For those of you keeping track at home, the Jimmy Carter Apology Express has NOT been met at the station by the always apoplectic ZOA (Zionist Organization of America). Jimmy Carter (former U.S. President, peanut enthusiast, and erotica writer), in an oddly-timed pre-Christmas apology to American Jews, offered his belated Al-Het for "stigmatizing Israel" over the years.

The gesture was met with both reluctant acceptance by Jewish organizations needing to appear magnanimous (see: Foxman, Abraham) and consternation by various Jewish figures who still dislike Jimmy and/or saw the timing of Carter's apology a little too closely linked to grandson Jason Carter's run for the Georgia State Senate.

The ZOA falls into the latter camp, issuing their rejection some two-and-a-half weeks after the Carter apology was announced. The ZOA was firm in the assessment of Carter's apology, deciding to actually reject it twice. In the second pronouncement, the ZOA references a characteristically harsh op-ed written by Carter in the Guardian literally hours before his apology to American Jews washed ashore in the New World. The ZOA statement called upon the ADL, NJDC, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (named for a historic lover of apologies) to retract their ambivalent approvals of Carter's apology some fifteen days after they were originally issued.

I'm sure I will eventually have to apologize for asking this, but...how does any of this political pussyfooting help the people actually suffering because of the obstinacy surrounding this conflict?

Last month, on the controversial Palestinian children’s program, The Pioneers of Tomorrow, a cartoon was aired (on the Hamas owned Al-Aqsa TV) ostensibly aimed at teaching kids Islamic values. The cartoon features a conversation between a Palestinian boy and a young Israeli Jewish settler. Through their dialogue and interaction, the Jewish settler learns to question everything negative he had been taught about Palestinians.

The problem is that while the cartoon is designed to empower Palestinian children, it does so through the use of anti-Semitic stereotypes. This is not all together uncharacteristic for the Hamas run TV program: Past episodes of the show, for example, have shown a cute and cuddly rabbit who desires to kill and eat Jews. Yet, unlike previous shows, the message of this cartoon is less than clear: Is Hamas (in its unique way) calling for dialogue with the enemy, or is the organization using dialogue to perpetuate fear and mistrust? Have a look and decide for yourself:

 

 

[Below are my comments, along with thoughts from Palestinian and Israeli peace activists Aziz Abu Sarah and Kobi Skolnick.]

Roi Ben-Yehuda: From an Israeli, Jewish and humanistic perspective, this is a disturbing cartoon. The faces of the Jews (who are all settlers) are evil looking: they have angular shapes, scowling eyebrows, and thin mouths. This is in contrast to the rounded facial features of the Palestinian boy, which make him look friendly and unthreatening. Moreover, the film uses some subliminal techniques to carry the anti-Semitic messages home. The opening close-up of the Jewish child, for example, appears (for a second) to have blood spilling from his mouth. While the older brother, with his red eyes and goatee, literally looks like Satan. The physical posture, vocal intonations and actions of the Jewish teacher and father clearly portray them as sinister and diabolical characters. All together, the cartoon depicts the Jews as fearful yet demonic figures who, on the one hand, believe it is necessary to fight against the evil Palestinians, and on the other hand, actually enjoy killing their neighbors. Ironically, this is exactly the type of negative misrepresentation the cartoon criticizes the Jews for originally engaging in vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

Continue reading...

Here it comes, my twice-yearly analysis of the New Jews that have surfaced in our modern era. Remember kids, this is all in good fun. So if you see a little bit of yourself in this, just laugh, because I certainly have.

 

Bro-thodox

Exactly as it sounds: an epic combo of "Bro" and "Orthodox."

Seen wandering around Circle K gas stations on Sunday nights with his "boys", the Bro-thodox smells like Axe Body Spray, wears a white baseball cap backwards,  and has been seen hitting on Hot Chanis at kosher pizza shops, but making sure not to accidently touch them for fear of awkward Shomer Negiah moments. He jerks off to Jewish porn star Joanna Angel but will call his sister a "whore" for wearing a skirt that is above her ankle. He calls his next door neighbor "shvartze" but listens to hip hop, has a picture of the Rebbe on his mini-fridge but skips davening and after failing vet school will wind up working for his dad, the only person kind (and stupid) enough to put up with his oafish, lazy attitude. He's the kind of guy who winds up making teshuvah in his mid-twenties and turning his asshole attitude into a fundamentalist, halachic requirement.

JCC Sluts

For some, spiritual enlightenment comes from being "as Jewishly connected as possible." This person is the JCC Slut. Their Blackberry reads like Shindler's List: a collection of "steins," "bergs" and "mans" that they don't really know on a personal level, but would have no problem calling up for a job recommendation, a deal on a car, or a chance to fundraise for their local Federation. A condo dweller by nature, this person is a "committee chairperson" for more Jewish organizations than probably exist. Their inner peace comes from IDF banquets at the local hotel, Limmud brainstorming sessions and Saturday night "Young Professional Singles" Parties sponsored by the local Reform synagogue. The Banana Republic skirt and too small jacket with not-too-slutty heels and gold "chai" necklace are a dead giveaway.

Jew Ager

This person takes Jewish Renewal to its logical extreme. With Tibetan prayer flags hanging from their sukkah and a picture of Krishna draped by blue and white "Hanukkah" lights, the Jew Ager (Jew/New Ager), is really a Universalist who was born into the Jewish tradition and just can't give it up, despite really having no interest in Judaism, per se. They drink Yerba Mate from their Jewish National Fund mug and nearly shit themselves when they heard about the Abayudaya music from the Jewish people of Uganda. 

The Palestinian Jew

It's really en vogue for college students to hate Israel. And the best are the Jewish kids who hate it. Coming home for a Passover seder, they proudly proclaim to their parents that they are hosting an anti-Birthright Israel party in the student center on the next Shabbos. With an "End the Occupation" button on their messenger bag and a "Free Palestine" bumper sticker on the Toyota Corolla their parents bought them, the Palestinian Jew is the epitome of American youth--totally clueless about anything and more than willing to shoot their mouth off, as long as their isn't an actual Palestinian around who might correct them on their theories about Middle Eastern Politics. They don't want a Two-State Solution, because then it would make them lose a soapbox to stand on. The Palestinian Jew has never befriended a Muslim (the hijab just looks too scary) but has certainly seen lots of them on Al-Jazeera. This person will later grow up to be a Jew Ager.

That Annoying Convert Guy

The name is John Smith, but he likes to be called "Adam Ben Avraham v' Sarah." This person knows everything about the Holocaust and like to point it out to everyone, feeling a certain glee that he's smarter than guys with names like Saul Bromowitz and Kyle Bergman. That Annoying Convert Guy only eats Cholov Yisroel dairy and goes into a rage when anyone suggests that OU is "just as good". For the Annoying Convert Woman, it's all about getting into uncomfortable conversations with women about periods and mikvah and complaining about how unobservant the men on JDate are. The best way to piss off this person: point out that they are a convert, then watch them fly into a storm about how the Gemarrah says that pointing out a convert is a sin and that, since they do not wish to be called a convert, the person is giving up Olam Haba because calling someone a name "by which they do not wish to be called" leads to the destruction of the soul.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie addresses a plenary session at J Street's first national conference in Washington, D.C., October 26, 2009. (Photo: Daniel Sieradski)

On Monday, October 26, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, America's largest Jewish religious denomination, addressed a plenary session of the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby J Street's first national conference in Washington, D.C., drawing cheers and jeers alike from attendees.

Yoffie's appearance at J Street was something of a coup for the nascent group, as it re-established some legitimacy lost when, in December of 2008, Yoffie condemned J Street's position against Israel's war in Gaza as "morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve." Yoffie's denunciation of J Street subsequently became fodder for the pro-Israel right, which used his remarks to paint J Street as being even too-far left for the left itself.

Nonetheless, J Street welcomed Yoffie's participation in the conference, exemplifying the group's desire to engage those with whom it disagrees, in the greater interest of promoting more open dialogue within the Jewish community about Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. And while it was clear, by the end of Yoffie's remarks (which included a roundtable discussion with J Street's executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami), that the Reform leader agreed on much more with J Street than he disagreed, there were clear differences on the issues of human rights and international law, particularly regarding the Goldstone report.

While J Street has neither condemned nor touted the U.N.'s Gaza war crimes investigation findings, it has cautiously stated the need for Israel to take the allegations seriously and investigate the charges. Yoffie, on the other hand, went straight for Goldstone's throat.

"This is not the time for a full discussion of the Goldstone report," he said, turning heads among audience members offended by the implication that Israel need not take credibly the allegations therein.

"Its reasoning is shaky in some places and more often absurd," he added, focusing not on specific charges, but on the seeming imbalance of the report's language, which he characterized as unjustly laying greater responsibility for the events in Gaza at Israel's feet rather than Hamas'.

Yoffie drew loud boos with his declaration, "You cannot be a moral agent if you serve an immoral master, and Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself for working under the auspices of the U.N. Human Rights Council."

I admit, I was among the booers.

Continue reading...

Photo by Daniel Sieradski 2009 (thanks to Jewschool).

Dear J Street Protesters,

C'mon - you can do better than that! You decide to go with the swastika - arguably one of the best pieces of repurposed graphic design in the last 75 years, and surely one of the most charged and taboo, and you get it dead wrong. Pencil thin? What happened - your copy of Printshop wasn't working? You couldn't find a bigger marker?

Seriously, mixed messaging aside, we don't mean to harp, but you were prepared to spend all day outside, hell - maybe even get arrested, and you only spent three minutes on your sign? Is that supposed to be a combination of the J Street arrow logo and a swastika? Brilliant! But hire a graphic designer my man - get it right! You look lame! You aren't even trying.

Moreover, when is the last time you guys protested something? Location, location, location. You are facing away from the hotel towards high speed traffic. You think that Honda doing 45 can read your wimpy swatiskas? Did it occur to you to call a few friends and get a permit for the prime real estate around the corner? (We're not even going to tell you where, 'cause you definitely don't deserve it.) We don't even feel like giving you this much attention. Maybe we'll delete this post, although its not like the photo op is going to help you considering how badly you failed at swastika drawing.

Anyway, speaking of lame, there weren't too many of you. On Tuesday, you collectively (?) decided to stay at home cause it was raining. You went from swastikas to "Oy, it's raining today. Maybe we should stay in and eat soup."

Good luck!
Jewcy

P.S. What does it mean that 1,500 people (Jews, Palestinians, Christians) show up to this conference, and 35,000+ watch it live online, and you're the only protesters that show? Is J Street the mainstream? Do they need more protesters? Do you need a copy of "Protesting for Dummies"?

In an event already being declared a breakthrough in Arab political identity and self-esteem by media outlets throughout the Middle East, Islamic resistance group Hamas secured the return of 20 Palestinian female prisoners held in Israeli jails, in exchange for a video of a single, emaciated Jew.

Hamas-leader-in-exile Khaled Meshal said during a speech-in-exile in Damascus that the exchange represented the greatest-ever affirmation of the sanctity that the Arab world places upon its prisoners, and the righteousness of their sacrifice.

"Imagine if we send them a fingernail, we could free every prisoner in Israel", Meshal told the crowd at Martyrs' square in the Martyrs' Heights neighborhood of Damascus, before mumbling something about "Zionist vampires" hijacking his Twitter feed.

In later statements made to an AP writer in Damascus, Meshal said he had received "unconfirmed proof" that Israeli agents had implanted a GPS tracking device in the left breast of each prisoner, in order to better facilitate future punitive air strikes on their homes and sleeping children.

The Gaza newspaper "Palestine", which secured a choice product placement in the video, reported that all 20 prisoners were currently undergoing reprogramming in UNRWA-run schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in order to expunge the trade school certifications and high school equivalency exams they completed while in the prisons of the Zionist entity.

On Friday, Palestinian families throughout the West Bank rejoiced in the glory of their loved ones' return home, with many saying it was their happiest day since the last of their regular visits to them in Israeli prison.

Also Friday, relatives of Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit celebrated their first view of their son since he was kidnapped in a cross-border raid by Hamas in 2006, saying that the three years without any contact or confirmation of his well-being and Hamas' refusal to allow Red Cross visits made viewing the 2:42 video all the sweeter.

 

Benjamin L. Hartman is an editor at Haaretz.com, the English Web site of Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz

Should we beoptimistic about the current discussions intended to create two sovereignstates in the area of Israel and Palestine? I'm not optimistic. I thinkthe conscience of the world is soothed by these meetings and accords andmemoranda and Camp David get-togethers, during which agreements are made thatwill not be kept, as mostpeople on both sides know. Settlements will continue to be built,terrorist acts will continue to occur, an occupied territory will remain occupied, an occupied people will continue tolose territory and such rights as they have, and then in the course of time the attention of the worldwill again be focused on the next conference or meeting in Madrid. Those of us who care and keep watchwill be hopeful and then again despondent and then again hopeful when attempts at a newagreement are made.

Isthere any reason to believe that something now under diplomatic discussion willchange this pattern? I don't thinkso.

Doesthis mean I am pessimistic and cynical about the possibilities of peace in theMiddle East? I'm not. However, Ido think we are looking for solutions in the wrong places, expecting oftreaties and agreements what can only be brought about by work on the ground,grassroots work, listening, mutual cooperation, and conversation. It's heartening to know that asthe peace treaties come and go work of this kind is taking place, right now, inIsrael/Palestine. I have devotedan entire chapter of my book, Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home, to a study ofthese efforts. The good news (and there is good news) is that these attempts at understanding between two embattledpeoples tend to spread.

I wroteabout a village called the Oasis of Peace: Neve Shalom/Wahat-ha-Salam in orderto study the way it grew from a dream to a reality, hoping to learn how othersin the region could make their dreams of peace come true. In the Oasis of Peace, Jews and Arabswork and teach and study conflict resolution together. At first hearing, this effort must seemmuch less significant than the grand events (Oslo, Camp David, Madrid, Cairo)that enter headlines and call upon the attention of the world. On the other hand, while these summitsare regularly taking place and as regularly failing, the little village is growing; there are six hundred children in the villageschool and tens of thousands of teenagers have gone through the School for Peaceprogram. When I think of them Itend to imagine them as individual glowing sparks seeded out over the landamong their embattled people. These, and those like them, are the people who will find resolutions tothe conflict in the Middle-East.

Theearliest writers and dreamers about Zionism must have looked absurd to thepeople who surrounded them. Theywere poor and middle-class boys and girls living in Russia who gathered insmall circles to talk about building a homeland for Jews in Palestine.Dreamers, who knew how to work hard, they invite us to dream on the same scale they did-always rememberingthat a dream must first be planted on earth, in daily activity, in sustainedcommitment.

In1997, Amin Khalaf and Lee Gordon, Israelis of Arab and Jewish origin,established a non-profit organization called Hand in Hand. In 1998, they opened an elementaryschool where Arab and Jewish children study together. Since then, three more schools have been opened; over 800 students are presently enrolled in the four bi-lingualschools. Here, in thiscountry of bombs and attacks and shelling and dispossessions, 800 students now know how to speak each other's language. Their parents are alsoinvolved, actively working to create social change. Soon it is expected that an entire, countrywide network ofsuch schools will exist, educating children from kindergarten through thetwelfth grade, educating their parents too, and the neighbors of their parentsand probably anyone to whom the children or the parents happen to speak abouttheir lived experience of peaceful co-existence.

Someyears ago, I dreamed that I waslecturing about how we, the privileged in a society of growing poverty, aredamaged by our efforts to deny what is happening to our less privilegedneighbors. We do not understandhow to help them and therefore we close ourselves off to knowledge. In the dream I grasped in graphicdetail the way this self-insulation as making us shrink, impoverishing us,covering us in layers of stiff gauze, so that soon, I kept saying in my dream,we will have enclosed ourselves in an indifference so profound we can no longerbe said to be alive inside all those layers of denial. This was not a dream about Israel andPalestine; I dreamt it years before I wrote my book, but perhaps, working inthe subterranean way dreams do, it eventually instructed me to write the kindof book I wrote, in which I study our ability to ignore what ishappening to our neighbors.

As weare approach Yom Kippur and theDays of Awe, we ask ourselvesto think over the deeds of the previous year, to atone and repent, and to askforgiveness for transgression. Perhaps this year we will be able to bring particular regard to a prayerwe have repeated so often on Erev Yom Kippur we may no longer pay muchattention to it.

"May all the people of Israel be forgiven, including all the strangers who livein their midst, for all the people are at fault." As is customary, we will saythis prayer three times. The first time perhaps for what we have done to thePalestinians; the secondtime for what the Palestinians have done to us. The third time for the possibility that these two peopleswill be guided to forgive each other.

I'm not an activist - perhaps, at best, I'm a desktop activist. I can't imagine myself part of these thirty-three Jewish organizations that guard the politically correct views of Israel. Yet, in my own conversational sphere I have been as intolerant of disagreement, as hot-headed, quick to take offense and strike back, as the members of these organizations.

That's why I began my book; or, better said, that's what turned my attention towards myself in a way that became the inspiration for my book. Storming out of cafes, refusing to speak for weeks to friends who disagreed with me, insisting that Israel, surrounded by a hostile sea of Arab nations, was seriously endangered -at some point I began to question myself. By profession I am a listener; sometimes we call this listening psycho-therapy or psychoanalysis. I call it intuitive listening and I practice it daily. If one of the people who came to talk to me was behaving as I had been I would wonder, and ask, and encourage us to discuss, this extreme behavior. Why so hotheaded? So quick to attack and defend? I would be curious about what was a-stir under the surface; some unrecognized conflict, some self-division, some terrible fear? Listening daily to others in this questioning way it was inevitable that I would begin, sooner or later, to question to my own stridency.

In general I am not an embattled person. I subscribe to the idea that we have points of view rather than Truths, different ways of perceiving and organizing reality. It was Israel that called up this storm of agitation and made me so intolerant. Was there something about Israel I didn't want to know or see, something involving the strength and power of our nation? If what was unseen by me was visible to others how had I managed over the years not to know what they knew? I worked hard at this question and eventually pieced together a sequence of refusal to know. I set out this interlocking structure in the chapter I call A Land Without A People, where it can be read in detail. I mention it here to emphasize that I do not exclude myself from my analysis. What I have to say about other strident and embattled Jews has been true of me, their ignorance has been my ignorance and to some degree it remains our ignorance. There are many things this chain of not-seeing can help us not to know; most of all it can help us not to know almost anything about the lives of the Palestinians.

Continue reading...

I started out by saying that I was worried about us, the whole community of us, American Jews. As Jews, inheriting a Talmudic tradition of debate and commentary, we have been a people given to disputation. We have been considered a stiff-necked, stubborn people precisely because we don't easily yield our opinions to authority and because our authorities have not felt the need to require of a Jew a rigorous structure of necessary beliefs. You can be a Jew if you believe in God or not, if you are kosher or not, if you are observant or not, if you read or have read the Bible, whether or not you observe the Sabbath and welcome the Shekinah and the extra soul she is said to bring us for the Sabbath. You could even be totally ignorant of any of this and still be a Jew.

So, how does it happen, I ask, with a tradition like this, that we have become a people who can't tolerate a difference of opinion when it comes to Israel? I'm serious when I say we cannot tolerate it. There are at present thirty-three distinct Jewish organizations formed into a coalition to watch what is said about Israel on college campuses. Yes, yes, I'm perfectly serious. The majority of them are off-campus organizations so concerned about attitudes towards Israel that they have determined to generate on campus a "pro-active, pro-Israel agenda." This does not sound very Jewish to me. It also does not sound much like higher education and that is what worries me. I want to understand why we Jews have begun to behave as if the holding or speaking of an opinion was, in itself, a threat to the survival of Israel.

In a recent article by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, I read the following (Tikkun, September/ October, 2009): "We have become increasingly concerned at the ways in which scholarly critics of Israeli policy have been cavalierly and maliciously misrepresented, mostly through ad hominem attacks on their characters, reputations, and careers."

Here is their recent example: The written reports of a panel, "Human Rights and Gaza," hosted at UCLA in January of 2009 have been for the most part misleading. The papers presented by the four speakers were received in an atmosphere of general tolerance, although on one occasion, briefly, they were "interrupted by pro-Israeli jeers." I have checked this account by listening to the podcast of the proceedings. It was a peaceful and civil public event. The reports, however, give a very different impression. It has been compared to a "beer hall political rally," the panelists have been characterized as an "anti-semitic lynch mob." They have been accused of leading a frenzied audience in chants of "F--k Israel" and "Zionism is Nazism." None of this, I repeat, absolutely none of this is accurate, there was no frenzied audience and there were no chants. One of the participants was Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Can one really imagine this man as part of an anti-semitic lynch mob?

I encourage anyone interested in this issue to do what I have done and check it out online. Or you can trust me that the occasion was as I have represented it - civil, respectable, entirely appropriate for an academic setting, not the way it has been represented by Roberta Said, education director of Stand With Us, in an article entitled "Reviving 1920's Munich Beer Halls at UCLA, Courtesy of California Taxpayers." Subsequently, articles in the Wall Street Journal (February 3, 2009), the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles (February 18, 2009) and in The Los Angeles Times use her characterization of the panel and its speakers without bothering to check facts. Could it be that the writers of these articles actually believe what they are saying? That they are so alarmed by a criticism of Israel that they experience it as a deadly attack and then unwittingly invent the mood, the atmosphere and the comments that would justify this assertion?

I have come to think about this as a "siege mentality," a state of mind in which one believes oneself and one's people to be perpetually under attack, living at an edge where drastic measures are needed for survival. I sense in it a raw, underlying fear of immanent destruction, as if the people who see the world in this way imagine that we Jews are still living through the Holocaust. Munich beer halls, vicious anti-semitic slogans, the fascist-style chanting, all taking place on a University campus in California in 2009? I sense here a serious confusion between past and present and also between acts and thoughts, so that a verbal critique is experienced as a physical attack and then comes to be perceived as a violent action - an escalating confusion between what is said and what takes place in the world.

How unfortunate this is, how tragic that members of our community are so traumatized by the past that they cannot easily join others of us in the present. We are not outcasts and victims any longer; we are a powerful people, we have accomplished a miracle of nationhood. What are these fears and worries that seem to express love and concern and support for Israel? Are they not (although not intended to be) an undeserved insult to the Jewish accomplishment? I see these fears as a heartbreaking failure to recognize what we have in fact achieved. In the world as it is now we have an indisputable fact, which these worriers cannot see: the Jewish people has become powerful.

Kim Chernin is the author of Everywhere a Guest, Nowhere at Home: A New Vision of Israel and Palestine. She is guest-blogging this week on Jewcy, and this is her first post.

I am worried about us, the whole community of us, American Jews who have lost the ability to hold a reasonable discussion. I became aware of this as I was writing a book about Israel and Palestine. I had published many books before so it is customary, when I run into old friends or acquaintances, to be asked what I'm working on. In the past, people didn't seem particularly impressed or interested; I guess the question was mainly polite and I learned not to answer it in too much detail.

But with this book, everything was different. The responses were often explosive and urgent, sometimes immediately embattled. I remember a few of them. "Why Palestine? Are you one of those self-hating Jews? What do you have to say that hasn't been said a hundred times already? We really need another book about Israel? I sure hope you're not going to attack Israel." Those were the negative responses from people who were not friends but belonged to a larger circle of acquaintances. It wasn't clear to me why their response was hostile before I had a chance to describe the book or my intentions for it; perhaps the word Palestine in the title sounded suspicious, as if anyone writing about both Israel and Palestine was probably not going to take Israel's side?

The positive responses sounded something like this: "Good for you. Oh, are you courageous. That's the most important topic in the world right now. Oh boy are you going to run into some angry people. I hope you're ready for a strong response." The neutral responses were few and far between. "What's your point of view? I'll be interested to find out what you are thinking." I explained, when given a chance, that my point of view was evolving; that the book was difficult to write, especially for a woman who had been a Zionist since she was a little girl, when the State of Israel was established in 1948.

Most of the discoveries I was making while doing research were about my own ignorance. I had lived in Israel for a time, I had strong opinions about Israel, but once I started to read it was clear to me how little I knew. I had a couple of basic misconceptions. I thought the Israeli army was fundamentally different than any army in the world. I took seriously that it practiced a "purity of arms." My boyfriend, when I lived in Israel, was a student at the Technion. He was studying to be an engineer but he loved poetry and was becoming interested in the Kabbalah. When he came to stay at our Kibbutz as the commander of an armed border patrol he had hair down to his shoulders, played chess in the Moadon after dinner, and was always engaged in serious discussions with members of the Kibbutz. For me, and for everyone else who met him, he embodied the idealism we wanted to associate with the Israeli army. In fact, for a long time, my entire impression of the Israeli army was based on him, and on an article I had read that Israeli soldiers cried at the funerals of their comrades and that the army higher command was debating whether this was an appropriate behavior for a soldier. Long-haired soldiers who read poetry and weep at funerals: that seemed at the time sufficient knowledge on which to base my strong opinions about Israel's fighting men.

But my reading and research were opening up other views of the Israeli army, a ferocious fighting force, the fourth largest army in the world. Israel, my little-sister country, had nuclear weapons and the largest army in the Middle East. Did that mean that Israel was perhaps less endangered than I had thought?

My other misconception concerned the Palestinians: I had thought that all of them were terrorists.

These are pretty slim qualifications for writing a book, I admit. But in their own way this these misconceptions became interesting AS the subject of a book written by a hot-headed, opinionated, ignorant author. All I had to do was turn the focus on myself, to wonder how I'd come to hold such strong opinions in the face of such blatant ignorance and to wonder whether other Jews who also were constantly getting into heated arguments about Israel might have arrived at their condition in the same way that I had. I put a lot of facts and statistics and quotations and stories and anecdotes in my book but the book remained essentially a narrative of consciousness-how it shaped itself through what it was willing to include and what it forcefully and militantly kept out of itself.

It's funny to think that one could be inspired to write a book because of one's misconceptions. But here we are.

Keith Kahn-Harris, in his discussion of British Jewish politics (Zeek, June 30th), presents a rather timid community, anxious to maintain cohesion behind its chosen voice, the Board of Deputies of British Jews.  He chooses to present this organisation as the quasi-parliamentary representative voice of British Jewry and shows that the elections to the board from the organisations that pay their rather steep affiliation fees, are seldom openly contested.

Kahn-Harris identifies the antipathy of the Board to open dissension within the Jewish community.  He suggests, as perhaps a modernising response, that like the British democratic parliament, there should be a parliamentary opposition which would allow the safety valve of open debate and thus draw the sting from those who feel excluded from Jewish life, because they happen to have fundamentally different conceptions of what the Board should be doing, particularly with respect to Israel.

The Board of Deputies behaves in this way, Kahn-Harris posits, as a coping strategy by a group infused with anxiety.  He traces this to years of persecution and the necessity of showing a harmonious face to the outside world, which otherwise could divide and destroy it. Its a familiar argument, often used to rationalise reactionary Jewish political behaviour. Unfortunately, in this instance, this account is not applicable.

The Board is only copying a tactic used over the centuries by Jewish communities, where Jewish male elders negotiated for their communities in arenas often hostile to them.  It kept the communities safe, enabled them to live according to Jewish precepts, allowed for the  advancement of the leadership and maintained social control. But this depended above all on the fact that no party rocked the boat.  This precluded of course negotiating with those  from within the communities, who could be seen to challenge powerful interests.

The Board of Deputies has tried on the whole to maintain good relationships with those in power and has usually been on the side of reaction. Although according to William Rubinstein's A History of Jews in the English Speaking World, the Board initially campaigned against the 1905 Aliens Act, Britain’s first anti-immigration law, passed to limit the number of Jews settling in the country, they soon adapted to it, as the implementation was not strict.  The Board of Deputies argued against confronting Fascists during the 1930s.  The Board were similarly hostile to the pre-war effort to boycott Nazi Germany, a tactic demanded by many Jewish communities throughout the world, but not by the Yishuv in Palestine. It also argued strongly against working with the left wing Anti-Nazi league against British Fascists in the late 1970s.

Although initially an anti-Zionist organisation, seeing themselves as Jews and not as nationalists, this changed in 1937, according to Geoffrey Alderman in Modern British Jewry, with the election onto the Board of an organised group of Zionists .  Since then, the board has maintained a consistent pattern of open defence of Israel’s actions and of organising solidarity events whenever there is major criticism of Israel’s behaviour.  Thus, in spite of the fact that the Zionist Federation is Israel’s main supporting organisation in this country, it is the Board, whose remit is British Jewry, not Israeli politics, that will publicly defend Israel’s actions.

It would seem that the Board actually follows the communal lead by identifying the changing opinions within the community and harnessing them in its public pronouncements.  This is fine when there is a degree of homogeneity within the community and when the board is able to co-opt its critics into the big tent, but fails comprehensively once there is real dissent. 

As Keith Kahn-Harris correctly points out, the major source of dissent now is the behaviour of the state of Israel and the fact that among thinking Jews, the idea of blind support of Israeli actions is no longer acceptable.  In his presentation to the annual general meeting of Jews for Justice for Palestinians,  Kahn-Harris outlined what he sees as a significant change in Jewish responses to Israel’s actions and his view that there are many Jews thirsty for fresh streams.  He identifies the Gaza attack as perhaps the trigger for a sense of discomfort in the Jewish community about the direction down which Israel is travelling.  This together with the new extreme government in Israel has made Jewish people in Britain start to question their allegiances. 

A group who have been active since the beginning of the second intifada, campaigning against the occupation and for a just peace, namely Jews for Justice for Palestinians may be well placed to pick up those increasingly disillusioned with undiscerning mainstream support. 

Kahn-Harris came to address our annual general meeting and was unhappy with what he found:

‘Many of those attending were extremely bitter with the ‘mainstream’ Jewish community, and most were uninterested in working to bring Jews who were more involved in the community on board. As much as the mainstream community shuns leftist critics of Israel, many of them effectively shun themselves’.

In my view, this bald statement does not do justice to the actions of JFJFP.  It is important to recognise that JFJFP has made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between ourselves and mainstream Jewry.  We find it extremely difficult if not impossible to obtain access to mainstream synagogues, or community facilities. In fact only recently we were well on the way to mounting an uncontroversial event in a synagogue. But the event was cancelled perhaps because of concerns expressed by some that JFJFP were sponsoring it.  Recently we offered to talk to a community in the home counties, after they expressed anger at a meeting arranged by humanitarian activists to highlight injustices suffered by Palestinians.    The response was a public letter of uncontrolled venom.  And indeed JFJFP has met with the Board on at least two occasions.  It is not us who shun the community but the mainstream community who seem to find our message difficult to digest.

In his presentation, Keith Kahn-Harris made a number of suggestions as to how JFJFP could change to harness this disquiet.  He made it clear that our approach is not calculated to appeal to Jews who ‘love Israel’.  These Jews, according to Kahn-Harris, ask ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians, what about Jews for Justice for Jews?’  They ask why we do not criticise Palestinians who deserve criticism as much as Israelis do and why we are silent on the issue of anti-Semitism and of Hamas.  He believed that this would encourage those Jews now looking for an alternative to take the plunge and join with JFJFP.

Each area mapped out by Keith Kahn-Harris is highly contentious.  It is difficult to understand how to equate the brutality of a military occupation together with its denial of human rights, with injustice to Jews.  Indeed it is difficult to know how, when Jewish life has never been less constricted, what injustice is being perpetrated.  There is also the question raised by those of us who are schooled in  the anti-colonialist struggles of the last century.  This is that those from the dominant side have a responsibility to challenge our own side and to expect the challenge to the oppressed side, to come from within.  Anything else is paternalism.  And indeed while Israel’s supporters continue to maintain a silence about its offences, they take every opportunity to criticise the Palestinians, and often peddle lies. 

Anti-Semitism today has become a much more contested arena.  There are those who would call it anti-Semitism to ‘deny Jews the right to self-determination’, as the EU Monitoring Commission seemed to suggest, taken up with alacrity by the Parliamentary committee on anti-Semitism.  This definition faces challenges from the European Jews for a Just Peace and from JFJP as it seems to be a stalking horse for a declaration that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.  True anti-Semitism is always challenged by members of our group, when on marches or when working with other solidarity movements, and we have managed to change behaviour.  We regard anti-Semitism as the enemy of the Palestinian cause, as much as it is the enemy of Jewish people.  However in talking about anti-Semitism, we need clarity to know exactly what people mean.

At the annual general meeting, signatories suggested that it is not for JFJFP to change, in  reaching out to the anxious, but rather for another organisation, a sort of half way house to be established, something like the almost moribund Peace Now. This would be able to net the unhappy in a way they would find amenable.  Sadly this organisation seems to have gone into hibernation following the ‘War on Terror’.  Now that this strange period is on the wane, perhaps the luminaries of this organisation both in Israel and in the UK might begin to emerge again and take their place in the peace pantheon as a half way house for those beginning at last to feel discomfort  caused by uncritical support for Israel’s actions.

It is strange that Kahn-Harris should be trying to disinter the bones of the British parliamentary system, one that the British public is finding increasingly unsatisfactory.  Maybe it would be more apt to look at the survival tactics of the board over the years.  The board identifies with powerful interests and tries to modify its stance in accordance with perceived changes in the Jewish community itself.  It is now apparent that powerful interests in the United States, in the European Union and in Britain are no longer willing to give Israel the free pass to disregard all international legal frameworks in its endeavour to achieve dominion in the Middle East.  This change is reflected in the more thoughtful approaches of many in the Jewish community that Kahn Harris at the annual general meeting, and Anthony Lerman have sketched out.

This wind of change seems even to be blowing in the direction of the Board itself, perhaps responding to perceived changes in the community. A quick peak at the Board of Deputies’ website shows a complete lack of any activity on behalf of Israel, other than prayers for the family of Gilad Shalit. Maybe the Board itself is beginning to adapt to the new environment in which it now needs to operate. What organisations like Jews for Justice for Palestinians can do is maintain their integrity.  Our goal is ultimately to be accepted by mainstream Jewish organisations, but not to destroy our own values in the process.  

In a controversial interview with Israel's Channel II News, the father of Prime Minister Netanyahu, historian Benzion Netanyahu, says that his son does not support a Palestinian state. The elder Netanyahu claims that the Prime Minister told him he deliberately placed impossible conditions before the Palestinians.

Here are excerpts from the interview. When asked if his son really changed his position concerning a Palestinian state, the 100 year-old Netanyahu unequivocally answered: (translation mine)

“He does not support. He supports such conditions that they (the Arabs) will never accept it. That is what I heard from him. I didn’t propose these conditions, he did. They will never accept these conditions. Not one of them.”

When asked about his own personal opinion about a Palestinian state, the senior Netanyahu stated:

Herzl and Nordau (fathers of the Zionist movement) did not labor to create a Palestinian state. This land is Jewish land, and not a land for the Arabs. There is no place here for Arabs, and there wont be a place here for the Arabs. They will never agree to the conditions.

Quick comment: Last night Kadima issued a statement declaring: “Today it is clear, even Bibi does not believe Bibi.” It is likely that people are going to jump on these comments as proof positive that the Prime Minister never was nor will be interested in a two-state solution to the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. After all, the argument will go, who knows him better than his father/greatest mentor?

However, I am bothered here by one question: If Benzion knew that his son was deliberately sabotaging the peace process why state so in public? Is it possible that the father feared his son would actually do the unthinkable, thereby forcing him to make statements which would harm his son’s intentions? In other words, contrary to Kadima’s position, is this proof that Bibi is serious?

Doubtful, but I cant really make sense of why he would make these statements. Benzion could simply be a very old-man who lost the patience to play the political game.  Yet his words betray a lucid and sharp mind that knows what is at stake.  Strange. Very strange.

Also posted over at RoiWord.   

It is difficult to believe that three weeks ago the main news item in Israel was Netanyahu’s endorsement of the two state solution. Notwithstanding the coverage his Bar Ilan address received, within days, it had largely slipped from public consciousness. While Obama’s Cairo speech continues to reverberate throughout the Middle East, the Israeli prime minister’s so-called acceptance of the "leftist" program has left no marks. The dismissive reception that Netanyahu received when he traveled to Europe afterwards, coupled with persistently blatant demands—even from Silvio Berlusconi—to cease all settlement construction in the Occupied Territories shows how little Netanyahu was taken seriously by Israel's so-called best friends.

Recent developments in the Mideast and, more specifically, the unfolding political crisis in Iran, could only spuriously be blamed for the Israeli public's alleged amnesia. The actual culprit: the internal dynamics of Israeli political culture and its observation of its own deeply ingrained rituals. Benjamin Netanyahu had simply undertaken what has become a necessary exercise for every new prime minister, in particular those who trace their political roots to the Likud Party. Like Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon before him (and Rabin, Peres and Barak, the leaders of the Labor Party before them), Netanyahu was forced to renounce the vision of one big Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and embrace the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The other components of Netanyahu's speech are likewise highly routinized. Such a speech must reference the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel, (he did that) and note the current threats to its existence (Iran). It is likewise necessary to assert that Israel has always endeavored to resolve the conflict with its neighbors, and that the blame for the failure of these endeavors lies with the other side (the Palestinians). One must also enumerate Israel’s preconditions for future negotiations—the other party should recognize Israel as a Jewish state, give up its claims over Jerusalem, withdraw its demand for the right of return for refugees and agree to a demilitarization, and begin negotiations without preconditions.

Reactions to Netanyahu's “change of heart” by members of Israel’s political establishment were also equally predictable. Whereas politicians and activists from the right clamored and protested the Prime Minister's words as a sell-out to the Americans, a capitulation to the left, etc. etc., the Israeli center and Zionist left rooted for Netanyahu's bold, groundbreaking move. Whereas the settlers and their allies continue to tighten their grip over the territories designated for a future Palestinian state, the Israeli center and left, now satisfied that its position is universally accepted, awaits further international pressure that would force Israel's leader to undertake serious action.

If all of this sounds familiar, it's because it is. The empty, highly ritualistic character of the affair - the announcement of 'new position', followed by predictable responses, and, ultimately, an unchanged status quo on the ground - leaves little room for interpretation. These are all simply gestures, and hollow ones at that, which do nothing other than cover up a fundamental commitment to maintaining the occupation by all of Israel's major political parties.

One need only think of the settlement project to gauge how persistent and widespread this commitment truly is. In the seventeen years since Israel was first coerced (by the administration of George Bush Sr.) to acknowledge Palestinian national rights on the west bank of the Jordan, the number of Jewish settlers residing in the Occupied Territories (excluding the Golan Heights) has nearly tripled, much of it under the guise of “natural growth.” It should be recalled time and again in this context that Labor governments were at fault as much, if not more, than Likud and Kadima governments in nurturing this so-called “natural growth,” as was the international community, in its ultimate consent to this situation as well.

Under these circumstances, the reaction of the Israeli left has been consistently troubling. Despite appearances, progressives are as responsible for the current state of affairs as the Israeli right. While most Israelis continue to express their support for a two state solution, only a handful of radicals on the left acknowledge that it is not a magic spell, and cannot not be realized without Israelis paying a huge price for its prosecution.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis would have to be relocated; precious resources, water in particular, would have to be ceded; the Israeli economy would stand to suffer, at least initially, great losses once it loses one of its biggest (captive) markets; and Israel would have to bear the lion's share of the cost not only for the rebuilding of the Palestinian infrastructure and economy which, in the past decade, it has brought to a standstill, but also for the resettlement of those Palestinian refugees who would not be allowed into Israel.

While most Israelis are willing to grant Palestinians a state, they are willing to do so under the illusion that if this is to happen (and most don't believe it actually will), Israel would immediately benefit from it, while others, namely, the settlers, the Palestinians, and the international community, would underwrite the human and monetary price for it.

The Israeli left is equally to blame for failing to acknowledge that the implementation of a peace agreement would not be a "peaceful parting of ways", as the Peace Now slogan once proclaimed but, will be painful,  even traumatic. Simultaneously, the Israeli left has failed to educate the Israeli public about the cost of maintaining indefinite control over the Occupied Territories, not only for Palestinians, but also for Israelis themselves. Thus, the persistence of the two state solution in Israeli politics is not a mark of political pragmatism but, rather, of continuous ideological blindness.

Herein lies the effectiveness of public rituals such as Netanyahu's two state speech. Despite the parliamentary powerlessness of the left, the Israeli public still follows its ideological lead, as Netanyahu’s growing approval rating following his Bar Ilan address shows. Widespread support accorded to the two state solution by Israelis turns it into something to which it is worth paying lip service. At the same time, affirming support for the two state solution also disingenuously promotes the false notion that peace does not require any effort or concessions either.

It is in this context that we should remember Ariel Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. The disastrous outcome of that move must be traced to Sharon and Olmert’s belief that Israel could force a resolution such that its cost for Israelis would be largely contained, limited to the 8,000 or so Jewish settlers that were relocated to Israel, and to the Palestinians who would bear the brunt of the Israeli redeployment. From an Israeli perspective, the relocation of a handful of settlers seemed like a truly meager price to pay particularly in comparison to the growing difficulties of military operations in the defense of such a small community. What the four years since the implementation of Sharon’s plan have shown us is that the cost cannot be easily contained, and that all involved continue to pay a huge price, some much more dearly than others.

Due to its myriad failings, the Israeli left has once again pinned its hope on outsiders, on the international community, and on the US in particular, both to bear the cost of the resolution of the larger conflict (and thus make the bitter pill more palatable) as well as to force Israel to resume some measure of responsibility for what others will not pay on its behalf. As this pressure mounts and yields some results (for example, the pressure recently exerted by the Obama administration), and as the Israeli government is forced to announce partial limits on construction in Jewish settlements, celebratory voices are again being heard on the left. Yet, the Israeli left's fundamentally passive attitude remains dangerously unchanged.

Until Israeli progressives confront such paralyzing limitations, and do more than simply produce useful rhetoric that can be coopted to uphold the status quo, it will remain impossible to imagine an end to six decades of war with the Palestinians. That's why it remains up to Israelis to decide whether they are truly willing to pay the price for resolving this conflict. As long as Israelis continue to think of the resolution of the conflict in utopian terms, notwithstanding the pressure that the US and the international community periodically puts on Israel to reinvigorate the peace process, the “two state solution” is going to remain an ideology, periodically pronounced in ritualized speeches, with little effect on the lives of Jews and Palestinians in the region.

At a glance, there really aren't that many "movements" in Judaism. Orthodox, reform, reconstructionist and conservative. That's pretty much it. Sure, there are some variations on this, but compared to the Christian world, Jews like to keep it simple.

Or do we?

I decided to jump into the proverbial rabbit-hole of Jewish Denominationalism and discovered that there are more ways of being Jewish than there ever have been before.

Secular-As-Balls:

You still don't understand WHY Jews believe in G-d. Frankly, you think the whole "G-d Thing" is irrelevant. There's nothing about being Jewish that requires religion, customs, beliefs, worship, a love for Israel or the Jewish People. But if anyone DARES to slam the Jewish People or pretend that the Holocaust didn't happen, you'll be the first to kick their ass. It's like being an older brother: you can torture your siblings all you want to. But the minute some other kid tries to pick on your kid brother/sister, you're going to pound them into the ground. You express your faith (or lack thereof) by reading Heeb Magazine and going to the opening of the new Jewish Museum in your neighborhood. Just try to avoid the rabbi at all costs!

See: anyone on the Tattoo Jew Facebook Group

Hippiedox:

The product of Orthodox or immigrant parents, you voted for Obama because he's cool like the new iPhone. Your tone of voice moves between stoner and yiddishkeit, and your love for Matisyahu at times rivals the Lubavitcher Rebbe. You're more comfortable at Whole Foods than you are around your conservative in-laws, but you still feel a sense of sadness when a non-kosher restaurant opens near your shul. Kabbalah is your favorite pastime, because it's like being on a permanent acid trip.

See: Shemspeed, FrumSatire and "that guy" on the Birthright Israel trip.

 

Chabad-Could-It-Be: Thanks to Chabad's supply chain of eager rabbis, your small town of approximately ten Jews just got an Orthodox shul. Too bad for you that you have a shaved head, love bacon and still don't know what a mezzuzah is. But because you feel a cultural connection to Judaism, you decide to start attending services. You really hate the religio-political attitude of Chabadniks, but because this movement offers you the "real" Judaism that you cannot muster for yourself, you keep going back as an atonement for all the Friday nights you spent playing X-Box instead of reading the Good Book.

See: any Jew living west of the Mississippi river and east of Phoenix, Arizona.

 

Trans(gender) Denominational: You're an activist within Judaism. You want to reform (no pun intended) every corner of the Jewish World. Your obsession with Tikkun Olam really has nothing to do repairing the world as a whole, but instead concentrating on key issues within Judaism. Such examples include gay/lesbian rights, trans-inclusion, gender feminism, environmentalism and animal rights. You can't settle on one shul because they just don't address your "issues". Like a serial monogamist, you fall in love with one synagogue/rabbi and work the hell out of it until there is nothing left, then move onto another hot affair.

See: Union For Progressive Judaism, Barney Frank, and Kosherveg.com.

 

PolitiKosher: You love Israel. In fact, you're IN LOVE with Israel. There's something about the desert, the ruins, the graffiti and the bombs that just gives you this tingling feeling in your stomach. You think the Palestinians are secretly plotting your death and that if Netanyahu could just get his act together, the Messiah will surely come. Hopefully that person is you. Just in case, you've got your passport and a duffle bag filled with tallit ready to go.

See: Friends of the IDF, the Libi Fund and anyone wearing an "I Love The IDF" T-shirt.

 

Deconstructionist Judaism: Innovation is the tradition of the Jewish faith, and you are its greatest champion. You believe that G-d has a great sense of humor and personally marvels at your creative thinking skills. You pioneered such moments in Judaism as the chocolate seder, dog and cat bar mitzvahs, and menorahs hacked together from leftover Ikea stuff. You express your Judaism by taking Jewish ideas and making them better.

See: Moderntribe.com, Rabbi Laura Baum, Mel Brooks.

Many religions approach their movements like a ladder: the higher up you climb, the more "authentic" your faith. And generally speaking, the more conservative practice is usually what you're striving for. Judaism has a motto of horizontally-intergrated faith. A belief that Judaism is not a climb to the top, but rather a continuum that you place yourself on. More liberal? Slide to the left! More Orthodox, then move to the right.

Judaism, for me, is more like a spider web. A spider web starts by having a few pillars to hold it together. From these platforms, the spider is able to weave its web to the center. The purpose: to catch what the spider needs in order to survive. If one of the pillars that the web is connected to simply cannot hold the web, then the creative little spider finds a new anchor. If someone breaks the web from the inside, then the spider repairs it, differently than it was originally created. Still, the web stays intact. And every spider web is different, just like everyone's Judaism.

Benny Morris is the picture of the contemporary Israeli intelligentsia. In Morris’ work, we find the disappointed politics of the old Labor Party, once dominant in Israeli politics, now consigned to barely 10% of the Knesset.

In Morris one can also see the frustrated idealism of the Meretz party, once the conscience of the mainstream left and progressive activists to balance Labor’s mainstream pragmatism.

Morris, like his country, was born in 1948. He was a paratrooper in the army, and in 1969 was wounded during Israel’s war of attrition with Egypt. He worked for twelve years as a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, which was at the time a major left-leaning newspaper in Israel.

The historian again saw action as a reservist in Lebanon in 1982, but refused to serve just six years later in the West Bank, and was jailed for his stance. That same year, he gained national fame with his groundbreaking study, The Birth of the Palestinians Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.

Through the early 90s, Morris was regarded as an ultra-leftist and an icon of Post-Zionism. But as the Oslo years wore on and hopes for peace dimmed from the pinnacle they reached with the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, like so many Israelis , Morris grew more pessimistic and disillusioned.

With the Al-Aksa Intifada’s violence leaving hopes shattered during the early years of this decade, Morris started speaking much more about “Arab mendacity” and the desire of Palestinians and all Arabs to sacrifice everything for the sake of destroying Israel. This was most evident in a 2004 interview in Ha’aretz, where Morris criticized David Ben-Gurion for not expelling all the Arabs from the nascent state of Israel, among other things.

His newest book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict illustrates the scope of Benny Morris’ work.

Benny MorrisMorris is an outstanding researcher. He digs down and assembles facts in minute detail. But as a polemicist, and in general as a thinker, he is not particularly adept. When he sticks to the facts, he has shown himself to be remarkably skilled at presenting them in an even-handed and thorough fashion, even when they do not support a view he holds. But when drawing conclusions or taking leaps of deductive reasoning, he tends to fall very short, with enormous, even prejudiced, bias coming through very sharply.

This too is well illustrated in his latest book. One State has three sections. The middle one which, though also flawed, is by far the best, details the history of both one- and two-state ideologies and strategies, from early bi-nationalism through to present-day diplomacy on the Oslo/Annapolis track.  

That history is not encouraging, with one solution after another being obstructed or rejected by one side or the other, sometimes both. But for Morris, the history is really two histories: one of pragmatic acceptance of partition of the land of Palestine/Eretz Yisrael on the part of the Jews, and the other the constant rejection of coexistence by Arabs.

Morris sets the tone in his first chapter, a review of the current rise of one-state thinking, largely among Palestinians and their supporters. He quotes, at some length, from Rashid Khalidi’s very worthy book The Iron Cage, accompanied by a flat statement that, despite Khalidi’s assertion to the contrary, Khalidi supports a single-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Morris offers no evidence for this assertion. He simply states it, based only on Khalidi’s exposition of the one-state position—an exposition that is clearly critical of the stance. And, one might add, an exposition that Morris himself would almost immediately imitate in this same book.

As Morris moves into his history of bi-nationalist ideas, notions of federated states and the various plans to partition Palestine, he works to trace a line from the earliest Palestinian and Arab opposition to Zionism directly and consistently through to today’s Palestinian proposals for full statehood and an end to the conflict. Morris, in his attempt to draw that direct line, makes no attempt to adjust his reading for circumstances. Thus, he sees the absolute rejectionism of Zionism by the Arab world before 1948 in the same light as he does the PLO’s gradual acceptance of a two-state settlement through the 1970s and 80s. For him, it cannot be possible that the Palestinians have come to accept the two-state solution as the only option, despite still believing that this is an unjust solution.

It seems that for Morris, Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution can only be sincere if they recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist movement. That hardly seems a realistic standard. No Palestinian I have ever encountered, including the many who completely acknowledge that Jews have a historic, cultural and religious connection to the land, endorses a two-state solution on that basis. They do so because they recognize it is the only feasible solution.

This shouldn’t be such a leap. Morris himself has documented the fact that the acceptance by the Yishuv leadership, under David Ben-Gurion, of the Peel partition plan of 1937 was a tactic, and that Ben-Gurion never intended to settle for that small patch of land. It was a pragmatic decision. This is true today as well, for a great many Israelis—they don’t want to give up the West Bank, and certainly not any part of Jerusalem, but most remain willing to do so in order to end the conflict.

It is very telling that Morris’ analysis of the decline of the Oslo process makes no mention of the massive expansion of settlements. He pays a great deal of attention to the issue of expunging parts of the PLO charter (the amendments made have never been deemed sufficient by Israel) and the ongoing terrorism in the 90s. But he sees no role in the failure of the peace process for the massive explosion in the number of settlements and settlers in those years or the sharp decline in the Palestinian standard of living. This was due, in part, to the Palestinian Authority’s own corruption. However, the most direct factors were the increasing restrictions placed on Palestinian freedom of movement due to the settlements and their accompanying bypass roads, combined with the elimination of most of the jobs in Israel for Palestinians, as Israelis shifted to employing foreign guest workers from the Philippines, and Thailand, among other places, for menial labor.

Morris offers no alternative to the one-state or two-state solutions. He only suggests the revival of an old idea of subsuming, either by confederation or annexation, a Palestinian entity under Jordanian rule. The notion is far from the table, as it is an option that no one but a few Israelis desire. Beyond that, and not surprisingly, there is no constructive thought here.

In the final chapter, Morris does make some very important points about the problems with a two-state solution. The geography of partition has always been a major issue, one that has generally been understated. From the Peel Commission partition plan in 1937 to the Clinton Parameters in 2000, when one actually looks at the proposals on a map, they certainly don’t look like very practical alternatives. Also, the process of building an independent Palestinian economy is going to take a very long time, and even if successful, that economy is not likely to be on a par with Israel’s. And that will always be the comparison.

There are other problems with a two-state solution, and they’re getting worse every day.  Morris demonstrates one of the biggest: the anger and bigotry that decades of conflict have spawned. One example: “Israeli Jewish society remains largely secular, with Western, democratic values predominating. This can hardly dovetail with the authoritarian and religious values of Palestinian Arab society…”

Morris includes in his division Israel’s Palestinian citizens, pointing out the greater crime rates among Arabs than Jews within Israel’s borders. He conveniently ignores the universally accepted correlation between wealth and social status with crime rates and instead attributes the difference to the distinction between the Jewish culture and the Arab.

There are real reasons on the ground that a two-state solution is a lot more difficult than many people believe it to be. And I certainly agree that any one-state formulation is a non-starter. But Morris demonstrates what might be the greatest obstacle to any resolution: the irrational, bigoted hatred of the other. For him, there is no such thing as a trustworthy Arab.

Too many Israelis and Palestinians, as well as their supporters throughout the world, hold views of this type. Morris typifies the Israeli version. We’ve all heard a great deal about the Palestinian one, in places like the Hamas charter, or the Muslim one that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad displayed again so well in Geneva a few weeks ago. Until that mindset is overcome, hope is, indeed, in very short supply.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a focus of media coverage throughout the world for decades. Yet, despite (or perhaps because of) widespread media attention in America, Americans often view this conflict from a distance, isolated from the painful reality by vast oceans and only a vague understanding of the participants’ motives. We often do not see that this conflict is actually an everyday struggle between real people, with names and faces never acknowledged by us. Palestinian artists, for example, have largely remained voiceless in the outside world, unable to find a forum through which to share their gifts. Even the most talented Palestinian writers go unnoticed, buried under silence. For this reason, it is such a joy to read Adina Hoffman’s biography of the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammed Ali, My Happiness Bears to Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century. Recognizing the need to share Palestinian artists with the world, Hoffman has chosen Ali (known as Taha throughout the book), a close family friend, as the subject of her biography.

As a Jewish American writer living in Israel, and as a friend of Taha, Hoffman offers a unique view. Hoffman’s friendship with Taha allows her to create a much more personalized biography than is typically seen. She draws the reader into her own internal struggles as she attempts to find truth within the multitude of facts, perspectives, and emotions. Taha’s life has been marked by countless battles and horrors since the inception of Israel. He recalls each conflict to Hoffman, describing the deaths and poverty that have marked his family’s history. Because Taha’s account of events often sharply differs from those of Israeli Jews, Hoffman must strive to find truths within these conflicting perspectives. She tells the reader of her own confusion and guilt in placing herself within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hoffman knows that there is no easy truth to be found—in believing one side of the story, she is automatically forced to disregard the standpoint of her friend. These internal struggles serve to exemplify the helplessness the two nations feel in coming to understand and trust one another. It is because of Hoffman’s friendship with Taha that she is able to create a candid, thoughtful exploration of Taha’s works and their broader cultural context. Hoffman succeeds impressively, crafting a heart-wrenching portrayal of an amazing, humble, good-humored artist forced to live in the heart of an often oppressive and war-torn country.

Taha was born in 1931 in a Palestinian village, Saffuriyya, which was later destroyed by the Israeli army. As a Palestinian born before Israel’s independence, every significant step in his life has been influenced by the Jewish and Arab battles throughout his homeland. These cultural tensions subtly influence his art. For example, in “The Falcon,” Taha writes of a songbird’s death, using the bird’s terror as a broader cultural symbol. Taha writes: “Massacres and cities / were gathered there in its gaze. / [. . .] / That small bird’s fear / cannot possibly be / its alone! / [. . .] / The fear of that small bird / [. . .] / cannot be fathomed except / as the fear of the flock as a whole.”

The surface level of this poem concerns a viper killing a songbird. However, as is typical in Taha’s work, beneath that simple subject lies the larger themes of pain and fear. Although Taha rarely writes explicitly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he imbues each poem with painful cultural relevance. In relating each poem to the reader, Hoffman elegantly entwines Taha’s poetry with her own perceptive exploration of each piece. Because of Hoffman’s deft analysis, the reader is able to appreciate Taha’s cultural anger and frustration as well as his humor and joy through Cole, Hijazi, and Levin’s translations. Taha’s emotional complexity can be seen in one example of his poetry, when he describes the “hatred” he feels “after the rape / of the light of morning’s laughter,” and expresses his pain and rage at the Israeli domination of his people. Yet, after this painful, enraged moment, Taha shifts the poem’s tone, focusing on the ways that “the laughter / of a child” makes him become a happy fool, forgetting the conflicts and recognizing the joy in his life. Taha uses his art as a lens through which he examines his own complex emotional reactions to these conflicting emotions.

Hoffman also embraces this goal, focusing her biography not on historical events, but rather on “how he had seen it: to try, in other words, to convey the way such cataclysmic historical events look through the eyes of one exceptional man.” In Hoffman’s hands, Taha’s story simultaneously becomes both his own unique tale, and a microcosm for more universal experiences. As Taha describes, “In my poetry, there is no Palestine, no Israel. But [there are] suffering, sadness, longing, fear, and [these] together, make . . . Palestine and Israel.” By focusing on the emotional complexities of his life, Taha’s poetry speaks to the reader through its themes of pain, hope, and humanity.

While Hoffman creates a powerful portrayal of Taha’s life and art, there are moments within the text when she seems to take on too much. Hoffman attempts to incorporate a broader national history and an analysis of Palestinian poetic movements throughout the text. As a result, there are passages within the story where she loses the reader, buried under a multitude of facts, dates, and names. At these points, Hoffman abandons the most fascinating element of the biography—her relationship with Taha. Luckily, these moments of dissonance are rare. For the majority of the biography, Hoffman skillfully portrays the cultural tensions that she and Taha must navigate. This emotionally honest portrayal of two people surviving amidst conflict makes Hoffman’s book an essential addition to the sparse Western literary corpus devoted to real people bridging the divide between Israel and Palestine.

Renee Chase, a former teacher, is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at the University of Denver.

January 02, 2009

Amir is not his real name, although that’s what’s written on his business card:Taxi Amir. I never find out what his real name is. Amir’s a Muslim from Palestine but his mum was born in Jerusalem and eight years ago he got Israeli ID.

We’re driving back from Bethlehem. Amir’s ID allows him to cross the Palestine-Israel divide in the hills by Beit Jala and Walada. Amir moved recently to Jerusalem where he worked on the buses, cleaning, picked up Hebrew, and started driving a taxi round the city and beyond.

‘I saw I had to learn Hebrew very good and very fast,’ he says. ‘So I listened and asked questions and then I learned to read. I took anything with Hebrew on it and at first I couldn’t understand – I just looked at the words – but I learned bit by bit. Now I read a Hebrew paper every day.’

It’s not that easy for Amir, getting fares. The other day a woman of about 50 jumped into his cab and they were driving along and a couple of lights in he puts the radio on – just softly. It’s Arabic, though, the music that’s coming out.

‘Oh my God!’ says his passenger, throwing open the door. ‘You’re an Arab! Why didn’t you tell me you're an Arab?’ And she’s gone without even paying the fare.

A lot of people assume Amir’s Jewish. His Hebrew’s perfect, but it’s more than just the words you use – it’s the confident way you say them that makes the difference. We stop at a checkpoint on the road from Walada to Jerusalem. Amir winds down the window and addresses the soldier: ‘Ma hamatzav achi–what’s up brother?’ It’s pouring with rain and the soldier glances briefly at me in the back. ‘Tayeret’ says Amir – she’s a tourist. The soldier waves us through.

‘You have to speak to them first,’ Amir says. ‘Then they relax. If I’m just sitting here silent the soldiers get scared and take the whole car apart. I’ve been through here with four people in my car and they let us pass. Another time, I was alone and they opened everything – it was 20 minutes before they let me go.’

Then there was the couple in their 30s. Amir was cabbing one day in Jerusalem, downtown. His Arab cabbie mate was up ahead – there was a queue and Amir told the couple his mate was first. ‘We don’t want him, he’s an Arab,’ they said. ‘We’ll take you – we want a Jew.’

It’s not easy to tell what Amir is. There are no special identifying signs. His taxi has yellow Israeli plates, and its only adornment is an air-freshener, swinging the colours of the US flag. Amir himself is dark, semitic, but not too dark. He’s 26. His mother wants him married soon – his younger brother’s a father already, at only 23. It’s just not easy finding her – the right one. But girls like Amir, they really do.

There was this woman, only 22, who took the the cab especially for him. There was a line of cabs all calling her – Taxi! Taxi! Monit! She’s strolling along and they’re all calling to her and she ignores them, every one, until Amir. This fine-looking woman spots him, stops and saunters back, bending into the window as he winds it down.

‘How much to L–’ she says.

He tells her 50 shekels. Much too much. Wants to make sure she’s getting in for him.

‘That’s cool.’ She jumps into the front seat. And they’re just sitting there talking and she’s all, how old are you, what do you like doing, where do you go? Are you married? Do you have any kids?

After a while, she says, ‘So where are your family from? Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq?’ And he says, ‘No, I’m an Arab, they’re from Palestine.’

She just sits there, frozen, arms clamped rigid to her sides: ‘Oh my God! I would have started something with you right now. I thought you were a Jew.’

Ever since Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Jews have had renewed interest in the "what if?": what if Jewish refugees from WWII had been welcomed in some land outside the Middle East? What would Israel be like today if it were not the only Jewish state? Alexander Heldring, former Ambassador of the Netherlands, tells us here about the Jewish quest to settle Surinam--Zeek

 

From 1946 until the mid-1950s, an American-Jewish organization called the Freeland League negotiated with Dutch and Surinamese authorities about the possible resettlement of 30,000 Jewish displaced persons and refugees from Central and Eastern Europe in Surinam. Hopes were high when the authorities concerned initially reacted positively to the plan. But the project never came to fruition. So what went wrong?

The Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization had been founded in Great Britain in 1935 by the Jewish lawyer Dr Isaac Nathan Steinberg, who twelve years earlier had fled Russia. As a representative of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Steinberg had briefly joined Lenin's first cabinet in the capacity of minister of Justice, but due to his much more liberal views on politics he had soon fallen at loggerheads with the Bolsheviks.

 

Even before the start of WWII, due to the persecution of Jews in Nazi-Germany, the Freeland League had searched urgently for a thinly populated area (‘Territory'), somewhere in the world, where Jewish colonists could settle and cultivate the land. They would become citizens of the country concerned while simultaneously retaining their own Jewish culture and Yiddish language as much as possible. For the Territorialists, Palestine was not an option, since they, unlike the Zionists, did not aspire towards creating an independent Jewish state. In those days, moreover, Palestine was still ruled by the British mandate, with a limited admission policy.

At first, the Freeland League focused on Australia because on that vast continent there were so many areas still sparsely populated, especially in the Northwest. Isaac Steinberg, chosen as the most convincing representative of the League due to his charismatic personality and brilliant oratory skills, launched an intensive campaign in Australia in favor of Jewish colonization. Initially it seemed that he would succeed in his objective. However, despite the support of several Australian agencies and substantial public opinion, the League failed to obtain consent from the central government in Canberra, which officially rejected the plan in 1944. They did not want a mass influx of Jewish refugees from Europe to settle as a separate group in a remote part of the country.

 

The Freeland League did not lose heart, and two years later, in 1946, it directed its attempts to find a sanctuary for the survivors of the Holocaust in another sparsely populated area, and that was found in Surinam.

Surinam

Why did the League select Surinam? Located on the northeast coast of South America between British Guyana and French Guyana, Surinam was still a Dutch colony at the time. Although four times the size of the Netherlands, its population amounted to no more than 180,000. The descendants of African slaves accounted for the largest ethnic section, approximately 75,000 people, followed by around 56,000 people from the Indian sub-continent, and 35,000 Javanese from the Dutch East Indies. Smaller ethnic groups consisted of Chinese, Lebanese, Amerindians and Dutch. There was also a small community of fewer than 800 Jews, who had settled in Surinam as far back as the mid-seventeenth century.

Initially - as had been the case with the Australia project - it appeared as if, during its negotiations with Surinam and the Netherlands, the Freeland League would succeed in its effort to carry out its colonization project. A delegation of the League headed by Isaac Steinberg visited Surinam in April 1947. After negotiations with an advisory commission appointed by the governor, the delegation and the commission signed a Joint Declaration in which both parties agreed to admit a maximum of 30,000 Jewish immigrants into Surinam. The Surinamese negotiators had insisted on this number, such being smaller than that of the Javanese segment of the population. On 27 June 1947, after a heated debate, the Staten (the Surinam parliament) decided thus to admit this maximum number of 30,000 Jews ‘under stipulations to be agreed on at a later stage'[i].

The colonization pursued by the Freeland League was targeted at the Saramacca district, west of Paramaribo, the capital city of Surinam. At the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948, a group of five American experts commissioned by the League made a thorough survey of the spot and concluded in their report that the area referred to was suitable for the Jewish colonization. The Freeland League would cover the costs of this project (estimated at US$35 million) using funds meant to be made available by Jewish organizations and some American trade unions.

However, a few months after the foundation of the State of Israel (14 May 1948), the new governor of Surinam informed the Freeland League in New York that the Surinamese Staten wished to suspend the discussion on the Jewish immigration until  ‘total clarification of the general international situation'[ii]. This was virtually the end of the Jewish colonization scheme in Surinam, although Surinam has never transformed the ‘suspension' into a formal ‘discontinuance'.

The League did not accept what it considered to be a unilateral decision. Although in the immediate years after the founding of the Jewish state, most of the inmates of the DP camps in Europe emigrated to Israel, there was a substantial number of Jews, especially the non-Zionists, who wanted a safe haven somewhere else in the world. They remained the League's principal target group and for almost nine years it continued its efforts to reopen the negotiations with the Surinamese government. Once in a while it would appear as if a new government in Surinam, perhaps not entirely aware of the history of the Saramacca Project, might be willing to re-examine the matter. Each time, however, this would fail to be followed up by the Surinamese authorities and eventually the League stopped pursuing its goal of having Jews resettle in Surinam.

After Isaac Steinberg's death in January 1957, the League gradually dropped the ‘territorialist' part of its mandate and started to focus more on helping to preserve Yiddish as a living language. This latter goal is still being pursued by the League for Yiddish in New York[iii], which might be regarded as the Freeland League's successor.

 

The only publications on the Freeland League and its colonization projects which I have been able to trace so far are the following. In 1948, Isaac Steinberg himself described his efforts to create a Jewish settlement in Australia in his book Australia, the Unpromised Land: In search of a Home[iv]. Copies are almost impossible to find. More recently, in 1993, a book by the Australian journalist Leon Gettler appeared under virtually the same title, Unpromised Land[v]. In 1967, the well-known American expert in Yiddish, Michael Astour, released his extensive study entitled the History of the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization (750 p.), but only in Yiddish[vi]. During the negotiations with the Surinamese and Dutch authorities, the two magazines produced by the Freeland League itself, Afn Shvel (Yiddish[vii]) and Freeland (English), also published many articles on the Saramacca Project.

The only in-depth study on the specific topic of the Freeland League and Surinam published in the Netherlands so far was made by Laura Almagor with her Master's thesis for the University of Utrecht, 'A Forgotten Alternative', presented in July 2007 (104 p.)[viii].

 

Why Surinam is not the Jewish State

 

In the beginning, there was enthusiasm for this project in both Surinam and the Netherlands. Put briefly, this initial positive reaction to the concept stemmed from the awareness that this could help displaced Jews in Europe; that the population in Surinam and its economy would grow; and that the reputation of Surinam and the Netherlands would be enhanced internationally (something that the Netherlands with its problems in Indonesia certainly needed) and it wouldn't cost the Netherlands a single penny. From 1946 to 1948 this enthusiasm transformed itself into various concrete arrangements between the Surinamese government and the Freeland League, favorable and recorded statements in the Staten of Surinam, the Dutch Lower House of Parliament, the United Nations General Assembly and affirmative letters from the then governor of Surinam to the League.

 

However, the colonization plan failed. In Surinam itself the resistance against the plan gradually increased, especially within the Creole National Party of Surinam (NPS). The black population was afraid of possible political and economic dominance by the Jewish immigrants. In its public relations campaign, the NPS even employed discourse which harked back to an era when Jewish slave masters exploited the sugar plantations.

The Zionists, who had their own agenda, also fueled these fears. After all, as long as Palestine was under British mandate and the British obstructed mass immigration of Jews from Europe, Surinam might well serve as an acceptable alternative for a possible sanctuary for Jewish displaced persons. This was a threat to the Zionists' ambitions and so the Zionists concentrated their lobbying against the colonization project of the Freeland League within Surinam itself. They sent the formidable Mrs. Ida Archibald Silverman, who had already won her spurs in contributing to the failure of the colonization project in Australia, to Paramaribo. The Zionists observed that initially not only the Jewish community, but also other people (including Muslims), the Surinamese government and some political parties showed great sympathy for the idea of a Jewish immigration.

Mrs. Silverman, during a three-day visit to Paramaribo in March 1948, managed to create a divide within the Jewish community of supporters and opponents of the colonization project. She would later remark: ‘I went there to check on and nip in the bud, if possible, Steinberg's nefarious scheme (via the Freeland League) to bargain with the then Dutch Governor for permission to settle Jewish refugees in the disease-infested jungles along the Surinam river. [...] It took very little effort on my part to disillusion the Governor...So that, aside from the thousands of dollars wasted on the experts ... nothing good came from this scheme.'[ix]

Within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, the opinion reigned that the Freeland League would never acquire the necessary funding for the plan.  This turned out not to be true at least in terms of financial support, which the League had already enjoyed from some American trade unions and would have continued to enjoy, had the Dutch eventually consented to the plan.

Immediately after the war, there were certainly sympathizers of the colonization project within the Dutch government.  The most determined opponents were a couple of officials in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, later joined by their colleagues from Overseas Territories, who eventually managed to convince their respective bosses to reject the project. There is substantial evidence that in the summer of 1948, the Netherlands government exerted pressure on the Staten of Suriname to ‘suspend the discussion' regarding the colonization plan, which ultimately led to the failure of the project.

Evidently the Freeland League had been so misled by the initial positive attitude of the Surinamese and Dutch governments that it didn't actually bother to lobby in the Netherlands. The League's lobbying campaign focused on Suriname, because it was under the mistaken impression that the entire decision-making process regarding the project would take place in Paramaribo. Only after Isaac Steinberg received a warning from his friends in Surinam about the Dutch pressure on the Staten of Suriname did the League decide to deputize its leader to the Netherlands, but Steinberg was denied access.

If the Freeland League had succeeded in concluding a binding agreement with the Surinamese and Dutch governments on the Jewish colonization, and if some U.S. agencies (such as trade unions) had made sufficient funds available for the implementation of the plan, would the League have been able to attain its desired number of 30,000 Jewish immigrants for a colonization in Suriname?

The answer is yes, if one focuses on the period right after the war. There is ample evidence hereof in the archives I had access to, for example the letters to the Freeland League from inmates of the displaced persons' camps in the American and British occupation zones in Germany and Austria[x]. However, any likelihood of Eastern European Jews in particular coming to Surinam was precisely one of the severest objections which the Dutch government harbored against the League's Surinam plan.  The government didn't want a large numbers of Jews from Eastern Europe in Suriname, 'because they are infiltrators who will turn Suriname into a communist state[xi]'. 

Conclusion

From my research, it seems apparent that neither the Dutch nor the Surinamese government treated the colonization project or the Freeland League itself with particular integrity. Dutch Prime Minister Willem Drees and his immediate entourage themselves have pointed out in various internal memoranda that in the discussion with the Freeland League following the initial negotiations, the Dutch position was very weak and the course of things "not unquestionable"[xii]. In these documents Drees and his colleagues also admit that the commitments which the Netherlands and Surinam had entered into with the Freeland League were in fact firmer than they had initially thought. According to one of Drees' advisors "this issue has developed and been treated in a very unfortunate fashion"[xiii].

The League's allegation that the Dutch government had exerted pressure on Suriname to suspend the negotiations has always been publicly denied by the Netherlands, but admitted in private. If on the Dutch side there was an awareness that this matter had not been treated in an entirely just manner, it is all the more striking that the authorities in The Hague and Paramaribo acted in a rather sloppy fashion, to say the least, in their further handling of contacts with the League: in due course, governor (s) and ministers no longer took the trouble to reply to letters of the League, except Prime Minister Drees himself. He was the only one who in his last letter to the Freeland League wrote that he personally regretted that the colonization project had not materialized.

What would have happened if the Jewish colonization project had materialized? This, of course, belongs to the realm of the ‘What if?' theory in historiography[xiv], or perhaps to Dutch journalist Jeroen Trommelen, who a few years ago wrote that Surinam had missed " a wonderful opportunity to develop into the nuclear weapons, iceberg lettuce producing nation that Israel ultimately has become"[xv]: a deliberately exaggerated and somewhat facetious prophecy.

The immigration of 30,000 Jews would, in my view, undoubtedly have contributed positively to Surinam's economic welfare, as significant Jewish presence elsewhere has proven.

But what impact would such a large amount of settlers have had on the native population? With the Australia project, the Freeland League unfortunately had overlooked the interests of the native Australians (Aborigines) of the region[xvi]. In the case of Surinam, however, the League had always emphasized its wish that the Jewish colonists be settled in an unpopulated area, thereby avoiding any allegations of dominance altogether.

 

But even with a large Jewish community, Surinam would never have become an alternative option for Palestine. The Freeland League regarded Australia, Alaska or Surinam as a refuge only complementary to Israel. It remains remarkable that at the time, the Zionists offered so much resistance to the colonization scheme in Surinam, as if indeed that country might have presented a serious alternative for the Zionists' ambitions. On the contrary: I believe that the Jewish colonization project in Surinam might eventually have served the interests of both the colonists and the Zionists. The colonists could perhaps even have followed the example of the largest Jewish community in South-America (i.e. the 190,000 Jews in Argentina), the majority of which are strong supporters of Israel[xvii].

 

(c) Alexander Heldring 2009. Alexander Heldring Sr. is former Ambassador of the Netherlands to Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. In his thirty-plus years of foreign service to the Netherlands, he has served in Poland, Belgium (NATO), the USA, Switzerland (UN) and Surinam. He is currently writing a dissertation about the Freeland League.

 

---

[i] ‘Handelingen van de Staten van Suriname',  July 1947, pag.164 t/m 184. Bijzondere collecties van de Koninklijke Bibiotheek, The Hague, Netherlands.

[ii] Letter from governor W. Huender to the Freeland League dated 14 August 1948. National Archives (NA) in The Hague, file 2.10.54, # 11842.

[iii] www.leagueforyiddish.org

[iv] V. Gollancz, London, 1948, 172 p.

[v] Fremantle Arts Center, Australia, 174 p.

[vi] Many thanks to Dr Israel Zelitch, Hamden Connecticut, member of the Executive Board of the League for Yiddish in New York. Dr. Zelitch kindly translated for me more than 80 pages from this book from Yiddish to English, so I was able to access the relevant chapters on the Freeland League and Surinam.

[vii] Still published by the League for Yiddish in New York (www.leagueforyiddish.org).

[viii] http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/student-theses/2007-0913-200158/(Secured)Laura_Almagor_Een_vergeten_alternatief_Het_Freeland_League-plan_voor_joodse_kolonisatie_in_Suriname.pdf.

[ix] The Jewish Forum, October 1956. Copy available at the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, University of Amsterdam, Hans Samson collection.

[x] E.g. YIVO, New York, Isaac Steinberg papers RG 366, files #523-547.

[xi] Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. Dossier ‘Freeland League', code 6/1945-1954, 3404 ~12015

[xii] National Archives in The Hague, file 2.03.01, # 4691

[xiii] Ibid.

 

[xiv] See for instance What if?, edited by Robert Cowley, Macmillan London, 2000.

[xv] De Volkskrant, 23 September 2000: Een joodse staat in Zuid-Amerika (A Jewish state in South-America).

[xvi] Leon Gettler, Unpromised Land, op.cit. p.  142, 143.

[xvii] Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, volume 2, Thomson Gale, Farmington Hills MI, 2007, p. 430 and 435.

 

*************************************

Images from artist Michael Blum's installation Exodus 2048

Year 2048. The US no longer play a prominent role in world politics. After the wars of Pakistan and Iran, and the guerilla warfare imposed by Al Qaeda over the years, American leaders have decided to act in the sole interest of the country and not to intervene any longer in the affairs of the world, and consequently withdrew all support to Israel. In addition, the demographic balance has been shifting in the Middle East. Palestinian population has tripled in the last 50 years and is bursting out of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The pressure of Arabs over Israeli Jews has become so strong that the latter, having lost the support of the US, have no other option than leave the country and emigrate. Some sporadic fights take place but, like the Arabs who hardly fought in 1948 (according to the myth), the majority of Israel’s population leaves without opposing resistance. While an Israeli government in exile tries to rule from Brooklyn, New York, other Israeli representatives successfully negociate the re-location of the state of Israel in Uganda, as proposed by Theodor Herzl in 1903. A majority of Mizrahi, unable to return to the countries of origin of their great-grandparents, accept to relocate in the New State of Israel. Nonetheless, a large number of Ashkenazim, wealthy and educated members of society, refuse to settle in Uganda. Some manage to be granted a visa to the US and join their families. Some others make a new start in Europe, South America or China. 

It’s in this context that the Exodus 2048, a Maltese ferry, is found roaming in the North Sea with about 4 500 Israeli refugees aboard. Rejected from most European ports during a three-month ordeal, the ship is finally allowed to dock in Rotterdam. Initially not allowed to disembark, the refugees are eventually accomodated in a variety of public buildings requisitioned throughout the Netherlands. The Van Abbemuseum being one of the requisitioned buildings, it now hosts a group of 120 Israeli refugees awaiting the result of their asylum application. They hope to receive, with their residence permit, a piece of land to establish a kibboutz. Named Eretz Hoven, it should revive the utopian spirit that led to the creation of the first kibboutzim in pre-Israel Palestine.

 

 

Wanna get "Che Herzl" T-shirt? Just surf your way over to Jewlicious and you'll find it along with all kinds of other swag designed especially for those aspiring to be the coolest of the cool Jews.

Yep, I did a double take when I saw this one.  I know there all too many leftists who are appalled at the sight of Che Guevara turned into a pop T-Shirt icon, but what on on earth do we make of Che Herzl?

Beyond Jewlicious' shallow hipster-frumster chic, this image raises some interesting assumptions about the very meaning of Zionism itself.  Indeed, there are many who fancy Zionism as the "national liberation movement of the Jewish people."  This concept was made especially famous by Chaim Herzog during his remarks in response to the UN's "Zionism is Racism" resolution in 1975:

Zionism is the name of the national movement of the Jewish people and is the modern expression of the ancient Jewish heritage. The Zionist ideal, as set out in the Bible, has been, and is, an integral part of the Jewish religion. Zionism is to the Jewish people what the liberation movements of Africa and Asia have been to their own people.

While I understand the substance of Herzog's argument, I have to confess that this particular defense of the Zionist enterprise has always rung a little hollow for me. First of all, I'm not sure it's all that accurate to describe Zionism as a national liberation movement -  certainly not as we've come to understand this concept post WW II.

While its hard for us to admit, Zionism is the product of ideologies  (i.e. 19th century European ethno-nationalism) that have fallen pretty far out of favor today. That's why it feels like Herzog's comparison of Zionism to the liberation movements of Africa and Asia is more than a little spurious.  After all, those movements were uprisings of indigenous peoples against centuries of colonial oppression. By contrast, Zionism sought to create an ethnic Jewish presence in Palestine and ended up doing so at the expense of its current inhabitants.

Not surprisingly, Che himself considered Zionism "reactionary" (according to biographer Jon Lee Anderson). I know he'd be rolling in his unmarked grave if he knew that his face adorned the shirts of clueless American teenagers; I can only imagine the cartwheels he'd be doing upon learning that his image had now become fused with Theodor Herzl's.

Anyhow, I'm not sure that reconceiving Zionism as a proto-national liberation movement is even all that compelling any more. Now that we've witnessed the post-modern travails of decolonized nations, we're learning that  "national liberation"  might not necessarily be all that it's cracked up to be. I'm not sure I have any good answers (certainly not one that would fit on a T-Shirt); I suppose I'm just suggesting  it's worth challenging the romanticizing of nationalism in all its various guises. 

“I think the people who are criticizing it or criticizing the idea of it, don’t really get it, because if they did, they would like it,” Gwyneth Paltrow recently told People.   Oh Gwynnie, I feel your pain!  As the writer for Jewssip, Celebrity News From a Higher Authority, I  know how it feels to be judged by close-minded individuals who just don’t understand.  Just the other evening at my local bar,  a very angry Palestinian with an authentic kaffiyeh (aka terrorist scarf) called me “a piece of subhuman garbage” after I told him about Jewssip.  I tried to engage him in a conversation about comedy as a means for social change, but he was too busy calling me a “delusional moron."

Find Out What Happened.... 

This much we know. On February 7, Hampshire College, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, divested from a mutual fund which owned equity in companies that do business with Israel. What we don't know is whether the decision to divest was specifically triggered by Israel-related concerns, or whether it was the consequence of general guidelines on ethical investment. A Palestine advocacy group on the Hampshire campus says, emphatically, that it was the former; in that, and in nothing else, they are in agreement with Alan Dershowitz. The college authorities, however, are insisting upon the latter interpretation.

It would appear that both parties are right. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) can certainly make the case that it was their petition which triggered the review of the college's investments and that, consequently, their divestment campaign has triumphed. Equally, the fact that 200 companies were found to be in violation of the college's investment guidelines - SJP identified only six, because their sole concern is divestment from Israel - bolsters the case of Hampshire's Board of Trustees that "the decision expressly did not pertain to a political movement or single out businesses active in a specific region or country."

The Trustees decree that "no other report or interpretation" of the divestment decision aside from their own is valid hasn't exactly nixed SJP's ardor. The group maintains that in the eight months prior to the February 7 decision, only the six Israel-related companies they fingered were in the frame. The other companies, SJP says, were hastily added in a bid to prevent the decision being described as divestment from Israel.

Hampshire's Trustees have not directly responded to this particular charge. Yet this interesting morsel tucked into the middle of a JTA report, if correct, rather punctures the SJP's spin on events: "Three of the six companies failed a screen for socially responsible investing based on their sales of military equipment, employee safety record and other violations, according to a spokesman. Two of the companies named by the student group - Motorola and Terex - passed the screen, the spokesman said. A sixth company, United Technologies, was unlisted."

One could spend days going through the inconsistencies in each side's position. Why, for example, did the Trustees, in their statement of clarification, namecheck SJP and its antics if the group had nothing to do with the decision on the mutual fund? Why did they not just announce a review of the mutual fund in line with the ethical investment guidelines? What on earth does SJP mean when it calls for divestment to include "Palestinian organizations or groups" involved in targeting civilians? And why, then, does it only mention by name those companies with a stake in Israel? Come to think of it, when SJP talks about the goal of an "end of the occupation as defined by UN resolutions," without specifying which resolutions, are they not tempting even the most ardent advocate of student involvement in the design of higher education to scream, "get back in the f**king classroom!?"

And yet, what's at issue here is not the detail of who said what. Nor is it really about whether a decision like this - or ten similar ones - will make a significant difference to either Israel's economy or the willingness of companies to conduct business there; a great deal more punishment will be needed to dent an economy which, despite having been subjected to two wars in the last three years, still merits an 'A' credit rating from Standard and Poor's.

Rather, it is about what boycotts have always been about: symbolism.

Not for nothing does SJP remind the world of Hampshire College's record in divesting from South African apartheid. Now they can portray a seamless link between Afrikaner domination back then and Zionist occupation in our own time. A message of support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu certainly reinforces this, as does the applause of the usual suspects - among them Noam Chomsky, Cynthia McKinney, Naomi Klein and the unctuous anti-Zionist blogger Philip Weiss.

What we have here is an echo chamber, morally and sonically insulated from precisely those accusations about double standards - the treatment of student dissidents in Iran and Syria, for example - which Alan Dershowitz elucidates. Hence, I confess a certain sympathy with Dershowitz's determination to show Hampshire's faculty and student body that "bigotry has its cost." At the same time, I would point the Hampshire Trustees in the direction of another US college, and another project, which sets a much more productive example.

Bard College, another upscale institution in the American northeast, has embarked on a joint venture with the Palestinian Al Quds university to bring the traditions of open thought and academic rigor to a region which desperately needs them. Liberals and leftists should appreciate that this initiative is not about petrodollars; Bard President Leon Botstein told the New York Times that "he was glad not to be following the example of larger universities building campuses in rich Persian Gulf emirates, a development that he said was 'like investing in Monte Carlo or Liechtenstein to develop Europe.'" Supporters of Israel anxious about boycott and divestment initiatives gaining traction should be soothed by Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian philosopher who is President of Al Quds, readily stating that "we do a lot of projects with Israel."

It is, as Botstein would seem to be suggesting, an open market. Hampshire College could probably find itself a niche with both Israeli and Palestinian institutions. If only its Trustees would put their minds to it, this divestment spat, and all the infantile gestures around it, could be safely in the past.

On February 11, 2009, aggression against Jewish students at York University in Toronto reached new heights. The subject at hand had nothing to do with the Middle East. A press conference was underway in which student activists were reporting that they had obtained the necessary 5,000 signatures required to peacefully and lawfully impeach the existing student government that had supported the union that had shut down York University for three months.

In other words, the students wanted to learn. The teachers wanted to teach. York University did not want to lose even more students. They had experienced a 15% decline in applications for the next school year due to the closure and to the bad press it had received.

But, a highly pro-Palestinian student government, (which has learned the value of using force in response to, or to obtain, election results in both the West Bank and Gaza and obviously, now in Toronto), turned into a frightening mob which screamed out anti-Jewish as well as anti-Israeli curses, banged on the floor and on the walls, and refused to disperse. The campus police could not handle the situation. They locked twenty Jewish students into a room for their safety and then called in the Toronto police who determined that they could not provide security for the Jewish students whom they chose to lead out to safety amidst a hate-filled mob, chanting chanted ""Die, bitch, go back to Israel," and "Die, Jew, get the hell off campus."

On February 12, 2009, Jonathan Kay, the Editorial Page Editor, published the eye-witness account of Jonathan Blake Karoly in the National Post. Karoly describes the clever verbal tactics used by the mobsters to try and rush the already overcrowded room. "Let the colored people in," "Maybe if my friends bleach their skin they'll be let inside," "Zionism is Racism." Karoly notes that as he took pictures of the melee, the Middle Eastern student who had yelled many of the racial slurs, saw that Karoly was also wearing a kippah and threatened to "take his camera and smash it." He threatened no other student, only the Jew.

According to Karoly, after the press conference was over, the mob outside the student press conference came and stood outside the Hillel office on another floor. They chanted, banged, yelled, and menaced and would not leave. When the Toronto police finally came, "one pro-Palestinian student (pulled his) Kaffeiyah scarf all the way up to his eyes." And, as the police led the twenty Jewish students out, single file "through this unruly mob, they were pointing, laughing and chanting that we were 'racists on campus.'"

None of this is new. In addition to an alarming number of anti-Semitic incidents which took place in Canada during the first intifada, the suffocated intellectual atmosphere on many campuses was also noted. On December 17, 2002, one hundred well-known Canadians signed an ad in the Globe and Mail that read "[a]n increasing number of students in universities and colleges say that they fear reprisals if they challenge prevailing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli views. If they argue that Israel has the right to exist, they are often greeted with threats, even physical assault."

And then, on September 9, 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at Concordia University in Montreal. One thousand Palestinians and their supporters gathered to scream vitriolic hate. They also taunted, spat at, and physically and verbally harassed all those who had come to hear Netanyahu speak. The police cancelled the event but they did not intervene as individuals were attacked. I personally knew some of the people who were attacked at Concordia. They included Concordia professors who were badly beaten and highly traumatized.

As usual, the ADL's Abe Foxman is dead wrong.  In an ADL press release, Foxman links a "pandemic" of anti-Semitism to Israel's military action in Gaza to defend its citizens from non-stop, relentless rocket attacks.  He writes, that no one imagined that the war in Gaza would "so explode in an epidemic, a pandemic of anti-Semitism." The press release goes on to say that the global fallout from the Gaza crisis (is) the biggest threat to the safety and well-being of Diaspora Jewry in decades. "This is the worst, the most intense, the most global that it's been in most of our memories."

Where has he and the ADL been for the last eight years? Flying to conferences with Saudi princes and assuring their Jewish funders that they had it all under control? Or does the ADL expect Israel alone to bear the relentless burden of Jew-hatred, but never Diaspora Jewry who are meant to live safe lives?

Foxman's 2003 book on the subject also missed the boat. He viewed the danger of anti-Semitism as coming to us mainly from the Christian right-wing. He totally underplayed the danger which is facing Jews, Israel, the West, and America and which is coming our way courtesy of Islamists, Muslims, jihadists and their left-wing supporters in the West.

I no longer can speak on campuses without armed security. This is true even when I am not speaking about Israel or anti-Semitism. (Perhaps my reputation precedes me.) But, just as the student press conference at York: These days, on campus, whatever the subject is, it is always about "Palestine." And, those who support "Palestine" behave like brownshirts--or worse.

In an interview with Press TV on January 24 , Noam Chomsky gave voice to the cynicism of the hardcore left, predicting that the Obama administration would show little substantive difference with past American governments in its dealings with Israel.

"The US is not going to join the world in seeking to implement a diplomatic settlement," Chomsky told his Iranian interlocutor. "and if that is the case, (George) Mitchell's mission is vacuous."

In theory, one can debate all sorts of things. However, the proof is in the actions oft he new president. Already we are seeing signs that Chomsky's pessimism is misplaced. In fact, early indications show a distinct change in American policy, with the possibility of more to come.

Durban 2

One small examplewas Obama's reversal of the Bush administration'sdecision to boycott the planning of the so-called Durban2 conference. This gathering, which will be held in Geneva in April, is a follow up to the much criticized first World Conference Against Racism that took place in 2001 in Durban, SouthAfrica.

That conference was largely diverted by pro-Palestinian groups and governments pushing anextremist agenda. The US and Israel both walked out. Some of those same NGOs and governmental delegations are pushing a similar agenda this time. But there are also strong forces working to ensure that this WCAR addresses broader issues of racism, and avoids the descenti nto anti-Semitism that characterized the first conference.

Israel has already announced its boycott, as has Canada. The United States has now decided, however, that the best way to prevent the conference from descending into an anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic frenzy is to engage in the event's planning. If that fails, the Americans can always decide not to participate, as the U.S. and Israeli delegations did in 2001.

Barack Obama should be applauded for taking this course of action. He is working to prevent another demonstration of anti-Jewish racism, while demonstrating that failed strategies for combating it are being abandoned. Sadly, the Israeli government, and a number of prominent U.S. Jewish leaders would rather continue to use claims of anti-Semitism as a political hammer than try to eradicate the phenomenon.

The Settlements

The Durban 2 decision is nothing in comparison to the stance that is emerging regarding settlement expansion in the West Bank. Ha'aretz reported on February 15 that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Special Mideast Envoy George Mitchell are expected to take a firm stance with Israel on settlement expansion, including threatening to reduce the remaining $1.3 billion in loan guarantees the US has promised to Israel by the amount spent on settlement expansion.

This expectation was bolstered by statements in the House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. On February 12, opening a hearing on the Gaza War, the chairman of the subcommittee, Gary Ackerman, one of the House's key pro-Israel leaders, issued a scathing indictment of Israel's settlement enterprise. Coming from a source like Ackerman, blame for the stalled peace process being laid at the doorstep of settlements alongside (though not, Ackerman was quick to point out, on an equal footing with) Palestinian violence was surprising, to say the least.

Ackerman's bold statement indicates that the direction Obama intends to head in is being mapped out not only with his own team of advisors, but with key pro-Israel figures in Congress. Unlike Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush, whose maverick policy making endeavors eschewed such collaboration, Obama is crafting an approach that he hopes will be executed without opposition from legislators and AIPAC-allied forces.

Indeed, at that very hearing (which I attended) we saw how things may split amongst Israel's supporters in Congress. While Shelly Berkley and ranking Republican Dan Burton sang the same old tune, other notable figures like Robert Wexler appeared very much in line with Ackerman, as did some of the House's newer lawmakers, such asrepresentatives Gerald Connolly and Michael McMahon. This indicates that the Obama team has marshaled reasonable Democrats behind it, and is ready to brave the attacks of the old guard.

Border Crossings

It is no coincidence that Israel has suddenly shown a willingness to discuss ways to openGaza's border crossings as part of a long-term truce and reconstruction arrangement. The idea was never hinted at during the Bush administration's tenure, right through its very last day. Suddenly, under Obama, it has become a cornerstone of every proposed arrangement.

In my discussions with officials at the State Department, it has been very clear that, while they always felt this was a necessary condition, Israel's responsiveness to the idea changed dramatically once they knew the President agreed with that direction.

Obama's team has demonstrated its interest in building stability in Gaza. It has also been absolutely clear (as was Ackerman) that anything that legitimized Hamas was a red line it was not willing to cross. But  instead of leaving the people of Gaza to starve, they have insisted on exploring alternatives that would allow the territory's civilian population to pursue their businesses and access needed services while bypassing its Islamist government

This strategy might well fail. The hope is to find a way to re-establish the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Hamas is both determined and well-positioned enough to prevent that. The Obama administration will not legitimize Hamas, and sees that as too high a price to pay to open up access to the devastated territory.

Hamas stands accused of very serious breaches of Gazans' trust. It appears to have wantonly deployed its forces in civilian areas during the fighting with Israel (to a greater degree than the considerable extent that the physical terrain and crowded conditions of Gaza made inevitable), and it has carried out beatings and executions of political enemies during and after the war. Hamas' well-documented attempts to steal aid from UNRWA nearly cut off the one lifeline for humanitarian assistance that the people of Gaza have left.

Hamas' position is not strong, and recent polls indicate that, while its profile remains high in the Arab world at large, in Gaza, support is at a low point. There may indeed be a way to administer the crossings without benefiting the Palestinian organization.

However, even if there is not, the fact that the US has chosen to vigorously pursue this approach is further evidence of real change from the Obama administration. Its stated eagerness to open a dialogue with Syria, and its slow pace in appointing an envoy to Iran further underline the depth of this change.

The Blank Cheque Has Bounced

Despite this change in policy direction, it is important to recognize that Israel isstill the American government's most valued ally in the Middle East. It is seen by the Obama administration as the closest friend the US has in the region, and it will remain that way on the President's final day in office.

What has taken hold in Washington is the clarity that only a party outside of a conflict can have. It is the view of what is truly in the best interest of both Israel and America. It is an understanding that giving Israel a blank cheque to decide its own course is unwise, especially when that course is subject to the volatile emotions of a populace in long-term conflict and a political system that is fractured and broken.

Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and founder ofthe pro-Israel think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stated after Obama's electoral victory that the "era of the blank cheque is over." This change is not due to decreased sympathy for Israel. On the contrary, it is precisely because of such sentiments, combined with a sober analysis of Israeli needs, that the Obama administration is embarking on this course. And it's also why it may very well succeed.

The rightward shift in Israel is a major obstacle. But Israel -- even Benjamin Netanyahu-- has already demonstrated that it understands that this is a new America it's dealing with. The question of how effective this strategy will be will come down to how well the Obama administration can deal with the backlash from so-called "pro-Israel" forces, who do not understand how much harm they are doing to the Jewish state, with their focus on protecting the settlements and defending other Israeli policy excesses.

Part of that equation will be measured by Obama's willingness to stay the course. But part will also come from the efforts of pro-Israel, pro-peace groups whose task it will be to counter two opposing forces. One is the supporters of the status quo, such as AIPAC, and more radical US organizations, such as the Zionist Organization of America. The other is the radical left who will follow Chomsky's lead and insist that until the US adopts an unrealistic and ineffective posture of withdrawing its support (particularly military aid) for Israel, nothing will change.

Moderate US peace organizations must demonstrate that a clear American stance that supports Israel's ability to defend itself, insists on an end to the settlement enterprise, and that gives Palestinians a real chance to build their society is a politically viable and effective position. Though liberal activists and pundits alike have been making this point for years, this is the first time since the beginning of the Oslo era where there has been such a serious chance to actually follow through. If they are effective, Obama's diplomacy stands a serious chance of succeeding.

Note: This piece and its companion, to be published next week, were written from notes taken while on a Birthright trip that spanned the end of December, 2008 and the beginning of January, 2009. Though written in the present tense, they are not, strictly speaking, journals or diaries. They were all written with the benefit of hindsight.

 

Pre-Gaming

"If it is now asked, 'Do we presently live in an enlightened age?' the answer is, 'No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.' As matters now stand, a great deal is still lacking in order for men as a whole to be, or even to put themselves into a position to be able without external guidance to apply understanding confidently to religious issues. But we do have clear indications that the way is now being opened for men to proceed freely in this direction and that the obstacles to general enlightenment--to their release from their self-imposed immaturity--are gradually diminishing. In this regard, this age is the age of enlightenment, the century of Frederick." - Immanuel Kant, 1784

 

My brother and I wake up to the news that 155 Palestinians are dead in Gaza, killed by Israeli missiles after a barrage of Hamas rockets had fallen on Israeli cities. We finish packing anyway and head to JFK with the assumption that the trip will be canceled, that Israel is only days away from another war. We show up four hours early, as instructed. There are a number of groups milling about, and it takes a few minutes to find ours. I have left most of the planning to my brother and haven't even bothered checking on the details once the trip was set. As we approach, the group leader NP's hat and flowing beard rise monolithic above the group of early-twenties-ish heads. Their faces shaved and cheerful, bordering on euphoric, they grab name tags from him as he describes a record-producer friend of his (a real catch) to a tall, eminently marriageable blond. I panic.

What do I know about the people who were to shepherd me through Israel? You hear horror stories. Interminable red-faced Zionist harangues, thinly-veiled meat-markets and marriage-orgies, cult-like protein deprivation, and so on. I'm a casual atheist raised Jewish and I have visions of an extremely awkward 10 days of Masada re-enactments, forced bar mitzvahs, and the great M.D./J.D. hunt. Looking at the name tags, I see Goldstein, Wasserman, and so on, and then I remember that Hebrew school was yet another circle of middle school's Inferno, not to mention the last time I had to be social with this many Jews.

The flashbacks catch me off guard. Even though I'm in my mid-twenties, working on a doctorate in American literature, teaching at a very respectable college, I suddenly feel withdrawn, cynical, beleaguered, stand-offish, ugly, ignorant. I have reverted to being the under-developed skeletal soul that I spent a decade outgrowing. Still, I give my name, take my tag, and drag my ugly duffel bag to ticketing.

* * *

Birthright (Taglit in Hebrew) is a no-brainer. A (more or less) free trip to Israel offered to every Jew between the ages of 18 and 26, courtesy of a few rich American Zionists and the Israeli Government, it's designed to connect young Jews to Israel. Who wouldn't take a free trip, replete with free hotels and meals, to another country? This temptation is the founding assumption: even non-believers, even those who lack sympathy with Israel, will find it hard to turn down the offer. Birthright itself is actually an umbrella encompassing several varieties of trip run by several varieties of facilitators. All of them take Zionism as their central tenet, but some are more religious than others. As I stand next to my brother in the ticketing line, I finally wonder about the precise mechanics that led him, a more religious Jew than I, to choose this trip out of the many offered. Could this be a discreet ploy on his part to stir up whatever cooling embers of belief I have left? It's a long line and I'm looking at him sideways the whole way.

We pass through security and head to the gate. I drift in to the comforts and rituals of pre-flight: listlessly half-reading a novel, compulsively buying and eating overpriced snacks, chewing half a pack of gum. I glance around and it's easy to see that, at 25 years, I must be one of the oldest on the trip. There's a kind of giddiness that permeates these kids - they're social, wandering up to each other, making introductions, exchanging the names of colleges, ages, and so on. Some of them are holding beers, and a couple are double-fisting, pre-gaming for what they assume will be a barely-remembered pub-crawl through the Holy Land. Nobody talks about the New York Times headlines staring out from the gift shops.

There are at least 100 people wearing Birthright name tags at the terminal. Those that haven't congealed into groups of fours and fives sit paired-off around the terminal. My eyes occasionally meet those of a few of the scattered fellow restless. We look away quickly, but they're not reading their novels either. A pair of very young-looking girls wearing University of Virginia sweatshirts talk to each other quietly as their heads swivel, and I imagine they see what I see: the first hour of a frat party about to go airborne. I don't approach them because I value reticence and skepticism in these situations - if we congeal, blend in and eventually begin the irregular orbits of these other groups, we risk falling into nondifferentiation. We risk the slipstream of sociability that smooths over rankles, lowers hackles: we risk acquiescence. This is surely what they want from us, and I imagine we sit silent and separate knowing that our near-total ignorance of each other is an ace-in-the-hole that we can play, but only if and when we want to.

Eventually they ask us to gather into the groups designated by the number on our name tag. I haven't put mine on. I dig it out of my carry-on, find my group, and my brother and I sit down with about 35 others in group 18. We look around at the faces that we're to spend the next 10 days with. A name game commences, the first of two we'll experience on our trip. We're to go around the group, say our name, where we're from, and our "favorite piece of furniture." Where I'm "from" is a tricky question and I answer it according to my mood. I tell them I live in New York and elicit audible admiration by choosing "hammock" (full disclosure: not actually my preferred furniture). After the name game ends we're handed The Rules. There aren't that many and only three strike me as having any consequences, but their implications are manifold:

1. No drinking alcohol anywhere other than the two bars and the winery we will visit as a group. You may not purchase alcohol anywhere outside the hotels. You may not get "drunk." "Drunk" is defined as any degree of consumption that results in vomiting, inappropriate behavior, or that prevents you from participating fully in group activities. Anybody who violates these conditions will be sent home immediately at their own expense.

2. You must stay with the group at all times. Anybody who intentionally wanders from the group or goes off on their own at any time will be sent home immediately at their own expense.

3. You must wear your name tag at all times.

As the bearded NP and fellow guide CM flesh out the implications of these rules and the reasoning behind them, the contours of the coming week begin to emerge. I'm nervous at this point: dreams of meandering walks through Tel Aviv have been replaced by disconcerting visions of field-trip protocols, buddy checks, and the reawakening of teen rebellion. Not that I'm pro-vomit, but we are, after all, adults, and the return of the impulse to sneer in the face of a camp counselor is a reminder of the essential pettiness of that gesture. And while the logistics of leading a group of foreigners through a country on the brink of war certainly demands vigilance, at the least, the name tag is a bit humiliating.

I half-heartedly introduce myself to a few people in the vicinity, and totter around the airport until we board the plane. After a ten-hour flight, another orientation (the first of innumerable times we're encouraged to stand in a circle, jump up and down, and hug people who are, at that point, total enigmas, save for their preferred furniture), and then a long bus ride from Tel Aviv to a hotel in the Golan Heights where we will stay for several days.

We're reminded about the name tags. I stuff mine deeper into my bag, and I have to remind myself that I am in Israel because it looks like the Arizona desert where I grew up. I am in Israel and I am going to see some shit. I hated being a child. I couldn't wait to grow up. I spend my first night in Israel staring at the ceiling.

The Lion

"There is absolutely no difference between a hard thing and a soft thing so long as they are not brought to the test." - Charles Sanders Peirce, 1878

After a night spent staring at the ceiling, we get up early and head to breakfast. Some circle the food suspiciously - most of it is clearly identifiable: hard-boiled eggs, bell peppers, cottage cheese, salad, French Toast, etc. A few bowls of yogurtish-looking material turn out not to be yogurt at all, but something else entirely. A few people, like myself, linger around the food because we dread having to find somewhere to sit. It's the first day of school, after all, and one defines oneself by the company one keeps. The best strategy is to get an empty spot and wait for people to congregate around you either by choice or necessity, but that's no longer an option. I take a chance and sit next to a few nice-looking people who turn out to be from New York. We talk about a lot of New Yorky things.

We're about ready to head to the bus and embark for Tzefat, one of Israel's holy cities, but, again, we're corralled into a circle in the hotel lobby and told by one of our well-meaning Israeli guides to play a name game. This one is "I Never," which is usually a kind of sexual party game, but here it’s shorn of its titillating overtones (I volunteer that I've never been to Hawaii). Eventually it's over.

The drive to Tzefat is heartening. As the bus winds its way up into the city (the highest in the region), we're told that it is the center for the study of Kabbalah, and that this will be one of the focuses of our visit there. The city is built almost uniformly of the same off-white stone, and besides the striking visual effect, it makes wandering through the city a disorienting experience. Because Tzefat is basically built on the side of a mountain, it's easy to get a basic orientation, but once you try to retrace your steps, the winding alleyways and streets have a habit of leading you back to your starting point.

Tzefat is also home to an artist community of sorts. The relationship between Kabbalah and the artists seems pretty close, and we get a glimpse of it while visiting Avraham, who is basically an American hippie from Michigan who found Kabbalah through the writings of Aryeh Kaplan while in college. We're taken to Avraham, it seems, because, whether or not he actually gets high, he's a stoner. Instantly recognizable as the type who will wander into a house party and extemporize on the virtues of yoga or Reiki or Rumi or Phish to anyone willing to listen, Avraham is there to pitch Kabbalah to us. Most of this pitch consists of repeating how "amazingly, totally awesomely awesome" (verbatim, by the way) Kabbalah is, and of how it will totally change our perceptions about everything. The evidence is right before our eyes, apparently.

Just hours after our guides were warning us of the shallowness of the recent celebrity Kabbalah craze, we've been confronted with somebody who pushes Kabbalah like hits of ecstasy. No doubt Avraham means well, but I can't help but feel that what's on display here is a familiar blip in an extremely unfamiliar place. His Americanness and his particular genre of personality is on display for us, a vexed mirror that shows us traces of our culture in an ancient city thousands of miles away. Avraham's speech patterns, his broad smile and his way of ending every other sentence with "man," signal his alignment with some of our most cherished mass-cultural forms. Kabbalah does not come to us through Madonna's plastic spiritualism; rather it comes by way of Arlo Guthrie and Cheech and Chong.

We depart from Avraham’s studio and visit a series of cramped, ornately decorated synagogues, their art and pillars completely alien and terrifying. By the time we leave, it's raining. Tzefat is a spectacular place to be rained on, and so I'm a bit dismayed when we're pulled into a Chabad-run hostel in order to play another name game. This one lasts for well over an hour and takes the well-known form of "My name is [name] and I'm bringing [name of item that begins with the first letter of your name] to the picnic." I bring marmalade and, again, minds are blown. But really it's like hell, and I say so. After which I'm reminded that Jews don't believe in hell. And yet I feel I must be in hell. The Kabbalah has much to say about this.

We're eventually released back into the rain to eat. I have some amazing falafel and an even more amazing cigarette. We're supposed to be back on the bus in about a half hour to head up to a kibbutz on the Lebanon border. Someone forgets something back at the hostel and a few of us volunteer to go back and get it. This is when I get somewhat profoundly lost. Lacking all sense of direction in even the most familiar places, the mise en abyme of Tzefat's alleys sends me into a tailspin. We're able to get someone to show us where the hostel is, but finding the bus is problematic. In these circumstances, though, I begin to realize that getting lost is the only avenue to independence. Eventually, some kindly strangers point us sort of in the right direction and we clomp down a massive stone staircase to the bus. A guide meets us halfway and reminds us not to run, presumably because water makes things slippery.

We head up to the kibbutz and we're shown the series of barbed-wire fences that mark the border with Lebanon. The kibbutz occupies an important tactical position - it has the high ground that looks down over Lebanon, which allowed IDF troops to repel Hezbollah soldiers as they attempted to breach the border during the 2006 war. Apparently not a single one made it across. The dining hall of the kibbutz bears the scars of this tactical position - the building's facade is covered in divets made by shrapnel from the rockets that fell during the war. There is a hole in one of the front doors.

Once inside the building, we're introduced to Aryeh ("lion" in Hebrew), who helps run the kibbutz. Aryeh was born in America and decided to make Aliyah in the 60's rather than "waste” his life in the States any longer. He's been through four wars, and it shows. His face is deeply lined and never quite shifts into neutral. Either he speaks animatedly or stares with roving, wide-eyed intensity. He tells us that they plan to leave the façade unrepaired as a reminder of the war and what it cost to maintain the kibbutz. Aryeh's a bit schizophrenic, swinging from full-throated, bright-eyed laughter to a contemptuous sneer in a matter of seconds. He is also possessed of an unparalleled Zionist fervor. Most of what he says amounts to invectives against the world media for what he – and many people we speak to on our trip – perceives as entrenched anti-Israeli bias. "Read your history" he tells us, and launches into a detailed explanation of why only Jews have the right to control Israel, of how the world is saturated with anti-Semitism, and, implicitly, why we ought to abandon our superficial, petty lives in the States and move to Israel. Any Arabs you meet, even in the states, he says, are not, will not ever really be, your friends. They have agendas and they are tricky people, he warns.

Aryeh's arguments are impressive insofar as they trace continuities in ancient wars over the holy land up through the present day, insofar as they rationalize all of Israel's action against the Palestinian people as a necessary and commensurate retaliation against outrageous acts of aggression, and insofar as they are able to reframe the broader political landscape of the Middle East within an essentially messianic teleology. But everything he says is contingent on an undergirding Zionism. If one is a Zionist, then Aryeh's explanations provide a neat causal chain that leads to the present political situation. If one is not, then he has nothing worthwhile to say.

Aryeh is literally unable to think about the notion of moral complicity, of what the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian death tolls look like to someone who bears a certain skepticism towards the Zionist metanarrative. When someone asks him to try to think about the situation from a Palestinian's perspective, he blurts out "Why should I?" He wields an aphasic's resistance to abstraction in service of the motherland. It’s no surprise that this refusal to think hypothetically typifies a key tactic in many of the Zionist arguments we hear on our trip. And it's no surprise that nothing I hear on my trip is helping me think past a Palestinian death toll that mounted steadily throughout our stay. Without belief, this mode of argument comes to nothing.

* * *

Wet and cold, we shuffle out of the dining hall and toward the bus. My brother takes a picture of one the kibbutz's residents, who asks him to delete it: "Last time that happened, I ended up on YouTube and almost lost my Green Card." We head back to the hotel for a bit before our dinner and "night out" in nearby Tiberias.

At the restaurant we're plunked down at a table and an incongruous series of dishes appears before us: spaghetti, hummus, fried fish, salad, orange juice, pizza, eggplant, and so on. Gradually people drift to the bar at the back of the restaurant and lines of people stream back wielding shots. Dinner lasts about a half hour and we're walked over to Big Ben, the first bar we'll visit on the trip. Big Ben is located in the middle of a strip mall. It's a long, narrow affair modeled after the American version of an English pub.

It's also incredibly loud. "In Da Club" is pumping and the guides try to get people to step onto the dance platform and sing karaoke. My brother and I wander to a side room that's a bit quieter and settle down at a table with a handful of other people from the group. It turns out that many of these people will become friends of a sort as the trip goes on. I think of us as a small group of draft dodgers. The uncanniness of the setting seems to amp up the pints of Goldstar that I'm gulping, but I retain brief snippets of conversation. Gossip, Heidegger's Nazism (a party favorite), Rate My Professor, Bushwick, Chicago, whether or not we're being indoctrinated (too early to tell), the nonchalant way one of our guides dances while holding his gun.

Eventually we're led back to the bus. We only have to pull over once for vomiting: not bad. So much for Rule #1. As we curl around the Sea of Galilee, I think about Aryeh again. If there is a time to contemplate the emptiness of American life it is now. We would carry that emptiness with us in a travel size tube, I suppose, if it weren't available for purchase. Aryeh and Big Ben become part of Birthright's dialectical logic: thesis (Aryeh), antithesis (Big Ben), synthesis (late-night half-drunken outlining of the Dialectics of Birthright). A half-coherent murmur drifts up from the back of the bus. Forced to find a position between the impending Gaza invasion's moral aporia and a night at Big Ben, I choose the bulwark of a temporary, recalcitrant silence.

As I reported last week, Fatima Hajaig, the Deputy Foreign Minister of South Africa, delivered a speech at a Palestine solidarity rally that could have been scripted by a sub-editor on Der Sturmer. “The control of America, just like the control of most Western countries, is in the hands of Jewish money,” she screamed, “and if Jewish money controls their country then you cannot expect anything else.”

Hajaig has now offered…what, exactly? A clarification? An apology? A restatement of her original remarks?

Whatever you want to call it, here it is:

I have just returned from a visit to Japan and learnt of the controversy surrounding some comments that I was purported to have made. I have reviewed the proceedings of the meeting and wish to say, to state the following: Throughout my life I have been opposed to apartheid and all forms of racism. It is this opposition that drove me into exile and to work with the African National Congress for decades. Along with all in the ANC and consistent with the recent resolutions adopted at our Polokwane conference in December 2007, I have long been cognisant of the immense suffering the Palestinians have experienced in the form of expulsions, collective punishment and massacres, of which the recent war in Gaza is but the latest example. It is to this suffering that I spoke at the meeting. I deplore the attempts of Zionists to justify policies that have worsened the crisis in the Middle East, in particular unmitigated state violence directed against unarmed civilians as much as I deplore indiscriminate attacks against Israeli unarmed civilians.

At a singular point in my talk, and entirely unrelated to any South African community, I conflated Zionist pressure with Jewish influence. I regret the inference made by some that I am anti-Jewish. I do not believe that the cause of the Palestinians is served by any anti-Jewish racism. As a member of the South African government and a committed member of the African National Congress, I subscribe to the values and principles of non-racism and condemn without equivocation all forms of racism, including antisemitism in all its manifestations and wherever it may occur.

To the extent that my statement may have caused hurt and pain, I offer an unequivocal apology for the pain it may have caused to the people of our country and the Jewish community in particular. I wish to reiterate that the major issue in relation to the Palestinian Israel conflict is the enormous suffering of the Palestinian people and the struggle for peace for all its’ people based on justice and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

As Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, I reaffirm the government’s commitment to engage all parties in Israel and Palestine to find an amicable and just resolution to the conflict in that region.

Let’s begin with the phrase, “some comments that I was purported to have made.” What’s implied here is that she may not have made these comments, or that what she said has somehow been distorted. One problem, though: she’s on record. Listen for yourselves here, about 50 seconds into the broadcast.

Then she adopts the moral high ground, with a reminder of her service to the ANC and her anger at “Zionists” who justify indiscriminate attacks upon civilians. Her point here is to say, in essence, do not judge me for what I may or may not have said, but rather by my political beliefs.

Then we get the killer line: “At a singular point in my talk…I conflated Zionist pressure with Jewish influence. I regret the inference made by some that I am anti-Jewish.” Check out the fascinating inversion going on here: instead of the word “Zionist” being used as deliberate code for “Jew,” the word “Jew” is being - accidentally? - used as code for “Zionist.”

Fatima Hajaig doesn’t want to explain how she flipped those around. And why should she? Antisemitic canards about Jews and money and power were, no doubt, furthest from her mind when she made this unfortunate slip of the tongue. Those of us who dwell on this point are playing the usual Zionist trick of changing the subject. As Hajaig’s defenders in South Africa’s Palestine Solidarity Alliance put it, what we have here is “no more than a sinister means of diverting public attention from the ever increasing reports war crimes, ethnic cleansing and a massive humanitarian crisis caused in Gaza by Israel.”

Yes, it’s very sinister. After all, Hajaig is clear that what she calls “anti-Jewish racism” does not serve the cause of the Palestinians, so how could she possibly be suspected of anything other than noble intentions? When Hajaig rails against Jewish financial influence, or when Hamas quotes from the Protocols, or when Torah scrolls are pulled from the ark of a synagogue in Caracas and defaced by a group of armed men, none of this is directed at Jews. Shame, really, on those who say otherwise.

Actually, one reason that Hajaig’s statement is so tortuous is that it goes on. And on. And on. Just when you think you can’t take any more, along comes this flourish: “To the extent that my statement may have caused hurt and pain, I offer an unequivocal apology for the pain it may have caused to the people of our country and the Jewish community in particular.” Ah, Fatima Hajaig. If she wasn’t South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, she’d be the creative mastermind behind Benetton’s next advertising campaign. And teaching the world to sing at the same time.

Perhaps the one saving grace is that what we have, up to now, are Fatima Hajaig’s own words. But what of that final sentence, with the reference to an “amicable and just resolution to the conflict?” I can only think that such diplofluff was inserted by a South African Foreign Ministry bureaucrat who didn’t bother to read the preceding paragraphs.

To return to my original question: how are we to categorize this statement, other than by noting its astonishing stupidity? In my view, it is a statement of contempt, rather like the person who smashes a bottle over your head and then assures you, three weeks later, that they didn’t intend to hurt you.

If Hajaig is signaling that she now wants to move on, her supporters in South Africa already have. Boycotting Israel was a constantly reiterated demand at the rally where Hajaig underwent her Hitler moment. It now appears that Cosatu, South Africa’s trade union federation, plans to take that to the next stage this weekend, refusing to unload an Israeli merchant ship scheduled to arrive in Durban. (Anyone spot the irony there?)

As sure as night follows day, activities like these, in South Africa and elsewhere, are bound to be accompanied by more speeches fingering Jews as the problem. But as to whether the speakers will even be bothered to say, afterwards, that they really meant “Zionists,” all bets are off.

When you live in a place that is steeped in turmoil and chaos, where women are rarely in positions of autonomy (let alone power), it is rare and inspiring to hear the story of someone taking a chance even if it means risking their life on a daily basis for change.

Amira Hanania is one such individual. She is the only lead female journalist working for Ma'an News Agency, which is Palestine's only independent news source. Just as surprising is Amira's age, she is all of 26 years old. I found the video below on feministing.com. It was taken from a clip from the forthcomming documentary Live from Bethlehem. Despite the conflict on both sides, there is no denying that Amira Hanania is surely a feminist in the truest sense of the term.

 

On the 20th day of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, at the time of this article's writing, what is missing is the quality of rahamim -- of mercy, of feeling and knowing when enough is enough. Israel’s government no longer knows the difference between mercy and mercilessness.  Overwhelming power has been demonstrated; overwhelming damage has been done. However voices such as that of David Grossman, who early on called for a ceasefire, have been ignored. Grossman understood that part of the responsibility of power lies in realizing when not to use it, or how to cease using power before it damages those who abuse its possession.

 

Rahamim moderates power, understanding that social, political or military advantage is always temporary and that the task of peace-making lies ahead. Hamas represents a vile, reactionary ideology of religious ignorance compounded with racist xenophobia and exterminationist fervor. That is to say, Hamas looks much like its Jewish counterpart among large elements of the settlement movement in the West Bank. Both share nominal commitments to peaceful democratic process so long as it supports their own vision of national sanctification and obedience to divine commandments. Both view two peoples sharing one land as a contradiction whose resolution lies in conquest and expulsion, or at least subordination as a condition for permitting the other’s continued existence. Both represent the face of religious fascism and its call for individual submission to a divine national mission to be achieved by force of arms.

 

Before it became counter-productive, there was full initial justification for using armed force against the more than 8500 missiles Hamas fired into Israel in its militaristic pursuit of an Islamic republic. A government that did not act to secure the safety and well-being of its citizens would fail if it did not act decisively in such circumstances. Yet the same principle holds for Palestinians as for Israelis: how should their government – governments, at this point – attain their interest in peace and security in their own land?

 

Taking one step further, in order to remove these West Bank settlements and establish a Palestinian state, as eventually needs to happen, might we not wonder also how much force will be required to remove Israel’s colonists? That civil war scenario within Israel well may be closer than it appears at present. Despite the exterminationist fantasies of Hamas, it will be Jews fighting Jews to disestablish Israel’s mini-empire in the occupied territories. Will we use the same quantum of force against Jewish theo-fascists in Kedumim as against Palestinians in Gaza, and – equally applicable to both right- and left-wing Israelis – how will we live together if we do? What will be the resulting political ethos in Israel after such a conflict. Will it lead to the creation of a destabilizing new class of ex-settler pieds noirs as in the Fourth Republic? Will the decolonization of Israeli society be possible?

 

The violent logics of colonialism and anti-colonialism not only become visible, their invisible futures hang over current decision-making. Vast majorities in both Israel and Palestine who wish desperately to live in peace with each other nonetheless find themselves caught up in violent conflict because Israeli and Palestinian extremisms feed off each other. In the politics of Israeli-Palestinian antagonism, the middle and its compromises constitute the weakest position. Political power emerges from promises to deliver the hardest blows against the other antagonist. This dynamic has resulted in a lengthy deterioration of the Israeli-Palestinian contest towards ever-greater extremism. On the Israeli side, positions decried thirty years ago as racist Kahane-ism achieved cabinet-level advocacy through Yisrael Beitenu until it left the current government. On the Palestinian side, a relatively secular nationalist leadership has been challenged and supplanted by religious extremists in the role of leadership of the resistance. For negotiating with Israel Mahmoud Abbas regularly gets pilloried by rejectionists as a tool of Euro-american imperialism, a Zionist collaborator, and a Palestinian Uncle Tom.

 

How did this dynamic of deterioration seize hold of the Israeli and Palestinian bodies politic? Neve Gordon’s book Israel’s Occupation provides a first-rate discussion of the history of the post 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and enables readers to understand that as a history driven by colonial concepts and policies. Unlike some recent and shoddy scholarship, Gordon exhibits full command of original sources and a clear ability to interpret them, avoiding rhetorical hyperbole in doing so. In fact, his interpretive abilities concerning Israel’s policies to consolidate a new spatial regime in the occupied territories have provided us with as good an historical guide on the subject as has been written to date.

 

Part of the historiographic problem lies in that, as Gordon points out, no Israeli government has adopted formally any of the numerous settlement plans proposed, including the Allon Plan, the Weitz Plan, the Dayan Plan, the Sharon-Wachman Plan, and the Drobles Plan. “This vagueness concerning Israel’s territorial objectives” Gordon writes “was both instrumentally convenient and genuine, and can be seen as serving the temporary and arbitrary modalities of control.” The absence of any formally adopted plan (excluding the Jerusalem bloc) has meant that ideology and opportunity combined to change social topography. For example, a number of Jewish settlements have been created at or near the spots where Palestinian attacks killed settlers, a practice that seeks to reinforce Jewish presence through demonstrative memorialization. Inside pre-’67 Israel, planning and building are heavily regulated; in the territories, Israel’s planning invents a regulatory regime of immediate convenience, one driven by twin beliefs in security and divine sanctification.

 

As Gordon reviews the well-developed mechanisms of control – land appropriations, water appropriation, bypass roads, restrictions on Palestinian movement and development, surveillance, closures, settler violence, and more – a portrait emerges of a model anti-democracy. Most important, he relates this methodology to its effects on the Palestinian economic situation and its decline during the Oslo years of the 1990s. The pauperization of Palestinians during this period contributed heavily to the frustrations that erupted in the second intifada beginning in September 2000. What was once an exploitation of cheap Palestinian labor in the 1970s-80s transformed into economic marginalization by the current decade. An attempt to normalize the occupation along the lines of classic colonialism, Gordon argues correctly, switched to a separation principle in response to the second intifada. Palestinians have increasingly lived within fragmented, restricted, confined and limited spaces.

 

The narrative of deprivation and disintegration of Palestinian civil society that Gordon relates has at least two missing additional chapters, ones that are now in the process of being written. The first of these is the Palestinian one, a chapter whose narrative must include the continued solidification and manifestation of popular rage over the occupation and its denial of human and collective rights. A second chapter must deal with the pervasive damage that Israel has inflicted against its own national interests and social constitution through the perpetuation of the occupation. Defeating and purging the racism that enabled and empowered the occupation will take generations of education, if such an educational project can even be accomplished. Hoser rehamim – an absence of mercy – is in the end an attribute of a colonialist sense of superiority over fellow humans.

The Trade Union Congress is raising money for humanitarian aid in Gaza. Please note that the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions and the International Transport Workers' Federation are not just independent entities--they are considered enemies by Hamas. Whatever your politics, there is no denying the human suffering in Gaza. Please consider donating money here.

All proceeds will be forwarded through the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) to support emergency humanitarian relief operations carried out by them in Gaza. All trade union relief operations are co-ordinated through Red Crescent in Jordan, Egypt and Gaza and focused on the identified needs of the people affected by the events. The first ITF-PGFTU humanitarian flight is due to leave for Gaza on 08 Jan 2009. The TUC supports an immediate ceasefire by both sides, and the pursuit of a political solution to the problems of the Middle East based on two states.

Thanks, appropriately enough, to Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War.