IN ISRAEL, AN OASIS OF PEACE
By Ken Ellingwood
The Los Angeles Times
September 25, 2007
The music blared in Arabic as a knot of women twirled slowly around the bride-to-be. Well-dressed onlookers, some in traditional Muslim head scarves, clapped and swayed.
On this evening of celebration, the fireworks sizzled, sweets beckoned and jubilant guests congratulated the Arab bride's parents with a double kiss and hearty "Mazel tov!"
Mazel tov?
"It's very normal," said Nava Sonnenschein, one of the Jews clapping at the edge of the dance circle. "For here."
The usual rules of the Middle East often don't apply in Neve Shalom, founded in the 1970s as a utopian village on a hilltop in Israel's midsection. For nearly three decades, its inhabitants have sought to defy the polarizing tugs of politics and nationalism.
Though most Jews and Arabs in Israel are kept apart by segregated communities and long years of mutual mistrust, Neve Shalom and its 250 residents -- half Jews, half Arab citizens of Israel -- represent a living experiment in integration.
The tree-shaded hamlet, whose name means "Oasis of Peace," is defiantly mixed, its bougainvillea-splashed lanes a mishmash of stone Arab-style houses and boxy, modern Jewish homes.
Schoolchildren learn Hebrew and Arabic together, a rarity in Israel, and play at one another's homes. Residents enjoy an equal say in running affairs and have elected Jews and Arabs as mayor. They also share management of the 120-pupil elementary school, which draws many students from outside the village, and a separate School for Peace, a well-known training center for activists.
The community's name is in both languages. In Arabic, it is Wahat al Salam (though the Israeli government has never recognized that part).
"We don't go out and protest in the classic way," said Ahmad Hijazi, a 40-year-old Arab who moved from northern Israel with his wife in 1992 and is now Neve Shalom's development director. "We live, and put into practice, what we want to see."
A half-hour's drive from Jerusalem, Neve Shalom is both a functioning community and a peace movement showcase. It has a website -- http://nswas.org -- and a parking lot for buses.
But this is no theme park. The affections and hurts are real, the gains and setbacks intimately felt. Alongside its taboo-breaking, the community has shown how hard it can be for Jews and Arabs to fully understand each other, even when they are trying.
Few know better than Abdessalam Najjar, a 55-year-old village leader with a balding head and pencil-thin beard tracing his jawline. Najjar, the father of the bride, moved to Neve Shalom in 1979 with a new wife, Ayshe, and a heart full of hope.
He was 27 and willing to take a chance, she 19 and in need of some persuading. Najjar, a devout Muslim, had been involved in discussion groups with Jews while studying at a branch of Hebrew University in nearby Rehovot. Clashes between Arab demonstrators and Israeli authorities a few years earlier that left six Arabs dead had generated new urgency over trying to improve relations.
The Najjars were the first Arab family to join Neve Shalom. Almost 30 years later, they are mainstays, well-liked and respected across the community. Najjar has been mayor and is working with a Jewish colleague in developing the community's new spiritual center for interfaith conferences, lectures on peace topics and prayer.
The couple built a life and home in Neve Shalom, "slowly, brick after brick," Najjar said. After the arrival a year later of the first of their four children, Ayshe watched over the village's growing crop of babies -- Jews and Arabs -- and he turned his efforts to helping start the village's bilingual school. He was one of two teachers.
He says residents have succeeded in creating an environment for raising tolerant children. For the grown-ups too there have been learning opportunities and innumerable debates, important and petty. Najjar, for example, has argued with his mostly secular Jewish neighbors over his right to pray at work and over whether he could keep a few sheep at home, as many rural Palestinians do. (He lost that one.)
Najjar said he once believed that conflicts break out only "between bad people." No more.
"This conflict can be between two good guys," he said.
Neve Shalom's residents, mostly left-leaning professionals and academics, have been tested by two Palestinian uprisings, war in Lebanon and a steep deterioration in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. At times, the two groups here triumphed over those divisive pressures. At others, they fell prey.
To much of the rest of Israel, Neve Shalom is a harmless if worthy novelty. But Jewish extremists once declared the Jews here traitors and sprinkled nails on the road to pop tires. The village's Arab residents, who refer to themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, often are asked by fellow Arabs if they really believe that Jews can accept them as equals.
The village today carries tempered aspirations and scars from past political fights. Not all of these are over yet.
Jewish and Arab residents spar over whether Neve Shalom Jews should perform compulsory service in the Israeli army. Arabs in Israel are not summoned to serve, and many object to residents of a "peace village" enlisting in the army.
They disagree too on some of the issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as what to do about Palestinian refugees who fled homes in present-day Israel during the 1948 war and their descendants.
Arab residents are resentful that, despite the talk of equality, Hebrew is the village's lingua franca. While the Arabs learned Hebrew by attending Israeli schools, few grown Jews in Neve Shalom have mastered Arabic.
Some residents from both groups, now in middle age, fear that the village has lost some of its political daring. It is perhaps telling that the burning issue these days is not potential peace talks but whether Neve Shalom residents can formalize their hold on the plots where they built homes years ago on land that was shared without private ownership.
"There are so many things we don't talk about," said Ayelet Ophir-Auron, 51, a Jewish special-education consultant who moved to the village with her family four years ago.
But residents say it may be success enough that Neve Shalom has managed to sustain its vision of mutual tolerance in a society with deep inequities between Jews and minority Arabs, who make up a fifth of Israel's population.
They assert that the project still has drawing power, even if it is from the fringe of Israeli society, and point to a waiting list of potential newcomers. The village is full but hopes to begin adding 90 families in the next year or so by turning some of the vacant land surrounding it into housing lots.
"It is enough that we are here," said Rayek Rizek, 52, an Arab former mayor who with his wife runs a cafe and gift shop at the entrance to the village. "It will never maybe bring the solution to the conflict. But there is still a small idea that maybe it is a candle in the midst of a big darkness."
Neve Shalom, a short drive off the main highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, looks from its hilltop over a panorama of rural tranquillity -- a sloping, rock-strewn plain turned paper-dry by late summer, and groves of almond and olive trees. The village is arrayed around an oval drive, shaded by evergreen trees and other plantings that have swaddled a once-barren hilltop.
Village business takes place in the two-story administration building. Two resident committees run the village and, separately, the elementary school, School for Peace and spiritual center. Key decisions, such as passing the budget and picking new residents, are voted upon by village members in the style of a town meeting.
Neve Shalom has no stores other than the cafe-gift shop, though it sports a 39-room guest house. Its swimming pool is frequented by visitors from as far away as Jerusalem. Most of the community's middle-class residents commute to jobs in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
The village is a far cry from the rough encampment that Rizek and his wife, Dyana Shaloufe-Rizek, encountered when they arrived in 1984.
Neve Shalom had been founded a decade earlier by a Dominican priest, Bruno Hussar, on a thistle-covered hill leased from a nearby Roman Catholic monastery. Father Bruno, who was born to Jewish parents, envisioned a place where people of different faiths could live together, though without a fixed political ideology.
Neve Shalom's first young couples arrived in 1978, motivated by the chance to craft an egalitarian way of life between Jews and Arabs. The village looks out over the site of a key battle in the 1948 war that broke out with Israel's independence.
Shaloufe-Rizek, who had been a student activist at Haifa University, was invited to teach at Neve Shalom's peace school, which she had attended after its establishment in 1979. Newly married, she brought her husband.
"There was nothing. No paved roads. A lot of flies and mosquitoes," Rayek Rizek recalled.
But it was an exhilarating place for Jews and Arabs to confront their yawning ignorance about one another.
Dorit Shippin, a Jew, arrived with her husband, Howard, the same year as the Rizeks after searching for a community that was, she said, "pluralistic enough and open-minded." She recalled being stunned to learn that Israel's Independence Day was treated as a historical catastrophe by her new Arab neighbors.
"My father participated in the 1948 war, and especially for this generation, the stories that they have are not stories of destruction and deportation of Palestinians, but they are stories of conquering, freeing, friendships and survival," Shippin said. "It was quite shocking to hear the other side of the picture."
For their part, Arab residents began to assume the burden of shared leadership and to confront a fuller portrait of Jews than the unflattering images many had grown up with.
The community's discussions were earnest, often heated. But the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987 drove home for many residents the fundamental gap that remained in how each side viewed the world.
"The Palestinians saw it mostly as a kind of legitimate struggle of the people under occupation, and the Israelis saw it as an unnecessary kind of uprising that threatens their life, and their existence here," Rizek said.
Some residents wonder, though, whether the community too often has steered around explosive issues to preserve neighborly harmony.
"As the years went by, it became more and more challenging to talk about the difficult issues," said Boaz Kitain, a Jew who has been mayor and run the elementary school and School for Peace. "We stopped talking about the difficult things."
The community was thrown into turmoil when Kitain's 20-year-old son, Tom, an Israeli soldier, died in a helicopter collision en route to Lebanon in 1997.
The Kitain family asked to put up a memorial. But some Arab residents found it unthinkable that a community dedicated to peace would commemorate a soldier on a military mission, even one who had grown up in their midst. The debate grew bitter. To the Kitains, it only aggravated their grief.
Despite an eventual compromise -- a plaque on the village basketball court saluting a "son of peace, killed in war" -- the episode proved damaging. Kitain's wife, Daniella, once active as fundraiser for the village, withdrew from community affairs. She has never rejoined.
Community relations have fared better since then, despite the buffeting effects of the second intifada, which further worsened Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, and the nation's war against the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah in Lebanon last year.
Both times, Neve Shalom's residents threw themselves into common action. After the second intifada broke out in 2000, they formed a motorcade to show support for families of 13 Arabs killed during rioting and delivered medical aid to Palestinians in the West Bank, a big swath of which sits within a 30-minute drive.
"This is when residents felt even more that we have to come together and try to do something for the outside," said Hijazi, the development director.
There is also much thinking here about the future.
The community plans to keep up its education efforts, mainly through the School for Peace, which over the years has provided training workshops for 40,000 peace and human rights activists and others. Supported heavily by foreign donations, it has served as an incubator for the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, with alumni sprinkled among important activist groups on both sides.
A planned residential expansion, which would nearly triple the number of families to almost 150, could lend the project more symbolic clout by increasing its size.
Some residents are urging a more activist role for the community in Israeli politics at a moment when polls show abysmal relations between Jews and Arabs.
"It's time for us to go out more, even if they don't want to hear us," Dorit Shippin said. "We have to stop apologizing, really, and be relevant."
The community claims a tangible accomplishment in rearing a generation of children to have friends across lines of religion and ethnic origin. Those young people have at times been unnerved by how much the egalitarian ideals of Neve Shalom clash with the stark realities of wider Israeli society.
"It's like a dream," said Sama Daoud, a 19-year-old Arab who lives with her parents in Neve Shalom. "It's different from the outside."
Tali Sonnenschein, 15, said she and her friends were well aware of the tensions and stereotypes that cleave the world outside Neve Shalom.
She sees no reason, though, why that should stop her little community from seeking some way out of the mess.
"I get to live in this place and have a different opinion -- that everybody can learn to live together," she said. "It's a little cheesy, maybe. But that's what I learned."
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Towards a New Leadership in the Middle East
THE PREPPY PATHWAY TO PEACE FOR ARAB CHILDREN
By Peter Weinberg
The Times (UK)
September 16, 2007
It’s dawn at the Allenby Bridge, the river crossing that connects Jericho and the West Bank to Jordan. The temporary community of Bedouins, truck drivers and UN peacekeepers warily watches the heavily armed Israeli border guards. The guards tell us to stand back; they won’t be opening the border any time soon. Everyone avoids eye contact. The tension is palpable.
As an investment banker from New York, I’m a long way outside my comfort zone. I’m here to attend the opening of a new school in Jordan – an initiative that may plant some small shoot of hope in this troubled region.
King’s academy is in Madaba, which lies in a fertile valley at the base of Mount Nebo, the biblical perch from which Moses looked out over the promised land. The school is the inspiration of King Abdullah II, who wanted to create a top-quality boarding school for talented teenage boys and girls from across the Middle East. Last week, the first 106 teenagers arrived to join the first classes.
You don’t need to be wealthy to attend King’s academy. In fact, the school has raised over $60m (£30m) to pay for buildings and land, and for scholarships for those who can’t afford tuition.
Last weekend, one student showed up in a limousine with more suitcases and boxes than could possibly fit in a dormitory. Contrastingly, another arrived by bus and walked through the front gate alone with just a small satchel of belongings. The students share potential and opportunity, not privilege.
Freshly cut grass and young olive trees decorate the walled campus. The library is rapidly filling with books; art supplies and lab equipment are unpacked and ready for use. The buzz of student conversations, both in Arabic and English, bring the campus to life. In some ways, this campus resembles any number of others around the world. But it’s different here.
The students are the cream of the intellectual crop from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. There are even a few from America and Taiwan. Ultimately all Middle Eastern countries will be represented, including Israel. But even more striking, particularly in this region of “haves and have nots”, is the economic diversity of the students.
The model for King’s academy is Deerfield academy in Massachusetts, one of the top boarding schools in the US. King Abdullah attended Deerfield in the 1980s and often identifies his days there as among the best of his life. As a former Deerfield student myself, I can echo the quality of the experience and its long-lasting impact.
The two schools do not look alike: Deerfield is the archetypical leafy, New England campus familiar to millions from movies such as Dead Poets Society; King’s is in the Levant style of stucco, wood and tile.
But the schools share a common DNA, marked by intelligence, tradition, and an environment that encourages students to engage and provoke. To shape and embody this culture, King Abdullah has recruited the legendary Deerfield headmaster, Eric Widmer, and his charismatic wife Meera Viswanathan.
At the opening ceremony last weekend, five students stepped forward to deliver a nervous premiere of the school song. As the sun set behind the campus buildings, King Abdullah welcomed the students and faculty and reiterated his dream.
Nobody can predict where these courageous students will attend university. One can say that they will have the option to attend the finest establishments in the world: Oxford or Cambridge, Yale or Harvard. I am hopeful that they will choose that route and ultimately return to the region when their academic training is completed. What could be more important in the Middle East than educating open-minded future leaders?
Last week I was strolling through the campus and I heard the sound of Deep Purple’s 1973 hit Smoke on the Water coming from one of the boy’s dormitories. In the US or Europe, such a sound would be unremarkable. But at this school, in this place, at this time, this very normality is extraordinary.
By Peter Weinberg
The Times (UK)
September 16, 2007
It’s dawn at the Allenby Bridge, the river crossing that connects Jericho and the West Bank to Jordan. The temporary community of Bedouins, truck drivers and UN peacekeepers warily watches the heavily armed Israeli border guards. The guards tell us to stand back; they won’t be opening the border any time soon. Everyone avoids eye contact. The tension is palpable.
As an investment banker from New York, I’m a long way outside my comfort zone. I’m here to attend the opening of a new school in Jordan – an initiative that may plant some small shoot of hope in this troubled region.
King’s academy is in Madaba, which lies in a fertile valley at the base of Mount Nebo, the biblical perch from which Moses looked out over the promised land. The school is the inspiration of King Abdullah II, who wanted to create a top-quality boarding school for talented teenage boys and girls from across the Middle East. Last week, the first 106 teenagers arrived to join the first classes.
You don’t need to be wealthy to attend King’s academy. In fact, the school has raised over $60m (£30m) to pay for buildings and land, and for scholarships for those who can’t afford tuition.
Last weekend, one student showed up in a limousine with more suitcases and boxes than could possibly fit in a dormitory. Contrastingly, another arrived by bus and walked through the front gate alone with just a small satchel of belongings. The students share potential and opportunity, not privilege.
Freshly cut grass and young olive trees decorate the walled campus. The library is rapidly filling with books; art supplies and lab equipment are unpacked and ready for use. The buzz of student conversations, both in Arabic and English, bring the campus to life. In some ways, this campus resembles any number of others around the world. But it’s different here.
The students are the cream of the intellectual crop from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Palestine, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. There are even a few from America and Taiwan. Ultimately all Middle Eastern countries will be represented, including Israel. But even more striking, particularly in this region of “haves and have nots”, is the economic diversity of the students.
The model for King’s academy is Deerfield academy in Massachusetts, one of the top boarding schools in the US. King Abdullah attended Deerfield in the 1980s and often identifies his days there as among the best of his life. As a former Deerfield student myself, I can echo the quality of the experience and its long-lasting impact.
The two schools do not look alike: Deerfield is the archetypical leafy, New England campus familiar to millions from movies such as Dead Poets Society; King’s is in the Levant style of stucco, wood and tile.
But the schools share a common DNA, marked by intelligence, tradition, and an environment that encourages students to engage and provoke. To shape and embody this culture, King Abdullah has recruited the legendary Deerfield headmaster, Eric Widmer, and his charismatic wife Meera Viswanathan.
At the opening ceremony last weekend, five students stepped forward to deliver a nervous premiere of the school song. As the sun set behind the campus buildings, King Abdullah welcomed the students and faculty and reiterated his dream.
Nobody can predict where these courageous students will attend university. One can say that they will have the option to attend the finest establishments in the world: Oxford or Cambridge, Yale or Harvard. I am hopeful that they will choose that route and ultimately return to the region when their academic training is completed. What could be more important in the Middle East than educating open-minded future leaders?
Last week I was strolling through the campus and I heard the sound of Deep Purple’s 1973 hit Smoke on the Water coming from one of the boy’s dormitories. In the US or Europe, such a sound would be unremarkable. But at this school, in this place, at this time, this very normality is extraordinary.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
It's Lobbying, but is it really "Pro-Israel"?
Washington DC, September 7, 2007
Issue # 337 By M. J. Rosenberg
(Courtesy of the PLO Mission in the US)
It's Lobbying, But Is It Really Pro-Israel?
Critics of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt cannot be surprised that the attacks on the book prior to publication have already helped propel it to #10 on Amazon's best-seller list.
Not only that, the names "Walt-Mearsheimer" have become almost People magazine famous, odd for two mild-mannered political scientists from the University of Chicago and Harvard. It just shows you what a little "buzz" will do and a lot of buzz surrounds this book.
And why not? It's an important, heavily sourced and documented book (108 pages of footnotes) by two distinguished professors at two of our best universities. It deals with Middle East policymaking at a time when America's problems in that region surpass our problems anywhere else. And it is a serious book about a subject that is decidedly provocative, a much improved and expanded version of the original London Review of Books article. The book asks the question: how much power does the pro-Israel lobby have? The authors answer: too much, and that both America and Israel suffer as a result.
It's an arguable question and people are definitely arguing about it. It is also the kind of book you do not have to agree with on every count (I certainly don't) to benefit from reading.
The authors do not say that there is anything intrinsically wrong about the existence of a pro-Israel lobby. As political scientists, they understand that lobbies are as American as corn in Kansas. They know that lobbies play a major role in virtually all areas of American policy-making, domestic and foreign. Nor do they suggest that the pro-Israel community is out of bounds when it uses its influence on Israel's behalf.
Their question is whether or not that influence is used to promote policies that are in America's interest, or Israel's.
The authors answer is "no."
They believe that the interests of both countries would be better served by aggressive US involvement to produce an Israeli-Palestinian agreement along the lines of the so-called Clinton parameters. Israel would withdraw more or less to the '67 lines, a Palestinian state would be established, Israel's security would be guarded by ironclad guarantees, and the Palestinians would abandon any future claims on Israeli territory. They believe that it is the influence of the lobby that has prevented the US from vigorously pursuing this goal, despite the fact that both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have endorsed it.
I spent almost 20 years as a Congressional aide and can testify from repeated personal experience that Senators and House Members are under constant pressure to support status quo policies on Israel. It is no accident that Members of Congress compete over who can place more conditions on aid to the Palestinians, who will be first to denounce the Saudi peace plan, and who will win the right to be the primary sponsor of the next pointless Palestinian-bashing resolution. Nor is it an accident that there is never a serious Congressional debate about policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, every President knows that any serious effort to push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on compromise by both sides will produce loud (sometimes hysterical) opposition from the Hill.
Walt and Mearsheimer mostly limit themselves to exploring whether all this is good for the United States (and to a lesser extent, Israel). The question I ask today, and not for the first time, is whether this type of behavior is good for Israel. Forty years after the Six Day War, the occupation continues, the resistance to it intensifies, and Israelis in increasing numbers question whether they have a future in the Jewish state. Has "pro-Israel" advocacy consistently produced "pro-Israel" ends? At several critical moments, it most certainly has not.
Was it pro-Israel to lobby the Nixon administration in 1971 to support Israel's rejection of Anwar Sadat's offer of peace in exchange for a three mile pullback from the banks of the Suez Canal? Nixon capitulated to the pressure and backed off, leaving Israel free to reject Sadat's offer. Two years later, Sadat attacked and Israel lost 3000 soldiers in a war that would have been prevented had Israel accepted the Sadat initiative. Israel gained nothing in that war, and ended up giving Sadat all the territory he sought in 1971, and much more.
Was it pro-Israel to urge the Reagan administration to back Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982? That war, and its bloody aftermath, lasted for 18 years with the last Israeli soldier not leaving Lebanon until 2000 - after a thousand soldiers were killed. Just days after Israel's invasion, Lebanese Christian forces massacred almost a thousand Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. And 241 United States Marines, serving as post-war peace keepers, were killed (the most on any single day since Iwo Jima) when Hezbollah blew up their barracks. In the end, the war accomplished nothing and Israel withdrew unconditionally.
Was it pro-Israel to press Congress to attach so many onerous conditions to aid to President Abbas's Palestinian Authority that Abbas was unable to demonstrate to his people that a moderate President, who fully accepted Israel, would produce benefits that they would not achieve by choosing Hamas. The US (and Israeli) policies of all sticks and no carrots led predictably to Abbas's defeat by Hamas and a Hamas-controlled Gaza which has resumed its attacks on Israeli towns.
Was it pro-Israel to prevent the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administration's from insisting on a permanent freeze on settlements or, at the very least, the immediate removal of the illegal settlements? Wouldn't Israel be infinitely better off if the United States had used friendly persuasion to end the settlement enterprise right from the get-go? After all, the vast majority of Israelis consider the settlements to be impediments to peace and so has every President since the first settlement was erected. Similar question could be asked about the arguments favoring the Iraq war as good for both the United States and Israel (when critics correctly predicted that it would be disastrous for both) and should be asked about some future attack on Iran.
These questions are especially urgent with a Presidential election coming up.
Once again, Presidential candidates are being told that in order to earn the "pro-Israel" label, they must heartily endorse the status quo. That means that when asked what they would do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they must state unequivocal support for Israeli policies. They must put the onus for the failed diplomacy of recent years on the Palestinians. They must indicate that although they support peace, they will not adopt the kind of pro-active peacemaking engaged in by President Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. They must never use the words "even-handed or "honest broker." There is a script and the candidates must not deviate from it.
For the vast majority of us who care deeply about Israel, the politically correct (and safe) approach to Israel is insulting. Sure, it keeps candidates out of trouble with that small minority of the pro-Israel community which believes that Israel can survive as a Jewish state while holding on to the territories. But that isn't most American Jews, not by a long shot.
Candidates who avoid saying what they believe out of fear of offending lobbyists and activists who have been proven wrong over and over again are not doing Israel any favors. And they should not be rewarded for it by being granted the label of "pro-Israel."
There is nothing pro-Israel about supporting policies that promise only that Israeli mothers will continue to dread their sons' 18th birthdays for another generation. For that we are supposed to be grateful?
Issue # 337 By M. J. Rosenberg
(Courtesy of the PLO Mission in the US)
It's Lobbying, But Is It Really Pro-Israel?
Critics of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by John J. Mearsheimer and Steven M. Walt cannot be surprised that the attacks on the book prior to publication have already helped propel it to #10 on Amazon's best-seller list.
Not only that, the names "Walt-Mearsheimer" have become almost People magazine famous, odd for two mild-mannered political scientists from the University of Chicago and Harvard. It just shows you what a little "buzz" will do and a lot of buzz surrounds this book.
And why not? It's an important, heavily sourced and documented book (108 pages of footnotes) by two distinguished professors at two of our best universities. It deals with Middle East policymaking at a time when America's problems in that region surpass our problems anywhere else. And it is a serious book about a subject that is decidedly provocative, a much improved and expanded version of the original London Review of Books article. The book asks the question: how much power does the pro-Israel lobby have? The authors answer: too much, and that both America and Israel suffer as a result.
It's an arguable question and people are definitely arguing about it. It is also the kind of book you do not have to agree with on every count (I certainly don't) to benefit from reading.
The authors do not say that there is anything intrinsically wrong about the existence of a pro-Israel lobby. As political scientists, they understand that lobbies are as American as corn in Kansas. They know that lobbies play a major role in virtually all areas of American policy-making, domestic and foreign. Nor do they suggest that the pro-Israel community is out of bounds when it uses its influence on Israel's behalf.
Their question is whether or not that influence is used to promote policies that are in America's interest, or Israel's.
The authors answer is "no."
They believe that the interests of both countries would be better served by aggressive US involvement to produce an Israeli-Palestinian agreement along the lines of the so-called Clinton parameters. Israel would withdraw more or less to the '67 lines, a Palestinian state would be established, Israel's security would be guarded by ironclad guarantees, and the Palestinians would abandon any future claims on Israeli territory. They believe that it is the influence of the lobby that has prevented the US from vigorously pursuing this goal, despite the fact that both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush have endorsed it.
I spent almost 20 years as a Congressional aide and can testify from repeated personal experience that Senators and House Members are under constant pressure to support status quo policies on Israel. It is no accident that Members of Congress compete over who can place more conditions on aid to the Palestinians, who will be first to denounce the Saudi peace plan, and who will win the right to be the primary sponsor of the next pointless Palestinian-bashing resolution. Nor is it an accident that there is never a serious Congressional debate about policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, every President knows that any serious effort to push for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on compromise by both sides will produce loud (sometimes hysterical) opposition from the Hill.
Walt and Mearsheimer mostly limit themselves to exploring whether all this is good for the United States (and to a lesser extent, Israel). The question I ask today, and not for the first time, is whether this type of behavior is good for Israel. Forty years after the Six Day War, the occupation continues, the resistance to it intensifies, and Israelis in increasing numbers question whether they have a future in the Jewish state. Has "pro-Israel" advocacy consistently produced "pro-Israel" ends? At several critical moments, it most certainly has not.
Was it pro-Israel to lobby the Nixon administration in 1971 to support Israel's rejection of Anwar Sadat's offer of peace in exchange for a three mile pullback from the banks of the Suez Canal? Nixon capitulated to the pressure and backed off, leaving Israel free to reject Sadat's offer. Two years later, Sadat attacked and Israel lost 3000 soldiers in a war that would have been prevented had Israel accepted the Sadat initiative. Israel gained nothing in that war, and ended up giving Sadat all the territory he sought in 1971, and much more.
Was it pro-Israel to urge the Reagan administration to back Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982? That war, and its bloody aftermath, lasted for 18 years with the last Israeli soldier not leaving Lebanon until 2000 - after a thousand soldiers were killed. Just days after Israel's invasion, Lebanese Christian forces massacred almost a thousand Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. And 241 United States Marines, serving as post-war peace keepers, were killed (the most on any single day since Iwo Jima) when Hezbollah blew up their barracks. In the end, the war accomplished nothing and Israel withdrew unconditionally.
Was it pro-Israel to press Congress to attach so many onerous conditions to aid to President Abbas's Palestinian Authority that Abbas was unable to demonstrate to his people that a moderate President, who fully accepted Israel, would produce benefits that they would not achieve by choosing Hamas. The US (and Israeli) policies of all sticks and no carrots led predictably to Abbas's defeat by Hamas and a Hamas-controlled Gaza which has resumed its attacks on Israeli towns.
Was it pro-Israel to prevent the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administration's from insisting on a permanent freeze on settlements or, at the very least, the immediate removal of the illegal settlements? Wouldn't Israel be infinitely better off if the United States had used friendly persuasion to end the settlement enterprise right from the get-go? After all, the vast majority of Israelis consider the settlements to be impediments to peace and so has every President since the first settlement was erected. Similar question could be asked about the arguments favoring the Iraq war as good for both the United States and Israel (when critics correctly predicted that it would be disastrous for both) and should be asked about some future attack on Iran.
These questions are especially urgent with a Presidential election coming up.
Once again, Presidential candidates are being told that in order to earn the "pro-Israel" label, they must heartily endorse the status quo. That means that when asked what they would do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they must state unequivocal support for Israeli policies. They must put the onus for the failed diplomacy of recent years on the Palestinians. They must indicate that although they support peace, they will not adopt the kind of pro-active peacemaking engaged in by President Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. They must never use the words "even-handed or "honest broker." There is a script and the candidates must not deviate from it.
For the vast majority of us who care deeply about Israel, the politically correct (and safe) approach to Israel is insulting. Sure, it keeps candidates out of trouble with that small minority of the pro-Israel community which believes that Israel can survive as a Jewish state while holding on to the territories. But that isn't most American Jews, not by a long shot.
Candidates who avoid saying what they believe out of fear of offending lobbyists and activists who have been proven wrong over and over again are not doing Israel any favors. And they should not be rewarded for it by being granted the label of "pro-Israel."
There is nothing pro-Israel about supporting policies that promise only that Israeli mothers will continue to dread their sons' 18th birthdays for another generation. For that we are supposed to be grateful?
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Jewish People's New Task, by Avraham Burg
The Jewish people's new task
Muslims as Jews of the 21st Century
By Avraham Burg
Ha'aretz -- Monday - September 10, 2007
Rosh Hashanah is very different from other Jewish holidays. A thread of universalism runs through it, and its prayers differ from those of the rest of the year. Nationalism and the nation's collective memories are marginal at this time; its main essence is directed outward: "a prayer ... for all the nations."
This is the only day when we pray for the world's well-being. We sing "today the world was conceived," and we know that "everyone in the world will pass before Him," without distinction and without discrimination, because everyone is equal before the world's creator. Like Adam and Eve, who were born free of religion and zealotry.
Over the years, due to the Jewish people's historical troubles, the holiday's universal identity became blurred. It was difficult for us, the persecuted, to rise to the occasion and act on behalf of the world that rejected us so violently. Behaving as "a nation that dwells alone" came naturally to us, and we abandoned the universal responsibility of the Jewish people, which was once "a nation of the world" and has now become too much of "a nation of the land."
The results of this closing of the national soul are very sad. For the first time in millennia, we are not at the forefront of influence on the world. In the past, there was hardly an era in which we did not have an influence. Take Jesus, for example. His teachings and values sprang from the Jewish core of the Second Temple period.
Those who sowed the European renaissance included descendants of Jewish Marranos, who brought the wisdom and achievements of ancient Greece, which had been preserved by the moderate and tolerant Muslim philosophers, back home.
It is impossible to decipher the codes of modern times without Spinoza or Moses Mendelsohn. And what would the previous century have been like without Marx and his communism, on one hand, or Freud and the individual soul, on the other? That period also produced Trotsky, Zamenhof and others, and their dreams. All that is finished. Sixty years ago, Europe failed the test of "the other." When it was given the chance, it spat out and destroyed its Jews, who became the ultimate lepers.
Today, Europe faces the test of a new "other" - the Muslims. Tens of millions of Muslims live in Europe and the West today, and when Turkey joins the European Union, it will have some 100 million Muslims. The question, "what do we do with them?" can be heard in the corridors of power in Paris; it influenced the elections in Britain; it changed the laws on religion and state in Sweden; it is reflected in the stereotypes of Hollywood heroes in Washington. The West's racists also ask, "what do we do with them?" And as the crowds cheer, they reply: What we always did - war, exile, restricting their rights.
But Israelis and Jews do not even ask this question. While the West is fighting one of its most important battles, over its health and sanity, we are absent, because of an understandable complex. They are struggling without us over the ecology of heaven and earth - against fundamentalism and extremism, for human rights, against international terror, for women's status, against the veil. A time when our international acceptance is greater than ever before, at a time when the world needs our unique input, we are absent as never before.
This is the Jewish paradox of our times. Our contact, friction, traumas, recovery and interface with the modern West opened some doors of contemporary Judaism to new winds and exciting ideas: religious pluralism, the equality of the Jewish woman. Yet on the other hand, we hide ourselves and cut ourselves off, with understandable fear, behind our closed national shutters.
The future of the world to a large extent depends on the West's ability to be fertilized and impregnated with the new Islam; to include Muslims, instead of rejecting them as they did us; and then together to give birth to a new world discourse. Not the "macho" discourse of George Bush and other fundamentalist Christians, not that of Israeli settlers and local conservatives, and not that of the Islamic zealots, who forbid all contact with the West as if it were an impure woman.
What is needed is a moderate and painstaking dialogue, semi-feminine, inclusive and accepting. A dialogue of pregnancy, "world-conceiving," such as that which enabled contemporary Western Jewry to break the pathological historic cycle of Jews and Gentiles and present a new model of life in opposition to Hitler, his successors and the thousand years of bloodshed that preceded them.
As the world opens up to us as never before, and as we change to meet it, we can relax from our fears, renew the holiday's originality and return to responsibility for the world and its well-being. What can we do to promote a world of this kind - a better, more perfect world that would be much less dangerous for its residents and for us? To my mind, we must contribute from our experience as victims, as "others," and then as those who were accepted, so as to prevent the unnecessary sacrifice of our generation's "new others."
Modern Jewry, with its victims and its lessons, must propose itself as a bridge on which Western Muslims and Christians can step as they go to meet each other, create a Christian-Muslim dialogue and institutionalize Western Islam. The West can and should embrace its Muslim citizens and cause them to see themselves, their religion and their traditions in a new light - a light of openness, tolerance and religious pluralism.
Many Muslims in the West oppose extremist terrorism. Not everyone there is Osama bin Laden, just as not everyone here is Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein or George Bush. Muslim moderates are in line to be the "Jews," the foreigners of the 21st century, without having done anything wrong.
The partners to the 20th century's failure, the victims as well as those who sacrificed them, must get together on their behalf, so that they can pass the test this time. Because if the Europe and the United States fail the test of "citizens of the Muslim faith," the wave of failure will unavoidably drown the West. In contrast, success could give the struggling West a new birth on the path to world peace, whose partners would include most believers in "the one God" to whom we all pray.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/902516.html
Muslims as Jews of the 21st Century
By Avraham Burg
Ha'aretz -- Monday - September 10, 2007
Rosh Hashanah is very different from other Jewish holidays. A thread of universalism runs through it, and its prayers differ from those of the rest of the year. Nationalism and the nation's collective memories are marginal at this time; its main essence is directed outward: "a prayer ... for all the nations."
This is the only day when we pray for the world's well-being. We sing "today the world was conceived," and we know that "everyone in the world will pass before Him," without distinction and without discrimination, because everyone is equal before the world's creator. Like Adam and Eve, who were born free of religion and zealotry.
Over the years, due to the Jewish people's historical troubles, the holiday's universal identity became blurred. It was difficult for us, the persecuted, to rise to the occasion and act on behalf of the world that rejected us so violently. Behaving as "a nation that dwells alone" came naturally to us, and we abandoned the universal responsibility of the Jewish people, which was once "a nation of the world" and has now become too much of "a nation of the land."
The results of this closing of the national soul are very sad. For the first time in millennia, we are not at the forefront of influence on the world. In the past, there was hardly an era in which we did not have an influence. Take Jesus, for example. His teachings and values sprang from the Jewish core of the Second Temple period.
Those who sowed the European renaissance included descendants of Jewish Marranos, who brought the wisdom and achievements of ancient Greece, which had been preserved by the moderate and tolerant Muslim philosophers, back home.
It is impossible to decipher the codes of modern times without Spinoza or Moses Mendelsohn. And what would the previous century have been like without Marx and his communism, on one hand, or Freud and the individual soul, on the other? That period also produced Trotsky, Zamenhof and others, and their dreams. All that is finished. Sixty years ago, Europe failed the test of "the other." When it was given the chance, it spat out and destroyed its Jews, who became the ultimate lepers.
Today, Europe faces the test of a new "other" - the Muslims. Tens of millions of Muslims live in Europe and the West today, and when Turkey joins the European Union, it will have some 100 million Muslims. The question, "what do we do with them?" can be heard in the corridors of power in Paris; it influenced the elections in Britain; it changed the laws on religion and state in Sweden; it is reflected in the stereotypes of Hollywood heroes in Washington. The West's racists also ask, "what do we do with them?" And as the crowds cheer, they reply: What we always did - war, exile, restricting their rights.
But Israelis and Jews do not even ask this question. While the West is fighting one of its most important battles, over its health and sanity, we are absent, because of an understandable complex. They are struggling without us over the ecology of heaven and earth - against fundamentalism and extremism, for human rights, against international terror, for women's status, against the veil. A time when our international acceptance is greater than ever before, at a time when the world needs our unique input, we are absent as never before.
This is the Jewish paradox of our times. Our contact, friction, traumas, recovery and interface with the modern West opened some doors of contemporary Judaism to new winds and exciting ideas: religious pluralism, the equality of the Jewish woman. Yet on the other hand, we hide ourselves and cut ourselves off, with understandable fear, behind our closed national shutters.
The future of the world to a large extent depends on the West's ability to be fertilized and impregnated with the new Islam; to include Muslims, instead of rejecting them as they did us; and then together to give birth to a new world discourse. Not the "macho" discourse of George Bush and other fundamentalist Christians, not that of Israeli settlers and local conservatives, and not that of the Islamic zealots, who forbid all contact with the West as if it were an impure woman.
What is needed is a moderate and painstaking dialogue, semi-feminine, inclusive and accepting. A dialogue of pregnancy, "world-conceiving," such as that which enabled contemporary Western Jewry to break the pathological historic cycle of Jews and Gentiles and present a new model of life in opposition to Hitler, his successors and the thousand years of bloodshed that preceded them.
As the world opens up to us as never before, and as we change to meet it, we can relax from our fears, renew the holiday's originality and return to responsibility for the world and its well-being. What can we do to promote a world of this kind - a better, more perfect world that would be much less dangerous for its residents and for us? To my mind, we must contribute from our experience as victims, as "others," and then as those who were accepted, so as to prevent the unnecessary sacrifice of our generation's "new others."
Modern Jewry, with its victims and its lessons, must propose itself as a bridge on which Western Muslims and Christians can step as they go to meet each other, create a Christian-Muslim dialogue and institutionalize Western Islam. The West can and should embrace its Muslim citizens and cause them to see themselves, their religion and their traditions in a new light - a light of openness, tolerance and religious pluralism.
Many Muslims in the West oppose extremist terrorism. Not everyone there is Osama bin Laden, just as not everyone here is Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein or George Bush. Muslim moderates are in line to be the "Jews," the foreigners of the 21st century, without having done anything wrong.
The partners to the 20th century's failure, the victims as well as those who sacrificed them, must get together on their behalf, so that they can pass the test this time. Because if the Europe and the United States fail the test of "citizens of the Muslim faith," the wave of failure will unavoidably drown the West. In contrast, success could give the struggling West a new birth on the path to world peace, whose partners would include most believers in "the one God" to whom we all pray.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/902516.html
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Scholar Denied Tenure at De Paul U, Chicago
U.S. prof. who says Jews abuse Holocaust to curb critics resigns
By The Associated Press
Ha'aretz -- Thursday - September 6, 2007
A Chicago university professor who has drawn criticism for accusing some Jews of abusing the legacy of the Holocaust agreed Wednesday to resign immediately "for everybody's sake."
DePaul University officials and political science professor Norman Finkelstein issued a joint statement announcing the resignation, which came as about a hundred protesters gathered outside the dean's office to support him.
Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, was denied tenure in June after spending six years on DePaul's faculty. His remaining class was cut by DePaul last month.His most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, is largely an attack on Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel. In his book, Finkelstein argues that Israel uses perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.
Dershowitz, who threatened to sue Finkelstein's publisher for libel, urged DePaul officials to reject Finkelstein's tenure bid.Finkelstein said in the statement that he believes the tenure decision was tainted by external pressures, but praised the university's "honorable role of providing a scholarly haven for me the past six years."The school denied that outside parties influenced the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure. The school's portion of the statement called Finkelstein a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher.
Finkelstein called that acknowledgment the most important part of the statement."I felt finally I had gotten what was my due and that maybe it was time, for everybody's sake, that I move on," he said at a news conference that followed a morning rally staged by students and faculty who carried signs and chanted "stop the witch hunt."Finkelstein added: "DePaul students rose to dazzling spiritual heights in my defense that should be the envy of and an example for every university in the United States."
The professor would not discuss financial terms of the resignation agreement, which he said was confidential, but noted that it does not bar him from speaking out about issues that concern him, including the unfairness of the tenure process.
He also said he does not know what he will do next, but came to realize before Wednesday that "the atmosphere had become so poisoned that it was virtually impossible for me to carry on at DePaul. The least I could hope for is to leave DePaul with my head up high and my reputation intact."
Dershowitz was critical of the school. "DePaul looks like they caved into pressure," he said in a telephone interview. "The idea of describing him as a scholar trades truth for convenience. He's a man who is a propagandist and is not a scholar."
Still, Dershowitz said, "I'm happy he's out of academia. Let him do his ranting on street corners."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Normal+Finkelstein&itemNo=901583
By The Associated Press
Ha'aretz -- Thursday - September 6, 2007
A Chicago university professor who has drawn criticism for accusing some Jews of abusing the legacy of the Holocaust agreed Wednesday to resign immediately "for everybody's sake."
DePaul University officials and political science professor Norman Finkelstein issued a joint statement announcing the resignation, which came as about a hundred protesters gathered outside the dean's office to support him.
Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, was denied tenure in June after spending six years on DePaul's faculty. His remaining class was cut by DePaul last month.His most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, is largely an attack on Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel. In his book, Finkelstein argues that Israel uses perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.
Dershowitz, who threatened to sue Finkelstein's publisher for libel, urged DePaul officials to reject Finkelstein's tenure bid.Finkelstein said in the statement that he believes the tenure decision was tainted by external pressures, but praised the university's "honorable role of providing a scholarly haven for me the past six years."The school denied that outside parties influenced the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure. The school's portion of the statement called Finkelstein a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher.
Finkelstein called that acknowledgment the most important part of the statement."I felt finally I had gotten what was my due and that maybe it was time, for everybody's sake, that I move on," he said at a news conference that followed a morning rally staged by students and faculty who carried signs and chanted "stop the witch hunt."Finkelstein added: "DePaul students rose to dazzling spiritual heights in my defense that should be the envy of and an example for every university in the United States."
The professor would not discuss financial terms of the resignation agreement, which he said was confidential, but noted that it does not bar him from speaking out about issues that concern him, including the unfairness of the tenure process.
He also said he does not know what he will do next, but came to realize before Wednesday that "the atmosphere had become so poisoned that it was virtually impossible for me to carry on at DePaul. The least I could hope for is to leave DePaul with my head up high and my reputation intact."
Dershowitz was critical of the school. "DePaul looks like they caved into pressure," he said in a telephone interview. "The idea of describing him as a scholar trades truth for convenience. He's a man who is a propagandist and is not a scholar."
Still, Dershowitz said, "I'm happy he's out of academia. Let him do his ranting on street corners."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Normal+Finkelstein&itemNo=901583
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Jewish/Muslim Dialogue. Yes
RABBI PRESSES JEWS, MUSLIMS TO EASE STRIFE
By Manya A. Brachear
Chicago Tribune
September 1, 2007
In an unusual goodwill gesture, the top rabbi of the nation's largest Jewish movement pleaded with American Muslims on Friday to transcend the differences that have divided their people for decades and join Jews to confront the extremist factions and prejudice that plague both religious traditions.
"It is ... our collective task to strengthen and inspire one another as we fight the fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both our faiths," Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told members of the Islamic Society of North America at their annual meeting in Rosemont. "We know nothing of Islam -- nothing. The time has come to listen to our Muslim neighbors speak in their own words about the spiritual power of Islam and their love for their religion."
Frequently interrupted by ovations, Yoffie introduced a joint initiative to launch conversations between Muslims and Jews across the country. In a separate interview, Yoffie envisions mosques and synagogues initially forging partnerships in 10 cities.
"There is nothing simple or easy about the project that we are about to undertake," he said. "But interconnected since the time of Abraham, thrust into each other's lives by history and fate and living in a global world, what choice do we really have?"
Sayyid Syeed, who directs the Islamic Society's national interfaith outreach, welcomed Yoffie to the stage, saying the appearance was long overdue.
"Today we are making history," Syeed said. "What you can ask him today is 'What took you so long?'"
For many in the audience, the answer was simple. For decades, most American Jews and Muslims have been unable to forgive or forget the deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Many attempts to engage in dialogue have reached an impasse.
Others who were not in the audience said the Muslim organization's invitation to Yoffie marks a significant and symbolic shift in approach. In years past, interfaith receptions have been scheduled on Friday nights, when Jews observe the Sabbath, making some Jews feel unwelcome.
"I think it's a healthy step forward," said Rabbi Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. "The important thing is to be able to talk to people."
Yoffie said Jews and Muslims should indeed start talking and stop arguing. They should present a unified front when urging the American government to work toward a peaceful resolution overseas and to stop racial profiling and discrimination on American soil. Yoffie joined Muslim leaders in private meetings with government officials Friday.
Along with other major American Muslim groups, ISNA's tax records and prison ministries have been investigated by the federal government in search of terrorist connections. No wrongdoing has been found. U.S. military and government officials have job booths at the convention to recruit chaplains and others who speak Arabic.
Yoffie acknowledges the trepidation some Jews might feel about the partnership, especially if they equate the Islamic Society with other Muslim organizations that have been targets of government investigations.
"Our view is that it's important to talk to people that you don't agree with and not simply those that you do agree with," he said in an interview. "It would be impossible to enter into this kind of program with a group that is somehow not unequivocally clear in its condemnation of terror. ISNA is not in that category."
To the Muslim audience, Yoffie insisted that Jews and Muslims must overcome the fears and suspicions that stem from clashes overseas.
"Will we, Jews and Muslims, import the conflicts of the Middle East into America, or will we join together and send a message of peace to that troubled land?" Yoffie asked. "If Israel is portrayed as 'a dagger pushed into the heart of Islam,' rather than a nation-state disputing matters of land and water with the Palestinians, we are lost. As religious Jews and religious Muslims, let us do everything in our power to prevent a political battle from being transformed into a holy war."
This is not the first time the Reform movement and national Muslim leaders have attempted to launch a dialogue in Chicago. Rabbi Herbert Bronstein, senior scholar of North Shore Congregation Israel, spearheaded negotiations in the early 1990s that broke down when neither Muslims nor Jews could avoid taking sides in the Middle East conflict. He called efforts to revive the conversations "nothing short of momentous."
He said liberal Jews can help Muslims who are seeking to become more moderate while retaining the authenticity of their beliefs.
"That's the North American experience," Bronstein said. "There's a kind of mutual illumination taking place that we should be proud of as Americans."
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, said that while agreeing to disagree may sound easy to some, "it takes time to build trust and confidence just like any relationship."
"They have to look at us as partners, not a threat," he said.
Niger Rehman of Long Island, N.Y., said she was pleasantly surprised by Yoffie's ability to give a balanced perspective.
"I do hope we can find common ground," she said. "One step at a time. Though the world is moving fast, we don't have too much time."
ISNA, based in Plainfield, Ind., is the largest umbrella group of Muslims in North America, claiming more than 100,000 members and 300 constituent organizations, including mosques, campus groups and professional organizations.
About 30,000 members from the U.S. and Canada are expected to attend the annual meeting, which runs through Monday. Yoffie leads 1.5 million progressive Jews in the U.S.
By Manya A. Brachear
Chicago Tribune
September 1, 2007
In an unusual goodwill gesture, the top rabbi of the nation's largest Jewish movement pleaded with American Muslims on Friday to transcend the differences that have divided their people for decades and join Jews to confront the extremist factions and prejudice that plague both religious traditions.
"It is ... our collective task to strengthen and inspire one another as we fight the fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both our faiths," Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told members of the Islamic Society of North America at their annual meeting in Rosemont. "We know nothing of Islam -- nothing. The time has come to listen to our Muslim neighbors speak in their own words about the spiritual power of Islam and their love for their religion."
Frequently interrupted by ovations, Yoffie introduced a joint initiative to launch conversations between Muslims and Jews across the country. In a separate interview, Yoffie envisions mosques and synagogues initially forging partnerships in 10 cities.
"There is nothing simple or easy about the project that we are about to undertake," he said. "But interconnected since the time of Abraham, thrust into each other's lives by history and fate and living in a global world, what choice do we really have?"
Sayyid Syeed, who directs the Islamic Society's national interfaith outreach, welcomed Yoffie to the stage, saying the appearance was long overdue.
"Today we are making history," Syeed said. "What you can ask him today is 'What took you so long?'"
For many in the audience, the answer was simple. For decades, most American Jews and Muslims have been unable to forgive or forget the deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Many attempts to engage in dialogue have reached an impasse.
Others who were not in the audience said the Muslim organization's invitation to Yoffie marks a significant and symbolic shift in approach. In years past, interfaith receptions have been scheduled on Friday nights, when Jews observe the Sabbath, making some Jews feel unwelcome.
"I think it's a healthy step forward," said Rabbi Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. "The important thing is to be able to talk to people."
Yoffie said Jews and Muslims should indeed start talking and stop arguing. They should present a unified front when urging the American government to work toward a peaceful resolution overseas and to stop racial profiling and discrimination on American soil. Yoffie joined Muslim leaders in private meetings with government officials Friday.
Along with other major American Muslim groups, ISNA's tax records and prison ministries have been investigated by the federal government in search of terrorist connections. No wrongdoing has been found. U.S. military and government officials have job booths at the convention to recruit chaplains and others who speak Arabic.
Yoffie acknowledges the trepidation some Jews might feel about the partnership, especially if they equate the Islamic Society with other Muslim organizations that have been targets of government investigations.
"Our view is that it's important to talk to people that you don't agree with and not simply those that you do agree with," he said in an interview. "It would be impossible to enter into this kind of program with a group that is somehow not unequivocally clear in its condemnation of terror. ISNA is not in that category."
To the Muslim audience, Yoffie insisted that Jews and Muslims must overcome the fears and suspicions that stem from clashes overseas.
"Will we, Jews and Muslims, import the conflicts of the Middle East into America, or will we join together and send a message of peace to that troubled land?" Yoffie asked. "If Israel is portrayed as 'a dagger pushed into the heart of Islam,' rather than a nation-state disputing matters of land and water with the Palestinians, we are lost. As religious Jews and religious Muslims, let us do everything in our power to prevent a political battle from being transformed into a holy war."
This is not the first time the Reform movement and national Muslim leaders have attempted to launch a dialogue in Chicago. Rabbi Herbert Bronstein, senior scholar of North Shore Congregation Israel, spearheaded negotiations in the early 1990s that broke down when neither Muslims nor Jews could avoid taking sides in the Middle East conflict. He called efforts to revive the conversations "nothing short of momentous."
He said liberal Jews can help Muslims who are seeking to become more moderate while retaining the authenticity of their beliefs.
"That's the North American experience," Bronstein said. "There's a kind of mutual illumination taking place that we should be proud of as Americans."
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, said that while agreeing to disagree may sound easy to some, "it takes time to build trust and confidence just like any relationship."
"They have to look at us as partners, not a threat," he said.
Niger Rehman of Long Island, N.Y., said she was pleasantly surprised by Yoffie's ability to give a balanced perspective.
"I do hope we can find common ground," she said. "One step at a time. Though the world is moving fast, we don't have too much time."
ISNA, based in Plainfield, Ind., is the largest umbrella group of Muslims in North America, claiming more than 100,000 members and 300 constituent organizations, including mosques, campus groups and professional organizations.
About 30,000 members from the U.S. and Canada are expected to attend the annual meeting, which runs through Monday. Yoffie leads 1.5 million progressive Jews in the U.S.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Israelis/ Palestinian Youth Summer Camp
CPTnet
28 August 2007
AT-TUWANI: Israeli children, parents, and teachers participate in Tuwani
summer camp
On 11 and 12 August, fifteen young Israelis and many of their parents joined
Palestinian children from the Tuwani area in summer camp activities. Tuwani
community members collaborated with the Israeli peace organization Ta'ayush
and a non-profit organization called Prelude to make the summer camp
possible
The Israeli visitors were mainly students and teachers from a bilingual
school in Jerusalem. Upon entering the Tuwani schoolyard, an arc of
cheering, chanting Palestinian children, clad in summer camp T-shirts and
caps, welcomed them. After shaking hands and listening to brief welcome
recitations from their hosts, the guests filed into classrooms for morning
activities that included musical games and art projects. Later, Tuwani
children hosted a tour of the village aiming to teach their Jerusalem
friends about life in the rural Palestinian setting. The Israeli youngsters
observed and participated in pulling water from the well, milking goats and
sheep, and riding a donkey before enjoying a meal prepared by local women.
A separate outing to the nearby village of Mufakara took place the following
day. A Palestinian cave-dwelling family received the Palestinians and
Israelis as guests for tea and conversation. The hosts responded to
questions from Israeli visitors about the challenges of living near two
Israeli settler outposts.
In a closing finale of the two-day exchange, all children joined forces in a
painting project that resulted in a vibrant mural hemming the exterior wall
of Tuwani's school.
Parents and teachers of the Israeli summer campers were equally involved in
the tours and activities. Some voiced concerns that the topics of settler
violence and other realities of the Israeli occupation could overburden the
young visitors. But all agreed that the visit reinforced the importance of
learning about Palestinian culture and building relationships with their
counterparts on the other side of the Green Line.
One Tuwani summer camp organizer commented on the significance of the visit:
"This is really something never done before in this whole area. We're
hoping that the people who came will tell their friends, and next year we
can have fifty children from Israel visiting us." He also expressed
interest in offering overnight home stays for next year's guests. "By doing
this we're saying we have faith in the future, because the children -- from
both sides -- are our future."
Click on the following link for a slideshow from the Tuwani summer camp
activities:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshhough/sets/72157601697599442/show/
______________
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of
Christian denominations.
To ask questions or express concerns, criticisms and affirmations send
messages to peacemakers@cpt.org.
28 August 2007
AT-TUWANI: Israeli children, parents, and teachers participate in Tuwani
summer camp
On 11 and 12 August, fifteen young Israelis and many of their parents joined
Palestinian children from the Tuwani area in summer camp activities. Tuwani
community members collaborated with the Israeli peace organization Ta'ayush
and a non-profit organization called Prelude to make the summer camp
possible
The Israeli visitors were mainly students and teachers from a bilingual
school in Jerusalem. Upon entering the Tuwani schoolyard, an arc of
cheering, chanting Palestinian children, clad in summer camp T-shirts and
caps, welcomed them. After shaking hands and listening to brief welcome
recitations from their hosts, the guests filed into classrooms for morning
activities that included musical games and art projects. Later, Tuwani
children hosted a tour of the village aiming to teach their Jerusalem
friends about life in the rural Palestinian setting. The Israeli youngsters
observed and participated in pulling water from the well, milking goats and
sheep, and riding a donkey before enjoying a meal prepared by local women.
A separate outing to the nearby village of Mufakara took place the following
day. A Palestinian cave-dwelling family received the Palestinians and
Israelis as guests for tea and conversation. The hosts responded to
questions from Israeli visitors about the challenges of living near two
Israeli settler outposts.
In a closing finale of the two-day exchange, all children joined forces in a
painting project that resulted in a vibrant mural hemming the exterior wall
of Tuwani's school.
Parents and teachers of the Israeli summer campers were equally involved in
the tours and activities. Some voiced concerns that the topics of settler
violence and other realities of the Israeli occupation could overburden the
young visitors. But all agreed that the visit reinforced the importance of
learning about Palestinian culture and building relationships with their
counterparts on the other side of the Green Line.
One Tuwani summer camp organizer commented on the significance of the visit:
"This is really something never done before in this whole area. We're
hoping that the people who came will tell their friends, and next year we
can have fifty children from Israel visiting us." He also expressed
interest in offering overnight home stays for next year's guests. "By doing
this we're saying we have faith in the future, because the children -- from
both sides -- are our future."
Click on the following link for a slideshow from the Tuwani summer camp
activities:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshhough/sets/72157601697599442/show/
______________
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of
Christian denominations.
To ask questions or express concerns, criticisms and affirmations send
messages to peacemakers@cpt.org.
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