Dear Friend,
Dr. Sabella is a Palestinian who teaches at Bethlehem University and expresses THE ISSUE succinctly.
It is first of all a human problem.
Then it is a socio-political, military matter where forces conspire to build up WALLS that isolate people; or break them down to bring people together.
JRK (with thanks to Pauline Coffman of I/PMN).
The Other Day: A Palestinian Feel
Dr. Bernard Sabella
July 15, 2010
The other day
I met my Jewish neighbor just across the street and his face looked just exactly like my face
I saw him play with his children just exactly as I would play with my children
I heard him speak tenderly to his wife just exactly as I would speak tenderly to my wife
I witnessed as he opened with reverence his Holy Book just exactly as I would open my Holy Book
I noticed how he takes care of his home just exactly as I would take care of my home
I observed as he communicated warmly with his neighbors as I would with mine
And yet
My Jewish neighbor does not see me nor does he think
That I play with my children the way he does with his
That I speak tenderly to my wife as he does
That I open my Holy Book with reverence as he does his Holy Book
That I care about my home the way he does about his
That I communicate warmly with my neighbors as he does with his
And More
My Jewish neighbor does not know my pain
When I am denied entry to my city through checkpoints and Separation Wall
When the identity cards of my children are taken away from them
When I cannot be with my wife because she is from the West Bank and I am from Jerusalem
When my home is demolished because I cannot get a building permit
When my neighbors are evicted from their homes and they have no place to go
My Jewish neighbor and I live so close to each other yet worlds apart
His world is one with a semblance of normalcy
Mine is one with threatening transition from one status to another
He feels filled with the dreams of his forefathers
I feel inspired by the dreams of my forefathers
He won't let go
I won't let go
My Jewish neighbor and I share the geographic space
Can we be like each other in our hopes and dreams?
Can he recognize my face which is exactly like his face?
Can he touch my pain?
Can we share the future with the dignity of people whose faces are so much like each other?
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Mark Braverman on PC(USA) Gen. Ass. Actions
Dear Friend!
Learn more about Mark from his blog: He was an invited guest at the recently completed Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly in MN.
His assessment is accurate and hopeful. But the road ahead is tortuous and long and forces of reaction and inertia lurk everywhere.
HOPE has two components: 1) Anger and 2) the Courage to make a contribution.
Report from the Presbyterian General Assembly – Part 1
July 12, 2010 at 9:32 am
Something Wonderful Happened
I’ve just returned from Minneapolis, having attended the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA at the invitation of the denomination’s Israel Palestine Mission Network. The PC(USA) is at the epicenter of the struggle of the Christian community in the U.S. to come to terms with the challenge of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
A victory had already been achieved before the start of the Assembly. Overtures from presbyteries from around the country urging action on justice for Palestinians would amount to over 40% of the actions considered by the Assembly. These included revisiting the 2004 decision to undertake phased divestment from companies implicated in the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and an overture affirming that Israel’s actions meet the United Nations definition for the crime of Apartheid. A centerpiece of Presbyterian actions was the call to approve the report of the Middle East Study Committee. The MESC, commissioned by the 2008 General Assembly, had produced a 170 page report entitled “Breaking Down the Walls.” The report documents the committee’s first-hand observation of the Israeli occupation’s impact on Palestinian society and includes specific recommendations, including urging the U.S. government to make military aid to Israel contingent on ending the occupation.
Predictably, the forces of opposition had gathered. As early as February of this year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked the report, calling it a “poisonous document by the Presbyterian Church [that] will be nothing short of a declaration of war on Israel.” This broadside by the Los Angeles-based Jewish advocacy group went on to declare that the report “shakes the foundations of interfaith relations.” This is the tack that has been taken for years by the mainstream Jewish community – both secular organizations like Wiesenthal as well as the religious denominations — claiming that any questions about Israel’s policies or the Zionist project itself partakes of anti-Semitism. The charge of anti-Semitism and the prospect of a disruption in the “interfaith partnership” has been effective in stifling the discourse and in thwarting actions directed at Israel’s policies. Implicit and sometime explicit in these statements is the threat that such “unfriendly” behavior by Christians will result in the removal of Jewish friendship. This strategy has intensified in recent years in response to efforts by church denominations to take a principled stand on the Israel-Palestine issue. Most recently, the biweekly Christian Century published an article by Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine, professors at Vanderbilt Seminary. Appearing the week preceding the PC(USA) General Assembly, the article, entitled “Habits of Anti-Judaism,” strongly critiqued the MESC report. In the opening to a letter to the Christian Century I wrote the following:
“The intent of the Presbyterian Middle East Study Committee Report “Breaking Down the Walls” is clear: “to break down these walls that stand in the way of the realization of God’s peaceful and just kingdom.” But in their critique of the report published in your June 29 issue, Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt Seminary strike at the heart of this message. They ask us to believe that the report advocates “a historical narrative that points indirectly to a single state—a new social body—in which a Palestinian majority displaces Jews.” In a shocking distortion of the Study Group’s evocation of Ephesians 2:14, they claim that “’Breaking down the walls’ in order to form ‘one new humanity in the place of two’ evokes old echoes of theological supersessionism and transposes them into a political key.” “Old habits die hard,” lament Smith and Levine. But it is the habit of crying anti-Semitism whenever Jewish sensibilities are disturbed or the actions of the State of Israel are questioned that we must urgently confront.” (Full text of the letter.)
The aim of the article was clear – to strengthen the hand of those who wanted to prevent passage of the report. And why not? This is a time-honored approach — it has always worked. I feared that it would prove just as effective in this case. I arrived in Minneapolis convinced that, except for the efforts of a courageous but small and embattled minority within the denomination, the natural commitment to social justice and support for the oppressed on the part of most Presbyterians would again be trumped by concern for preserving the relationship with the Jewish community. I was betting that the tactics of the Wiesenthal Center and the arguments of Smith and Levine would serve, as they always have, to muzzle the conversation and block actions that might offend Jewish sensibilities or be perceived as hostile to the Jewish state.
A thing of beauty
I was wrong. Yes, the concerns about the feelings of Jews when Israel is “attacked” are still there, and they exert a powerful pull on Presbyterians’ decisions. But something wonderful happened last week in Minneapolis.
I watched as the committee charged with studying “Breaking Down the Walls,” and recommending action to the GA debated the matter. I listened to the arguments for and against approval of the report. Those in favor passionately talked about the suffering of the Palestinians under occupation. Those against spoke just as passionately about the report’s seeming “anti-Israel” bias, claiming that to approve the report would be to cut off dialogue with the Jewish community. I noted what seemed like a universe of disagreement between the two positions. I despaired that anyone who, unlike the study group itself, had not seen the occupation with his or her own eyes would understand that the report was not biased – that it was simply telling the truth and recommending that the church respond accordingly.
But something happened. The committee clearly wanted to find a way to have the report adopted. A group from the committee stayed up all night to craft a number of changes. Problems with perceived bias against Israel were fixed. The obligatory language about Israel’s right to exist was inserted. None of these changes touched the faithful witness and prophetic heart of the report. While strongly asserting the church’s commitment to Israel’s security and wellbeing, the Study Committee’s report as presented to the General Assembly clearly presents the narrative of Palestinian dispossession and suffering. It asserts that Israel’s actions, illegal and in violation of international law, are an “enduring threat to peace in the region.” It receives the Palestinian Kairos document, a courageous and heartfelt call of Palestinian Christians “from the heart of Palestinian suffering” to the churches of the world, and recommends it for study by Presbyterians. It calls on the U.S. government to end aid to Israel unless the country stops settlement expansion in Palestinian territories.
The report came before the 730+ commissions on Friday June 9 and was approved by a vote of 82%. When the results were displayed on the screen, the assembled broke into applause – which is against the rules but in this case the moderator, smiling, allowed the spontaneous outburst to go on! The applause, breaking through these restraints, meant one thing: this is where the denomination wants to go. Then something else unusual happened – the Moderator, Cindy Bolbach, offered a prayer, thanking God for guiding the assembled to this act, for breaking down the walls dividing people and standing in the way of peace. The thousands of people in the hall bowed their heads in reverence. They knew that something important had happened.
It is not always clear from down on the floor, in the thick of things. But looking back, I see that the PC(USA) General Assembly is a thing of beauty. This church is committed to tearing down walls. Watching the plenary, one witnessed a courageous and heartfelt struggle with things that matter: gay and lesbian ordination and honoring of marriages; benefits for civil union partners; how to respond to state laws that violate the rights of immigrants. With respect to the Israel-Palestine question, the struggle will continue. Other overtures did not fare as well as the MESC report. Even though overtures to divest denomination pension funds — close to 10 million dollars — from Caterpillar (the company manufactures the bulldozers that destroy Palestinian homes and build the separation wall) have been proposed at every General Assembly since 2004 (actually it passed in 2004 and then withdrawn in the face of a juggernaut of institutional Jewish pressure, but that’s another story), the overture failed. In addition, Presbyterians could not bring themselves to approve the overture naming Israel’s policies as Apartheid.
But here is the thing: it is clear to me that all but a small minority of the 36 who voted against that overture in committee (the vote was 16-36) agree that Israel’s actions meet the UN definition of the crime of Apartheid. What drove the vote was not the substance of the overture but rather the belief, as stated in a comment on the vote inserted by the committee, “that dialogue is hampered by words like ‘apartheid.’” It was also clear to me in listening to the debate that, despite the stubborn unwillingness to move to divestment, all but a fringe within the denomination agree that Caterpillar is building machines that illegally and criminally destroy Palestinian life and that the denomination must pressure the company to stop (the Assembly did pass an overture that “denounces” the corporation). The issues are not in question. What is in question for a steadily decreasing percentage — again, this is clear if you are paying attention — is the proper method for action.
To the Presbyterians: learning to love us
Sixty five years ago, Christians, confronted with the horror of the Nazi genocide, began a painful, faithful process of reconciling with the Jewish people. Presbyterians today didn’t choose to be in the difficult position of having to choose between their commitment to justice and preserving their hard-won friendship with the Jews. But the hard fact is that there has been no getting around this conflict. It has come about because of the policies of the State of Israel and the choice, so far, of the American Jewish establishment to adopt a bullying, defensive stance in response to Christian efforts to address the injustice. Under these challenging conditions, you have had to struggle to learn how to love us well and rightly. And that you are doing. The more you call us to account for our sins and challenge us to be true to the values of our tradition, the more you show your commitment to our friendship. The spirit and the specifics of the MESC report are fully in line with Jewish aspirations and beliefs. More than that – in its powerful plea to break down the walls, it takes my people where we urgently need to go today – to tear down the walls – both psychological and physical – that we have erected between ourselves and the people with whom we share a land and a common history. For thousands of years, our survival as Jews depended on building walls. Now it depends on tearing them down.
In commissioning and producing this precious and faithful document of “Breaking Down the Walls” you have demonstrated your love for us. It is love in the deepest, truest sense – love as Jesus and Paul teach us to love – love the way Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah taught us when they spoke truth to power and reminded us of our responsibility to our fellow creatures and to the earth itself. In going back into the fray, year after year, to consider divestment from the companies that are participating in our sin, and to call us to account for building an apartheid state in full view of the world, you are loving us well. This year, the arguments marshaled against these faithful actions of the denomination, calling them biased and unbalanced, claiming that they will disrupt your “partnership” with us, simply sounded tired.
Minneapolis is the beginning of the end of all that.
Learn more about Mark from his blog:
His assessment is accurate and hopeful. But the road ahead is tortuous and long and forces of reaction and inertia lurk everywhere.
HOPE has two components: 1) Anger and 2) the Courage to make a contribution.
Report from the Presbyterian General Assembly – Part 1
July 12, 2010 at 9:32 am
Something Wonderful Happened
I’ve just returned from Minneapolis, having attended the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA at the invitation of the denomination’s Israel Palestine Mission Network. The PC(USA) is at the epicenter of the struggle of the Christian community in the U.S. to come to terms with the challenge of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
A victory had already been achieved before the start of the Assembly. Overtures from presbyteries from around the country urging action on justice for Palestinians would amount to over 40% of the actions considered by the Assembly. These included revisiting the 2004 decision to undertake phased divestment from companies implicated in the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and an overture affirming that Israel’s actions meet the United Nations definition for the crime of Apartheid. A centerpiece of Presbyterian actions was the call to approve the report of the Middle East Study Committee. The MESC, commissioned by the 2008 General Assembly, had produced a 170 page report entitled “Breaking Down the Walls.” The report documents the committee’s first-hand observation of the Israeli occupation’s impact on Palestinian society and includes specific recommendations, including urging the U.S. government to make military aid to Israel contingent on ending the occupation.
Predictably, the forces of opposition had gathered. As early as February of this year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked the report, calling it a “poisonous document by the Presbyterian Church [that] will be nothing short of a declaration of war on Israel.” This broadside by the Los Angeles-based Jewish advocacy group went on to declare that the report “shakes the foundations of interfaith relations.” This is the tack that has been taken for years by the mainstream Jewish community – both secular organizations like Wiesenthal as well as the religious denominations — claiming that any questions about Israel’s policies or the Zionist project itself partakes of anti-Semitism. The charge of anti-Semitism and the prospect of a disruption in the “interfaith partnership” has been effective in stifling the discourse and in thwarting actions directed at Israel’s policies. Implicit and sometime explicit in these statements is the threat that such “unfriendly” behavior by Christians will result in the removal of Jewish friendship. This strategy has intensified in recent years in response to efforts by church denominations to take a principled stand on the Israel-Palestine issue. Most recently, the biweekly Christian Century published an article by Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine, professors at Vanderbilt Seminary. Appearing the week preceding the PC(USA) General Assembly, the article, entitled “Habits of Anti-Judaism,” strongly critiqued the MESC report. In the opening to a letter to the Christian Century I wrote the following:
“The intent of the Presbyterian Middle East Study Committee Report “Breaking Down the Walls” is clear: “to break down these walls that stand in the way of the realization of God’s peaceful and just kingdom.” But in their critique of the report published in your June 29 issue, Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt Seminary strike at the heart of this message. They ask us to believe that the report advocates “a historical narrative that points indirectly to a single state—a new social body—in which a Palestinian majority displaces Jews.” In a shocking distortion of the Study Group’s evocation of Ephesians 2:14, they claim that “’Breaking down the walls’ in order to form ‘one new humanity in the place of two’ evokes old echoes of theological supersessionism and transposes them into a political key.” “Old habits die hard,” lament Smith and Levine. But it is the habit of crying anti-Semitism whenever Jewish sensibilities are disturbed or the actions of the State of Israel are questioned that we must urgently confront.” (Full text of the letter.)
The aim of the article was clear – to strengthen the hand of those who wanted to prevent passage of the report. And why not? This is a time-honored approach — it has always worked. I feared that it would prove just as effective in this case. I arrived in Minneapolis convinced that, except for the efforts of a courageous but small and embattled minority within the denomination, the natural commitment to social justice and support for the oppressed on the part of most Presbyterians would again be trumped by concern for preserving the relationship with the Jewish community. I was betting that the tactics of the Wiesenthal Center and the arguments of Smith and Levine would serve, as they always have, to muzzle the conversation and block actions that might offend Jewish sensibilities or be perceived as hostile to the Jewish state.
A thing of beauty
I was wrong. Yes, the concerns about the feelings of Jews when Israel is “attacked” are still there, and they exert a powerful pull on Presbyterians’ decisions. But something wonderful happened last week in Minneapolis.
I watched as the committee charged with studying “Breaking Down the Walls,” and recommending action to the GA debated the matter. I listened to the arguments for and against approval of the report. Those in favor passionately talked about the suffering of the Palestinians under occupation. Those against spoke just as passionately about the report’s seeming “anti-Israel” bias, claiming that to approve the report would be to cut off dialogue with the Jewish community. I noted what seemed like a universe of disagreement between the two positions. I despaired that anyone who, unlike the study group itself, had not seen the occupation with his or her own eyes would understand that the report was not biased – that it was simply telling the truth and recommending that the church respond accordingly.
But something happened. The committee clearly wanted to find a way to have the report adopted. A group from the committee stayed up all night to craft a number of changes. Problems with perceived bias against Israel were fixed. The obligatory language about Israel’s right to exist was inserted. None of these changes touched the faithful witness and prophetic heart of the report. While strongly asserting the church’s commitment to Israel’s security and wellbeing, the Study Committee’s report as presented to the General Assembly clearly presents the narrative of Palestinian dispossession and suffering. It asserts that Israel’s actions, illegal and in violation of international law, are an “enduring threat to peace in the region.” It receives the Palestinian Kairos document, a courageous and heartfelt call of Palestinian Christians “from the heart of Palestinian suffering” to the churches of the world, and recommends it for study by Presbyterians. It calls on the U.S. government to end aid to Israel unless the country stops settlement expansion in Palestinian territories.
The report came before the 730+ commissions on Friday June 9 and was approved by a vote of 82%. When the results were displayed on the screen, the assembled broke into applause – which is against the rules but in this case the moderator, smiling, allowed the spontaneous outburst to go on! The applause, breaking through these restraints, meant one thing: this is where the denomination wants to go. Then something else unusual happened – the Moderator, Cindy Bolbach, offered a prayer, thanking God for guiding the assembled to this act, for breaking down the walls dividing people and standing in the way of peace. The thousands of people in the hall bowed their heads in reverence. They knew that something important had happened.
It is not always clear from down on the floor, in the thick of things. But looking back, I see that the PC(USA) General Assembly is a thing of beauty. This church is committed to tearing down walls. Watching the plenary, one witnessed a courageous and heartfelt struggle with things that matter: gay and lesbian ordination and honoring of marriages; benefits for civil union partners; how to respond to state laws that violate the rights of immigrants. With respect to the Israel-Palestine question, the struggle will continue. Other overtures did not fare as well as the MESC report. Even though overtures to divest denomination pension funds — close to 10 million dollars — from Caterpillar (the company manufactures the bulldozers that destroy Palestinian homes and build the separation wall) have been proposed at every General Assembly since 2004 (actually it passed in 2004 and then withdrawn in the face of a juggernaut of institutional Jewish pressure, but that’s another story), the overture failed. In addition, Presbyterians could not bring themselves to approve the overture naming Israel’s policies as Apartheid.
But here is the thing: it is clear to me that all but a small minority of the 36 who voted against that overture in committee (the vote was 16-36) agree that Israel’s actions meet the UN definition of the crime of Apartheid. What drove the vote was not the substance of the overture but rather the belief, as stated in a comment on the vote inserted by the committee, “that dialogue is hampered by words like ‘apartheid.’” It was also clear to me in listening to the debate that, despite the stubborn unwillingness to move to divestment, all but a fringe within the denomination agree that Caterpillar is building machines that illegally and criminally destroy Palestinian life and that the denomination must pressure the company to stop (the Assembly did pass an overture that “denounces” the corporation). The issues are not in question. What is in question for a steadily decreasing percentage — again, this is clear if you are paying attention — is the proper method for action.
To the Presbyterians: learning to love us
Sixty five years ago, Christians, confronted with the horror of the Nazi genocide, began a painful, faithful process of reconciling with the Jewish people. Presbyterians today didn’t choose to be in the difficult position of having to choose between their commitment to justice and preserving their hard-won friendship with the Jews. But the hard fact is that there has been no getting around this conflict. It has come about because of the policies of the State of Israel and the choice, so far, of the American Jewish establishment to adopt a bullying, defensive stance in response to Christian efforts to address the injustice. Under these challenging conditions, you have had to struggle to learn how to love us well and rightly. And that you are doing. The more you call us to account for our sins and challenge us to be true to the values of our tradition, the more you show your commitment to our friendship. The spirit and the specifics of the MESC report are fully in line with Jewish aspirations and beliefs. More than that – in its powerful plea to break down the walls, it takes my people where we urgently need to go today – to tear down the walls – both psychological and physical – that we have erected between ourselves and the people with whom we share a land and a common history. For thousands of years, our survival as Jews depended on building walls. Now it depends on tearing them down.
In commissioning and producing this precious and faithful document of “Breaking Down the Walls” you have demonstrated your love for us. It is love in the deepest, truest sense – love as Jesus and Paul teach us to love – love the way Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah taught us when they spoke truth to power and reminded us of our responsibility to our fellow creatures and to the earth itself. In going back into the fray, year after year, to consider divestment from the companies that are participating in our sin, and to call us to account for building an apartheid state in full view of the world, you are loving us well. This year, the arguments marshaled against these faithful actions of the denomination, calling them biased and unbalanced, claiming that they will disrupt your “partnership” with us, simply sounded tired.
Minneapolis is the beginning of the end of all that.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Is President Obama Caving in?
July 8, 2010...8:10 pm
Post Columnist Milbank Calls Obama-Bibi Meeting A “Surrender”Jump to Comments
by James M. Wall
Barack Obama swept into the White House, thanks, in part, to his political and oratorial skills.
He should have learned during his campaign for the US Senate that what he says about race relations at a Southern Illinois county fair will be reported in the African American wards in Chicago.
So what happened to those skills when he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu at the White House this week?
One day after what he described as an “excellent” White House meeting with Netanyahu, President Obama turned his back on the rest of the world, and focused tightly on confronting “the anxiety some Israelis feel toward him.”
The President was determined to reassure the Israeli public. But did he pause, even for a moment, to consider how his answers would sound to that part of the Israeli public that desperately wants him to stand up to Bibi?
Did he think how demeaning his answers were to Americans who want their president to be their president, and not pander to the prime minister of a foreign nation?
Did he stop to think that his answers would be harmful and offensive to the Arab/Muslim world? Worse yet, did he care?
Obama was interviewed by Israel’s Channel 2 network reporter Yonit Levy one day after his meeting with Netanyahu.
The story of the interview appeared in the Jerusalem newspaper, Ha’aretz.
Obama responded to Levi’s question by saying that some of the anxiety may stem from the fact that his “middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”
“Creates suspicion?” Please, Mr. President, the name Hussein is one you have previously said you carry proudly. What purpose is there in linking “Hussein” to “suspicion”. That is Fox News talk and we know what you think of Fox News.
The name Hussein “creates suspicion” only to small minded people who hate and fear Muslims. It is beneath Barack Obama to fall into that Fox News bigoted mindset by pandering to an Israeli television audience, most of whom know pandering when they see it.
Unfortunately, the President was just warming up. He went on to brag about the fact that two of his top staff members are Jewish:
Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors.
The advisor, whom he does not name, is, of course, David Alexrod.
And I am reasonably certain that Alexrod would not have approved of the President Obama’s final comment on this topic:
My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the US Senate.
That closeness did have a lot to do with the start of your national career, Mr. President, but it is not something you brag about when you claim to be working for a “peace agreement” between Israel and the Palestinians.
Barack Obama has been in this political business long enough to know that what is said on Israeli television, does not stay on Israeli television. You are not in Las Vegas anymore, Mr. President.
Bragging about key advisors being Jewish and commenting like a political reporter about the start of your political career would not have impressed Israelis from the hard right political wing of Israeli politics.
Nor were they impressed by the President of the United States pandering to the Israeli prime minister who has yet to give the President even the slightest concession in negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.
Netanyahu made that clear even before he left on his triumphant return to Israel. Reuters reported:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled on Thursday he would not extend beyond September a 10-month moratorium on new housing starts in settlements in the West Bank.
“I think we’ve done enough. Let’s get on with the talks,” he said, when asked in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York whether he would extend the limited freeze he put in place to coax the Palestinians into peace negotiations.
Bibi Netanyahu does not have the slightest intention of making concessions to the Palestinians. Why should he? He has the US Congress in his back pocket. The American public remains under the sway of a decades-old Hasbara campaign that has created a false narrative that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East.
That narrative has been around a long time and its grip on American consciousness is appalling. It is a narrative that should be very much in President Obama’s mind as he confronts Netanyahu’s hard line stance.
Geoffrey Wawro explains how Israel’s power over the US has grown dramatically in his book, Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East:
Already in 1948, the Truman administration regretted the arrogance and brutality of Jewish ethnic cleansing in the Arab parts of Palestine but did nothing about it because of Cold War rivalry and fear of what Truman called the “pressure boys” of the Israeli lobby.
Each subsequent administration cried foul–”Henry, they can’t do that to us again,” Nixon wailed to Kissinger in 1973–but failed to crack down on Israeli foul play because of the same worries that creased Truman’s brow. (page 606)
The American media has, of course, long been under the control of Israel’s Hasbara (Hebrew for propaganda or explanation), but of late there have been signs that change may be on the way.
How else to explain a surprising column written by the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank, under the heading, Netanyahu hears no discouraging words from Obama.
A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House. Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.
That is what we might refer to as an “ouch” opening paragraph. Read on, there is more:
Four months ago, the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration’s actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover.
So on Tuesday, Obama, routed and humiliated by his Israeli counterpart, invited Netanyahu back to the White House for what might be called the Oil of Olay Summit: It was all about saving face.
The president, beaming in the Oval Office with a dour Netanyahu at his side, gushed about the “extraordinary friendship between our two countries.” He performed the Full Monty of pro-Israel pandering: “The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable” . . .
For that small number of readers for whom “the Full Monty” might not be a familiar movie and play title which has given rise to a term now widely used, suffice it to say that not only does Milbank’s column evoke the image of surrender, he also manages to slip in a term that five years ago would never have made it past the Post’s Hasbara copy desk.
That my friends, is progress toward peace, real peace, not the peace going nowhere around a negotiating table, but progress toward peace that has begun to shatter the Hasbara grip on American politics.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Possibly related posts
Post Columnist Milbank Calls Obama-Bibi Meeting A “Surrender”Jump to Comments
by James M. Wall
Barack Obama swept into the White House, thanks, in part, to his political and oratorial skills.
He should have learned during his campaign for the US Senate that what he says about race relations at a Southern Illinois county fair will be reported in the African American wards in Chicago.
So what happened to those skills when he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu at the White House this week?
One day after what he described as an “excellent” White House meeting with Netanyahu, President Obama turned his back on the rest of the world, and focused tightly on confronting “the anxiety some Israelis feel toward him.”
The President was determined to reassure the Israeli public. But did he pause, even for a moment, to consider how his answers would sound to that part of the Israeli public that desperately wants him to stand up to Bibi?
Did he think how demeaning his answers were to Americans who want their president to be their president, and not pander to the prime minister of a foreign nation?
Did he stop to think that his answers would be harmful and offensive to the Arab/Muslim world? Worse yet, did he care?
Obama was interviewed by Israel’s Channel 2 network reporter Yonit Levy one day after his meeting with Netanyahu.
The story of the interview appeared in the Jerusalem newspaper, Ha’aretz.
Obama responded to Levi’s question by saying that some of the anxiety may stem from the fact that his “middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”
“Creates suspicion?” Please, Mr. President, the name Hussein is one you have previously said you carry proudly. What purpose is there in linking “Hussein” to “suspicion”. That is Fox News talk and we know what you think of Fox News.
The name Hussein “creates suspicion” only to small minded people who hate and fear Muslims. It is beneath Barack Obama to fall into that Fox News bigoted mindset by pandering to an Israeli television audience, most of whom know pandering when they see it.
Unfortunately, the President was just warming up. He went on to brag about the fact that two of his top staff members are Jewish:
Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors.
The advisor, whom he does not name, is, of course, David Alexrod.
And I am reasonably certain that Alexrod would not have approved of the President Obama’s final comment on this topic:
My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the US Senate.
That closeness did have a lot to do with the start of your national career, Mr. President, but it is not something you brag about when you claim to be working for a “peace agreement” between Israel and the Palestinians.
Barack Obama has been in this political business long enough to know that what is said on Israeli television, does not stay on Israeli television. You are not in Las Vegas anymore, Mr. President.
Bragging about key advisors being Jewish and commenting like a political reporter about the start of your political career would not have impressed Israelis from the hard right political wing of Israeli politics.
Nor were they impressed by the President of the United States pandering to the Israeli prime minister who has yet to give the President even the slightest concession in negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.
Netanyahu made that clear even before he left on his triumphant return to Israel. Reuters reported:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled on Thursday he would not extend beyond September a 10-month moratorium on new housing starts in settlements in the West Bank.
“I think we’ve done enough. Let’s get on with the talks,” he said, when asked in an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York whether he would extend the limited freeze he put in place to coax the Palestinians into peace negotiations.
Bibi Netanyahu does not have the slightest intention of making concessions to the Palestinians. Why should he? He has the US Congress in his back pocket. The American public remains under the sway of a decades-old Hasbara campaign that has created a false narrative that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East.
That narrative has been around a long time and its grip on American consciousness is appalling. It is a narrative that should be very much in President Obama’s mind as he confronts Netanyahu’s hard line stance.
Geoffrey Wawro explains how Israel’s power over the US has grown dramatically in his book, Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East:
Already in 1948, the Truman administration regretted the arrogance and brutality of Jewish ethnic cleansing in the Arab parts of Palestine but did nothing about it because of Cold War rivalry and fear of what Truman called the “pressure boys” of the Israeli lobby.
Each subsequent administration cried foul–”Henry, they can’t do that to us again,” Nixon wailed to Kissinger in 1973–but failed to crack down on Israeli foul play because of the same worries that creased Truman’s brow. (page 606)
The American media has, of course, long been under the control of Israel’s Hasbara (Hebrew for propaganda or explanation), but of late there have been signs that change may be on the way.
How else to explain a surprising column written by the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank, under the heading, Netanyahu hears no discouraging words from Obama.
A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House. Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.
That is what we might refer to as an “ouch” opening paragraph. Read on, there is more:
Four months ago, the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration’s actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover.
So on Tuesday, Obama, routed and humiliated by his Israeli counterpart, invited Netanyahu back to the White House for what might be called the Oil of Olay Summit: It was all about saving face.
The president, beaming in the Oval Office with a dour Netanyahu at his side, gushed about the “extraordinary friendship between our two countries.” He performed the Full Monty of pro-Israel pandering: “The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable” . . .
For that small number of readers for whom “the Full Monty” might not be a familiar movie and play title which has given rise to a term now widely used, suffice it to say that not only does Milbank’s column evoke the image of surrender, he also manages to slip in a term that five years ago would never have made it past the Post’s Hasbara copy desk.
That my friends, is progress toward peace, real peace, not the peace going nowhere around a negotiating table, but progress toward peace that has begun to shatter the Hasbara grip on American politics.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Possibly related posts
Sunday, July 4, 2010
PC(USA) Moment of Truth
Friend,
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is meeting presently in Minneapolis, among other things, to decide what to do with the Middle East Study Committee's report.
James Wall, a former editor of the Christian Century, has been following the ISraeli/Palestinian conflict closely for years. Here is his assessment of the stakes the descendants of John Calvin are facing this week. (JRK)
July 4, 2010...3:04 pm
219th Presbyterian Assembly Faces Its Moment of Truth
by James M. Wall
Presbyterian General Assembly delegates are in Minneapolis this week for their national gathering–held every two years–discussing, praying, arguing, and finally voting, on a wide variety of issues that will determine how the heirs of John Calvin will face the future.
This 219th General Assembly runs from July 3 through July 10.
In a nice bit of timing, John Calvin’s 500th birthday is celebrated on the final day of this year’s Assembly.
At some point during this week, the delegates (commissioners) will vote to approve or disapprove–parts or all–a report from their own Middle East Study Committee (MESC), a report two years in the making. written by a cross-section of church members, officials and clergy.
The MESC vote will be a moment of truth for the 219th Presbyterian General Assembly. Decisions made in Minneapolis will tell the world where the Presbyterian Church, USA, stands on Israel’s military occupation of 4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
The question before the PCUSA delegates will be simple:
Do we place our moral stamp of approval on the status quo, and call for more dialogue with our American Jewish friends, or do we say to the world that the status quo is immoral, unsustainable and a blatant rejection of the finest traditions of the Jewish faith.
What brought the PCUSA to this moment of truth?
If you want to be ready to fully understand this background and what will be happening in Minneapolis this week, it helps to have a crib sheet.
The Israel/Palestine Mission Network provides the crib sheet on its website, complete with daily updates during the Assembly.
Noushin Framke is writing a daily blog on the IPMN page. Here is a sample from the first day of the Asembly:
Just got back from the moderator election – went so late cuz there were 6 candidates and then we had a hanging chad/diebold issue – voting machines were not working and it took a while to fix the issue – it is not 11 pm and they just adjourned.
Cindy Bolbach from Arlington, VA elected as new moderator – an elder [laity], not clergy – she sure has a keen sense of timing and humor – I like her; she gets it – reminds me of Bea Arthur! and to the question of what about civil unions, she said i am for it but this church is not! Yup – well said.
Jeff Halper [Jewish activist who runs the anti-house demolition NGO in Palestine] did a great talk today on “Is it really apartheid?” He just gets better and better. I recorded the audio – i will see if I can post it on the site soon. [Italics added]
These Assembly meetings can be invigorating and tense. At its previous national meeting in 2008, the General Assembly ran into strong opposition from supporters of Israel inside and outside the denomination who forced the creation of a Middle East Study Committee (MESC). At the time, this was seen as a delaying tactic described as a victory for supporters of Israel.
Two years later the delay is over and the 219th Assembly is in session. The MESC has done its work and is ready with its report.
Members of the Committee were appointed by the three most recent PC (USA) moderators.
The Middle East Study Group spent the past two years in meetings and study sessions, supplemented by trips to Israel/Palestine, where committee members met with both Israeli and Palestinian religious and secular leaders.
The MESC Report will bring eight recommendations to the Minneapolis meeting
A special GA committee, “Committee 14″, will assume legislative control of the MESC report, formally presenting it to the entire Assembly, where it will either be adopted, modified, or rejected.
Delegates who arrived in Minneapolis determined to support the CMES proposals have the additional backing of almost all of the living moderators, both lay and clergy of the PCUSA who presided over the denomination from 1976 through 2010.
These previous moderators sent a “Support Letter for the Middle East Study Committee”, signed by 17 previous moderators, endorsing the findings of the MESC Report and asking delegates to support the recommendations.
This Assembly arrives for its work after the United Kingdom’s National Methodist Conference held its meeting June 24 to July 1 in Portsmouth, England. Delegates to that Conference approved eleven resolutions in a report entitled “Justice for Palestine and Israel”.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, congratulated the Methodists for adopting “important and forward looking resolutions” and for action by the delegates that
called on the Methodist people “to support and engage with [the] boycott of Israeli goods” emanating from illegal settlements as their response to a call of the WCC in 2009, supported by Palestinian Christians in the “Kairos document” and a growing number of Jewish organizations, both inside Israel and worldwide.
The Conference also called for a full arms embargo as an important step towards a just peace in the region.
In addition to this favorable action from the British Methodists and the WCC, the Presbyterians in Minneapolis, should they support the findings of their CMES resolutions, will find considerable support outside the churches for favorable action.
One recent example of an important media voice speaking out against the Israeli policies comes from New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, who recently wrote from Gaza that Israel’s Occupation is “morally repugnant”.
In a second New York Times column, also written from Gaza, Kristof explored the tunnel system that has been getting around Israel’s blockade by trucking in supplies and materials through tunnels dug along the Egyptian/Gaza border.
After his visit to the tunnels, Kristof wrote that Israel should halt its blockade.
No amount of hasbara propaganda can resist the power of voices in the US, like an aroused church public and enlightened journalists like Kristof who have broken through the hasbara campaign barrier.
There is an encouraging parallel between a journalist of Kristof’s stature and the Presbyterian CMES members who made their own site visits to Palestine where they reached the conclusions that now appear in the CMES report to the General Assembly.
Hasbara as a tactic is losing some of its bite, yet another reminder of the wisdom in the phrase often used by Martin Luther King, Jr., “truth crushed to earth, will rise again”.
For those still unfamiliar with the term hasbara, Jane Adas provides a valuable description of the term in an essay she wrote for the November-December, 2009, issue of Link, a publication of Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU):
Hasbara literally means “explanation” and is often translated as “public diplomacy,” but can perhaps best be thought of as problem solving through marketing techniques, like rebranding (Israel as the victim of Hamas’ aggression), product placement (hide the Goldstone Report in the darkest, least-frequented corner of the shop), and promotional lingo (“The side that seems to want peace more will win…” from The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary).
Having identified the problem to be solved concerning Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon as Israel’s failure to explain its case, [Prime Minister] Netanyahu, soon after assuming office in February 2008, formed a National Information Directorate within the Prime Minister’s Office tasked with planning the media campaign for the Gaza operation and headed by “hasbara czar” Yarden Vatikay.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a strong pro-Israeli NGO in California, headed by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, has been a leading hasbara opponent of the MESC report.
Knowing the report was being developed, the Wiesenthal Center launched an all-out hasbara attack on the MESC report, long before the report was written.
The Wiesenthal Center sent out alerts to its own constituency and to members of the Presbyterian Church, especially delegates to the GA, urging them to send e-mails critical of the yet-to-be published report, to the Louisville headquarters of the denominations.
Members of the academic community are often recruited as hasbara “agents” for reasons future psychological studies will have to determine. No doubt “Friends of Israel” faculty colleagues, either from ethnic, academic or religious motivations, are helpful in making Israel’s case in long chats in the faculty lounge or at academic conferences. They may even have traveled together to visit Israel.
I earlier commented on the essay that appeared in the Christian Century before the start of this current General Assembly. The essay was written by Vanderbilt University Divinity School professors Ted A. Smith and Amy-Jill Levine.
If the delegates want to read a counter theological argument, supporting the CMES report, delivered without venom, I suggest they read a letter from my Jewish friend and colleague, Mark Braverman, which he has submitted to the Christian Century in response to the Smith-Levine essay.
Here is the opening portion of Mark’s letter:
The intent of the Presbyterian Middle East Study Group Report “Breaking Down the Walls” is clear: “To break down these walls that stand in the way of the realization of God’s peaceful and just kingdom.”
But in their critique of the report published in your June 29 issue, Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University, strike at the heart of this message. They ask us to believe that the report advocates “a historical narrative that points indirectly to a single state—a new social body—in which a Palestinian majority displaces Jews.”
In a shocking distortion of the Study Group’s evocation of Ephesians 2:14, they claim that “’Breaking down the walls’ in order to form ‘one new humanity in the place of two’ evokes old echoes of theological supersessionism and transposes them into a political key.”
“Old habits die hard,” lament Smith and Levine. But it is the habit of crying anti-Semitism whenever Jewish sensibilities are disturbed or the actions of the State of Israel are questioned that we must urgently confront.
Before you vote in Minneapolis this week, you sons and daughters of John Calvin, read the entire text of Mark Braverman”s letter, which is posted here.
Years from now, when you remember this week, something tells me you will be grateful that Mark Braverman, a Jewish author, shared with us his timely reading of Ephesians 2:14.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is meeting presently in Minneapolis, among other things, to decide what to do with the Middle East Study Committee's report.
James Wall, a former editor of the Christian Century, has been following the ISraeli/Palestinian conflict closely for years. Here is his assessment of the stakes the descendants of John Calvin are facing this week. (JRK)
July 4, 2010...3:04 pm
219th Presbyterian Assembly Faces Its Moment of Truth
by James M. Wall
Presbyterian General Assembly delegates are in Minneapolis this week for their national gathering–held every two years–discussing, praying, arguing, and finally voting, on a wide variety of issues that will determine how the heirs of John Calvin will face the future.
This 219th General Assembly runs from July 3 through July 10.
In a nice bit of timing, John Calvin’s 500th birthday is celebrated on the final day of this year’s Assembly.
At some point during this week, the delegates (commissioners) will vote to approve or disapprove–parts or all–a report from their own Middle East Study Committee (MESC), a report two years in the making. written by a cross-section of church members, officials and clergy.
The MESC vote will be a moment of truth for the 219th Presbyterian General Assembly. Decisions made in Minneapolis will tell the world where the Presbyterian Church, USA, stands on Israel’s military occupation of 4 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
The question before the PCUSA delegates will be simple:
Do we place our moral stamp of approval on the status quo, and call for more dialogue with our American Jewish friends, or do we say to the world that the status quo is immoral, unsustainable and a blatant rejection of the finest traditions of the Jewish faith.
What brought the PCUSA to this moment of truth?
If you want to be ready to fully understand this background and what will be happening in Minneapolis this week, it helps to have a crib sheet.
The Israel/Palestine Mission Network provides the crib sheet on its website, complete with daily updates during the Assembly.
Noushin Framke is writing a daily blog on the IPMN page. Here is a sample from the first day of the Asembly:
Just got back from the moderator election – went so late cuz there were 6 candidates and then we had a hanging chad/diebold issue – voting machines were not working and it took a while to fix the issue – it is not 11 pm and they just adjourned.
Cindy Bolbach from Arlington, VA elected as new moderator – an elder [laity], not clergy – she sure has a keen sense of timing and humor – I like her; she gets it – reminds me of Bea Arthur! and to the question of what about civil unions, she said i am for it but this church is not! Yup – well said.
Jeff Halper [Jewish activist who runs the anti-house demolition NGO in Palestine] did a great talk today on “Is it really apartheid?” He just gets better and better. I recorded the audio – i will see if I can post it on the site soon. [Italics added]
These Assembly meetings can be invigorating and tense. At its previous national meeting in 2008, the General Assembly ran into strong opposition from supporters of Israel inside and outside the denomination who forced the creation of a Middle East Study Committee (MESC). At the time, this was seen as a delaying tactic described as a victory for supporters of Israel.
Two years later the delay is over and the 219th Assembly is in session. The MESC has done its work and is ready with its report.
Members of the Committee were appointed by the three most recent PC (USA) moderators.
The Middle East Study Group spent the past two years in meetings and study sessions, supplemented by trips to Israel/Palestine, where committee members met with both Israeli and Palestinian religious and secular leaders.
The MESC Report will bring eight recommendations to the Minneapolis meeting
A special GA committee, “Committee 14″, will assume legislative control of the MESC report, formally presenting it to the entire Assembly, where it will either be adopted, modified, or rejected.
Delegates who arrived in Minneapolis determined to support the CMES proposals have the additional backing of almost all of the living moderators, both lay and clergy of the PCUSA who presided over the denomination from 1976 through 2010.
These previous moderators sent a “Support Letter for the Middle East Study Committee”, signed by 17 previous moderators, endorsing the findings of the MESC Report and asking delegates to support the recommendations.
This Assembly arrives for its work after the United Kingdom’s National Methodist Conference held its meeting June 24 to July 1 in Portsmouth, England. Delegates to that Conference approved eleven resolutions in a report entitled “Justice for Palestine and Israel”.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, congratulated the Methodists for adopting “important and forward looking resolutions” and for action by the delegates that
called on the Methodist people “to support and engage with [the] boycott of Israeli goods” emanating from illegal settlements as their response to a call of the WCC in 2009, supported by Palestinian Christians in the “Kairos document” and a growing number of Jewish organizations, both inside Israel and worldwide.
The Conference also called for a full arms embargo as an important step towards a just peace in the region.
In addition to this favorable action from the British Methodists and the WCC, the Presbyterians in Minneapolis, should they support the findings of their CMES resolutions, will find considerable support outside the churches for favorable action.
One recent example of an important media voice speaking out against the Israeli policies comes from New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, who recently wrote from Gaza that Israel’s Occupation is “morally repugnant”.
In a second New York Times column, also written from Gaza, Kristof explored the tunnel system that has been getting around Israel’s blockade by trucking in supplies and materials through tunnels dug along the Egyptian/Gaza border.
After his visit to the tunnels, Kristof wrote that Israel should halt its blockade.
No amount of hasbara propaganda can resist the power of voices in the US, like an aroused church public and enlightened journalists like Kristof who have broken through the hasbara campaign barrier.
There is an encouraging parallel between a journalist of Kristof’s stature and the Presbyterian CMES members who made their own site visits to Palestine where they reached the conclusions that now appear in the CMES report to the General Assembly.
Hasbara as a tactic is losing some of its bite, yet another reminder of the wisdom in the phrase often used by Martin Luther King, Jr., “truth crushed to earth, will rise again”.
For those still unfamiliar with the term hasbara, Jane Adas provides a valuable description of the term in an essay she wrote for the November-December, 2009, issue of Link, a publication of Americans for Middle East Understanding (AMEU):
Hasbara literally means “explanation” and is often translated as “public diplomacy,” but can perhaps best be thought of as problem solving through marketing techniques, like rebranding (Israel as the victim of Hamas’ aggression), product placement (hide the Goldstone Report in the darkest, least-frequented corner of the shop), and promotional lingo (“The side that seems to want peace more will win…” from The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary).
Having identified the problem to be solved concerning Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon as Israel’s failure to explain its case, [Prime Minister] Netanyahu, soon after assuming office in February 2008, formed a National Information Directorate within the Prime Minister’s Office tasked with planning the media campaign for the Gaza operation and headed by “hasbara czar” Yarden Vatikay.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a strong pro-Israeli NGO in California, headed by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, has been a leading hasbara opponent of the MESC report.
Knowing the report was being developed, the Wiesenthal Center launched an all-out hasbara attack on the MESC report, long before the report was written.
The Wiesenthal Center sent out alerts to its own constituency and to members of the Presbyterian Church, especially delegates to the GA, urging them to send e-mails critical of the yet-to-be published report, to the Louisville headquarters of the denominations.
Members of the academic community are often recruited as hasbara “agents” for reasons future psychological studies will have to determine. No doubt “Friends of Israel” faculty colleagues, either from ethnic, academic or religious motivations, are helpful in making Israel’s case in long chats in the faculty lounge or at academic conferences. They may even have traveled together to visit Israel.
I earlier commented on the essay that appeared in the Christian Century before the start of this current General Assembly. The essay was written by Vanderbilt University Divinity School professors Ted A. Smith and Amy-Jill Levine.
If the delegates want to read a counter theological argument, supporting the CMES report, delivered without venom, I suggest they read a letter from my Jewish friend and colleague, Mark Braverman, which he has submitted to the Christian Century in response to the Smith-Levine essay.
Here is the opening portion of Mark’s letter:
The intent of the Presbyterian Middle East Study Group Report “Breaking Down the Walls” is clear: “To break down these walls that stand in the way of the realization of God’s peaceful and just kingdom.”
But in their critique of the report published in your June 29 issue, Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University, strike at the heart of this message. They ask us to believe that the report advocates “a historical narrative that points indirectly to a single state—a new social body—in which a Palestinian majority displaces Jews.”
In a shocking distortion of the Study Group’s evocation of Ephesians 2:14, they claim that “’Breaking down the walls’ in order to form ‘one new humanity in the place of two’ evokes old echoes of theological supersessionism and transposes them into a political key.”
“Old habits die hard,” lament Smith and Levine. But it is the habit of crying anti-Semitism whenever Jewish sensibilities are disturbed or the actions of the State of Israel are questioned that we must urgently confront.
Before you vote in Minneapolis this week, you sons and daughters of John Calvin, read the entire text of Mark Braverman”s letter, which is posted here.
Years from now, when you remember this week, something tells me you will be grateful that Mark Braverman, a Jewish author, shared with us his timely reading of Ephesians 2:14.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Marlin and Sally Vis Weigh In
Friends,
Marlin and Sally, friends of FPI, divide their time between Michigan and the Middel (especially Isr/Pal). Here is their fresh "take" on conversations they are having with Jews and Palestinians "on the ground". JRK
Greetings!
Sally and I are preparing to leave for Jerusalem next week Tuesday, June 29. We are excited to be going back to our "second home." We love the people of this place, all the people, and miss them when we are in the States. We miss the place as well. It is a wonderful, mysterious, historic, conflicted and confusing land, and we love it and are drawn into it, because this is the place where God chose to flesh into and rise out of. You have to come with us some day. You just have to! (Look at details for trips in 2011.)
We hear from our many friends in the region that nothing much has changed, except to get worse. Our Jewish friends worry about the internal strife that is breaking out from under the surface and is threatening to further divide the Jewish population of Israel. The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox are conducting daily protests, some which lead to ugly confrontation with Israeli police. The rest of the population is thoroughly fed up with their separatist ways and this tension is becoming more and more a problem within the Jewish population. Messianic Christians (Jewish people who claim Jesus as the Messiah, but still observe Jewish custom) are caught in the middle, often targeted by other Jewish people as traitors, or at best, "lesser Jewish." Pray for these brothers and sisters.
Israel's decision to ease the Gaza blockade is helpful and hopeful, even though we know it is a reluctant move that comes on the heels of the tragedy off the Gaza Coast. What we hear from our Palestinian friends is that this will help relieve some tension in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but only a little, and only for a little while. Such is life for a people living under oppression. The primary flash point for Palestinians is the demolition of homes in East Jerusalem, and the expansion of settlements in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Our Christian brothers and sisters are caught up in both these issues and are as affected by them along with everyone else. We hear from these brothers and sisters that relations with Muslims continue to deteriorate as the pressure of the occupation takes its toll. When you can't strike out against your oppressor, then you strike out at those you can. Both our Christian and Muslim friends grieve this development, and we with them. Please pray for peace between all warring factions - the peace of Christ!
Twenty people will travel with us as we visit holy sites and with God's holy people. Pray for us. Pray for each person coming with us. Pray for the people we will meet along the way. Pray for eyes to see and ears to hear.
Visit our blog site for the latest posts.
Blessings and peace,
marlin and sally vis
Marlin and Sally, friends of FPI, divide their time between Michigan and the Middel (especially Isr/Pal). Here is their fresh "take" on conversations they are having with Jews and Palestinians "on the ground". JRK
Greetings!
Sally and I are preparing to leave for Jerusalem next week Tuesday, June 29. We are excited to be going back to our "second home." We love the people of this place, all the people, and miss them when we are in the States. We miss the place as well. It is a wonderful, mysterious, historic, conflicted and confusing land, and we love it and are drawn into it, because this is the place where God chose to flesh into and rise out of. You have to come with us some day. You just have to! (Look at details for trips in 2011.)
We hear from our many friends in the region that nothing much has changed, except to get worse. Our Jewish friends worry about the internal strife that is breaking out from under the surface and is threatening to further divide the Jewish population of Israel. The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox are conducting daily protests, some which lead to ugly confrontation with Israeli police. The rest of the population is thoroughly fed up with their separatist ways and this tension is becoming more and more a problem within the Jewish population. Messianic Christians (Jewish people who claim Jesus as the Messiah, but still observe Jewish custom) are caught in the middle, often targeted by other Jewish people as traitors, or at best, "lesser Jewish." Pray for these brothers and sisters.
Israel's decision to ease the Gaza blockade is helpful and hopeful, even though we know it is a reluctant move that comes on the heels of the tragedy off the Gaza Coast. What we hear from our Palestinian friends is that this will help relieve some tension in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, but only a little, and only for a little while. Such is life for a people living under oppression. The primary flash point for Palestinians is the demolition of homes in East Jerusalem, and the expansion of settlements in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Our Christian brothers and sisters are caught up in both these issues and are as affected by them along with everyone else. We hear from these brothers and sisters that relations with Muslims continue to deteriorate as the pressure of the occupation takes its toll. When you can't strike out against your oppressor, then you strike out at those you can. Both our Christian and Muslim friends grieve this development, and we with them. Please pray for peace between all warring factions - the peace of Christ!
Twenty people will travel with us as we visit holy sites and with God's holy people. Pray for us. Pray for each person coming with us. Pray for the people we will meet along the way. Pray for eyes to see and ears to hear.
Visit our blog site for the latest posts.
Blessings and peace,
marlin and sally vis
Friday, June 11, 2010
Roger Cohen. NY Times. End the Occupation
June 10, 2010
Modern Folly, Ancient Wisdom
By ROGER COHEN
NEW YORK — I took a short break for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, Israel killed nine activists on a Gaza-bound ship in international waters, and its bungled raid prompted international uproar and Jewish soul-searching.
And so the last 10 days of my life were shaped by Middle Eastern rage, churning through 24-hour news cycles, and private joy framed in millennial Jewish tradition. I’ll try to sift through them here.
Often our outer and inner worlds diverge. We do our best to reconcile them, the daily juggle. Seldom have I felt the ugliness of the political — Yeats’s “weasels fighting in a hole” — and the consolation of the spiritual with such clarity.
Israel’s bloody interception of the Mavi Marmara and its motley crew was crass — another example of the counterproductive use of force — but nothing about it could justify the Turkish prime minister’s outrageous statement that the world now perceives “the swastika and the Star of David together.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the bristling leader who has given Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkey an Islamic tinge and an eastward-looking inclination, should know better than to invoke the Nazis when speaking of a state that emerged from the ashes of European Jewry.
Israel is a liberal democracy stuck in the blind alley of a morally corrupting 43-year-old occupation that has made force its reflexive mode of operation. Several factors have nudged the country rightward: religious-settler extremism; obliviousness to the Palestinian plight now concealed behind walls; Russian-imported strands of Arab-baiting intolerance. But it is still a liberal democracy, home to a level of debate and openness unknown elsewhere in the Middle East. This needs broader acknowledgment.
What Israel in turn must realize — before it is too late — is that the real threat it faces today is not one of destruction but of de-legitimization. Its tactical lurches, often violent, do not add up to a strategy; they have resulted in a shocking erosion of Israel’s stature. I was talking the other day to the Israeli ambassador to a West European nation and he complained that he could rarely set foot on a university campus these days. Universities represent the future.
The only way to re-legitimize Israel and integrate it is an end to the occupation and the achievement of a two-state solution, with Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people and Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people. Israel cannot do this alone. Feckless Arab powers must step forward.
But Israel emphatically cannot do this, ever, by succumbing to a deeper and giddier embrace of those terrible twins, victimhood and force — terrible because at once addictive and blinding.
An ever larger share of the officer corps of the Israel Defense Forces comes from Orthodox or settler families. The mindset of secular Tel Aviv has migrated — as far as is feasible — to Europe and the United States.
Such rump Zionism does not bode well for an Israel that needs a crash course in restraint. Blockading Gaza is not difficult. But of course the blockade only nourishes the tunnel economy controlled by Hamas. Is this intelligent? Is this a strategy?
Jews have survived by using their minds. Israel was founded in the image of Jewish values debated and distilled over centuries. Before my daughter Adele chanted her Torah portion, with the sacred scroll unfolded before her, Rabbi Andy Bachman of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn used an image from Jewish mystical thought of the Torah as “black fire upon white fire.”
The notion here is that the word of God is fire, redoubled fire if you like, and that if you get too far from it you freeze, but if you draw too near to it you burn. “The word of God can actually destroy you if you get too close,” Bachman suggested.
With all the Middle Eastern charges and countercharges echoing dimly in my mind, these words about the peril of too fierce a zealotry resonated. Then Adele read from the scroll and her clear voice, her young mind and those ancient desert-sprung sounds took everyone far from sound-bite squalor.
Her portion was about the Korah rebellion and God’s sweeping punishment of it.
In her subsequent speech, she said, “I think that God didn’t understand that not everyone was behind this rebellion, only Korah and his followers, because He isn’t human. He doesn’t understand how the human race works, and Moses and Aaron do because they are humans. In my opinion that is the main reason that God has Moses and Aaron, to help Him understand the human race and help fix conflicts in a calm and rational way.”
Calling God’s harsh reaction “a hasty decision,” she suggested that “Judaism begins to teach us that God and humans together can be partners in keeping each other calm and rational.”
I’m not about to suggest a 12-year-old can solve the Middle East’s problems, but the distance between the wisdom in that sanctuary and the warring words of the modern-day absolutists of Israel-Palestine cleaving too close to the fire was so immense as to constitute a terrible betrayal — of youth and its hopes above all.
Modern Folly, Ancient Wisdom
By ROGER COHEN
NEW YORK — I took a short break for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, Israel killed nine activists on a Gaza-bound ship in international waters, and its bungled raid prompted international uproar and Jewish soul-searching.
And so the last 10 days of my life were shaped by Middle Eastern rage, churning through 24-hour news cycles, and private joy framed in millennial Jewish tradition. I’ll try to sift through them here.
Often our outer and inner worlds diverge. We do our best to reconcile them, the daily juggle. Seldom have I felt the ugliness of the political — Yeats’s “weasels fighting in a hole” — and the consolation of the spiritual with such clarity.
Israel’s bloody interception of the Mavi Marmara and its motley crew was crass — another example of the counterproductive use of force — but nothing about it could justify the Turkish prime minister’s outrageous statement that the world now perceives “the swastika and the Star of David together.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the bristling leader who has given Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkey an Islamic tinge and an eastward-looking inclination, should know better than to invoke the Nazis when speaking of a state that emerged from the ashes of European Jewry.
Israel is a liberal democracy stuck in the blind alley of a morally corrupting 43-year-old occupation that has made force its reflexive mode of operation. Several factors have nudged the country rightward: religious-settler extremism; obliviousness to the Palestinian plight now concealed behind walls; Russian-imported strands of Arab-baiting intolerance. But it is still a liberal democracy, home to a level of debate and openness unknown elsewhere in the Middle East. This needs broader acknowledgment.
What Israel in turn must realize — before it is too late — is that the real threat it faces today is not one of destruction but of de-legitimization. Its tactical lurches, often violent, do not add up to a strategy; they have resulted in a shocking erosion of Israel’s stature. I was talking the other day to the Israeli ambassador to a West European nation and he complained that he could rarely set foot on a university campus these days. Universities represent the future.
The only way to re-legitimize Israel and integrate it is an end to the occupation and the achievement of a two-state solution, with Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people and Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people. Israel cannot do this alone. Feckless Arab powers must step forward.
But Israel emphatically cannot do this, ever, by succumbing to a deeper and giddier embrace of those terrible twins, victimhood and force — terrible because at once addictive and blinding.
An ever larger share of the officer corps of the Israel Defense Forces comes from Orthodox or settler families. The mindset of secular Tel Aviv has migrated — as far as is feasible — to Europe and the United States.
Such rump Zionism does not bode well for an Israel that needs a crash course in restraint. Blockading Gaza is not difficult. But of course the blockade only nourishes the tunnel economy controlled by Hamas. Is this intelligent? Is this a strategy?
Jews have survived by using their minds. Israel was founded in the image of Jewish values debated and distilled over centuries. Before my daughter Adele chanted her Torah portion, with the sacred scroll unfolded before her, Rabbi Andy Bachman of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn used an image from Jewish mystical thought of the Torah as “black fire upon white fire.”
The notion here is that the word of God is fire, redoubled fire if you like, and that if you get too far from it you freeze, but if you draw too near to it you burn. “The word of God can actually destroy you if you get too close,” Bachman suggested.
With all the Middle Eastern charges and countercharges echoing dimly in my mind, these words about the peril of too fierce a zealotry resonated. Then Adele read from the scroll and her clear voice, her young mind and those ancient desert-sprung sounds took everyone far from sound-bite squalor.
Her portion was about the Korah rebellion and God’s sweeping punishment of it.
In her subsequent speech, she said, “I think that God didn’t understand that not everyone was behind this rebellion, only Korah and his followers, because He isn’t human. He doesn’t understand how the human race works, and Moses and Aaron do because they are humans. In my opinion that is the main reason that God has Moses and Aaron, to help Him understand the human race and help fix conflicts in a calm and rational way.”
Calling God’s harsh reaction “a hasty decision,” she suggested that “Judaism begins to teach us that God and humans together can be partners in keeping each other calm and rational.”
I’m not about to suggest a 12-year-old can solve the Middle East’s problems, but the distance between the wisdom in that sanctuary and the warring words of the modern-day absolutists of Israel-Palestine cleaving too close to the fire was so immense as to constitute a terrible betrayal — of youth and its hopes above all.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Our Shadow Side
The Shadow over Israel
Until Palestine has its own 'legitimized' state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
By Margaret Atwood
This article is part of a special edition of Haaretz, to mark Israel's book week.
The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage,
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
Climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.
But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?
“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.
I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.
The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.
The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.
I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.
Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)
I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.
Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.
But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot.
The most virulent language was truly anti-Semitic (as opposed to the label often used to deflect criticism). There were hot debates among activists about whether boycotting Israel would “work,” or not; about a one-state or else a two-state solution; about whether a boycott should exclude culture, as it is a bridge, or was that hypocritical dreaming? Was the term “apartheid” appropriate, or just a distraction? What about “de-legitimizing” the State of Israel? Over the decades, the debate had acquired a vocabulary and a set of rituals that those who hadn’t hung around universities – as I had not -- would simply not grasp.
Some kindly souls, maddened by frustration and injustice, began by screaming at me; but then, deciding I suppose that I was like a toddler who’d wandered into traffic, became very helpful. Others dismissed my citing of International PEN and its cultural-boycott-precluding efforts to free imprisoned writers as irrelevant twaddle. (An opinion cheered by every repressive government, extremist religion, and hard-line political group on the planet, which is why so many fiction writers are banned, jailed, exiled, and shot.)
None of this changes the core nature of the reality, which is that the concept of Israel as a humane and democratic state is in serious trouble. Once a country starts refusing entry to the likes of Noam Chomsky, shutting down the rights of its citizens to use words like “Nakba,” and labelling as “anti-Israel” anyone who tries to tell them what they need to know, a police-state clampdown looms. Will it be a betrayal of age-old humane Jewish traditions and the rule of just law, or a turn towards reconciliation and a truly open society?
Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.
Then there are people like me. Having been preoccupied of late with mass extinctions and environmental disasters, and thus having strayed into the Middle-eastern neighbourhood with a mind as open as it could be without being totally vacant, I’ve come out altered. Child-killing in Gaza? Killing aid-bringers on ships in international waters? Civilians malnourished thanks to the blockade? Forbidding writing paper? Forbidding pizza? How petty and vindictive! Is pizza is a tool of terrorists? Would most Canadians agree? And am I a tool of terrorists for saying this? I think not.
There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.
Until Palestine has its own 'legitimized' state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
By Margaret Atwood
This article is part of a special edition of Haaretz, to mark Israel's book week.
The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage,
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
Climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.
But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?
“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.
I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.
The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.
The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.
I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.
Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)
I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.
Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.
But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot.
The most virulent language was truly anti-Semitic (as opposed to the label often used to deflect criticism). There were hot debates among activists about whether boycotting Israel would “work,” or not; about a one-state or else a two-state solution; about whether a boycott should exclude culture, as it is a bridge, or was that hypocritical dreaming? Was the term “apartheid” appropriate, or just a distraction? What about “de-legitimizing” the State of Israel? Over the decades, the debate had acquired a vocabulary and a set of rituals that those who hadn’t hung around universities – as I had not -- would simply not grasp.
Some kindly souls, maddened by frustration and injustice, began by screaming at me; but then, deciding I suppose that I was like a toddler who’d wandered into traffic, became very helpful. Others dismissed my citing of International PEN and its cultural-boycott-precluding efforts to free imprisoned writers as irrelevant twaddle. (An opinion cheered by every repressive government, extremist religion, and hard-line political group on the planet, which is why so many fiction writers are banned, jailed, exiled, and shot.)
None of this changes the core nature of the reality, which is that the concept of Israel as a humane and democratic state is in serious trouble. Once a country starts refusing entry to the likes of Noam Chomsky, shutting down the rights of its citizens to use words like “Nakba,” and labelling as “anti-Israel” anyone who tries to tell them what they need to know, a police-state clampdown looms. Will it be a betrayal of age-old humane Jewish traditions and the rule of just law, or a turn towards reconciliation and a truly open society?
Time is running out. Opinion in Israel may be hardening, but in the United States things are moving in the opposite direction. Campus activity is increasing; many young Jewish Americans don’t want Israel speaking for them. America, snarled in two chaotic wars and facing increasing international anger over Palestine, may well be starting to see Israel not as an asset but as a liability.
Then there are people like me. Having been preoccupied of late with mass extinctions and environmental disasters, and thus having strayed into the Middle-eastern neighbourhood with a mind as open as it could be without being totally vacant, I’ve come out altered. Child-killing in Gaza? Killing aid-bringers on ships in international waters? Civilians malnourished thanks to the blockade? Forbidding writing paper? Forbidding pizza? How petty and vindictive! Is pizza is a tool of terrorists? Would most Canadians agree? And am I a tool of terrorists for saying this? I think not.
There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.
“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.
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