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.

Women hold candles in remembrance of the lives lost in Gaza, street protest, Jaffa

A boy and a girl make the sign for peace

A mother and her children 

The Pope is due to visit Israel in May, along with 40,000 Christian pilgrims, to walk where Jesus is said to have walked, according to UPI. The trip was formally announced yesterday and details the Benedict's planned itinerary to visit Amman in Jordan, Nazareth and Jerusalem in Israel, and Bethlehem on the West Bank, according to The New York Times. Reuters says he will also pay a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

This trip comes on the coattails of tension between the Catholic Church and the Jews, only a month after the controversial re-instatement of Holocaust-denying bishop raised claims that the Pope may be anti-Semitic. 

The Pope told a crowd in St. Peter's Square that he would pray for "the precious gift of unity and peace in the Middle East and for all of humanity."

Israeli President Shimon Peres is welcoming the pontiff's visit to Israel from May 8-15, saying, "His visit is an important and exciting event that brings the spirit of peace and hope." Ha'aretz also reported Peres calling Benedict "an honored and welcomed guest of all the people."

This will be the second time a pope has visited Israel, with the first being Pope John Paul II in Jubilee Year 2000. At the time, John Paul prayed at the Western Wall for God's forgiveness of Christian's offenses against Jews throughout history.

Israel has never been the most popular of nations. Since its inception, the Jewish state has consistently found itself in the precarious position of having to choose between shielding its public image and implementing arguably necessary security measures that inevitably undermine that same image. When faced with the choice between accolade and survival, Israel has routinely opted to take those steps which it deems necessary to its survival, no matter the damage done to its credibility nor the Jewish People's.

Never so much has this been the case as with the second Palestinian intifada, which, since its outset, has compelled an Israeli military response staggering in its appearance of disproportionality and consequently staggering in its appearance of brutality. Worse yet for Israel, these events bear the unfortunate circumstance of coinciding with the advent of the Internet era, unfolding at a time that has inevitably placed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage among all international conflicts -- at least online. Throughout the last eight years, the World Wide Web has been an unyielding source of horrifying images and, to put it mildly, unflattering news emanating from the Middle East, as well as heart-rending appeals by Palestinian solidarity activists and an infinite stream of ill-informed and conspiratorially-minded (if not outright antisemitic) screeds demonizing the actions of Israel and the influence of its supporters in Washington.

All of this has lent to the increasingly popular view -- whether held by individuals in whole or part -- that Israel is a racist, apartheid state engaged in ethnic cleansing and war crimes and, furthermore, that the American Jewish community is exerting undue influence in support of Israel's purportedly Naziesque policies, which Jews "of all people" should know better than to pursue. In the specter of this image, is it any wonder that Israel's 2006 operation in Lebanon and its recent assault on Gaza inspired more public outcry and protest against the Jewish state than ever witnessed before?

For most Jews and Israelis, of course, such a depiction of Israel could not be any more outrageous, further from the truth, nor threatening to the security of the Jewish state and Jewish people around the globe. The lopsided vilification of Israel, as it's perceived, not only overlooks the nuances and mischaracterizes the nature of the conflict, but it also negates the legitimate concerns and rights of the Jewish people who are entitled to live in peace and security within their own state.

For this fact, countless Jews have tasked themselves with the role of stating Israel's case publicly and defending the Jewish state from its detractors whether in the media, on college campuses, or in the political arena. In the U.S. alone, dozens of Israel advocacy or "hasbara" (public relations) projects infused with tens of millions of dollars annually are focused full-time on countering such anti-Israel sentiment, from large community supported initiatives like those spearheaded by the Anti-Defamation League and the United Jewish Communities, to smaller initiatives like Fuel for Truth and Stand With Us, which were founded by independent activists. Many of these organizations provide training and assistance to college students to help combat anti-Israel activism on campus, including challenging the tenure of professors who are alleged to discriminate against Zionist students. Others have zeroed in on the online threat, with groups like GIYUS and the Jewish Internet Defense Force mobilizing Jewish Web surfers to tilt online polls and combat anti-Israel submissions to popular User Generated Content Web sites. The Israeli Consulate has even launched a Twitter account and its own various blogs in order to engage in the online debate.

Often, the case for Israel -- whether made in a blog entry or in a shouting match across a campus quad -- is stated with a series of standardized talking points: Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, it is the only reliably pro-Western ally in a notoriously anti-Western neighborhood, and it is an important strategic ally of the U.S. economically and militarily. In rebuffing claims made against Israel in its treatment of the state's Arab minority, it is claimed that the Arab population of Israel has full equal rights and protection under the law, that Arabs are free to vote in Israeli elections and to run for and serve in public office, and that the quality of life maintained by Arab citizens of Israel is unsurpassed by that of any other Middle Eastern nation.  

But what would happen to Israel advocacy efforts should those talking points cease to reflect reality of the situation? Or to be more exact, what happens when a prominent Israeli politician pursues proposed policies that would explicitly disenfranchise Israel's Arab minority or even eliminate its very presence from the state all together?

As chairman of the far-right party Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman has, throughout his political career, proffered many extreme ideas, from drowning Palestinian political prisoners in the Dead Sea to executing Israeli Arab legislators who maintain contacts with the Hamas government in Gaza. His most recent controversial proposals include redistricting the state of Israel to exclude Arab-majority regions all together and requiring the remaining Arab population to take a loyalty oath or otherwise forfeit citizenship. Both policies would be enacted without the democratic consent of the Arab population.

As ludicrous as these policies may seem, the party's strong showing in today's elections evidences that Lieberman's ideas are gaining traction among a war and peace process weary Israeli electorate hungry for new ideas that adequately address Israel's oldest challenge: maintaining both the Jewish and democratic character of the state.

In their biggest polling victory to date, Yisrael Beiteinu won 15 seats in the Knesset, coming into third place ahead of the once dominant Labor party. While the party has seen moderate electoral success in the past, neither Yisrael Beiteinu nor its chairman has ever enjoyed so much public support nor media attention. Now Yisrael Beiteinu may very well decide whether Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party or Benjamin Netanyahu's moderate right Likud party forms the next government coalition.

What this means for Lieberman's proposed agenda remains to be seen. It's quite unlikely that such policies would ever see the light of day under a Likud or Kadima administration. Yet the fact that a prominent Israeli politician is gaining ground on such a platform itself gives cause for concern, as it risks further undermining an already considerably weakened pro-Israel position. Should such policies ever come to pass, experts say that defending them would be untenable.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former press officer at the Israeli Consulate General in New York said that should Lieberman's policies gain footing, "It would be a hasbara disaster."

"The state is already criticized in the media for the poor conditions under which Israeli Arabs currently live," he said. "These policies would only lend weight to the accusations that Israel is becoming an apartheid state."

"A lot of people on the center left in Israel and even on the right are already pretty concerned about how it looks to the outside world," says Amos Kamil, director of the Israel Advocacy Initiative at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. "The 'Zionism is racism' crowd is going to seize onto this and we're never convince them of anything."

Of greater concern, says Kamil, are those who have not yet made up their minds about the conflict. "It's going to be tricky for those in the middle. If an advocate is trying to convince people who are undecided, this might be a problematic turn of events."

Steve Rabinowitz, a former Clinton White House aide and a media strategist for several Israel advocacy organizations, concurs. Were such policies to be implemented, says Rabinowitz, "it would brutalize mainstream public support for Israel."

"Politically savvy American Jews who want to maintain mainstream American support for Israel would have to jump through a lot of hoops separating how they feel about Israel as a country, Zionism as a concept, and their lack of support for the Israeli government and its policies," says Rabinowitz. "We'd hear so much more of that than ever before, especially among those Jews trying to keep non-Jews in the pro-Israel fold. It's tough enough now as it is."

"I think it would definitely challenge us as a community whereas many of those positions are ones we don't agree with," says Amos Kamil. "But I don't think, as Israel advocates, that you can throw out the baby with the bathwater." That one may disagree with the policy, he said, "doesn't necessarily change our need to advocate for Israel. We can openly disagree with the policies and still defend Israel's right to exist."

Jon Loew, founder and chairman of Fuel for Truth, believes that Lieberman's policies could have both negative and positive effects.

"I think that some people will view his policies as extreme and become alienated further from Israel," he says. "But I also think other people will be able to relate to his policies and further embrace Israel."

When asked what kind of rhetoric to expect from Israeli officials and Israel advocates should they be forced to defend Lieberman's polices, the former consulate press official said, "There would likely be a major effort to paint Israeli Arabs as people who have not shown loyalty to the country. You would likely see statistics and images promoting the notion that Israeli Arabs support Hamas and the like. And I think that strategy will fail miserably."  

Loew, on the other hand, sees a silver lining. He believes Lieberman's proposals could have the potential benefit of reprioritizing the activist agenda.

"Right now the world is obsessed with stopping Israel from expanding their townships in disputed territories," says Loew. "Maybe if Lieberman is successful in implementing these even more controversial policies, the world will focus on that instead of nitpicking every brick that's laid in Efrat [a West Bank settlement]. It may end up giving Israel more room to negotiate."

For those wary of such an outcome, "The good news," says Rabinowitz, "is that there is nearly zero chance" of Lieberman's policies gaining real ground.

"I think the only way that Lieberman makes it into the coalition is if the coalition is so broad that he could never bring the coalition down by himself. [The winning party] would be foolish to build a narrow coalition with him, lest they be held captive by him."

"I would be surprised if his positions would be adopted by any coalition government in which he'd be asked to serve," says Kamil. Noting that Lieberman had previously served in both Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert's administrations to little effect, he says that, "Although Lieberman's policies might be repugnant to some, they have still never been part of any government he's been asked to serve in."

"I don't have to tell you that what somebody says in Israeli politics before and after an election are two very different things," he added.

The former consulate press officer also agrees.

"He's going to be reined in. You're going to see his position move towards the center because the Israeli public won't tolerate it and Netanyahu [the expected winner at the time of this interview] won't tolerate it. If he wants to stay in the government and have his constituency's interests met, he's going to have to toe the party line."

For the moment, a reprieve.

This video was sent to us by a Jewcy reader. Apparently, his brother is the singer/songwriter in this video. I found this funny yet poignant. Maybe, if more people listened to love songs (particularly of the country variety), there would be a lot less anger and hatred. Or maybe, if you don't like country music, there would be even more. Either way, the message behind this video is important. What do you guys think?

Jewish Voice for Peace (my favorite marginalized Jews for peace nonprofit) is currently conducting a campaign for the Shministim 2008-a group of young conscientious objectors refusing to begin service in the Israeli Army. (They've also got about 800 supporters on Facebook.)This group of about 100 12^th graders has articulated their reasons for refusing to serve in this smart and clearly heartfelt letter. The students are not protesting mandatory service but rather the policies of the Israeli government in the West Bank and Gaza. They see the government's current policies as moral indefensible and a dead end.

They also call for dialogue and an end to the claim that there is no one to talk to on the Palestinian side: "In a place were there are humans, there is someone to talk to."

It is moving to see young Israelis choose to serve repeated jail sentences rather than act in opposition to their moral views.

If you're interested, you can send a letter of support for their cause to the current Defense Minister, Ehud Barak.

Growing up in Argentina, my girlfriend Gabriela and her sister Paola cherished ice-cream day. On that day they got to eat as much ice-cream as they could. Only there was a catch. Gabriela’s mother employed the ice cream rule: during ice-cream time, the rule was that one sibling would decide how much ice-cream would go into each bowl, while the other had the right to first pick. That way, if one of the sibling had distributed the ice-cream unevenly, the other benefited. It was an ingenious system designed for fairness.

Now, what if we could employ the ice-cream rule to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Imagine the following: President Obama meets with Abbas and Livni/Netanyahu. He gives the latter a map and says, “Go ahead, two states for two people. You draw the boundaries, you choose a capital, and you decide where people have a right to reside. There will be no opposition or interference from Abbas. However, once you finish, it is up to Abbas alone to choose which side to take.”

Is there any question as to how the conflict would be resolved? Half a bowl of ice-cream for Abbas and half for Livni. Of course, such an approach would seemingly not be in Israel’s immediate interest since she possesses more than half of historic Palestine (the much more developed side as well). However, as has become clear to many across the Israeli political spectrum, if in the immediate future there is no viable solution to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict, Israel's territorial advantage (along with its demographic baggage) will be her undoing.

Thinking over a divided land, I am reminded of the story of King Solomon and the baby. As is told, when two prostitutes came to the king with conflicting claims over ownership of a baby, he adjudicated with a stratagem: "Cut the live child in two", he said, "and give half to one and half to the other." Realizing what is at stake, the real mother came forth and pleaded with the king to give the child to the other woman, "only don't kill the baby." The other woman said, “Cut it in two.” Hearing this, the king immediately returned the child to its rightful mother.

Now it is not out-of-bounds to use this story to champion the vision of a one-state solution, or Greater Israel or Greater Palestine. If the baby is a symbol for the land, then the true owner of the land will not compromise by dividing it into parts. On some kind of mystical level, the land needs to be indivisible and whole. One people, one land / two people, one land. Either way, one land it must remain.

But there is another reading of the story that could be helpful. It seems to me that the moral of the story is that real and unconditional love sometimes means letting go of something that is of ultimate concern. For the child to survive, the mother had to let go of her claims to him. Likewise, if the people of Israel and Palestine love their land as much as they say they do, then they need to let go of their vision of what Palestine and Israel ought to be - not let go of a vision of Palestine or Israel per say, just the one that is keeping them from realizing peace. Israelis and Palestinians are attached to myths (e.g. undivided Jerusalem, right of return) that given the reality on the ground serve no good. A new schema is in order, one that is based on genuine compromise and fairness, not on the unreasonable and exclusive claims of religion and history.

Commonly, the laws of war in Judaism are understood through the categories of milchemet mitzvah (commanded or holy war) and milchemet r'shut (optional war). These two categories-supplemented at times by the category of milchemet hovah (obligatory war), are helpful in outlining the acceptable and/or unacceptable practices of deploying violence on a massive scale. This is usually the first place that people turn to when trying to think about Jewish notions of just and unjust war.

I want to argue that this specific body of halachah or Jewish law is irrelevant to the contemporary discussion. To find moral insight about the justice of war in the Jewish tradition, one must turn to a less well trod part of the halachic field. A more technical and, in certain ways, legally more sophisticated halachic discussions reveals that these parts of halachah are embedded in a (by definition) particularistic and, at times, chauvinistic tradition. Yet, it is possible to extract a halachic claim from its particularist context by embracing rather than ignoring the specifics of that context.[2]

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It may not seem like there’s much any of us can do to bring peace to even a relatively small corner of the world, but supporting world peace is as easy and concrete as drinking coffee or playing basketball. Here are four groups that not only work for peace, they also grow coffee, make yummy food, teach kids to play basketball, and bring young people together for a camp experience that includes conflict resolution exercises.

	Mirembe Kawomera A coffee cooperative in Uganda that grows organic, kosher, fair trade coffee. The best part: The co-op is made up of Jewish, Muslim and Christian coffee farmers all working together. In Luganda, Mirembe Kawomera means Delicious Peace.
	Peaceworks is a "not only for profit" company that makes healthy foods products produced by neighbors on opposing sides of political or armed conflicts. Plus, they donate 5% of all profits to groups working to empower the moderates in the Middle East who want a peaceful end to the war through a two-state solution.
	PeacePlayers International Founded on the premise that “children who play together can learn to live together” PPI brings kids together to play basketball, which unites and educates young people in divided communities. Currently operating in Northern Ireland, South Africa, New Orleans, Cyprus, and the Middle East, they foster positive relationships for thousands of children, helping form positive relationships, develop leadership skills, and improve their futures.
	Seeds of Peace Bringing kids together at a summer camp in Maine, and doing follow up programming in their home communities in the Middle East and South Asia, this program includes daily dialogue sessions, regular camp activities like arts, sports, and music, a ropes course, religious services for both Jews and Muslims, and a peer support program. When participants (called ‘Seeds’) go home, they attend more coexistence programs, and a conflict resolution and mediation training program.

Qassam rockets rain down on Negev towns; suicide bombings have reappeared; Israel is maintaining a blockade on the Gaza Strip with periodic invasions that are growing in severity; Hezbollah is re-arming itself in a chaotic Lebanon; and the fear of a nuclear Iran remains. It seems an odd time to say that Israel is now in the best position it has ever been to normalize its existence.

But that is precisely the case, and Israel's sixtieth birthday is the perfect opportunity to see this.

Israel has been at the center of global intrigue for so long, it's hard now to recall the idealism in which it was born. But sixty years ago, the first citizens of Israel dreamt of a country that was both Jewish and democratic, and that was welcomed fully into the family of nations and at peace with its neighbors.

Today, the view of Israel around the world is at its lowest point ever. Yet it has also been offered full recognition and normal relations by the entire Arab world, and all the negative press it has received has not eroded the general support in the West for its continued existence as a Jewish state.

Had this Arab offer been proposed even twenty years ago, most Israelis would have wept in joy at the prospect and leapt at it. But today, Israel is hesitant to extend its hand to that offer, even while it has acknowledged it as a positive step. What's changed, and how can we change it back?

Living By The Sword

Beginning with the very birth of the country in 1948, Israelis have lived each day with the sense that their neighbors want to destroy them. One can debate whether Arab determination toward that goal has waned, but that doesn't change the very real feelings Israelis have or their historical basis.

Modern historical research has shown that the Arab effort in 1948 to eliminate Israel in its infancy was half-hearted, but the war still cost Israel one percent of its population. Even if the facts on the ground were not in line with the mythos of the Israeli David triumphing over the Arab Goliath, it was still a stunning triumph, and one which cemented the central place the Israeli military holds in Israeli hearts and minds.

Technically, that war never ended. An armistice was reached, but a state of war remained with Egypt until 1979, with Jordan until 1994, and is still in place with Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

War flared again in 1956, 1967 and 1973. Israel learned to live by the sword, and this was only reinforced as it moved away from fighting other countries back toward fighting the Palestinians.

The 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which led to Israel's eighteen year occupation of southern Lebanon, an era many compared to America's Vietnam quagmire, was followed five years later by the first Intifada. Even the Oslo years were marked, in the mid-1990s, by an upsurge in terrorist attacks and, until early 2000, by the ongoing violence in southern Lebanon.

In the twenty-first century, Israel has seen the worst violence with the Palestinians since the 1948 war. In 2006, it also experienced its first significant cross-border conflict since 1973, as war broke out with Hezbollah.

That's a lot of fighting, and it's meant that Israel, which from its birth has focused on its military abilities, has become even more mistrustful of diplomatic initiatives. This feeling has been reinforced in recent years by the Israeli government's embrace of George W. Bush's style of international relations. That style is best described as "shoot first and ask questions if it happens to be convenient later."

The Right Flowers and the Jewish Mainstream Wilts

It isn't hard to see that with all that militarism in the mix, and the very real threats Israel has faced, an aggressive, right-wing element has moved consistently closer to the forefront, in both Israeli politics and among Israel's supporters throughout the Jewish world.

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Zeek Contributing Editor (and Velveteen Rabbi) Rachel Barenblat asked Rabbis Camille Angel (Reform), Lynn Gottlieb (Renewal), Fred Guttman (Reform), and Meyer Schiller (Orthodox/Hasidic) to discuss the impact of the Israeli state and its politics on their rabbinate.

Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with?

Schiller: I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general.

The right of Orthodoxy and the Modern Orthodox share a certain fear and demonization of the Other. It's difficult to offer a different perspective than that of the comunities in which I live. I try, but by the time I come in contact with students, attitudes are already set. It's very difficult to move people from a sense of victimhood, from a sense that there's one side to the conflict and the failure of the world to recognize that is an indication of the world's persistent antisemitism.

Zeek: Do you think there's a sense in which your own background, coming originally from a secular family and choosing Orthodoxy as a pre-teen, has an impact on how you approach this?

Schiller: Absolutely. Because I went to public school; my parents shared a sense that the non-Jews amongst whom we lived were people like ourselves in many ways! It's always been difficult for me to make my peace with those who don't view the world that way.

There are inklings of an alternative perspective within Orthodoxy. I think the German Orthodox experience of the nineteenth century was different. There are individuals in Israel like Eliyahu MacLean who are active in reconciliation efforts. There are echoes within Orthodoxy, but it is lonely.

Gottlieb: Camille [Rabbi Angel] and I were both laughing, not because this is funny but because this is so difficult; we share with Rabbi Schiller across the spectrum how difficult it is to help people overcome their fear of Palestinians. Which of course is necessary for us to build the kind of peace we hope for.

Angel: My experience is in some ways similar to Rabbi Schiller's, although from the other side. I'm in the Bay Area in San Francisco; this is the first time in my life I've been surrounded by so many Jews who developed a Jewish identity post-'67. By and large they're from secular backgrounds; they've felt marginalized by the mainstream for all sorts of reasons, and are deeply suspicious of mainstream ideas--and being pro-Israel is largely a mainstream idea.

When I went to Israel as a high school student, I believed -- hook, line, and sinker! -- that Israel was defending itself appropriately in every way. I have a cousin by marriage who told me that Israel committed human rights atrocities, and I thought she was from Mars!

Over the years I've been here, I've worked to bring people to Israel in order to begin to get a clearer idea of what Israel is. In turn, our visits have involved me going on trips into the occupied territories, being with Israelis and Palestinians who can help me to see how deeply complicated and pained both sides are.

Guttman: I'm pretty much a centrist on Israel and Israeli politics, and my community for the most part shares my perspectives. I do try to help our congregation learn to love Israel; the land, the people and the country. Naturally there are those to the right and left of me.

I also try to help our congregation understand the existential difference between being here and being there. I may have feelings about what the government of Israel should do on a particular issue, but the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of those policies will fall upon the people of Israel and not their supporters in the United States. Having served extensively in the IDF and in the West Bank when I lived in Israel, I can fully appreciate the difference between living here and living there.

Zeek: Rabbi Guttman, you've used the phrase "administered territories." Say more about that?

Guttman: That's the nom de jure that the Israeli government uses, that these are "administered" territories. This has been the term used since shortly following the Six Day War. "Liberated" would have implied no intention to ever give these territories back. "Occupied" might imply the intention to give all of the territories back. However, the interpretation of Resolution 242 by the governments of the United States and Israel for the past forty years has been that in return for peace and security, Israel will return territories occupied in 1967.

The feeling then, and now, as reflected in the Geneva Accords, is that there will need to be some sort of territorial adjustments made to the 1967 borders. The word "administered" implies that Israel is controlling these territories until an agreement for peace (God willing!) can be reached. The recent events in Gaza sadly seem to make such an agreement more unlikely in the near future.

Angel: "Occupied Territories" is a term I use now that I wouldn't have used before. I also use "Disputed Territories." It depends on the audience. I want my congregation to try and understand multiple perspectives, just as they have helped me to broaden mine.

Gottlieb: I want to offer some strategies for coping with this. I've been involved in Palestinian-Jewish reconciliation since 1966, when I met Atallah Mansour, the first Palestinian journalist for Ha'aretz. He told me the story of the Naqba, their term for their experience of 1948, and I realized there were at least two competing narratives. And how tragic the situation was and is.

Guttman: But the conflict didn't commence in 1948 with what the Palestinians call the Naqba. Jews were already being murdered in Palestine half a century earlier. Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians have the right to an independent state of their own. Unfortunately, that view is not shared mutually by the Palestinians, who have yet to recognize our legitimate rights (remember, I hold dual citizenship!)

The Jewish belief that the land was given to us by God from the Nile to the Euphrates is not mainstream. But it is mainstream in the Arab world to believe that Jews have no right to their own state in the Middle East. The Palestinians have been offered a partition of the land so many times and have always turned it down. Understanding the Palestinian narrative requires us to recognize that there is, among many in the Arab and the Palestinian world, no room for Israel on the world map.

Gottlieb: My strategy has been to be in partnership with Palestinians, so we have a mutual opportunity to meet. And of course I've worked with those who, like me, are interested in peaceful resolutions. Lately I've tried to focus attention on those who, like Yehuda Stolov of Interfaith Encounter, are working with Palestinians in partnership and mutuality to build institutions in civil society. We need to figure out how to... nurture young men and women to form the connections that are needed to move toward the future.

Whether it's "administrative oversight" or "occupation," anyone who's... watched olive trees by the thousands be pulled up from the earth, sat for hours at a checkpoint, or seen tanks in the streets -- you realize that no matter what you call it, Palestinians are feeling very helpless as they witness the loss of land and livelihood. As of 2007, 50% of the West Bank was off limits to Palestinians. This is part of the reality of life on the ground that is necessary for people to understand.

Zeek: It's interesting to me that you mention nurturing young men and women to form the connections that are needed to move forward, especially given what Rabbi Schiller was saying about working with teenaged boys at YUHS. Do you have thoughts on how to bring this to American teens in a way that they'll be able to hear?

Schiller: My experience has been that if you focus on conflict elsewhere, Northern Ireland or the Balkans, and you present the histories of the rival peoples there, it's a good starting point. They don't have as much at stake; they can see that there are places in the world where territory is disputed, similar to Israel and Palestine.

I like to start from a perspective of: one's heart has to become a different kind of heart. It has to be a heart in which love and charity are essential ingredients of one's whole human and religious perspective. Going from there: okay, now we know this is how God wants us to be. Fair, compassionate and just. Now what do we do when we move that into the reality of the situation?

Gottlieb: I like to work with theatre games. When you bring people into a theatrical conflict, you can then apply that to different situations. You get a more firsthand experience, you see what works and what doesn't work in conflict transformation.

For me, building understanding in the American Jewish Community has set me on the road to the Muslim community. I've been involved in the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk, which I co-created with Abdul Rauf Campos Marquetti. It's based on a model of bringing people together in pilgrimage to each others' holy sites. We nurture relationships around which people can build coalitions of shared concerns, which inevitably involve the safety of their youth and the health of their communities.

Zeek: I'm going to pull us in a different direction for a moment. How do you navigate the need to direct time and energy toward Israel, with the need to direct time and energy toward what's happening in our Diaspora communities? Is that a tension any of you want to speak to?

Guttman: It's not necessarily an "either/or" type of situation. I view Israel as an incredible educational resource for adults and teens. In our congregation, we make a concerted effort to raise the necessary funds to help our teens go to Israel. The percentage of our students who have visited Israel before high school graduation has been as high as 70%. This is very important to us because recent studies of college-age youth show a marked decrease in their feelings of connection to Israel.

But our Jewish communal leadership hasn't come to terms fully with two basic facts. The first is that Israel is no longer a third world country and therefore less of our philanthropic dollars need to go there. More of these dollars should go to the JDC and should stay here in the United States. Second, our Jewish communal leadership has yet to fully comprehend how underfunded Jewish education in the United States is and how devastating the consequences for such underfunding can be in the next twenty years for the American Jewish community and for the support of Israel from the United States.

Zeek: Has support for Israel always been a strong part of your congregation, or is that something you've stewarded during your time there?

Guttman: Support for Israel has always been there, but has increased during my time. This is especially true of teen trips to Israel, which were kind of non existent prior to my arrival thirteen years ago. But, these trips could not have been done without the support of lay leadership, generous donors and the Greensboro Jewish Federation.

Angel: When I first came to my congregation there was a veil of silence that the leadership and the congregation had consciously and unconsciously colluded in establishing, so that Israel was just not talked-about. The Israeli flag had been taken out of the sanctuary, Hatikva had been taken out of the siddur. There was no reference to Israel in the curriculum for our school; no one talked about Israel from the bimah in divrei Torah.

Part of my work has been to find organic ways to bring Israel back into the full life of everything we do. In the same way that we work to make sure God and Torah are part of the life of the congregation, we're trying to strengthen the pillar of Israel in various dimensions.

Zeek: Has your community been receptive to that?

Angel: Yes, mostly! Now it seems hard to believe there was a time when it was such a lightning rod. Now we're trying to make annual congregational pilgrimages to Israel. We have Israel in the curriculum. We have a whole continuum of dialogue in the life of the congregation. That's healthy.

Of course there was an Exodus of people who wrote in that they were quitting the synagogue because of our Israel politics--on one side or the other. We're too this, or we're too that. Even though now what we aim to be is dynamic.

Gottlieb: I can relate. On both sides. How painful it is to be the messenger of difficult news. I've led delegations to Israel and Palestine and when I've come back people wanted me to speak from the pulpit, and it's a very painful reality to convey.

People are looking for a ready-made solution. As Jews we're used to thinking in long periods of time, but nonetheless there's so much anxiety about the ambiguous and unresolved nature of the situation, especially on the heels of such terrible trauma and tragedy (the Shoah is still very much with us.)

Zeek: You mentioned working with Palestinians who are working toward peace. How has your community responded to that? Have you and your community always been aligned on the need to "live in the ambiguities," or has that posed a challenge? And on a related note, (how) do you think your geographic location shapes your community's response to these issues?

Gottlieb: My community is committed, but it's a burden to bear in relationship to the rest of the Jewish community. Since I've left my congregation, the desire to connect with the rest of the Jewish community has dampened their willingness to reach out to Palestinians who are critical of Israel's policies related to occupation. Geography can impact this situation; communities in more isolated areas feel vulnerable to lack of connection with the rest of the Jewish community.

Every year or so in my community we have what we call Council; we pass the proverbial talking stick or shofar around, and each person speaks about how they're feeling about Israel. We have different feelings, different experiences; we can cultivate this talmudic idea that "these and those are the words of the living God." If we can't do that in our own communities, how are we going to find common ground with the Palestinians?

Zeek: I'm delighted that you mention the talmudic idea that we're a multi-perspective people; that enshrined in our texts is a sense that disagreement can be productive. I'd love to look at how our relationship with our texts shapes this whole set of questions for us.

Schiller: The solution to part of the struggle, the political part, is ultimately in God's hands. As it says in Avos [Pirke Avot], "lo alecha hamlecha ligmor," the work is not upon us to conclude. We have to bear witness, we have to create acts of kindness on the ground. How the political struggle will play itself out, from this vantage point is difficult to see. But it's not just about the political solution; it's about the 101 day-to-day acts of conversation and kindness, which in a mystical sense are adding to the spiritual balance of existence.

In hockey when two players fight, the officials let them fight until they're exhausted and then separate them. It's possible that we are, tragically, not yet at the point in history when these two peoples are exhausted. But if other models are being created through acts of kindness, by moral spiritual warfare, then at the point when the combatants are exhausted there will be an alternative model on the ground. The things we do in relation to Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our own spiritual development can't be divided.

Gottlieb: How we respond to the Palestinians is core to our spiritual development as a people. What we're watching happen to the Palestinian people is partly in our hands because of the balance of power in that relationship. We're called to rise to the occasion. And in order to do that, we have to address healing from cultural trauma and then understand what that means for the Palestinians as well.

Angel: There's a certain willingness, in a large part of my community, to only be learning about the Palestinians' cultural experience. We need to start with an appreciation for Jewish history and the miracle that Israel is. I want us to form an attachment to our Jewish homeland, our Jewish family and origins before working on behalf of the family of humanity.

Gottlieb: I'm into that. In the non-Orthodox world we're often challenged to carve out a space for Jewish cultural identity. I teach in a program called Interfaith Inventions, which brings Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Native American kids together. They explain their traditions to each other, and we've found that both their self-pride and their self-knowledge increased, as well as their respect for others.

Schiller: Amongst the Orthodox I find a tremendous need to teach that there is a version of Zionism that is not a rightist type of Zionism. I speak to them about the original Brit Shalom, the Ichud movement, Ernst Simon who was an Orthodox Jew in the 1930s and 40s. There is an opportunity to be a Zionist with a humanistic strain. I trace that history for my students, because I'm always afraid they think they're going to forfeit their Zionist credentials if they appear even-handed.

In the Haredi world, it's very important to show sources in Talmud and Shulchan Aruch that embrace a humanistic vision of Judaism. And to deal with sources that seem antithetical to that, which also certainly exist. One must dialogue with those sources, and cite alternate sources, amongst the Orthodox. There's a lot of work to be done within the Torah experience itself, to show people they need not embrace the endless dialectic of victimhood and hate.

Gottlieb: I remember sitting in Kiryat Arba in the home of a man who had settled there with his wife. And I asked, can you show me where it's a mitzvah to live in the Land? He pulled a text out and started quoting from Ramban instead of Rambam. At that moment he realized that, in fact, there were alternative perspectives -- it was like Coyote had entered the room and made him point to the wrong text! By the end of our conversation, talking about the idea that we as children of Abraham should be known for our compassion was a source of opening for him.

If you have an angry heart, you'll end up with an angry Torah. A fearful heart, you'll end up with a fearful Torah. A compassionate heart will lead you to a compassionate Torah.

RB: Maybe that's a good place for us to end. Thank you all.

Rabbi Camille Angel was ordained through the Reform movement in 1995. "One of the most primary influences in my life was my father, who was ordained Reform in 1934 and whose letters I found this year from his travels through Palestine. Unlike many classmates in '34, he was very much a Zionist.

Today I serve Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco, primarily a congregation that serves GLBT Jews -- though we have an increasing population of straight folks, and a religious school of 160 kids."

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is a sixth generation American Jew of German Jewish descent. "My grandfather, Morritz Gottlieb, founded the National Jewish Welfare Board. He was active during the Second World War, and after, in supporting the birth of the state of Israel. My family has pictures of him with Ben Gurion and Aba Eben.

My first year with Temple Beth Or of the Deaf, also kind of an unusual pulpit to begin with, was 1973. I had the unfortunate task of announcing the beginning of the Yom Kippur war in sign language to my congregation. I have a long history with Israel; I was an exchange student there, went to college there, and have gone back numerous times, most lately leading delegations for the Fellowship of Reconciliation."

Rabbi Fred Guttman lived in Israel from 1979–1991. "I served in the Israeli Army as a reserve soldier in a combat artillery brigade and served extensively in the administered territories from 1984–1990. Since 1995 I've served as the senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, North Carolina.

I'm an AIPAC activist and I've lobbied extensively in Congress on issues affecting Israel. I've been a member of the UJA/UJC Rabbinic Cabinet since 1993, and I serve on the Commission of Social Action of Reform Judaism, where for two years I was chair of the Israel/Foreign Affairs Task Force. I've also been very involved with the March of the Living."

Rabbi Meyer Schiller teaches Talmud at Yeshiva University High School for boys in Manhattan. "I've been teaching Talmud to Modern Orthodox high school youth for thirty-one years. I've written several books and articles on political and religious matters. I was raised in a secular or perhaps one might say Reform-oriented home in the 1950s, and opted for Orthodoxy in seventh grade.

My ties are in the Hasidic community though I teach in the Modern Orthodox community. I'm very much taken by notions of seeking to create a broad-based humanistic vision for Orthodoxy which would embrace the sufferings of all of mankind and the narratives and experiences of all peoples."

[We asked cousins Mimi Asnes and Ben Keller to cover yesterday's peace conference at Annapolis, Mimi from the outside and Ben from within. Read all their coverage here.]

I'm on the overnight train from Boston to Washington, DC with a Darwin’s sandwich steadily disappearing next to me and a lot of hours to fill. As of my last functional wireless connection, the world is abuzz with preemptive talk about the failure of Annapolis. Haaretz has a lead story on Ismail Haniyeh’s refutal of Abbas’ mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. Over on Al-Jazeera's Arabic site, an article about the deaths of four martyrs in Gaza is accompanied by a picture of a young boy crying and cradling the head of one of the militants in his arms. The message is clear; headsof state can have all the congratulatory dinner parties they want:here, it’s still war.

Tabling the discussion: The conference room early this morningIt’s remarkable how some days, being able to read fluently in Arabicand Hebrew just reaffirms the futility of my very motivation forlearning these languages: to be able to Make A Difference in thePalestinian-Israeli conflict. People are often amazed at how quickly I can switch between Israeli-sounding Hebrew to Palestinian dialectand exclaim, “if only there were more people like you, this conflictwould be over tomorrow!” Or if there were more people like me, everyone would give up right here and now.

I am 27, born and raised in Watertown, Massachusetts with anexcellent early education at the Solomon Schechter Day School ofNewton. My parents sent me to Jewish school less out of their ownlinguistic or religious conviction (neither speaks Hebrew or believesin a traditional God) and more because I was a miserable failure atmaking friends in public school kindergarten. If they figured thatthere might be a higher percentage of the socially awkward in privateschool, they were right.

Fast forward through the requisite drama geek high school experience—incollege I (re)discovered my connection to the Middle East, thistime fueled by a beginning knowledge of the Arabic language and adesire to see Israelis and Palestinians on my own terms. I spent twosummers working in Nazareth with a Palestinian-Israeli women’sorganization before and during the al-Aqsa Intifada and went on to pursuea Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies. I've recently begun curating aseries of Talkbacks following the performance of the play MASKED, anIsraeli-authored drama about three Palestinian brothers.

Where the magic happens: Setting upMy cousin Ben, 24, is trying to grab a few last hours of sleep before his 5 AMcall inside the Naval Academy to set up computer systems to monitorthis seminal conference. Ben grew up mostly in Silver Spring, MD, withforays into Canada and Queens during his formative years. He is partof a third generation of tinkers and builders in the Goldsman-Kellerfamily; Ben’s grandfather’s reputation for being able to fix anyelectrical gadget (as long as you aren’t in a hurry) turned into anaptitude for fixing up cars and computers in his grandsons. Not manypeople can claim to have bought a BMW “fixer-upper” for $100, or tohave driven in a caravan of such cars from Maryland to Philadelphia fora cheese steak.

After graduating from Blair High School, Ben enlisted in the US Armyand as a Private First Class was in charge of what he explains is “awhole lot of important computers at Fort Lewis”; he ended his serviceafter over two years and went on to work for Boeing before moving intojournalistic tech support. Ben looks forward to pursuing a BFA, and eventually an MFA, in photography; his specialty is sports photography but unless Olmertand Abbas really go at it, he’ll have little use for that particularskill at Annapolis.

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Previous posts:
A little family background

In just a few weeks, statesmen from around the world will convene at an international peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference will coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the UN's historic decision to partition Palestine into two states. Yet after six decades of diplomatic failures and fruitless peace plans, the attendees look set to consider only warmed-over versions of the same stale and unimaginative "two-state solution."

It's time to consider daring new ideas and radical new solutions. To that end, I present to you the five strangest proposals to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Olmert and Abbas, please take note.

Peace of Mind

According to the International Meditation Society of Israel, peace between Israel and her neighbors can be achieved without protracted negotiations or conferences. The key is transcendental meditation (TM). Practitioners of TM—including, famously, the Beatles—believe that by turning inward, one is able to unite with "the Source of all Being" and spread kindness all around. If enough people in a society practice TM, hatred and violence will dissipate.

Alex Kutai, a leader of the TM movement in Israel, has done the math. Kutai has determined that bringing peace to the entire Middle East will require that the square root of one percent of the region's population undertake transcendental meditation.

During Israel's 2006 war with Hizbullah, Kutai dispatched a "squadron" of 65 TM practitioners into the war zone to create a spiritual force shield of invincibility around the north of Israel. Kutai has challenged the government of Israel to demonstrate its commitment to peace by assemble 265 TM practitioners around the country. Two-hundred sixty-five is the square root of one percent of seven million, and thus should be sufficient to bring peace to Israel/Palestine. The government of Israel has yet to finance even a single practitioner of TM.

The No-State Solution

Forget the two-state vs. one-state debate. It is time to consider the anarchist-inspired no-state solution. Conflict between Israel and her neighbors is a result of the divisive and coercive influence of state power, the reasoning goes. Peace will come only when the the people of Israel/Palestine assemble into a non-authoritarian cooperative community of free individuals.

In Israel, political groups like Anarchists Against the Wall, Israeli National Traitor Anarchists, and Amoria have been at the forefront in advocating for this solution. According to Amoria, "AMORIA is the intentional community that we wish to create in Kna'an, the land that is called Israel by some and Palestine by others. We are anarchists, so we are opposed to the state system that oppresses all peoples on the planet and the planet itself. We sidestep this semantic political conflict by advocating not a one-state solution, or two-state solution, but a NO-state solution in the Land of Canaan."

Weed for Peace

Continue reading...

CAIR founder Omar AhmadThe Council on American-Islamic Relations's new website is priceless!

The background: CAIR took a lot of heat when founder Omar Ahmad was reported as saying that "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant", and that "The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." Later they got flak for placing a link on their website that requested donations for 9/11 victims but instead led to the site of an organization that raised funds for Hamas.

So apparently someone over at CAIR decided they needed an image overhaul, because their new website starts with a Flash presentation that's so hippy-dippy and one-world-we've-got-to-love-one-another, you-may-say-that-I'm-a-dreamer-but-we-believe-the-children-are-our-future that I could feel my ego dissolving and my consciousness melding into the cosmos just from watching it.

Go and watch. Learn. Expand your mind. And make sure you have the volume turned up if you want the full crystals-and-incense experience. And note the part at the end about how their new open typeface reflects CAIR's openness and love of dialogue! OMG, that's magnificent!

Daniel Pipes despises CAIR, and thinks they are shameless apologists for, and enablers of, terrorism. I'm no fanboy of Pipes, but I absolutely cannot wait to hear his reaction to the new website.

And after you watch the Flash presentation you can read their lead article: it's titled "CAIR: Life for U.S. Muslims Very Different After 9/11". Gee, you don't say. See, that's the kind of inside info that only one of these on-the-ground, on-the-inside, communal leadership organizations can provide...

UPDATE: CAIR's taken down the Flash presentation and the splash page that followed it. They must have gotten calls from younger members warning them that it was unintentionally humorous. I've contacted them to ask when and where I will be able to enjoy the presentation again. Until then, I've consoled myself by ordering one of CAIR's free DVDs of the life of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.