I am responding to Bob Unger’s essay of March 8th, in which the Standard-Times apparently took some flak for a Danziger cartoon and a few letters opposing Israel’s siege in Gaza. With very little effort, a delegation from the Jewish Federation and David Cohen, who works for a number of pro-Israel lobbying organizations including the ADL, succeeded in convincing the paper that the problem was anti-Semitism.
How easily the subject can be changed.
The subject, in this case, being the illegal and (a number of us would say) immoral treatment of Palestinians in Israel’s Occupied Territories.
The descriptions of Unger’s friend’s father sleeping with a packed suitcase under the bed indeed strikes a chord with many Jews who regard Israel as their rainy-day policy. Of course, sleeping with a suitcase under the bed also is a current reality for Palestinians who never know when their homes will be bulldozed. But the world has changed much in 60 years. A couple weeks ago “Waltz with Bashir,” a film based on an Israeli soldier’s nightmares resulting from his involvement in the Sabra-Shatila massacres in Lebanon in the 80’s, almost took an academy award for best animation. Military “refuseniks” regularly decline to serve in the Occupied Territories. In 2007, Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Israeli Knesset, wrote a book which appeared last year in English, “The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes.” This is the counterpoint to Mr. Unger’s editorial and, more importantly, suggests the tremendous ethical turmoil Israelis are grappling with in confronting their society and their history.
But for American pro-Israel groups like the Federation or the ADL, it doesn’t matter that Israel is now the most powerful military nation in the Middle East, the only nation in the region to have nuclear weapons, and has both the ear and the purse of the United States. David has become Goliath and yet these organizations still think of Israel as a nation of helpless refugees of three generations ago.
The cartoon which partly prompted the delegation’s complaints was indeed in poor taste and does not adequately depict the politics of Netanyahu or Livni, although Lieberman publicly urged that Gaza should be destroyed completely like Grozny was by the Russians, and that Arab members of the Knesset should be killed – so Danziger had him pegged correctly. As for Netanyahu, his party flatly rejects a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River and so Palestinians must either remain in a quasi-Apartheid state, or be forcibly deported. Not quite as bad as Lieberman, but bad enough. And none of the three candidates seemed particularly appalled by the massive loss of life in Gaza. So maybe Danziger didn’t have it so very wrong after all.
For the ADL to whine to the Standard Times about anti-Semitism is the very definition of the term “chutzpah.” The ADL itself has been criticized by Jewish peace groups for actually defending Avigdor Lieberman’s racist attacks on Israeli Arabs.
Cultural understanding is already alive and well in this community. Any visitor to Buttonwood Park will see Abe Landau’s arm with its concentration camp number on the Holocaust memorial there. Avahath Achim is among the oldest synagogues in New England. A charter school is operating in the Tifereth Israel building. Jews have been well integrated into our region’s and American life for centuries. Jonathan Sarna’s excellent history, “American Judaism” from the Yale Press, paints a fairly positive portrait of Jewish acceptance in America since the earliest Sephardic Jews arrived with the Dutch. In the Truro Synagogue, you can read a wonderful letter from George Washington stating that this is a country of all faiths – a letter that Washington wrote to all 24 of the nation’s Jewish congregations at the time. The suitcase under the bed has been unnecessary in this country for hundreds of years.
The dispute over Palestine is a political and territorial issue which has less to do with Jew versus Muslim than occupied versus occupier. It is an issue which demands more attention to justice, human rights, and international law than to exploring our feelings or singing Kumbaya (or Hatikvah). If anything, we’ve been a bit remiss in the cultural or historical understanding of Palestinians.
What is interesting now is that the Obama administration has sent a number of signals indicating a new, more balanced, approach in dealing with the Arab world – and pro-Israel supporters don’t like it a bit. This, I suspect, not simply the cartoon, is what truly upsets pro-Israel flag-wavers, fixated on persecutions of the past, in which every affront means an existential threat or anti-Semitism.
So let’s not change the subject.
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