Jewish and Democratic - Yes Arab and Democratic - No

Egyptian protestors at Tahrir Square today (NY Times)

                                

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's muzzling of his ministers,  turns out to have been just a tactical ploy. Netanyahu's public silence was the cover for diplomatic activity. The Israeli newspaper of record, Haaretz, reports that the Israeli government is advocating in Western capitals on behalf of Mubarak' regime.

Liberal Zionists argue that Israel can resolve the paradox of being simultaneously a Jewish ethnocracy
and a Western democracy. The shorthand for this is "Israel is Jewish and democratic".
Now it appears that Israel does not share the same optimism with regard its Arab neighbors.

In 1989, the world trusted Eastern Europe's democratic revolutions against totalitarianism.
Five years later, the West trusted South Africa's democratic revolt against apartheid.

In the last few days, the U.S. has - albeit belatedly - begun to shift support from Mubarak to the Egyptian people.

Why is Israel still behind the curve?

Netanyahu's machinations will surely reinforce Arab suspicions that Israel will never voluntarily end its domination over Palestinians.

Who will trust that Israel with its Palestinian population when it backs a dictator against his own people?

Those who are invested in the status quo in Israel/Palestine are rightly concerned that if the Egyptian protests against Mubarak succeed in deposing him, Israel's military occupation and ethnic discrimination of the Palestinians will come under close scrutiny.

For those of us who support a peace and justice resolution in Israel/Palestine, nothing could be more welcome.

Israeli Cabinet Minister: No Democracy for Arabs Right Now

Events in Egypt are moving fast. U.S. and Israeli officials are trying to keep up. 


Only yesterday, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley  said that while the U.S. welcomed the Tunisian democratic uprising, Mubarak should be allowed to remain in power because of  the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel. The New York Times picked up the administration's line in its reporting today.
By this afternoon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was already calling on the Egyptian government to refrain from violence and introduce reforms. 


Early this morning, an unnamed Israeli cabinet minister proclaimed:
"I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process."
By the evening Prime Minister Netanyahu had instructed his government minsters and officials to stay mum on the subject of Egypt.


Will the Egyptian protesters forget that Mubarak's security police fired US-made tear gas canisters at them? (h/t Phil Weiss at mondoweiss.net)

The Loss of Hope

When I lived in Israel I would skip over Gideon Levy's articles. Curling up with Haaretz weekend magazine, his "Twilight Zone" column - weekly reports from the West Bank and the other harsher sides of Israel  - was more reality than I needed on my weekends. It's only since leaving Israel that I have taken to reading him. He reads like a Biblical prophet; unflinchingly looking at the facts with a clear, courageous, moral voice.
                                                  
                                                                      Khalil Givati-Rapp

The story Gideon Levy published on Friday brought me to tears. Khalil Givati-Rapp was a sensitive, articulate, popular young man who was a leader volunteered for an elite combat unit. His name embodies the Israel-Palestine conflict: Givati is the name of one of the Israeli army combat brigades. Khalil mean a flute in Hebrew but, as a name, is better known as an Arabic name. It is also the Arabic name for the West Bank town that we know as Hebron. Khalil's parents are academics in the arts. They live in an eco-village and spent seven years in the States.  These are educated, progressive Israeli. And yet there was no place for young Khalil to speak his truth about his military service.
He was popular, successful, engaged and he was about to be deployed to his namesake, the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Hebron. Khalil could have chosen to opt out of military service. Did he not want to be marginalized in Israeli's macho culture? Was he not willing to compromise his full engagement in public life by running away from military duty? Was he  - as he put it - a coward? We'll never know the answers.

Khalil tried to have a conversation about his concerns that he was about to be called upon to fire upon civilians. His comrades-in-arms were deaf to his appeal. His unit memorialized the Holocaust. The Holocaust is part of their moral imperative for serving  in the military. Khalil understood that the Holocaust can never justify killing Palestinian civilians. He tried to engage his military buddies in that conversation. They turned a deaf ear. and he left them at the lunch table in the mess hall, took his military-issue gun and shot himself to death.

The sadness I feel for this tragic loss is met with the challenge - how can we save our young people, in the US and Israel, finding themselves in Khalil's situation?

Why I'm Anti-Zionist but Pro-Israel - Part I

I am pro-Israel but anti-Zionism.


First, three reasons why I oppose Zionism.

One hundred years ago the founder of cultural Zionism, Asher Ginzberg bemoaned the anti-diaspora stance within the Zionist camp. Ginzberg, better known by his nom de plume, Ahad Ha'am, penned "Negation of the Diaspora" in 1909. The article criticizes the so-called "true Zionists" for declaring the Land of Israel as the only option for Jews. Ahad Ha'am deemed that plan as unrealistic. The Jews will not migrate to the Land of Israel in an realistic time frame; the "Diaspora" will not disappear. Instead, he advocated a gradual migration of Jews to the Land of Israel focussing on rebuilding Jewish culture. He presciently recognized that most Jews would prefer to stay in the Diaspora. The Talmud (Tractate Kiddushin) tells us that very few - those at the bottom of the social order - migrated from Babylon to Ezra at the foundation of the Second commonwealth. The Third Commonwealth would not be substantially different.

Ahad Ha'am lost this ideological battle to the political Zionists led by Theodor Herzl's camp. Nearly forty years later, David Ben Gurion laid out his detailed manifesto for the State of Israel in which he unapologetically "negated the Diaspora." If you listen to any official representatives of the State of Israel speak on the topic, nothing, essentially has changed. A few years ago I heard the senior Israeli diplomat in the Midwest end his address to a group of American Jews with this:

As Jews, Israel is the stage and you are in the audience. We invite you to step on to the stage and become part of the action.

So, for the 130 years of political Zionism, negating the Diaspora has been a constant component. In other words Zionism is constituted as anti-Diaspora. As a Jew who chose to live as a Jew outside Israel I have to reject Zionism on those grounds.

The second aspect of Zionism which I reject is the settler movement. Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar in Lords of the Land documented the moment in the 1970s when the establishment Zionist camp, led by the late Yigal Allon and Yizhak Rabin along with President Shimon Peres, conferred legitimacy on the nascent settler movement. The repeated attempts of the settlers to establish a base at Sebastaya succeeded. The stand-off with the IDF ended in an embrace. That moment established the protocol of collaboration between the military and the settlers. This protocol is in force to this day. The Israeli military builds roads, provides arms, training, employment and security on behalf of the West Bank settlers. According to Zertal and Eldar, the Labor Zionist leadership came to the conclusion that the mantle of Zionist vanguard had passed from the kibbutzim to the settlements. Two years later, the Likud rose to power and, under Ariel Sharon, the West Bank settlements became the largest and most expensive national project of the State of Israel.

I reject Labor and Likud's Zionism. I reject the State of Israel's Zionism.

The third aspect of Zionism which I reject is the system of laws, Basic Laws (the building blocks of a future Israeli constitution) and national institutions that are governed by these laws that discriminate against non-Jews because of their religion and ethnicity.

Why am I pro-Israel?
I am an Israeli. I relate to the Land of Israel not only as a Jew, but as an Israeli. I love the creations of modern Hebrew culture. I am deeply connected to events, music. I could not reject Israel without rejecting part of  myself - and I have no need or desire to do so.

I care deeply about the future of Israelis: my family, friends and the people I am a part of. I am an activist on their behalf, largely, because I care about them. I am working for future coexistence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Zionism created a new people, of which I am a part.

As an Israeli and a Jew, I call on Israel to dismantle the settlement project and to undo its discriminatory laws and institutions. As a Diaspora Jew I call on Israel to abandon its anti-Diaspora position.

(In Part 2, I will look at other formulations of the Israel-Diaspora relationship that are mutually supportive)

Abe Foxman on Sarah Palin's "Blood Libel" and Palestine

The Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman, whose organization was founded to address anti-Semitism, was called to address Sarah Palin's inappropriate use of  the term "blood libel." Instead of giving her the benefit of the doubt that she was ignorant of the term's loaded history (doesn't she have any Jews on staff?), Foxman raps her gently on the knuckles. But first he spreads the blame around (the "blame game") then accuses the left of targeting Palin (she's not an "accessory to murder"!) and only then, towards the end,  issues a mild rebuke.

Foxman:

"It is unfortunate that the tragedy in Tucson continues to stimulate a political blame game.  Rather than step back and reflect on the lessons to be learned from this tragedy, both parties have reverted to political partisanship and finger-pointing at a time when the American people are looking for leadership, not more vitriol.  In response to this tragedy we need to rise above partisanship, incivility, heated rhetoric, and the business-as-usual approaches that are corroding our political system and tainting the atmosphere in Washington and across the country.

It was inappropriate at the outset to blame Sarah Palin and others for causing this tragedy or for being an accessory to murder.  Palin has every right to defend herself against these kinds of attacks, and we agree with her that the best tradition in America is one of finding common ground despite our differences.

Still, we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase "blood-libel" in reference to the actions of journalists and pundits in placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on others. While the term "blood-libel" has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history."

This is all well and good. But look how the ADL responded when the subject was not the presumptive Republican candidate for president but Palestinians. In November 2009, a group of Palestinian Christian clerics issued a theological statement calling for equal rights with Jews and a fair resolution of Palestinian claims. The Palestine Kairos document follows a South African Kairos document that South African Black clerics drafted in 1985.

After reading the Palestine Kairos document, I find there are no substantive statements that I cannot support. I think all Jews who care for the future of Israel should read this document. This is a call for reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians, based on justice. As a Jew, I would use different language and different Biblical  sources, but this is about listening to the voice of the oppressed.

However, Foxman reserves different language for the Christian call for justice. He labels the Kairos document as: "awful". He excoriates the Palestinian Christians for grounding their claim in their own Biblical theology. He criticizes them strongly for attacking Israeli settler use of the Bible to justify the dispossession of native Palestinians.

Why, Mr. Foxman, is there one rule for Ms. Palin and another for Arabs?