigence because Gerson Baskin and Hanna Siniora, co-directors of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information have been traveling the country touting their middleman position in not-so-secret negotiations between Israel and Hamas for the return of Gilad Shalit, for a Hamas-Israel one-year ceasefire, and between Israel and the PLO for a final settlement. Read it in JPost.
What lacks on both sides, the two say, is political chutzpah. And it’s almost certainly true, despite whether they’re really said shuttle pigeons.
Either way, the mantra that the Arabs resist peace at every turn should be shucked by the wayside. It’s just as incumbent on Israel to not blow these opportunities — and on Americans to do our part too.
In the Times Online, appears a lengthy review by Geoffrey Wheatcroft of no fewer than 6 books on Israeli and her history: Jacqueline Rose’s THE LAST RESISTANCE, Colin Shindler’s THE TRIUMPH OF MILITARY ZIONISM: Nationalism and the origins of the Israeli Right, David Goldberg’s THE DIVIDED SELF: Israel and the Jewish psyche today, Victoria Clark’s ALLIES FOR ARMAGEDDON:The rise of Christian Zionism, Yakov M. Rabkin’s A THREAT FROM WITHIN: A century of Jewish opposition to Zionism, and Jimmy Carter’s PALESTINE: Peace not apartheid
The review is long and rangy, starting and ending with a focus on the complicated and largely unknown major Israeli historical figure Jabotinsky. As he says in the review,
But the conflict in the Holy Land is still more dissonant in this regard. It is the single most bitterly contentious communal struggle on earth today (something which itself casts an ironical light on the aspiration of the first Zionists to “answer the Jewish question” by “normalizing” the Jews and removing them from the pages of history); it must receive more media coverage than India, which has a population a hundred times greater; it inflames acute passions. And yet it sometimes seems that the more strongly people feel, the less they actually know about the story of Zionism. Maybe it should be a requirement for anyone who wishes to hold forth on the subject to write first a few lines each on Ahad Ha’am, Max Nordau, George Antonius – or Vladimir Jabotinsky.
If not many Europeans or Americans know who “Jabo” was, Israelis certainly do. He remains the most charismatic, fascinating and controversial figure in the history of Zionism, and in the state to whose creation he devoted his life, but which he never saw. Born in 1880 in Odessa, he was converted to the Zionist cause as a young man by tsarist persecution, became a tireless publicist and organizer, and helped to create the Jewish Legion which fought with the British against Turkey during the First World War. In the 1920s he broke away to found the uniformed youth group Betar, and then the militantly nationalistic right-wing brand of Zionism he called Revisionism, in opposition to Chaim Weizmann and the general Zionists, and to David Ben Gurion and the Labour Zionists of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
From Betar would grow the Irgun Zvei Leumi, which waged an armed campaign against the British and the Arabs – in British and Arab eyes, a terrorist campaign – in the ten years before Israel was born. When Jabotinsky died in American exile in 1940, he had not seen the murderous horror that engulfed the European Jews, the creation of the Jewish state, or the legacy of his own movement. The Irgun evolved into the right-wing Herut party, which was not merely excluded from office but veritably anathematized in Israel for the first quarter-century the state existed after 1948, but which, now in the guise of Likud, took power at last in 1977 under the old Irgun leader Menachem Begin – and which descends to the present administration.
You might not call this direct support of Breaking the Silence, but you can call it standing up against right-wing blowhards like Mort Klein. This I can definitely respect. Rabbi Bernie was distraught by the “lack of context” to the exhibit but nonetheless stood by his students’ decision to bring the exhibit into a Jewish space. He, like many others, disagree with the soldiers on many points. But thank the Lord this doesn’t mean he’s like some of the people who’ve come to exhibit simply to tell the soldiers that they should be shot as traitors. Or even attack them (and Hillel International at large) for being anti-Israel, as Mort did in a press release.
The highlights here, the full open letter below the fold.
On the ZOA:
I do not know the mission of the ZOA. If, however, your mission does include working with young Jews, you have done a grievous disservice to the ZOA. If it is not part of your mission, you should not intrude clumsily and aggressively into the Harvard campus, and undermine the good work of young Jews…
…Truth from a skyscraper in New York City looks different than on the ground of a campus in Cambridge. Every campus and every Hillel has its own unique culture.
On the student body:
Many students feel inconvenienced by the presence of the exhibit in the building. Many more criticize the presentation of the exhibit itself. Some feel that it humanizes the soldiers and they come away with a more positive feeling about Israel. I myself did not anticipate this response. It is more widespread than I would have thought.
On what Mort’s press release did:
…As a result of your actions, our students are receiving hate emails [from ZOA members]. In light of what you have said and have not said, this is a totally predictable response. If you intended to injure and hurt young Jews, your recent actions and words are a success. If your goal is to inflame and to defame Harvard Hillel, you should justly feel a sense of pride – mission accomplished.
Whether you’re into Breaking the Silence or otherwise, you can also tell Mort to fuck off here.
Ma’aleh Adumim resident Julian Czarny woke up recently to discover that he lived in “Palestine” - at least according to the popular Internet social networking site Facebook.
Facebook no longer allows members from Ma’aleh Adumim, Ariel, Betar Illit and other settlements over the Green Line to list their hometowns as situated in Israel, but instead provides only a preset location, with their country listed as “Palestine.”
“Someone at Facebook is simply prejudging whatever may or may not come about in future negotiations,” said Czarny. “Who exactly decided on this computerized transfer of over a quarter-million Jews from Israel to Palestine?”
Whether or not I agree with the decision, I find it fascinating the way folks’ on-line lives intersect with off-line world.
Editor’s note: The following D’var Torah is a guest post from Elliott Horowitz
On a Friday morning fourteen years ago, Dr. Baruch Goldstein walked into the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, on a day that was Purim for him but Ramadan for his victims, and opened fire, with his army-issued semi-automatic rifle, on dozens of Muslims who were praying there, killing twenty nine. Goldstein had, like his hero Rabbi Meir Kahane, been born in Brooklyn, and after studying at Yeshiva University and completing his medical studies, immigrated to Israel in 1983, settling in Kiryat Arbah on the West Bank. It was from his home there that Goldstein, accoutered in his IDF reserve officer’s uniform, made his way to the holy tomb. Before leaving on his deadly mission he dutifully attended services for the day of Purim. The Torah reading, from Exodus 17, recounted the Amalekite “rear attack” upon the Israelites at Rephidim, and it was followed by a re-reading of the book of Esther, culminating in the hanging of Haman and the revenge of the Jews. There is little doubt that Goldstein regarded not only Haman and his sons, but also the Arabs of Hebron, as Amalekites who, according to divine commandment, were to be utterly destroyed.
Earlier this month, on a Thursday evening that inaugurated the New Moon of the traditionally merry month of Adar, Ala Abu Dhaim, a twenty-five year old Arab resident of East Jerusalem, left his home in the Jebel Mukaber neighborhood armed with a semi-automatic rifle and made his way to the Merkaz Ha-Rav Yeshiva in west Jerusalem, a trip just a bit longer than that taken by Goldstein from Kiryat Arbah to Hebron. Abu Dhaim sprayed his bullets as indiscriminately as had Goldstein, killing eight young men - most of them teenagers.
Speaking at the collective funeral of all eight young victims, which took place the next day at Merkaz ha-Rav, Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, who recently succeeded his late father as head of the Yeshiva, said that “the murderers are the Amalek of our day, coming to remind us that Amalek has not disappeared, just changed its appearance.” He also saw the attack as “a continuation of the 1929 massacre,” in Hebron, many of whose 67 victims were students of the famed local Yeshiva.
Although the rabbis of the Talmud have taught us that “a man is not to be held responsible for things said in a time of sorrow” (Baba Batra, 16b), I beg to differ with Rabbi Shapira on both points. Regarding the latter, it is not likely that Abu Dhaim, who was not much older than most of his victims, ever heard of the massacre in Hebron. He was much more concerned with the 126 Palestinians, many of them women and children, who were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during the first week of March, 2008, in their (perhaps overzealous) attempt to save the lives of Israeli women and children in Sderot and Ashkelon. By contrast, Baruch Goldstein, like most Jewish residents of the Hebron area, had been well aware of (if not obsessed with) the bloody massacre that took place some three score and five years earlier, and it is his murderous action in that same city which is is better described “a continuation of the 1929 massacre.”
With regard to the alleged Amalekite affiliation of “the murderers,” Rabbi Shapira is on even shakier ground. As every student in his yeshiva knows, the biblical Amalek was the grandson of Esau, the older son of Isaac. The Arabs, by contrast, are seen as descendants of Ishmael, the half-brother of Isaac. Rabbi Shapira presumably meant that those behind the murder of his young students were Amalekites in the metaphorical sense. But in that sense, it may be argued, so was Dr. Baruch Goldstein.
The two photos above, shot by Dotan Greenvald, are part of the Breaking the Silenceexhibit, supported by your very own Jewschool, which remains open for guided tours at Harvard Hillel in Boston through through March 16th. My recent visit to the exhibit was intense, eye opening, and almost magical in its ability to cut through all of the rhetoric and illustrate humanity.
These photos, like much of the exhibit, seek to demonstrate the realities experienced by many IDF soldiers serving at checkpoints, on patrols and fulfilling other tasks in the Occupied Territories, as told through the narratives of soldiers giving tours of the photo exhibit, and testimonials available at the exhibit and online.
All of the photos were from the personal collections of soldiers who served in the territories- they took pictures as part of their daily life, and to document their experiences serving their country. According to my guide at the exhibit, Oded Naaman, a former IDF soldier affiliated with Breaking the Silence, one of the behaviors mastered quickly by soldiers serving in the territories, is the practice of pointing one’s gun ahead of one’s body before moving in any direction, in order to “show presence” and be ready for danger. Greenvald, who is the other former IDF soldier who has been giving tours of the exhibit in Boston, was interested in capturing some of the nuance of this behavior–the degree to which one ends up viewing everything through the scope of his weapon. In the first shot, he views an innocent thirteen year old boy tending pigeons on his roof in the West-Casba. Juxtaposed with this, he photographed two of his friends talking, also through the lens of his gun, with his nigh-vision scope. Oded explained the quickness and ease with which humans adapt to the many behaviors necessary for these soldiers carrying out the work of the occupation–such as pointing your gun at children and your friends.
This is one of several visual memories which stand out as ideas and feelings which can never be captured in a policy briefing paper, newspaper editorial or email. They are the very real experiences happening each to day to adolescents barely old enough to vote, in whose hands the day-to-day necessities of the occupation are held.
When we [rightfully] consider the lives of innocent Israelis killed in bombings or innocent Palestinian children killed by IDF fire, this exhibit asks us also to consider the toll that the occupation takes on those who carry out its essential functions, and the effect these experiences have on Israeli society more broadly. For those in the Boston area, I highly recommend a visit to glimpse the images and hear the stories of the occupying soldiers.
