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.
My friend and colleague, Rabbi Brant Rosen has been breaking new ground over the last week. Although there have been several Jewish clergy who have taken on Israel/Palestine issues, Rabbi Rosen's stand is significant because of his role as rabbi of a large congregation. He has succeeded in doing his work while maintaining the intricate web of relationships that sustain a community.
He was the first rabbi I saw to openly address the Palestinian nakba (the Palestinian experience of dispossession and exile as a direct consequence of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948) and publicly refusing to participate in the community-wide Israel Solidarity Day.
Rabbi Rosen is in the middle of a remarkable congregational trip to Israel/Palestine. Instead of the usual, Israeli-Jewish tour guide covering the standard Israeli Zionist narrative, his trip is led by a Jewish-Palestinian tourism agency. You can read a fascinating diary of Rabbi Rosen's Israel-Palestine trip on his blog Shalom Rav.
There are many local coexistence programs in Israel-Palestine. This is a wonderful way for American Jews to support these local efforts, and, at the same time to construct a new, Jewish-American narrative for Israel that acknowledges Palestine. We can help realize the vision for coexistence in Israel-Palestine by supporting the pioneers and by rethinking our received beliefs on the history of Israel-Palestine.
When I moved to the States some 12 years ago people here were largely ignorant of the issues. In 2000, I addressed a skeptical Jewish audience trying to convince them of settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank. We have come a long way since then. But, at the same time, for American Jews, Israel is still a very difficult topic. At a time when Jews are avoiding the divisive topic of Israel, Rabbi Rosen is engaging fully with the issues and opening up the conversation in the American Jewish community.
Yishar koach!
With Rabbi Brant Rosen (at a worker justice rally in Chicago in the summer)
...or Government Employees Demand Citizens Not Rent Homes to Minorities.
...or, Public Officials in the Middle East Encourage Racist Policies
Take your pick. This is the news from Israel.
The call by a group of Israeli rabbis to ban Arabs from Jewish towns has topped the news in Israel for two days. Besides the obvious problems here, this shines a light on the troubling mixing of church and state in Israel: all the rabbis draw a government salary as municipal chief rabbis.
With 2,000 years of rabbinic rulings, it doesn't take much scholarship to cobble together a religious document like this that looks like an authentic expression of Judaism. The most senior independent Israeli rabbi, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, issued a strong statement castigating the junior government-appointed clerics: "I have long said that some rabbis should have their pens confiscated!" Elyashiv has earned his moral clout by virtue of his scholarship, age (he's in his 90s) and independence (he's never taken state money). In the unofficial hierarchy of rabbinic leaders, he ranks as a super-authority.
Rabbi Elyashiv
Elyashiv brought to the fore a debate in the Israeli Orthodox community which is as old as Orthodoxy's engagement with political Zionism. When Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook arrived in Palestine from London, following the fall of the former Ottoman territory to the British in WWI, he quickly became rabbi to the young Jewish pioneers. This became his life work and he was rewarded with his appointment as the first chief rabbi of Palestine. The position of municipal chief rabbi can be traced to him. His brand of religious activism led his followers, and particularly his son, Zvi Yehuda Kook, to launch the settler movement in the late 60s.
Abraham Kook was opposed vehemently by the, native Jewish community of Jerusalem. This community is the spiritual ancestor of Rabbi Elyashiv.
In distancing himself from the municipal rabbis Elyashiv denounced the rulings of "Zionist rabbis." This is a loaded term. It reflects power struggles for choice government jobs in cities and state-endorsed religious courts in Israel. It also exposes an ideological divide between rabbis such as Kook who embraced Zionism as a religious movement, and the traditional camp which was deeply suspicious of the young rebels. Elyashiv's accusation that "Zionist rabbis" are the ones issuing the ban on renting Jewish homes to Arabs is an extension of his community's worldview, that, prior to the arrival of the Zionists, Jews and Arabs lived in harmony.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu also spoke out against the rabbis, quoting from the Bible's book of Leviticus. "Thou shalt love the stranger" and "one law shalt thou have for the native-born and the stranger." Netanyahu got this one right: Judaism has always acknowledged that Jews in Israel/Palestine share the same physical space as non-Jews. There is no period in Jewish history where that has not been a focus of Jewish religious culture. From the Torah, to the later books of the Bible; from the Apocrypha to the Mishna; from the Talmud to medieval scholars and beyond, Jews have always read the Jewish domain as overlapping with the non-Jewish.
However, Israeli law belies Netanyahu's statement. The State of Israel is constituted to protect Jewish privilege. The Basic Laws, building blocks of Israel's future constitution guarantee Jewish primacy in land use, citizenship and other privileges. State institutions such as the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Administration control land use by excluding non-Jews from national projects.
The rabbis' ruling is a natural outgrowth of this political culture. Netanyahu has expelled Palestinians from their East Jerusalem homes, forcefully expropriated Arab lands, and funds and encourages Jewish settlements and the dismemberment of the West Bank...why, the rabbis can reason, is their ruling crossing the line?
Rabbi Elyashiv's followers live illegally on the West Bank in Israeli-sponsored towns such as Immanuel. Why is baring Palestinians from the Orthodox town of Bnei Berak worse than illegally settling in the Palestinian territories?
I'm glad Netanyahu and Elyashiv spoke out against the racist rabbis. But, if they want to quote the Biblical injunction that all - Jew and non-Jew - are equal before the law with integrity, they need to do their house cleaning first
I saw the excellent documentary Budrus this afternoon. Today's was the last showing in Chicago, and I'm glad I made it. Besides thoroughly enjoying this well-made work, I also left the movie theater inspired. Budrus is about a West Bank village that successfully confronted the Israeli army. The Palestinian villagers successfully organized to save their olive groves and cemetery from being destroyed by the Israeli security wall.
This story is so wonderful not only because it has a happy ending but because is rings true. As one of the activists in the movie says, "The powerful never make concessions without a struggle." I saw other universal lessons including the importance of non-violent, steadfast, unified resistance. These are just as relevant to the campaign for worker justice in Chicago's hotels as they are for Palestinian farmers on the West Bank. Budrus reads like a textbook for community organizing.
As a story of building a unified campaign, Budrus pays attention to alliances between different constituencies: men and women; parents and children and teens; Palestinian villagers and Israeli activists. One of the relationships the documentary illustrates is that of Israeli soldiers and Israeli activists. An Israeli activist, seeking to make a human connection with the armed, Israeli soldiers, calls out to the soldiers through a megaphone, "We are peers. I am 22 and you are my age!"
If activism is your pleasure, Israel is a paradise. When I lived in Israel, what made for an enjoyable demonstration was a good slogan: it has to rhyme and pack a punch. The Israeli activists in Budrus came up with a great one. A group of young Israeli activists taunt the Israeli soldiers with the call: "lo yoreem v'lo bocheem!" "Don't shoot and don't weep." This call mocks the classic Israeli military ethic: "We shoot and then we will weep." In other words, Israeli soldiers are tough enough to go into battle and do what needs to be done, yet sensitive enough to process their emotions back home and let the tears run. This is reflected in mainstream Israeli culture. The mourning soldier is a touchstone of Israeli music and literature. Israeli popular music abounds with elegaic songs that articulate rituals of grief, among soldiers and with civilians.
The early Jewish pioneers who laid the foundations for modern Israel set out to re-create the Jewish man. These young men and women - peers in age of the soldiers and activists of Budrus - turned their teenage rejection of their parents' lives into an ideological movement. Their mission - as reflected in contemporary writings - was to take the weedy, terrified, bookish shtetl Jews and produce farmer-warriors. One hundred years later, the Israeli military male has developed as a hybrid: the Israeli sabra combined with the traditional Jew: The Israeli is the warrior, then, after the battle is over, the "Jew" emerges, and talks, and weeps. Israelis are proud of this archetype.
What I find lacking in this model is the ability to go beyond emoting and to question the premise for going into battle. There is no format in mainstream Israeli culture for asking fundamental questions. Like the documentary's woman-warrior Yasmin, this ideal type never questions the morality of her actions. (This pattern is the subject of the 2008, Israeli movie Waltz with Bashirabout the first Lebanon War.)
Israeli military Border Police enforcing illegal seizure of Palestinian lands to build the Israeli '"Separation Wall"
The formula of "We shoot, then we weep" has a particular resonance in Hebrew. I hear in it a paraphrase of the formula with which the Children of Israel accepted the authority of the Torah. Famously (to those who had a traditional, Jewish upbringing) the first generation of Israelites entered into covenant with God with the formula: "na'aseh v'nishma". "We will do it, and then we will study (lit. hear) it." The Talmud (BT Shabbat 88a) lauds the Israelites' acceptance of the commandments before knowing the scope of that commitment. This unquestioning acceptance of authority in matters of war is a perversion of the classical, rabbinic understanding of accepting the authority of God.
The Israeli activists' call on the Israeli military to abandon the cycle of violence-then-therapy. The Israeli activists in Budrus issue an urgent call to return to traditional, Jewish values of non-aggression. That message is delivered in simple, Israeli Hebrew: lo yoreem, v'lo bocheem!
Translation: If you won't shoot at us now, you won't have to cry about it later.
