ZOA Goes Gunning for UPZ
Morton Klein has made a career for himself by virulently attacking criticism of Israel on the Left. Yet as director of the Zionist Organization of America, Klein has himself become one of the most vociferous American critics of Israel on the Right. Under his stewardship, the ZOA has loudly and publicly opposed any and all Israeli peace efforts of the last decade, including Oslo, Camp David, the Road Map and the Gaza disengagement.
As if that were not enough to demonstrate Klein’s discontinuity with the overwhelmingly pro-peace American Jewish community, as well as the consistency of his views with those of religious Jewish extremists, after this summer’s war in Lebanon, Klein opposed the use of post-war relief funds contributed by the American Jewish community to assist Israeli Arab communities ravaged by rocket fire in Israel’s north.
Klein has even gone so far as to deny that the Deir Yassin massacre ever took place (despite the fact that the Irgun themselves admit to it, albeit disputing the application of the word “massacre”). Forgive the connection here made between the Shoah and the Palestinian experience — because they’re quite clearly dissimilar and incomparable experiences — however little, if any, difference exists between denying Palestinian suffering and denying the Shoah. It’s not okay when it happens to us, it’s not okay when we do it to them.
In his latest affront, Klein has focused his energies on having the Union of Progressive Zionists (comprised of Habonim Dror, Hashomer Hatzair, Meretz USA and Ameinu alumni) thrown out of the Israel on Campus Coalition for co-sponsoring a recent North American university tour of pro-peace IDF veterans.
JTA reports:
In a letter sent last week to the executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, ZOA National President Morton Klein said the program, Breaking the Silence, “promotes outright falsehoods” and is at odds with the coalition’s mission of promoting a positive image of Israel on college campuses.
Klein told JTA he has no firsthand knowledge of the accuracy of Breaking the Silence’s presentation. But according to reports he has received, the program does not provide the necessary context for understanding the conflict, instead portraying a few isolated incidents of Israeli misconduct as indicative of a military culture that brutalizes Palestinians.
[…] Despite the claims of falsehoods and distortions, critics like the ZOA and Stand With Us, another Israel advocacy group that complained to the campus coalition, are hard-pressed to provide examples of untruths presented by Breaking the Silence.
Klein says the falsehood lies in the implication that a few individual cases of abuse are suggestive of the whole Israeli military.
Morton Klein has never served in the IDF. He has never been on active duty in Hevron or Gaza. He has never participated in a raid on a Palestinian village, nor on a Palestinian home. He has never spent a day at a checkpoint, let alone a year at one. And yet Klein is certain that the IDF veterans participating in Breaking the Silence — a program he has never even seen — are misrepresenting Israel by “portraying a few isolated incidents of Israeli misconduct.” But Klein has no firsthand experience of Israeli military conduct. For him, whatever truth these soldiers may offer is eclipsed by the “truisms” of Right-wing pro-Israel talking points, whether or not they are based in reality.
Men like those who participate in Breaking the Silence come forward because they see a broken system that needs fixing. Men like Morton Klein cover up that brokenness until it is too late for anyone to repair it and the structure collapses.
It is a great disservice to Israel and the Jewish people to attack one’s fellow Jew for caring about Israel and taking action to sort out the problems the fanatic pro-Israel right are too beclouded by their own propaganda to recognize. Israel is not perfect, it is not a beacon of moral clarity (the treatment of protesters in Amona, for example, should, for the Right, be more than ample evidence of this fact), and it has many problems that will continually worsen so long as these problems are swept under the rug for the sake of Israel’s PR image.
Please email info at israeloncampuscoalition dot org to express your support for the Union of Progressive Zionists and the positive work they are doing to bring the definition of “pro-Israel” back down to earth, and to oppose the ZOA’s attempts to silence all viewpoints that differ from their own.
even “left” zionist ami isseroff complained about the same thing: http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000313.html
Has Ami Isseroff seen Breaking the Silence’s presentation? I’m guessing not.
And Klein even admits he hasn’t, he just has emuna shleima (perfect faith) that it couldn’t be…(yay for circular logic!)
I’ve been to the presentation in question, and it wasn’t anti-Israel at all. And if those guys didn’t love Israel enough to try to fix the terrible brokenness they’ve seen/been part of, they wouldn’t be doing this. They might, ya know actually have gone to university, and found something actually profitable to do…
Is Ami Isserof really “left”? I have read some of his writing and doubt it…
An email of mine began circulating through the lefty nets about some personal and apparently thoughtful reflections on how pissed I am Judaism has been hijacked by fundamentalists in the Territories — and of all people, Ami Isserof dropped me an email to tell me what a bad person I was for allowing it to circulate the net!
Yes yes, Ami, I will tell everyone who’s mother I don’t know to p-l-e-a-s-e stop forwarding my email. I’m sure that will work.
But more so, his complaint that Israel’s pr concerns should come first and foremost, before it’s clear conscience, is the very reason that mainstream Jews are peaced out from Israel advocacy. Sweeping Israel’s problems under the rug is a sure way to prevent the completion of any hope for the Jewish state’s eventual completion.
By the by, the offending email can be found permanently available here now: http://kungfujew18.blogspot.com/2006/08/dear-judaism.html.
By the way, Combatants for Peace — Israeli and Palestinian former soldiers and terrorists — will be in Manhattan at the Village Temple on Jan 11 and at a Brooklyn-side location on Jan 10. Find the info posted soon here: http://www.btvshalom.org/chapters/newyork/
Brought to you by the other way to be pro-Israel: Brit Tzedek v’Shalom.
I never understand general terms like pro – peace and anti war. After all, who isn’t pro peace? (It’s like the term pro life, who isn’t for life))? So rather than use generalities, could posters please state specifically what it is they agree with or object to when referring to specific groups – generic labels do nothing.
I’d defend to the death Klein’s right to criticize Israel — it took the Right a long time to come around to the Left’s position that being a good Zionist means loving Isrel enough to criticize her (of course, the ZOA and others on the Right didn’t embrace this until after the Right was out of power). That’s why it is galling that ZOA says Breaking the Silence fails the “coalition’s mission of promoting a positive image of Israel on college campuses.” No other group has been as critical of the Sharon and Olmert governments over the years, issuing a string of harshly worded press releases. Klein needs to ask himself, although I doubt he will, whether it is promoting a “positive image of Israel” to urge widespread opposition to its government’s policies?
By the way, thre’s an account of a BReaking the Siolence event in the NJ Jewish News, at
http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/112306/njJewishPalestinianGroups.html
Klein is an enemy. Why would the progressive Zionists want to be in a coalition with him? Yuck.
There wasn’t any massacre in Deir Yassin. The story persists because pro-Arab sources constantly repeat it and no other pro truth sources compete the allegations. I expect people here to read some trustful sources before fixing their mind.
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_war_diryassin.php
It took the Right a long time to come around to the Left’s position that being a good Zionist means loving Isrel enough to criticize her (of course, the ZOA and others on the Right didn’t embrace this until after the Right was out of power)
Are you claiming that this has happened? If so, please fill me in on the details.
i see there’s still some confusion over the difference between the zionist left and the zionist right, so i’ll explain it again.
q: what’s the difference between the zionist right and the zionist left?
a: the zionist right wants to put all the arabs onto buses and send them into jordan. the zionist left wants those buses to be air-conditioned.
Xisntox:
I have to concede that there seems to me to be a very modest amount of wit in this witticism. More importantly, I really don’t mean to be naive, but I’m genuinely confused about the underlying point. Maybe I’m simply unfamiliar with the current locution of either “the Left” or “Zionism,” but is the implication that Zionism is inherently incompatible with an Arab or Muslim citizenry? That all Zionists – of the Left and Right – want the country to be free of Muslims or other religious minorities? I’m not being captious, but am genuinely curious. I consider myself both a Leftist and Zionist, and could never imagine supporting an Israel that seeks to expel or limit the fundamental civil rights of its Arab minority, or, for that matter, deprives the Palestinians of a state in the Occupied Territories. Is there some prevalent assumption that this state of affairs is impossible, or that Zionists don’t really want it to come about?
David Smith: can Israel be both a Jewish and a democratic state? Can it be a Jewish state and not be inherently discriminatory towards its non-Jewish citizens, indigenous population, and people over which it is de facto sovereign?
as for supporting an Israel that seeks to deprive the rights of its minorities, consider that Palestinian Israelis dont have the same rights to the land as Jewish citizens, that only Arabs, mostly Bedouin, live in “unrecognized” villages that the government refuses to put on the service grid, while it paves roads to illegal Jewish outposts in occupied territory. That Israel destroys bedouin crops in the Negev and bulldozes their houses. That one-quarter of Palestinian Israeli citizens are “present-absent” refugees, living in Israel but dispossessed of the land they lived on until ’48. That the rights of millions of refugees and their descendents are not recognized. That Palestinian land is routinely made “state” land, and earmarked for Jewish settlement. That Palestinian Israeli citizens are restricted by law from marrying their kinsmen from the territories.
As for Zionists wanting a Palestinian state, where? on the opposite side of the fence built 80% inside occupied territory, which separates Palestinians from their most arable land and water resources? If it’s not true that left Zionists are tolerating that, why is it so little posted about it on “progressive” Jewschool? When I’ve posted that it amounts to land theft, most who reply to me defend that theft. so where are these “left” zionists? What function do they serve? Yesterday Peretz, who used to be in Peace Now, approved the army’s fence route around Ma’ale Adumim, enclosing 42,000 dunams of land. Can you find a word of protest?
even tho it’s been revealed Ma’ale Adumim was built almost completely on Palestinian private land, in contravention even of Israeli law, no one in Israel seems to care. From Ha’aretz:
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=18090
“What is more interesting than the extent of the coverage that the report received in Israel is the impression it left on Israeli public opinion: A day after the modest announcement of its findings, the report disappeared entirely from public discourse, except for one more announcement by the Yesha Council challenging its reliability. The parties on the left did not address it, the Knesset did not deliberate it, the press did not deal with it, the government ignored it, and the justice, defense and prime ministers were not asked to explain the findings that it exposed.[…]
“Israel`s conscience is entirely black. Scandal follows scandal, and today`s injustice wipes away yesterday`s injustice in our consciousness. Israeli society`s heart is so hard when it comes to Palestinians in the territories that it remains unmoved even when confronted with a scene of continuous injustice that strips individuals of their property.
“The malice, deception and aggression embodied in the way the state took over lands belonging to private individuals, even if they are Palestinians, ought to stir up every honest person, even if he is a settler. This method has nothing to do with the ideological dispute over the establishment of the settlements: The issue at stake is that individuals have been stripped of their basic rights. The settlements could have been set up solely on state land. However, a society that is not shocked by the killing of innocent Palestinians will also not be moved even slightly by the sight of land stolen from any individual Palestinian. ”
Note that even benziman, who wrote the article, seems to indicate it’s ok if the settlements had just been set up on “state” land, ignoring international law completely, which forbids settling occupied territory.
And why did Americans for Peace Now condemn Avigdor Lieberman’s addition to the cabinet, and then go to a meeting with him when he came to the US?
Where’s the love of our fellow Jews in all of these exchanges?
You leave out the fact that Roz Rothstein of StandWithUs also criticizes – she apparently, despite the JTA quote, has seen the program.
Uh, Klein didn’t need to “deny “that the Deir Yassin massacre [sic] ever took place. Arab researchers working with the town’s residents established that pretty well for themselves. I actually read the original ZOA study and it’s well documented. There’s a strong historical case that all sides back in ’48 found the stories of a massacre politically useful and exploited it for as long as they could use it.
(I don’t quite understand: the hyperlink you provide to the Irgun “admitting the Deir Yassin massacre” features explicit documentation and quotes from them denying it.)
“Pro-peace IDF veterans.” As opposed to those militaristic pro-war cretins who operate security checkpoints! Talk about a victory of advertising over logic…
“Klein has even gone so far as to deny that the Deir Yassin massacre ever took place (despite the fact that the Irgun themselves admit to it, albeit disputing the application of the word “massacreâ€)”
Mobius often talks about how loving Israel means being willing to criticize her. Now we know he actually means vilify.
Ra’ash Gadol asks:
Are you claiming that this [that the Right a long time to come around to the Left’s position that being a good Zionist means loving Isrel enough to criticize her] has happened? If so, please fill me in on the details.
Besides the obvious case of the ZOA, here’s two more:
1/ The Orthodox Union, the largest Orthodox umbrella group in the United States, adopted a resolution at its biennial national convention in Jerusalem earlier this month, empowering its leaders to publicly oppose Israeli government positions if they deem it necessary.
2/ In the April 1993 issue of Commentary. Norman Podhoretz reversed his position that American Jews had no moral right to criticize Israel’s security policies
The Orthodox Union, the largest Orthodox umbrella group in the United States, adopted a resolution at its biennial national convention in Jerusalem earlier this month, empowering its leaders to publicly oppose Israeli government positions if they deem it necessary.
the orthodox union’s position is based upon their failure to “do enough” to prevent the disengagement. it also reflects the position of the r.c.a., following the war in lebanon, which was that israel has no right jeopardizing soldiers’ lives to defend innocent arabs and that, therefore, in the future, it should simply carpetbomb arab villages.
In the April 1993 issue of Commentary. Norman Podhoretz reversed his position that American Jews had no moral right to criticize Israel’s security policies
yeah, that was the year bibi became chairman of likud and oslo was signed.
so yeah, it’s kosher to criticize israel for not being right-wing enough. however, it will forever be trayfe and supposedly antisemitic to criticize israel for not being left-wing enough.
ie., their position is contingent on the political slant of the criticism. if it’s not coming from the right, criticism of israel is illegitimate.