“I was taught from infancy that the Jewish people never existed merely in order to exist, we never survived just to survive, we never just carried on in order to carry on. Jewish existence has always been directed upward: not just to the Father, the King, up in the heavens, but up toward the great human calling.”

I just finished reading Avraham Burg’s book, The Holocaust is over: We must rise from its ashes. Allan Brownfield has written a good review of the book for those who want a quick summary of its 242 pages. Burg’s book, as the title suggests, alludes to the use of the Shoah to justify Israel’s human rights abuses, and Burg documents this in painful ways. But his stories are also filled with amusing insight into how the Shoah has been packaged into a common, unifying, one-size-fits-all, Jewish experience – for example, the anecdote about a Iraqi Jewish friend who experiences the Holocaust “all over again” on a business trip to Poland. Other stories, like the one of his father’s involvement in the Eichmann trial, in which he pictures Jews having replaced Eichmann in his bulletproof defendant’s box, are the keen observations of an insider who grew up in Rehavia, an old Yekke neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Those expecting a trivialization of the Holocaust will be disappointed. From Burg’s stories of his family, neighbors, and friends, it is indeed remarkable how many Israelis have had direct experience of camps or fleeing for their lives.  These are woven into the fabric of the book, but he prefers to bring his readers a different message.

The working title of the book was “Hitler Won.” This angrier viewpoint is indeed embedded within Burg’s pages, but he ends the book by calling – a view he credits to his mother – for a more universal love of humanity which conquers fear and suffering: the “courage of love.”

Burg’s book is really about two Jews. One is represented by his father Yosef, a reserved German-Jewish scholar and government official who witnessed the collapse of a world in which Jews played a major part. The other is his sensitive mother, Rivka, a Sephardic Jew from Hebron, whose family was wiped out in the massacres of 1929. What they represent, of course, is the cosmopolitan, progressive Jew with a connection to Judaism’s humanistic values, and the traumatized Zionist, still reliving the Holocaust and finding in Zionism a kind of “survivalist” Judaism, a worldview we can find today in Israel and in Zionist organizations in the United States.

These two Jews have always existed. Abraham and David. Heine and Jabotinsky. Buber and Kook. Maybe even Hillel and Shammai. This is why we are continually searching for clues about who we are and what Judaism really means.

Who am I calling Neo-Nazis? Geert Wilders or the Florida synagogue leaders who invited him? The proper answer is: both.

On April 28, 2009, Geert Wilders brought his hate speech to the Orthodox Palm Beach Synagogue in Palm Beach, Florida. In the speech, Wilders went through his usual laundry list of hate-filled views, including his claim that “Islam is not a religion” and “the right to religious freedom should not apply to this totalitarian ideology called Islam,” all to the applause of the audience. Wilders also called for stopping immigration from Muslim countries and urged “voluntary repatriation” to those countries. A video of the speech can be viewed online.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on members of the Jewish community to condemn Wilder’s hate speech: > A synagogue should be the last place that Geert Wilders’ Nazi-like propaganda would find a warm reception,” said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Members of the Jewish community know all too well what happens when a religious minority is demonized by demagogues. Wilders uses the same scurrilous attacks on Muslims and Islam that the Nazis used against German Jews and Judaism in the 1930s.

Here’s the congregation that defiled their own sanctuary with sinat chinam:

Rabbi Moshe Scheiner
Palm Beach Synagogue
120 North County Rd.
Palm Beach, FL 33480
+1 (561) 838-9002
pbsynagogue@bellsouth.net

In his letter of March 24th (“A disconnect in the dialog“) David Cohen makes a strange interpretation of my criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, claiming that such criticisms “demonize and objectify” that country, thus introducing his own disconnect in whatever dialog he hopes for. Yet Israel can blame only itself, not its critics, for the world’s disapprobation.

I had pointed out how deftly Mr. Cohen, the ADL, and the Jewish Federation had managed to change the subject from Gaza to anti-Semitism. Mr. Cohen saw this as “writing off [my Jewish friends and neighbors] as genocidal partners of an apartheid state.” I’m not in the habit of using such incendiary rhetoric, but friends can disagree.

Cohen goes on that the Jewish Holocaust is singular in history. I wish he were right, but of course there is the Armenian genocide – which his own employer, the ADL, actually denied. And there have been many more, starting with King David’s slaughter of the Amelekites and including genocides in our own lifetimes in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

There is nothing singular about the human capacity of violence, injustice and brutality. And it is indeed shocking, after all Jews have endured through the centuries, that a Jewish state could be guilty of human rights abuses. But it’s a fact, and one that Mr. Cohen wants to filter through “lenses,” explain by past persecutions, and diminish by assigning equal blame to oppressor and oppressed.

I’ll happily accept Mr. Cohen’s challenge to acknowledge that not every violent act is Israel’s fault. Israelis in Sderot are justifiably frightened from countless home-made rocket attacks that have killed several civilians.

But does this mean any sensible person must assign equal blame to both parties? Do Palestinians have racist policies that take Israeli homes and land? Did Palestinians kill 1500 Israelis in the Gaza offensive? Do Palestinians control Israel’s borders and internal checkpoints in their own land? Did Palestinians build a “Berlin Wall” on Israeli farms? There are fundamental injustices underlying this conflict that have yet to be acknowledged by Israel’s defenders and professional lobbyists, of which Mr. Cohen is one.

I would in turn challenge Mr. Cohen to acknowledge the reality and Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinian “catastrophe,” the Nakba, which “cleansed” 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. But Cohen seems to believe that dialog is only possible if no one criticizes Israel or asks it to confront some ugly realities.

In fact, the Nakba is a fitting event to consider next month at Passover, which re-tells the story of persecution and the flight from oppression. Recalling both the Exodus and the Nakba, we are reminded us that oppression is universal and that when our religious texts call on us to pursue justice: “justice, justice shalt thou pursue” – it means justice for everybody. On Passover some Jews add an olive to the seder plate to remind us that Jewish history is forever linked with that of Palestinians, and neither people will be truly free until justice exists for both.

Mr. Cohen may talk that line, but let’s see him walk it. There will never be peace without justice, and justice requires some painful admissions that, as of yet, Israel’s defenders are not prepared to make.

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.

Friends of Israel have been a little touchy about the upcoming UN Review Conference on racism” nicknamed “Durban II”), dubbed Durban II, and its resolutions. Israel plans to boycott the conference and several of its friends, including the U.S. and Canada, have stepped back considerably from endorsing the conference. Although it will attend as an observer, the U.S. has abandoned efforts to continue to shape the draft resolutions. In doing so, the United States made the right decision, and for the right reasons.

The Durban II document blasts xenophobia toward foreigners in general terms. It mentions discrimination against immigrants without identifying particular nations. It deplores propaganda used against foreigners vaguely. It expresses shock at tribal and ethnic violence, once again without so much as a mention of a continent. The document says that militias should not be used to terrorize minorities – where? It suggests that victims of slavery might have some justification for seeking recourse to reparations (a view which President Obama has opposed). It complains that the global War against Terror has given rise to racial profiling and human rights abuses, including spying on people in their places of worship. If this had been a much shorter document of universal principles, it would have meant the same thing to all countries.

But on about the 8th page the document dutifully deplores the Holocaust, then launches into a full page of criticisms of Israel. The word “Zionism” does not appear in any draft resolution (despite distortions by Israel and its policy defenders in the U.S.) and only the facts of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as well as its discrimination toward its own Arab citizens, are condemned. The document criticizes Israel’s “Law of Return” as a racial law, which is indisputable since the law pertains only to Jews or in-laws of Jews. And who can rationally dispute the facts of Israel’s occupation – facts documented for decades? Everything on that page was true.

But Israel is the only country that is specifically singled out for criticism, and for all the committee-generated verbiage, the Durban II document lacks the courage to target any specific human rights abuses other than those in Palestine and Israel. There are also quite a few missed opportunities. On about page 16 it calls for an end to discrimination based on sexual orientation, but fails to identify the countries with the worst records of persecution of gays (Iran and Saudi Arabia come to mind). The document goes on to encourage the recognition of international bodies and discusses UN procedures and bodies, but in none of the remaining 30 pages are any countries other than Israel ever mentioned by name.

It is regrettable that the United States decided to walk away from the draft process after several dozen revisions, but it did try. Other points might have been added to the document – expressions of concern for the treatment of native people in the U.S., Brazil and Tibet, or concern for the persecution of Uighurs in China might have been added. The treatment of religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic countries, Venezuela, the treatment of Baha’i or Kurds in various countries, or the treatment of foreign workers or religious minorities in Saudi Arabia, could all have been mentioned as well. Of course, by naming names and naming crimes for each of the 195 nations of the earth, the draft document would have been tens of thousands of pages long.

While Israel and several pro-Israel organizations in the United States rejoiced in the State Department’s seeming rejection of anti-Semitism, there is a more obvious truth: The Durban II document was simply a mess. In fact, the word “anti-Semitism” was absent from State Department spokesman Robert Wood’s explanation for the rejection of the document.

It may be true that the United States is not eager to pay reparations, doesn’t welcome criticism, and doesn’t want to criticize its friends – which includes not only Israel, but Saudi Arabia and China. But another truth is that the Durban II outcomes document, by failing to hold none of the nations of the world accountable for racism and human rights abuses (with the notable exception of one), is also a document that means nothing.

The U.S. actually did the right thing.

Another Islam-bashing event at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Stoughton, Massachusetts on February 27, 2009, courtesy of JTA, reprinted in the Baltimore Jewish Times. It truly irks me when Jews act like neo-Nazis:

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STOUGHTON, Mass. (JTA) – In his home continent, Dutch politician Geert Wilders is something of a pariah, banned from the United Kingdom and facing prosecution in the Netherlands for his harsh views of Islam.

His calls to end immigration from Muslim countries and ban the Koran – he compared it to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and said it incites to violence – have earned him broad condemnation in Europe and forced him under the protection of a security detail, a rarity for Dutch leaders.

But in some quarters of the American Jewish community, Wilders is more akin to a hero. At the very least, he was greeted as such by about 250 people last week at a Conservative synagogue in this Boston-area town.

The boisterous crowd at the Ahavath Torah Congregation gave Wilders, who heads the Dutch Party for Freedom and serves in the parliament, a standing ovation and shouted “Bravo” at the conclusion of his speech.

In an event co-sponsored by the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project and the Republican Jewish Coalition, Wilders made his only synagogue appearance on his recent tour of the United States, where he appeared on cable news networks and radio talk shows, spoke at the National Press Club and held a private showing of his anti-radical Islam film “Fitna” for senators and their staff on Capitol Hill.

The Middle East Forum’s director, Daniel Pipes, said he doesn’t agree with Wilders that the Koran should be banned. But he does believe that Wilders should be able to publicly present that view, which is why his organization co-sponsored the talk and is raising funds for Wilders’ legal defense.

“I don’t need to agree with him to see the importance of him making his arguments,” Pipes said.

Wilders is among a small number of European political figures who have spoken out forcefully about the impact of Muslim immigration and what they see as a religion irrevocably at odds with Western values. In the Netherlands, renowned for its liberalism and tolerance, the debate has often been particularly fraught.

A former parliamentary colleague of Wilder’s, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was forced into hiding for her work on a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women. Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker and Hirsi Ali’s partner, was murdered on an Amsterdam street in 2004. Pim Fortuyn, another Dutch politician outspoken about immigration and Islam, was murdered in 2002.

In Europe, where freedom of speech laws are generally more restrictive – Holocaust denial, for example, is widely outlawed – figures like Wilders have pushed the boundaries of acceptable discourse. But in the United States, with its comparatively looser speech laws, the violence and intimidation directed at Islam’s harshest European critics is seen by some as allowing radical viewpoints to flourish.

“If our collective voice is impeded from speaking” or “shut down,” said Pipes, then “the way is paved for radical Islam to move ahead.”

Pipes says hate speech laws, which also have been used to prosecute Holocaust deniers in Europe, are a bad idea.

“I believe in the First Amendment,” he said.

Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks takes a similar position, saying that while he also opposes banning the Koran, he believes Wilders’ views should still be given a hearing.

“If we only had speakers we agree with 100 percent of the time, it would be a very small universe of speakers,” Brooks said.

Bjorn Larsen, whose International Free Press Society arranged Wilders’ U.S. tour, said the Dutch politician was invited personally by the rabbi at Ahavath Torah, Jonathan Hausman.

Hausman would not speak on the record to JTA about the event.

Security was tight in Stoughton, with bags being checked and guards for Wilders. After a showing of “Fitna,” Wilders said the Koran is being used as a justification for “hatred, terrorism and violence against the world,” and he outlined how he believes the rise of Islam in Europe is threatening the traditional Judeo-Christian values of the West.

A staunch supporter of Israel who once lived on a moshav, Wilders also proclaimed solidarity with the Jewish state.

Israel “is receiving the blows for all freedom-loving people,” he said. “We are all Israel. We have to defend our freedom.”

Wilders noted that while he was banned from the United Kingdom despite being a member of the Dutch parliament and carrying an E.U. passport., the head of Hezbollah was allowed to enter the country.

“This is Europe today,” he said.

There were no protests at Wilders’ speech – there was little advance publicity – and many in the crowd were sympathetic to his arguments. Andrew Warren of Sharon said he wanted to judge for himself whether Wilders is xenophobic, and said afterwards that Wilders had not crossed the line.

“The unfortunate reality is that a lot of troubling passages in the Koran are being embraced by militant ideology,” Warren said.

Louise Cohen of Brookline described Wilders as a hero and a man of courage.

“What’s disturbing to me is that no one has said that there is anything in his movie that is false,” she said.

While unaware of Wilders’ call to ban the Koran, Cohen said his film makes a case that the Koran is a hate document.

That view troubles Ron Newman, who said Wilders took certain verses from the Koran that appeared to promote violence and used them to generalize about all of Islam.

Saying that a similar approach could be used with portions of the Torah, Newman cautioned that the line of reasoning could be used to produce an anti-Semitic film.

“I don’t like that being done to us,” he said. “I don’t support people who do that to others.”

Nonetheless, as a staunch supporter of free speech, Newman said the attempt to squelch Wilders’ film and the refusal to allow him into Great Britain is a travesty.

In his recent letter defending Israel’s assault on Gaza, Irving Fradkin again maintains that Israel is blameless for human rights abuses which have received widespread international condemnation. He also attempts to sell Israel as a modern democracy as one reason for Americans to support it. Enough has been said about Gaza, but I would like to refute Dr. Fradkin’s rosy image of Israel as a democracy like ours with a few facts.

Dr. Fradkin claims that “Arabs and Israelis there have equal rights.” Perhaps this is just a Freudian slip, but Arab Israelis are Israelis. Palestinians in occupied territories clearly do not enjoy the same human rights as Israelis. However, Fradkin’s portrait of happy Arabs in Israel is totally distorted. Because of institutionalized racism, Arab Israelis do not have the same rights to own property or exercise freedom of speech or assembly. Wages for Arab citizens are 30% lower. Nor do Arabs now even have full electoral rights. Two weeks ago, the Central Elections Committee in Israel banned the Arab parties Ta’al and Balad from running in recent election. Avigdor Lieberman has openly called for revoking Arabs’ citizenship and called for “transfer” – forced deportations of Arabs. This is a more realistic picture of life for Arab Israelis.

Dr. Fradkin writes that Israel “wants peace and wants to share land peacefully with the Arabs.” But go to the Knesset’s website at http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm and look at the Likud’s platform: “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.” Now look at a map and you’ll notice that all of the West Bank is west of the Jordan River. Where do Israeli hardliners want Palestinians to live? Jordan and Egypt. Forced deportations are not the same as peaceful sharing.

He writes “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” First of all, unlike Turkey, a secular democracy which Dr. Fradkin fails to mention, Israel is a theocracy: a “form of government which defers not to civil development of law, but to an interpretation of the will of a God as set out in religious scripture and authorities.” It has no constitution. Its laws are selectively enforced along racial and religious divisions – or ignored altogether. It has major human rights problems, including the use of torture. Israel has press censorship. If all this is a democracy, then let’s call Pakistan a democracy too.

This was published in the Standard Times on February 17, 2009
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/20090217/opinion/902170339

For those who work for peace in Israel and Palestine, there are a number of strategies for applying pressure on Israel. Divestment is one, while boycotts and sanctions are others.

Divestments

Divestments can be divided into those concerning (1) Israeli businesses based on illegal settlements (such as the well-known cosmetics line, Ahava), (2) American or international companies whose products are used for oppressive means (for example, the militarized Caterpillar tractors used to bulldoze Palestinian homes), or (3) all Israeli companies. The Global BDS movement, for example, has demonstrated cases of companies which have been forced to move out of settlements into undisputed territory. I am generally supportive of divestments, but would caution against calls for divestment of all Israeli companies, particularly if their only crime is being a subsidiary of an international company. Of course, many of these international companies are subsidiaries of military contractors which profit enormously from continuing oppression and human suffering. This is a tricky area which needs some kind of litmus test.

Boycotts

Boycotts can similarly be divided into (1) academic, sports and cultural boycotts and (2) consumer boycotts. While I have read the arguments for restricting Israeli cultural connections with the U.S., “human” boycotts punish even progressive Israeli voices – athletes who want to promote peace, non-Zionist Israeli history professors, or Israeli film makers who try to depict the truth. We have already seen in the case of Tariq Ramadan, who was denied a visa to the United States to teach for a semester, or in the case of the Israeli tennis player Shahar Pe’er, how these forms of punishment can be applied to hurt individuals. I oppose punishing civilians for their government’s positions (Americans would be unable to travel anywhere if this were the case). I am opposed to any form of ideological purity tests applied to individuals, whether they are Avigdor Lieberman’s loyalty oaths for Arabs, or ways of exempting people with “correct” views from boycotts. We have had some experience with this in our own history. These were the HUAC hearings in the Fifties. I am certain this view differs from many who are working for peace in the Middle East.

Rather than limit the contact of Israelis in the United States, I would like to see the expansion of Palestinian contacts with the U.S. While www.pacbi.org makes some valid points about the exceptionally free access that Israelis, many of them dual-nationals, have in the United States, only stepped-up cultural and political contacts with Palestinians will counteract this. We need a more free exchange of ideas, not more restrictions on them. In the case of consumer boycotts, however, I believe that Israel must feel the pinch of the world’s disapproval of its policies, so I am in favor of boycotts of all Israeli products as long as the Occupation continues. This is something that does not target an Israeli citizen individually, but is something he has the power to change.

I believe that, as a political tactic, a boycott must be easily explained or understood to be adopted by the public. PACBI has issued a clarification of how to consider various types of boycotts. While this is a good start, it demonstrates the complexity of explaining cultural boycotts to the public.

Sanctions

Sanctions are perfectly justified, since Israel is in violation of so many international, U.S. export control, and even its own laws that we have lost count. There are many kinds of sanctions, among them: (1) military, (2) economic, and (3) diplomatic. Tactically, boycotts and divestments may distract us from concentrating on sanctions, which, to me, are the most powerful forms of demonstrating disapproval of Israel’s policies and actions. The most effective sanction we could apply is to completely withdraw all military aid from Israel. The United States has no business propping up any government which commits human rights abuses, whether it is in Pakistan, Egypt or Israel. For this reason, Americans must cut all military aid to Israel and eliminate economic cooperation projects, including cooperative energy programs.

Israel’s current military expenditures, the highest per capita in the world, are approximately $14 billion a year and roughly 7.3% of its GDP. Israel has over 150 defense industries, with revenues of $3.5 billion. Yet Americans are paying for between one-third and one-half of Israel’s military budget, or subsidizing Israel’s GDP by 2.5% or more. The only way to reverse Israel’s extreme right turn is to place these military burdens on their own shoulders. This can be a painful reminder to Israeli voters of how expensive their misadventures in the Occupied Territories have become (just like our own disaster in Iraq). In any case, Americans should not be responsible for bailing out Israel. In regard to diplomatic sanctions, however, it is not productive for any country (for example, Venezuela) to cut off relations with Israel. Peace only happens when enemies talk. And Israel has a lot of enemies. Besides, doesn’t it accomplish more to call in the Israeli ambassador weekly for a well-publicized dressing-down?

I have recently read several of my co-religionist’s pieces in the Standard Times, and would like to offer a different Jewish view on the siege of Gaza. Does the world unfairly fault Israel for protecting itself, as Irving Fradkin and Bob Feingold maintain? Are critics of Israel usually anti-Semites, as another recent article suggests? The answer to both of these questions is an emphatic “no.”

Before the siege of Gaza, Hamas and Israel had been exchanging rockets for months, both parties in violation of a truce. On November 4th Israel launched attacks in Gaza. On December 19th Hamas announced an end to the truce, and on December 27th Israel unleashed its tremendous military might on a population of 1.5 million locked into a space twice the size of Dartmouth. After the escalation of hostilities, 3 Israeli civilians were killed, 1500 Palestinians were killed – half of them children, and 10 Israeli Defense Force soldiers were killed, half by “friendly fire.” It was the reckless and disproportionate use of force on a civilian population that had nowhere to go, combined with the use of phosphorus bombs on civilians and other violations of international law that has so enraged the world and drawn the criticism of the UN and human rights organizations. In addition, there was indiscriminate bombing of infrastructure – sewage plants, first responders, medical facilities, UN food distribution centers, schools, and aid agencies. This was calculated to punish Palestinians for voting for Hamas, and for no strategic military reason.

Irving Fradkin suggests that what Israel did was simply what the United States would do if Mexico or Canada began bombing the US. A more apt analogy is: what would the United States do if the military wing of a Canadian political party began lobbing missiles into Detroit? Would we destroy most of Windsor, Ontario and the surrounding province, killing thousands and destroying half its infrastructure? I would like to think we would act swiftly, forcefully, but far more surgically than Israel did in either Gaza or Lebanon.

Those with longer memories than Mr. Fradkin will recall that, in 2002, Israel similarly destroyed the Palestinian government in Ramallah and brought about the demise of Fatah, the Palestinian political party it now wishes were in power. Israel now openly admits it is trying to do the same with Hamas. Although the U.S. and Israel have categorized Hamas as a “terrorist” organization, it actually has more in common with Sinn Fein than Al Qaida or Israel’s Irgun. For years Hamas has been running social services important to desperate Gazans, is involved in government, is constituted as a political party, and has generally been less corrupt than Fatah. Like it or not, Palestinians have some valid reasons to embrace Hamas. And, like it or not, Israel will have to talk to Hamas – just as it is now clear that the United States will have to start talking to Iran.

The issue of peace in Israel and Palestine is complicated by all sorts of emotional, religious, historical, and racial baggage. The only way this issue will ever be resolved is to look clearly at the reality of life for both Israelis and Palestinians. Israel/Palestine in 2009 is not biblical Israel. The Ottoman empire is gone. Israelis aren’t leaving, and they won’t be bombed. Palestinians aren’t leaving, and they’re not going to permit themselves to be herded into Indian reservations. Israel must admit and address the misery of Palestinians since the Nakba, and Palestinians and the wider Islamic world around it must acknowledge that the Israelis, too, had nowhere to go after the Shoah. But Israel holds more cards than the Palestinians, receives massive military aid from the United States, and has less motivation to compromise on the basic issues that have stymied a resolution. It will be up to Israeli voters in the next election to decide whether they want to reject a militaristic, go-it-alone strategy that we have abandoned here – or to finally engage in good-faith negotiations organized by a very different U.S. administration. I would urge everyone, especially American Jews, to pressure Israel and our own government to keep the fragile and heartbreaking realities of not only Israeli lives – but those of Palestinians too – in their minds and hearts.

This was published in the Standard Times on January 30, 2009
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20090130/opinion/901300324

Recent discussions of the war in Gaza have focused on rocket attacks, Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists, or that it is our only friend in the region. But Operation Cast Lead is not a war over the exchange of rockets. Despite Israel’s assertions, the massive civilian casualties in Gaza are well beyond anything required for self-defense. These deaths are in fact the costs of a calculated attempt to neutralize Hamas before elections in February.

Gaza has been described as the largest prison camp in the world. It is one-tenth the size of Rhode Island and houses 1.5 million stateless people, refugees and children of refugees from what became the Jewish state in 1948. Israel controls Gaza’s borders and hunger is endemic. Most Gazans are dependent upon the United Nations’ World Food program. Unemployment is about 45%. Gaza’s tunnels, while known primarily as conduits through which arms are smuggled, are also used for bringing in food and trading goods for Gaza’s underground economy. And that’s Gaza in times of relative calm.

Israel’s siege of Gaza has killed over 800 Palestinians, a third of whom are children. 1500 people have been wounded. What Israel categorizes as ‘militants’ are often just policemen or government employees. In addition to reckless bombing of schools, mosques, police stations, and apartment buildings, Israel has also targeted indisputably non-military infrastructure, including a sewage treatment facility. Two thirds of Gaza is without power and food supplies have been exhausted. Israel has barred doctors, food, aid agencies, and journalists from Gaza. There is now a massive humanitarian crisis.

Hamas and Israel have been exchanging rockets for months, previously with few casualties on both sides, so Israel’s urgency is political theater. Next month Israel holds elections (from which its Arab parties have been excluded). Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Kadima is talking as tough as the Likud. These two right wing parties officially refuse to talk to the elected Hamas government. Livni is openly critical of lame duck Ehud Olmert, who has urged concessions to Palestinians, including returning illegal settlements. Livni wants to create new “facts on the ground” – code for a political landscape without Hamas. While the United States has historically taken Israel’s side in peace negotiations and at the UN, Israeli politicians don’t quite know what to think of an incoming Obama administration open to at least talking to enemies. Anything brutal had better be done quickly in the waning days of the Bush administration.

Israeli hardliners seem to have learned nothing from their own experience in Lebanon in 2006 or from American misadventures with Neo-Conservatism. The slaughter of large numbers of civilians does not weaken support for militants living among them. In fact, it has the opposite effect. And Hamas has a political and social service dimension, as Sinn Fein had, which distinguishes it from terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or the Irgun. Hezbollah has not disappeared from Lebanon and neither will Hamas from Gaza. Whatever their negative views of Fatah, Palestinians recall the 2002 siege in Ramallah which removed Arafat from power and effectively destroyed Fatah and increased Hamas’ credibility. Operation Cast Lead has only produced a humanitarian disaster and sowed more anger on the Arab Street. If it truly wants peace in a Two State solution, Israel must instead address the issues of its future neighbors and try something new.

The solution to peace in Israel and Gaza is not the wholesale destruction of Palestinian government, infrastructure, and massive carnage, but long-term negotiations with Palestinian leaders. A new wind is blowing in Washington, and it will serve Israel’s interests better to abandon militarism and unilateralism before it damages its last remaining friendship.

Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” paints a portrait of neighbors fixing their common stone fence in the spring. It is a fairly apt description of the relationship we have with our neighbor in the north, Canada. Unfortunately, Frost’s famous line also has been used to describe Israel’s “security barrier” in the West Bank. The chief problem with this analogy, and with the Israeli wall itself, is that “good fences make good neighbors” only when the fence is situated on one’s own property.

Consequently, the International Court of Justice ruled in July that the fence is “contrary to international law” and that Israel must cease its construction, dismantle it and pay reparations to those damaged by it.

Senate Resolution 408 condemns the International Court’s ruling. Massachusetts senators must vote against this resolution, and thereby vote for the international rule of law, when it comes up for a vote around Labor Day.

Strangely, although there is little discussion in the United States about this issue, the Israeli supreme court has condemned the wall in recognizing that Israel is occupying the West Bank and that the wall violates Palestinian human rights.

On June 30, it ruled that Israel has held the West Bank “in belligerent occupation” since 1967 and “the route which the military commander established for the security fence, which separates the local inhabitants from their agricultural lands, injures the local inhabitants in a severe and acute way, while violating their rights under humanitarian international law.”

On Aug. 24, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz recommended that Israel formally declare that the Fourth Geneva Convention, which formed the basis of the ICJ advisory opinion, applies to its military occupation of the West Bank.

It is true that the United States, Korea and India also have built security barriers, but they all have been built on recognized borders or cease-fire lines.

The wall Israel is building in the West Bank cuts deeply into Palestinian territory. The wall is twice as long as Israel’s border with the West Bank, and it has not even been completed.

Israeli Attorney General Mazuz, in an 84-page report to the prime minister, recommended that the government show “respect” for the ICJ’s decision, despite its misgivings, and that “a maximum effort to adapt, as soon as possible … the fence’s route and arrangements … in the seam zone to the principles the High Court of Justice has set.” Thus, even Israel appears to offer more respect for the ICJ and world opinion than this Senate resolution would.

If there is ever to be a solution to this 50-year-old problem, it will require evenhanded foreign policy by the United States.

By voting for this resolution, the United States effectively flouts international law and eliminates any influence it could ever hope to exert in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Urge your senators to vote “no” on Senate Resolution 408.

This was published in the Standard Times on September 2, 2004
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/09-04/09-02-04/a14op280.htm
(link may be broken)

The Likud has presided over all but three of the past 13 Israeli governments since 1977 and bears the greatest responsibility for government policies and for the way both intifadas have been handled. Thus, my harsh critique of Israel is in some ways synonymous with a critique of the Likud. As a Jew myself, I find no connection between Judaism’s ethics and current Israeli policies.

Far from creating a strategic center of stability in the Middle East, as neo-conservatives had once hoped, the U.S. occupation of Iraq is now a mirror of the 16-year-old Israeli quagmire in Gaza and the West Bank. Both situations in parallel threaten to destabilize any remaining good will the Arab world once had toward the United States, not only because of our own missteps but because of our uncritical support, and now overt emulation, of Israel. After 9/11 the gloves came off. Israel, known for its “extrajudicial killings” (i.e., illegal assassinations), torture and preemptive strikes against terrorists was seen as the model of how to handle homeland security and terrorism.

The Dec. 9, 2003, issue of Time magazine asked, “The U.S. military is reportedly turning to Israel for tips on how to manage the insurgency in Iraq. Will it work?” Iraqis, who as Time pointed out, grew up with images of Israelis dishing out rough treatment to Palestinian civilians, had an idea of what might be coming. Americans, had they and Congress not suspended critical judgment, should have expected a disaster, as well.

Israeli Defense Forces trainers were sent to Fort Bragg to train U.S. squads. Use of the IDF technique of bulldozing homes of suspected terrorists is now being used in the Sunni Triangle. Searches of homes are often accompanied by destruction of doors and walls, a technique used by the IDF in Gaza and the West Bank.

Also familiar in the West Bank, checkpoints and home invasions have become routine in Iraq. Israeli practices of kidnapping and incarcerating relatives of targets of military interest also have been introduced in Iraq. Many of the female detainees in Abu Ghraib are simply spouses or children of suspected Baathists.

According to a November 2002 article by John Diamond in USA Today, Israeli commandos were active in Iraq, looking for Scud missile sites before the invasion. The same article reported that Israel also built two mock Iraqi towns in Israel for American training exercises that were taught by IDF forces.

Using the Israeli policy of preemption used in Lebanon and Syria, U.S. troops are now behind the lines in Syria, hunting down suspected jihadis before they can cross the border into Iraq. However, this technique might have unintended consequences. This week, for example, U.S. troops accidentally wiped out a clan of 45 people at a wedding party in Iraq on the Syrian border.

Techniques employed at Abu Ghraib also appear to have been patterned after those used at one time by Shin Bet, the Israeli security service. In September 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Shin Bet’s “coercive techniques” could be no stronger than those applied by the police. However, the list of techniques documented in the Taguba report reads like a list of those banned techniques: blasting prisoners with noise while bent, bound and beaten in urine-soaked hoods, violent shaking, sleep deprivation and forcing prisoners into painful positions for long periods of time.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others, all have criticized Israel for routine torture. The second intifada, which began in September 2000, has killed 2,700 Palestinians, including 545 children, and there have been as many as 20,000 injuries. Israeli deaths have totaled approximately 840, including 100 children, with perhaps 2,500 injuries. The disproportionate number of deaths and injuries of Palestinians results from the continual use of lethal force against civilians. Of course, it is also true that Hamas targets civilians almost exclusively. However, both sides’ atrocities should be receiving equal condemnation from the U.S.

For example, on May 19, Israeli forces opened fire with tanks and helicopter gunships on a protest march of 3,000 people in Rafah in Gaza, killing 10 to 23 children. Israelis from peace organizations such as Shalom Achsav, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, and other segments of society condemned the massacre, but here in the U.S., the Bush administration only called for more “restraint” by Israel. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution, 14-0, condemning Israel.

The U.S. abstained. Why the tepid condemnation or none at all? Could it be because the U.S. is now using similar tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It has been recently reported in the Arab press that American snipers have killed a high proportion of women in Falluja. One report counted 56 women killed by snipers as of April 17.

Also on May 19, the newspaper Ha’aretz reported that 2000 Israelis in a peace march were headed for the besieged city of Ramallah with 20 vehicles of donated food and supplies. Police broke up the march with tear gas and rifle butts. Several people were injured, including a member of the Knesset. Peaceful assembly and rights of expression are often a problem in Israel. Within Israel, there has been strong condemnation of the IDF’s treatment of Palestinians. In a November 2003 article by Esther Schrader and Josh Meyer in the Los Angeles Times, Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, a group of retired leaders of the Shin Bet internal security service and a number of active-duty soldiers are quoted as saying that Israeli measures have been unduly harsh and threaten to destroy Israeli and Palestinian society if no solution is found to the conflict.

Even Israel’s military establishment knows that these strategies have failed. On November 26, 2002, Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror addressed the Washington Institute’s Special Policy Forum. In this speech, he suggested that “if Saddam Hussein were deposed … the Palestinian leadership would see that reform is inevitable in the long run – that the only way to negotiate is without terror. Hence, action in Iraq could be an important factor in changing the mindset of the Palestinians and, perhaps, other Arab leaders.”

Of course, Amidror was wrong, but his better points, dwarfed by the remarks on Iraq, were that Israel’s current methods lack a coherent strategy. He warned policymakers that “at the end of the day,” Israel must negotiate with the Palestinians and that civilians must not be harmed.

Just as even formerly pro-war Americans have begun to call for an exit strategy in Iraq, many Israelis have been calling for an exit strategy in Gaza and the West Bank for years. Last weekend, 150,000 people demonstrated in Rabin Plaza in Tel Aviv, calling for Israel to get out of the territories. Even Ariel Sharon, who apparently is seen as a softy within his own Likud party, sees the hand writing on the wall: Israel cannot hang on to the West Bank and Gaza much longer. Whatever our cultural and religious backgrounds in this country, we should be standing up for justice, not defending policies that we would be embarrassed by or prevented by federal law from carrying out domestically. This applies to our actions in Iraq and our support for Israel. Why is the Bush administration trying to create legal gray zones where U.S. law does not apply?

In Israel’s case, certainly it is a nation of laws and a parliamentary democracy. But we don’t need to idealize a nation that builds a Berlin Wall on stolen land, bulldozes homes, runs checkpoints that remind one of apartheid, conducts dubious and violent interrogations and has not been able to draft a Constitution in the 50-plus years it has existed. In our own case, we should not be supporting leaders who have ripped up selected pages of our own constitution, such as habeas corpus.

We have to stop conducting and condoning Machiavellian foreign policy and just do the right thing. And the right thing is to condemn torture, cease practicing it ourselves, condemn attacks on civilians, cease practicing it ourselves, and deal fairly with all people in the Middle East, whether they have oil reserves or not. This is going to require Americans to replace the Bush administration, just as peace in Israel will require the Likud to be replaced.

Like us, like Iraq, like Israel, every nation is a country in evolution. No country finds its way by being forced to follow another’s example.

This is the lesson we need to learn from our disaster in Iraq. This is the lesson we should learn from many of Israel’s failures. And it is a lesson we should have learned more than 30 years ago in a place called Vietnam.

This was published in the Standard Times on May 21, 2004
http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/05-04/05-21-04/a14op267.htm
(link may be broken)