During the four months I spent researching the film before we flew to Geneva for the Durban Review Conference I occupied my time by talking to as many people as I could and reading article after article.  I learned as much as I could about the background the story of the film would be based upon: other UN conferences on racism, the buildup to the mayhem of the first conference (which began when the Israeli delegation was denied visas to attend to a preparatory meeting in Tehran), what actually happened on the ground in Durban, how each side felt and the details of the conference eventual outcome document - the Durban Declaration and Program of Action - which was a robust statement in support of victims of racism around the world.

Most importantly I learned how the UN, the pro-Zionist organizations and the pro-Palestinians were actively organizing to tell their version of the story. The Jews wanted desperately to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2001.  Palestinians and their supporters didn't see anything wrong with the events of 2001 and, still without a state of their own, thought they could use the Durban Review Conference to continue pleading with the international community for help. UN officials, who felt the 2001 conference was a landmark success, wanted to continue their momentum without being criticized by the NGO community, members of which had been the most vocally anti-Israel. As the April 20, 2009 start date got closer the tension was high, with many countries, including the US and Israel, threatening to boycott.

It didn't take long for me to realize the pro-Israel, pro-Zionist groups were obviously very well funded and very well organized in getting their message out. Antisemitic language had not in fact been included in the UN conference outcome document. But the anti-Semitism the Jews felt that week in Durban led to an eight-year-long fight to never let it happen again. A quick Google search for ‘Durban hate-fest' produced endless results. Groups such as the ADL, B'Nai B'rith, WJC, AJC, The Israel Project etc. had spent a tremendous amount of time speaking to the media, had published numerous pamphlets, media-guides, and op-eds and had been able to control the message, effectively re-branding the first conference an utter failure. They also seemed able to convince Obama administration officials the same.

When I called these organizations they were happy to talk, to give me interviews, to help out in whatever way the could. In the film you'll meet many of these key strategists:

--Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Simon Wiesenthal Center (speaking about a man he met at the 2001 conference): "In the middle of the handshake he pulled his hand back and he said, ‘Are you a Jew?' I said, ‘Yes,' and he wiped his hand off on his jacket."

anne

 

 

--Anne Bayefsky, Hudson Institute: "Saudi Arabia and Cuba and China are all members of the UN Human Rights Council, the lead UN human rights body. It doesn't do human rights. It does anti-Semitism, and the destruction of the State of Israel is its number one agenda."

--Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor: "Durban One wasn't just a conference, it wasn't just a week and a half of angry words and declarations targeting Israel. Durban was a strategy. And the Durban strategy was to use the United Nations, to use the rhetoric of human rights, to use international relations, to use the legal system as a
weapon of war and against Israel."

Continue reading...

Imagine it -- thousands of protesters in the streets of South Africa chanting ‘Death to Israel', screaming ‘Israel is Apartheid,' people holding signs with a star of David, an equal sign and a swastika. Signs read ‘Hitler was Right', others "Zionism = Racism." My initial reaction when I saw the footage -- "You have to be kidding me?!" I had never seen such offensive imagery and on such a large scale. I had never even heard of the 2001
United Nations World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, where these photos were taken. Sixty years after a Holocaust of immeasurable atrocities and people have the gall to call Jews Nazis. It all struck me as completely absurd. Yet there it was.

I had been hired in February 2009 by a small, award-winning media company called Globalvision Inc. to help produce a new documentary about the United Nations and the upcoming Durban Review Conference to be held in Geneva, Switzerland that April. The Review Conference was meant to review progress that countries had made in addressing racism and intolerance in their respective borders since the first Durban Conference in 2001. I was still coming down off the intense hopefulness that the election of our new biracial president gave me and I began the project optimistic and excited. It was a new era.  Maybe now the world could finally come together and make real progress addressing the needs of the millions of marginalized, repressed, suffering people on our planet.

Now that the film is finished, after endless hours of research, interviews with many of the main conference organizers, UN representatives and heads of NGOs from around the world; having poured through hundreds of hours of articles, photos and footage, and having thought a great deal about how effective a huge multilateral institution such as the UN is in truly provoking change, unfortunately much of my cynicism has returned. Why?

Let me tell you the inside story of the making of this film - The Battle of Durban II: Israel, Palestine & the United Nations (which you should all see, by the way) - and you'll get a sense of why, when examined through the prism of the Middle East, my positive conceptions on the efficacy of the UN have been shattered.

A bit of disclosure to begin - I was raised a Conservative Jew, was very active in USY in high school and have visited Israel numerous times. As a journalist, I follow world affairs closely and know, as we all do, that the Israeli-Palestinian divide is an extremely heated one.  As an American, although I haven't been directly affected, I do have strong emotions about the situation. Since I was a little boy (the Camp David Accords were signed 9 months before I was born) I've watched it all play out in newspaper headlines, non-fiction literature and fiction (Skinny Legs and All!), in long conversations with friends and family, blogs, Al-Jazeera and the occasional documentary on PBS' POV or at the local Jewish Film Festival. Images of Orthodox Israeli settlers desperately trying to keep their houses while being forcefully removed by Israeli soldiers; Palestinian refugees waiting in long lines only to be turned away at the checkpoint border into Israel; Jewish groups rhythmically swaying during prayer at the Kotel, Jimmy Carter getting lambasted for his new book 'Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid' during conversations at the Passover dinner table, young Palestinian children starving, bombs dropping into Sderot; etc. all continuously swirl in my head when I think about it.  How can one not get emotional?

Though the emotional effect of these images goes only so far.  They never taught me one very important part of the struggle, the strategies both sides of the divide use at the international level to get their message heard. And where else better to get their message heard then the UN, the body that's supposed to be a forum to solve the world's troubles? After seeing and interacting with Palestinian sympathizers and staunch Zionists trying to get their voices heard directly in trying to make this film I realized that this is what much of the conflict is actually about - controlling the message. Not who is right and who is wrong, but who can best convince the largest group of people to believe in their position. Watching the intense political jockeying that took place during the build up to and during the Durban Review Conference was an amazing chance to see and document this process in real time.

The UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance had been held in the summer of 2001 in the midst of the second Intifada. World headlines reported daily on suicide bombings all over Israel and about the increasingly desperate plight of the Palestinian people. Figuring that a World Conference on Racism was an excellent chance to get additional media attention to their cause, masses of pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Durban. They fought hard at a parallel forum for representatives of Non-Governmental Organizations, which preceded the official UN conference, to encourage UN officials to incorporate critical language about Israeli treatment of Palestinians into their final report or outcome document.
Halfway through the UN conference the fight got so heated delegations from the US and Israeli delegations walked out in a flurry of protest.

Protesters at DurbanThis was not the first time the Middle East issue had derailed a United Nations effort. Founded out of the ashes of the Holocaust, the UN was meant to be a place where the world could come together and prevent conflict. But when it comes to a discussion of human rights the Middle East conflict tends to occupy most of the conversation. The Middle East was the subject of 76% of country-specific UN General Assembly resolutions, 100% of the Human Rights Council resolutions, 100% of the Commission on the Status of Women resolutions, 50% of reports from the World Food Program, 6% of Security Council resolutions and 6 of the 10 Emergency sessions. These decisions, passed with the support of Muslim countries represented by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) among others, invariably criticize Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.

Even though the UN in effect created the State of Israel in 1948, the country has obviously never felt at home there. Many UN delegates believe Israel should not even exist. Zionism was officially declared a racist practice in a 1975 resolution by the UN General Assembly. This was repealed in 1991 but, as we saw on the ground in Durban in 2001, the concept was far from being forgotten. In our interview with Gabriela Shalev, Israel's current Ambassador to the UN in New York, she reminded me of a famous quote from David Ben-Gurion: "UM-Shmum" which roughly translates from Hebrew to "The UN? Who needs it?"  More loosely: "When Israel feels danger, it feels it can't depend on the world community to support it, so why even try?" Admittedly, at times during the making of this movie, I've tended to agree.

Gabriela ShalevBut then the journalist in me thinks - why shouldn't it be criticized?  No country is perfect.  If Israel is wronging people it should be held accountable. I also see the way the world quickly divides itself into blocks when Israel is criticized - with the US and Europe invariably supporting it, the Arab countries against it, and all the other suffering people the UN is supposed to help screaming, "What about us!?"  What a mess! 

Part Two will be posted Tuesday, November 24th 

Part Three will be posted Tuesday, December 1st

For more information, you can visit TheBattleofDurbanII.com to watch the trailer or become a fan of the movie on Facebook.

Jerusalem was busy last week as thousands descended on the city for Sukkot and the annual Jerusalem March. This year's march drew around 70,000 people, up from the 35,000 who participated in 2008. 20,000 police stood by on Tuesday to oversee the controversial event, after what has already been a tense week in Jerusalem. Thousands of Christians also took part in the march, attending as part of a Feast of Tabernacles celebration hosted by the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ).

Christian presence is a by now a familiar part of the Sukkot milieu, but Israelis have yet to decide what to make of these "friends of Israel." Rabbi Tovia Singer has warned that the Christian congregants want to "prey on" rather than "pray for" Israel, and in 2007 the Chief Rabbinate forbade Jews from taking part in the march and other events with ICEJ presence. Minister of Tourism Stash Misezhnikov, however, has justified the event, stating that the Feast of Tabernacles is the largest annual tourist event in Israel, and is expected to generate between $16 and 18 million in revenue.

Who are these "Christian Zionists," and should they be welcomed by Israelis? These questions return each year, and have also surfaced occasionally during events like the death of Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwall in 2007. Israeli journalist Evan Goldstein at the time pointed out that "philo-Semites, like Falwell, seem to relate to Jews more as mythical figures from the Bible than as real living, breathing people." His analysis was based on the thoughts of German philosopher Ernst Bloch, who wrote that a "philo-Semite is an anti-Semite that loves Jews."

As an American Christian who has lived and worked in Israel, I think Goldstein's diagnosis strikes at the heart of the problem. For many Christians the term "Jews" is understood to denote a homogenous group, often conceptualized as characters in a modern retelling of the Biblical narrative. To visit Israel is to enter into that narrative, as is reflected in the names of Christian Zionist tours: Bridges for Peace offers "Land of the Bible" experiences, the ICEJ gives "Grafted In" tours, CFOIC runs tours of "Judea and Samaria," and the Christian Friends of Israel lead a "Meet the People" tour. With the ICEJ you can even "adopt a holocaust survivor" for $250 a month.The problem of "meeting the people" is that in these discourses, the people are the tourist attraction, living figurines in a life-size diorama of Biblical past and prophecy.

When I moved to Israel in 2005, I came equipped with this American Christian picture of Israelis as "Biblical," religious, and European. What I found was a diverse and modern nation of secular, traditional, and religious Jews. Some were of European descent, but there were also Russian, Ethiopian, Iraqi, Yemeni, and many other ethnicities. Among Israeli society I also found a broad variety of opinions on the conflict, and a greater freedom of dialogue than exists in American politics (where the conflict is reduced to a choice between being "pro-Israel" and being labeled an "anti-Semite" or "self-hating Jew").

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Mahmoud Ahmedinejad fulfilled all the promise he brought with him to Geneva for the Durban II conference.

He rambled about Israeli racism (whilst one wonders what a Baha’i observer might have been thinking) and said that the “pretext of Jewish suffering” was used to cover Israeli crimes. Ahmadinejad firmly re-established his bona fides as an anti-Semite and a demagogue, and in so doing seriously undermined the good efforts at Durban II.

The conference organizers really wanted to get past the 2001 conference. But their own short-sightedness doomed them. There was every reason to believe that the Iranian leader’s speech was going to be just what it turned out to be - a full rehash of all the 2001 problems. Yet they welcomed him to the podium anyway. Now they have an even more formidable task of trying to overcome both 2001 and Ahmedinejad’s appearance.

In an interesting coincidence, the European Commission had just chastised some of its own member states for boycotting the conference in anticipation of Ahmedinejad’s appearance. And then most of the rest of the EU states walked out on the speech. Ahmedinejad, as this response demonstrates, dealt a serious blow to those who are advocating engagement with Iran and bolstered the case of those who contend, incorrectly, that the Iranian regime cannot be dealt with rationally.

Iran’s history, even under the Islamic Revolutionary regime, has been one of a rational actor pursuing, in many cases with criminal and objectionable means, rational goals of enhancing its own position and power. They can be dealt with. But Ahmedinejad, who is not the head of the Iranian state, has repeatedly shown himself to be an unreasonable figure. In these tense times, with Israel rattling its military sabers, this is a very stupid move.

Once again, the foolish singling out of Israel has undermined the Durban process. This time, it was due to a really stupid decision on the part of the UN conference's organizers, and despite the fact that this one decision stood in marked contrast to the vast efforts made to avoid just this outcome.

But not be outdone, Israel recalled its ambassador from Switzerland because their prime minister met with Ahmedinejad before his appearance at the conference. The Netanyahu government wanted, apparently, to make sure that Ahmedinejad didn’t corner the market on looking foolish. The Swiss have a long tradition of staying out of others’ disputes and trying to engage and mediate.

Israel knows that very well. Surely they cannot reasonably expect the Swiss government to snub a visiting head of state they are not in conflict with, however objectionable that head of state may be. That’s simply unrealistic. It’s just another move by Bibi to win populist points at home and never mind the expense to Israel’s image in the rest world.

Originally posted at Realistic Peace

Why do we need a liberal Jewish lobby? What does "liberal" even mean, anyway? What's wrong with existing Israel lobbies?

The 92nd Street Y in New York recently held a panel discussion which addressed these issues and more. Jeremy Ben-Ami (Executive Director of J Street), Jane Eisner (Editor of The Forward), Michelle Goldberg (author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism), Eric Alterman (Professor of Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism), and Rabbi Steve Gutow (Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs) spent more than an hour untangling these complicated issues. You can view the full video here:

For more information, try the 92Y blog. Also, Jewschool has a response to Rabbi Gutow from an unaffiliated Jew who finds fault with his arguments.

Dr. Max Nordau, the apostle of muscle-Jewry, was also an avid Zionist and friend of Theodor Herzl, but they differed on how long it would take to get the Jews in shape for independence. As Herzl wrote in his diary on November 19, 1895:

Nordau, it would seem, is completely won over to the cause. My talk with him concerns objections in the higher realms; "If the Jews are anthropologically fit for nationhood?-and the like.

Experience will tell.

Nordau thinks that the plan will need three hundred years for its realization.

I believe thirty--provided the idea makes headway.

Nordau seems to have thought that the Jewish body had to evolve in the Darwinian sense before they could be ready--something that would have taken a lot more than 300 years. Herzl's diary entry on September 3, 1897, contained this boast: "If I were to sum up the [First Zionist] Congress in a word...I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out loud today I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it."

Exactly 50 years and 87 days later, on November 29, 1947, the UN partition vote created the Jewish state; Israel's nationhood was proclaimed on May 14 the next year. It was not evolution, it was revolution, and it was in large part a revolution of the body.  

Between1904 and 1914 an estimated 40,000 Jews came to Israel. One, Aaron David Gordon, was a founder of the first kibbutz, Degania. Like many Zionists, he thought a major part of the Jewish "problem" was that Jews had an unhealthy alienation from physical labor on the soil. At his death in 1922, he was widely known in Israel as an old man with a long white beard who farmed in the fields of the kibbutz all day and led the young men and women in song and dance at night.

But all was not song, dance, and working the soil. Causes of death ranged from malaria through suicide; there were Arab attacks, and Jews in the older settlements had hired Bedouin and Arab guards - basically, a protection racket in which Jews paid Arabs not to attack them. In 1907 a group of ten Jews began to protect themselves, and their success led to an expanded multi-settlement organization called Ha-Shomer - the Guard. They dressed as Arabs and spoke Arabic well but slung bandoliers of bullets across their chests like Mexican revolutionaries. They were good horsemen, considered both fierce and fair by the Bedouin, and their motto said it all: "By blood and fire Judah fell, by blood and fire Judah will rise up."

The rest, like they say, is history. European Jewry was doomed, and the Zionists who had foreseen that doom took the helm of Jewish destiny. Six million Jewish bodies were crushed by the Nazi murder machine and millions more were permanently hurt in mind and body by the ravages of deliberately inflicted starvation, disease, beatings, loss, humiliation, and more. The Jewish body took on a new element in the form of a tattooed number on the arms of survivors, and this indelible mark on that body will not only outlive them, it will stand out forever in our collective memory as emblematic of what happens when Jews allow others to define their bodies.

Of the remnant, hundreds of thousands went to Israel and followed their Zionist predecessors into blood and fire. But Judah did rise up, and the martial courage and prowess of the new Israeli Jews stunned the world, friend and foe. For Jewish Americans, only a tiny fraction of whom joined those fights, the success of the new Jewish body in the uniform of the IDF would recreate the pride of the distant past.

In the tiny historical space of a single lifetime, Jews have experienced the greatest physical weakness and vulnerability in their long, often tragic history, both as a people and as individual bodies. After centuries of relying on mind, faith, and spirit, they discovered that no matter how good your mind is, bodily weakness is still dangerous. In the same single lifetime they have also experienced their greatest historical strength, giving the lie to millennial slanders about their physical fortitude and courage.

Strength is better.

 

Melvin Konner's website is www.jewsandothers.com, See the videotrailer for his new book, The Jewish Body here: http://www.nextbook.org/bookseries/title.html?bookid=25 and listen to a podcast here: http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=3175

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. 

The Israeli elections confirm the death of grand Zionist visions and the rise of new forms of fearful separatism.

‘Today the people chose Kadima… We will form the next government led by Kadima.’

‘The nation wants a change, it wants to move forward along a different path headed by the Likud. Our way has won; it is our way that will lead the nation.’

Both Tzipora Livni of the ruling Kadima party and Benjamin Netanyahu of the opposition Likud party claimed victory in Tuesday’s Israeli elections, in which voter turnout was only slightly higher than the record low of 2006. With 99 per cent of the votes counted at the time of writing, of the 120 seats in the Israeli parliament - the Knesset - Kadima won 28 and Likud won 27. It is still unclear who will be Israel’s next prime minister, but the election results have shed light on the despondency that many Israelis felt for the politicians on the ballot.

Despite various Israeli politicians’ Obama-inspired rhetoric of change, the real shift in Israeli society, which this election has brought to the fore, is the decline of left-wing Zionism, and the prevalence of a politics of insecurity, which inspires defensive patriotism rather than ideological zealotry. The fall of the centre-left Labour party, which came fourth with only 13 seats, and the rise of the right-wing party Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel our Home), which got 15 seats, encapsulate these two defining features: the death of grand-vision Zionism and the rise of a new politics of hiding behind walls.

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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.

It's the last day before the Israeli elections, and there seems to be widespread agreement that Yisrael Beiteinu party chairman Avigdor Lieberman is going to win big - perhaps as much as 19-20 seats. They've already pulled ahead of the Labor party and by now it's virtually a foregone conclusion that Lieberman will emerge from these elections with considerable political influence.

It's also fair to say that those of us who cherish the values of liberal democracy are recoiling at the prospect of a politically ascendant Avigdor Lieberman, whose most notorious campaign promise is a requirement for all Arab citizens of Israel to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish state:

(Lieberman's) loyalty oath would require all Israelis to vow allegiance to Israel as a Jewish, democratic state, to accept its symbols, flag and anthem, and to commit to military service or some alternative service. Those who declined to sign such a pledge would be permitted to live here as residents but not as voting citizens.

Currently Israeli Arabs, who constitute 15 percent to 20 percent of the population, are excused from national service. Many would like to shift Israel’s identify from that of a Jewish state to one that is defined by all its citizens, arguing that only then would they feel fully equal.

Mr. Lieberman says that there is no room for such a move and that those who fail to grasp the centrality of Jewish identity to Israel have no real place in it.

These are disturbing ideas to be sure, and it's even more troubling that they seem to finding traction with increasing numbers of the Israeli electorate.

And yet...

...and yet in the wee hours of the night, I just can't shake the nagging feeling that the real reason Lieberman makes us squirm is that he shines a bright light on the logical contradictions of political Zionism: an ethnic nationalist movement that has always sought to create a Jewish state in a land that also happens to be populated by millions of non-Jewish inhabitants.

Take, for example, Israel's Declaration of Independence, which refers specifically to Israel as a "Jewish state" committed to the "ingathering of the exiles" but also promises complete equality of political and social rights for all its citizens, irrespective of race, religion, or sex.  Therein lies the tension: the first principle emphasizes the creation of a state that privileges the Jewish people and the latter promises equal rights for all its citizens.

I don't say this easily: I'm not sure this is a nut that Israel will ever fully be able to crack.  It is indeed notable that Israel has repeatedly tried and failed to create a constitution that legally guarantees equality for all citizens of this exclusively Jewish state. In the meantime, Israel's Arab citizens suffer from what we Americans would consider significant institutional discrimination with only limited recourse to the rule of law.

So as a nice liberal American Jew fully prepared to voice my outrage at Lieberman's likely Tuesday morning success, here are some questions I feel compelled to ponder:

- As proud citizens and beneficiaries of a secular multi-cultural nation, are we ready to face the deeper implications of Israel's ethnic nationalism?

- Will it ever truly be possible, in a country defined as exclusively Jewish, for its Arab citizens to be considered as anything but second class citizens (or at worst, traitors)?

- If  it does indeed come down to a choice between a Jewish or a democratic state, which will we ultimately support?

I'd love to hear your responses...

Two months ago, I announced that I’d decided to vote for the Green Movement. I urged the Greens to form a joint slate with MK Michael Melchior’s Meimad party—and they did. And since then, silence. Where the hell have I been?

Skeptical journalist that I am, I’ve been doubting my decision. I’ve been looking for the holes in my arguments. I’ve been agonizing. In the wake of the Gaza war, shouldn’t security issues take precedence? What if the Green Movement-Meimad doesn’t get over the 2 percent threshold? And if they do, what can a tiny party accomplish?

But now, with the election coming up next Tuesday, I’ve made my decision. Again. And it’s to vote for the only party in the race that I can be enthusiastic about. The only party that offers a new way of looking at the weighty issues that Israel will face in the years before us, the only party that offers a comprehensive, long-term vision of Israel’s future as a democratic Jewish state that is part of the local and global community of nations.

A friend told me the other day: “Environmental issues are important, but given the perils Israel faces, should the environment be the single issue you vote for?” A brief perusal of the movement’s platform shows that the question is misplaced. Far from being a one-issue party, the Green Movement-Meimad offers a comprehensive program that addresses international affairs, economics, social services, and education as well as the environment. In the tradition of the Green movements of Europe, the environmental crisis serves as a paradigm for how to address the entire range of issues facing the country.

The left-hand column of the movement’s website offers (in Hebrew) a long list links to the slate’s position papers on topics ranging from the Israel-Arab conflict, employment, and higher education to immigrant absorption, Jewish-Arab relations within Israel, health, and the water crisis. If you believe that Israel must strive for an accommodation leading to a two-state solution to the current conflict; if you believe that Israel must build a more just and equal society if it is to survive; and if you understand that to survive and to live peacefully with our neighbors, we must adopt rational, conservationist policies regarding our use of our land and natural resources, this is the only party to vote for.

So the good reasons to vote for the Green Movement-Meimad are evident. What about the good reasons for doubt, the ones I’ve been agonizing over for the last few weeks?

One of these is the strategic argument. It states that a responsible citizen should vote for that large party that is headed by the candidate for prime minister the voter prefers. To govern effectively, the prime minister needs the backing of a strong party. So one should not quibble about details and chose the large party that is closest to your views.

In this race, there are only two viable candidates to head the next government—Binyamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni. The news organizations have been including the leader of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, on the list simply because Labor has historically been one of Israel’s two largest parties. But the fact is that Barak and Labor are out of the race.

While I’m far from enthusiastic about her, there’s no question in my mind that she’d be a better prime minister than Netanyahu. But Livni heads a party whose allegiance to her commitment to the two-state solution and social progress is questionable. Her slate includes super-hawks like Shaul Mofaz and a large contingent of party hacks. There’s no reason to believe that a vote for her party, Kadima, would in fact make her more able to govern.

Another reason not to vote for the Green Movement-Meimad is the fear that they will not make it over the 2 percent threshold required to gain seats in the Knesset. In fact, most polls show them falling short.

However, the polls also show that a full third of voters remain undecided. The accuracy of the surveys’ findings is thus seriously in doubt. And there are good reasons to believe that the Green Movement-Meimad’s support is being undercounted. Most of the polls call people at home; Green Movement-Meimad’s supporters are disproportionately young people who have only cell phones, not land lines.

But even if the movement does not make it over the threshold, its votes will not be lost. If Netanyahu wins, as seems likely, the Zionist left will be in disarray. It will need to look for new ideas and new leaders. And the enthusiasm and commitment that the Green Movement-Meimad has generated in this election will make it an important component any new force for peace and social justice in Israel.

So I apologize to the candidates and supporters of the Green Movement-Meimad. I’m done agonizing and ready to vote.

Read more by Haim at South Jerusalem

Over the weekend Facebook swelled with postings from British Jews seeking to verify an unusual and unexpected email appearing to have been sent by Britain's primary Jewish institution. The email claimed that a pro-Israel rally in London's Trafalgar Square planned for Sunday was canceled because it "might be perceived as the community taking one side in the tragic war in Gaza and Israel, and might be seen as supporting Israel's military campaign."

The email, which also called, in the voice of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for "an immediate ceasefire, immediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and for lifting the economic blockade of Gaza," was apparently a hoax initiated by a group of young British Jews affiliated with the organization Jewdas.

Billed as a "radical Jewish diaspora group," Jewdas is well-known for having pulled off other provocative stunts in the past. Though they have not yet publicly disclosed their involvement, on Sunday an unidentified member of the group was apprehended by the London police as the alleged sender of the email. He is presently awaiting arraignment.

An anonymous source close to Jewdas told Jewcy, "We wanted to show another possible reality, to suggest that another Jewish community is possible. Those who believed it, even for a moment," he said, "were being given a gift -- a vision of a Jewish leadership which stands up for peace and justice rather than mindless ethnic solidarity."

The Board of Deputies did not respond to Jewcy's requests for comment, but a spokesperson, Samantha Cohen, described the incident to BBC as "an attempt to silence the Jewish community's support for peace for the people of Israel and Gaza."

Not at all, says the anonymous source. "This action was a call for new or radically reformed Jewish communal organizations. Ones that promote peace and justice over solidarity, and pluralism and democracy over hierarchy and backroom politics."

Taking issue with the Board of Deputies' branding of the Trafalgar Square rally as one that was "pro-peace," he said, "A rally that puts all the blame on one side and fails to call for a ceasefire would be better be described as a pro-war rally."

"We will not allow the notion of 'peace' to be bastardized, to become 'peace on our terms,'" he added.

If it weren’t the fact that the fracas at yesterday’s meeting of Israel’s Central Election Committee was theater rather than serious deliberation, I might be more upset about the decision to bar from contesting the coming election two of the three Arab slates represented in the current Knesset. Everyone there, both the right-wingers accusing the Arab parties of sedition and the representatives of said parties charging the Committee with racism, knew that the decision will almost certainly be overturned by the Supreme Court.

That’s what happened 2003, when the Committee sought to ban Balad (National Democratic Assembly), one of the two parties it banned yesterday. The other is the joint slate of Ra’am (United Arab List)/Ta’al (Arab Movement for Renewal).

As Ha’aretz’s Ze’ev Segel explains, the Central Election Committee was empowered by an amendment to the Basic Law on the Knesset of 2002 to disqualify parties that act explicitly or implicitly in support of armed struggle against Israel. In its 2003 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that disqualification required a high standard of proof that the parties in question were in fact taking active measures to support armed struggle and that the advocacy of armed struggle against Israel was the party’s governing ideology. (Recommended: the Israel Democracy Institute’s position paper on the disqualification of parties, written by Mordechai Kremnitzer.)

Oddly enough, the language in question does not appear on the Knesset website’s version of the law and its amendments, nor on the Hebrew site, nor on any other official Israeli website that I could find.

But no matter—the subtext of the debate (or rather free-for-all) at yesterday’s Elections Committee meeting was not sedition and terror but rather the previous amendment to the basic law, which states that:

A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: (1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people; (2) negation of the democratic character of the State; (3) incitement to racism.

After all, none of the ranters accusing the Arab slates of treason thinks that these parties are running guns for Hamas, and the Arab ranters would not be so stupid to do so and then field a slate for the Knesset. The real issue is whether advocating that Israel be a state of all its citizens—rather than a Jewish national state—constitutes sedition in and of itself. That Israel should not be a Jewish state is the official position of Balad and of a part of the Ra’am-Ta’al list.

The amendment to the basic law quoted above was passed in response to the election of Meir Kahane to the Knesset. Kahane explicitly denounced democracy and his Kach party vowed to eliminate many of Israel’s democratic institutions and practices. Kahane was his party’s sole representative in the Knesset, but in the early 1980s opinion polls showed Kach gaining support at an alarming rate, and the country’s parliamentarians sought to protect this young and not entirely stable democracy from those who would use democracy’s freedoms to destroy its system.

However, in the political bargaining that ensued, the parties of the right demanded that, if the law was to disqualify anti-democrats from running for the Knesset, it should also disqualify anti-Zionists. Their logic was that the Jewish state is essential to the survival of the Jewish people and that therefore advocacy of stripping the state of its Jewish character was ipso facto an attack on the Jewish people.

But making opposition to the Jewish character of the state the converse of opposition to its democratic character was problematic from the start. Democracy is the scaffolding of government; the state’s Jewish character is determined by said state having a population that wants the state to be a Jewish nation-state. The state’s Jewish character can’t be set in stone because it depends on the will of the state’s inhabitants. But the state’s democratic character must be inalienable, because if the majority decides that it should not be democratic, no subsequent majority can revoke that decision. To put it another way, the state’s Jewish character is its what, while its democratic character is its how.

I am a fervent advocate of the Jewish people’s right to their own nation-state. I strenuously oppose any political party—Arab or Jewish—that says Israel should not be a Jewish state. Neither do I have a high opinion of most of the men (only men) that Balad and Ra’am-Ta’al have sent to the Knesset. But to suggest that Israel should be a state of all its citizens is not treason or sedition. Avid Zionist that I am, there are conditions under which I would, reluctantly and with great fear and trepidation, conclude that Israel could no longer be the country of the Jews—for example, if the majority of people who live in it are not Jews.

Balad and Ra’am-Ta’al anger and disturb me, but that’s not cause to keep them out of the Knesset. On the contrary, they and their ideas must be part of Israel’s national conversation. A conversation, not a shouting match, as we saw yesterday at the Central Elections Committee.

Read more by Haim at South Jerusalem

Dani Rosenberg's 2007 drama Homeland , which made its American debut at the 23rd Israeli Film Festival, provides an opportunity to examine how contemporary Israeli cinema reflects upon history: upon the history of the state of Israel as represented in cinema, but also upon the history of Israeli cinema itself.

More often than not, Israeli films focus on the present. In stark contrast to American cinema, the historical genre occupies only a marginal place in Israeli cinema, and relatively few films could genuinely be called historical. This could be attributed to the poverty of the Israeli film industry; the small scale of Israeli productions seems unbefitting the historical genre, in its expanses of sets, costumes, and multitudes of characters. The resources required are simply unavailable to Israeli filmmakers.

Beyond such prosaic reasons, however, lies an inability to move beyond the didactic terms dictated by the Zionist ethos in order to conceptualize the past. The few films that have succeeded in doing so — Ilan Moshenson ’s 1979 film The Wooden Gun, Dan Wolman ’s Hide and Seek (1980), Amos Gitai ’s Kippur (2000), and most recently Joseph Cedar ’s Campfire (2004) and 2007 Beaufort (2007)—have turned the past into a chamber drama that puts into relief the interaction of characters at the expense of action, the driving force of the historical spectacle.

Homeland (Beit Avi) - English Trailer

Dani Rosenberg turns necessity into merit, and makes the poverty of means into a formal principle that shapes Homeland. By and large, his film is a piece for two actors. History is rendered not through the perspective of large collectives, nor through the perspective of the family—literally or metaphorically—like many historical Israel films, but rather, through the perspective of the individual.

The year is 1948, and Lolek, played by Itay Tiran, a young Holocaust survivor, arrives in the newly established state of Israel hoping to join his pre-war lover in Haifa.

Lolek finds himself completely disoriented when he is dropped off from a military truck in the middle of the wilderness, made to repeat an oath of allegiance in Hebrew— a language he does not understand—to the state and to the IDF, and pointed in the direction of a military outpost on top of a nearby hill. The outpost is manned by sunburnt and muscular Mickey Leon, who is determined to transform the unsoldierly, slender and pale Lolek into an image of the Israeli sabra. To this end, Leon continuously abuses Lolek, both mentally and physically.

Rosenberg’s film is the often-told story of Jewish immigrants to pre-state Palestine and to post-independence Israel, who were ask to shed off their exhilic mentality, to immerse themselves in the new society and to become new Jews: upright, strong, ready to fight and to sacrifice themselves on the alter of their old-new homeland. Yet, unlike the didactic Zionist-Israeli story that celebrates the Israeli melting pot, or the more recent, critical story, that points to the price paid by immigrants in their endeavors to become Israelis, Rosenberg’s protagonist resists the forceful, violent attempt to both undo and redo his body and soul.

In taking this position, Rosenberg seems to be responding to the film often dubbed “the first Israeli movie,” namely, to Herbert Klein and Meyer Levin ’s My Father’s House, which was produced in 1947, but released only after the establishment of the state. The two films, which share the same Hebrew title— Beyt Avi (my father’s house)—also share the same premise: a young survivor who arrives in Palestine/Israel after losing his whole family in the Holocaust. Yet each film takes this premise in a very different direction.

David, the protagonist of the original My Father’s House, fails to immerse himself in the kibbutz or in the boarding school to which he is subsequently sent, because he clings to the hope that he could still unite with his father. In search of him, David goes on a long tour of the land, a tour in which his sorrow is supplanted with admiration for it’s beauty and for Zionist achievements. Towards the end of the film, he is adopted by a Holocaust survivor and her Israeli partner, and all of them join a new kibbutz in the Negev. When the three arrive there, the kibbutz members uncover an old stone carving of a menorah. All gather around it, and one of them points at the carving and addresses the child: “This is your father’s house.”

Rosenberg’s Beyt Avi paints a picture of a very different homeland. The film takes place in a desolated, uninhabited wilderness. This wilderness is not the setting for pioneering settlement, but of destruction, one that encompasses the whole land. By a military logic he does not understand, Lolek is shackled to the outpost, and is forbidden the opportunity to explore other parts of the country. Indeed, when he insists that he would leave for Haifa, the commander brutally assures him: “Haifa is gone! There is no more Haifa!” The commander undoes the Zionist slogan of turning the wilderness into a blooming garden, turning the entire country into a wilderness. There is no reprieve, the commander suggests, from the empty landscape and the scorching sun that burns their skin. Indeed, there is no reprieve from war, so one should give up the illusion of finding or founding a new home.

Nothing breaks the solitariness of the outpost. The enemy has last been seen over three weeks ago, and the war is present only in the form of a radio broadcasting anxious screams begging for help. The only sign of war that, ironically, is also the only sign of life—past or present— are the haunted ruins of a Palestinian village. In an eerie scene Lolek, who is sent to the village to bring fresh water to the outpost, enters one of the destroyed houses, and is watched by the ghost of a Palestinian boy that hides underneath a bed. Lolek lies on the ground and stares back at him. The desolation of the land, the film seems to suggest, results from the devastation of pre-existing civilizations, not only Palestinian civilization, but Jewish exhilic civilization as well. Both are victims of the destructive forces unleashed by militarism embraced by the young Israeli state.

The growing tension between Lolek and his commander cannot be resolved by anything but violence. In this, Homeland follows the footsteps of such films as Yehuda Ne’eman ’s 1977 Paratroopers, which likewise portrays the intense relationship between a fresh, puny and pale paratrooper recruit and his chauvinist commander, who believes that discipline and hazing would make a true soldier out of him. Yet, whereas all of the characters in Ne’eman’s film accept the soldierly ethos, whether they are capable of realizing it or not, Lolek rejects this ethos. In defiance, he challenges his commander with buffoonish, Charlie Chaplin-like antics that mock the commander’s chauvinist-military mannerism and express resistance to the demand to put behind exhilic values.

The friction between the two, however, is not one between a native and a new immigrant, between an arrogant Israeli—who, in the effort to establish and secure a new state, refuses to acknowledge the emotional and physical needs of others—and his victim, as it might seem at first glance. The number on his forearm and, more than that, his nightmares reveal the antipathetic sabra to be but another suffering Holocaust survivor. The conflict is between two damaged newcomers and the divergent strategies they adopt in their struggle with the past in Europe and the present in an inhospitable country. Not only does the transition to Israel fails to relieve newcomers of the traumas they suffered in exile, the film suggests. It also leads them to victimize each other.

The ambiguity that underlies the conflict between the two characters also makes ambiguous the most conspicuous aspect of the film, namely, its Yiddish. Homeland is one of only a handful of Yiddish-speaking films to be produced since World Word II. Most obviously, Homeland's employment of Yiddish marks the destroyed European culture that the new immigrants were expected to forget upon their arrival. In his insistence on speaking Yiddish and on using Yiddish humor, Lolek mounts a critique of the Hebrew’s militaristic character. Yiddish is the language that links him to his past home and murdered family, but also to the hope of a future new home and family in “Haifa.”

Hebrew, on the other hand, is the language of war and of destruction. Yet, the conflict is not between Yiddish and Hebrew since, by and large, the dialogue takes place in Yiddish. The conflict seems to be between two types of Yiddish: between Yiddish that desires to become Hebrew and Yiddish that insists on its independence from Hebrew. The outcome of the film (which, for the sake of those who have not seen the film yet, I avoid from revealing) leaves uncertain not only which Yiddish wins but, more than that, what is the significance of the victory.

Homeland offers not only a revisionist account of Israeli history, but of Israeli cinema as well. More than any other Israeli director, Dani Rosenberg explores the price paid by the individual for the demands put on them by the Zionist endeavor. Other Israeli filmmakers, no matter how critical of the Zionist project and of Israeli society, tended to mitigate the stress of this demand by placing their protagonists within the context of a collective—commonly represented by a small group of people or a family—and in doing so, submitted their anguish to its impersonal logic. By placing this community outside of the film’s frame and by rendering the significance of the struggle against its demands uncertain, Homeland turns that anguish into a challenge to talk about Israeli history.

 

Among early Zionist writers, Ze'ev Jabotinsky stood out for the cruelty and compete amorality of his arguments.  His position was simple:  we want territory in Palestine, there is an indigenous Palestinian people living in that territory, we must crush them by violence until they surrender to our will. "As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups."  Jabotinsky was forthright about the nature of Zionism:  it was "colonialism," a program to be carried out behind "a wall of bayonets."  

There was almost something bracing about his brutal honesty:  that Zionism was an essentially imperialist enterprise, that Jews simply should not care about non-Jews, that "right" is determined by reasoning backwards from what we want to what is required to achieve it.  "We hold that Zionism is moral and just," he wrote.  "And since it is moral and just, justice must be done . . . There is no other morality."  Jews should make no other kinds of claims (Jabotinsky was particularly contemptuous of the Jewish religion, which he described as "a preserved corpse" in the Diaspora:  it is interesting that today it is in Israel that Judaism most obviously fits his description.)  Israel was not to be a center of Jewish culture or learning or the inculcation of virtue, it needed no justification beyond "we want it and we have bayonets."

To bolster his arguments later, however, Jabotinsky also made an argument based on "justice":  "The soil does not belong to those who possess land in excess but to those who do not possess any.  It is an act of simple justice to alienate part of their land from those nations who are numbered among the great landowners of the world, in order to provide a place of refuge for a homeless, wandering people."  The weird perversity of this notion of justice becomes apparent (if it isn't already) as soon as one tries to apply it in any other context.  Catholics have a country in Southern Ireland - therefore Northern Irish Protestants should be entitled to drive out all Catholics from the area?  There is no Romany state, nor a Breton state nor a Druze state nor a Kurdish nor a Basque state; therefore it would be justifiable to drive Americans, Frenchmen, or Spaniards, Turks, Lebanese or Israelis out of their homes in order to create a new state for each of these peoples?  There is no Bahai state nore a Wiccan state nor a Sufi state.  Therefore it would be justifiable to drive Christians, Muslims and Jews out of their homes to create space for these new states?  Jabotinsky's answer was, effectively, a shrug.

Continue reading...

It is a problem that will not speak its name. We all know that there is bigotry, prejudice, and intolerance in the American Jewish community; that much is inevitable, and that's not the problem I'm talking about. The problem I'm talking about is this: how do we react when we encounter those things among our Jewish "friends"?

I am thinking about this because I recently had a troubling conversation with a good friend; let's call him Bob. Bob has another friend who is an Orthodox Jew (of a certain kind), and they have a mutual acquaintance who is transgendered. Bob is struggling with the moral problem of determining his appropriate response. Does he allow his Jewish friend to spout homophobic garbage, or call him on his bigotry and stand up for the dignity their transgendered acquaintance at the risk of losing a relationship that he values deeply? This is not a new conundrum, of course; it is a basic problem that arises from living in a community marked by value pluralism. But as I listened to Bob's description of the situation, I couldn't help but think of the particular form that this conundrum takes within the community of American Jews.

We may pride ourselves on our cosmopolitanism and our open-mindedness. We cringe at the kind of question I was once asked by my grandfather on meeting two of my school friends: "are they Jewish?" We would never dream of insisting that our community of friends be limited to members of a certain religion or nationality or ethnicity. Except that when American Jews go to Israel they are often heard to say something like what a friend of mine once said: "Here, they're all Yidden. Good Yidden and bad Yidden, but all Yidden." He assumed that would mean something to me, and of course it did. Life is easier, more comfortable, when we have common bonds with the people around us. "Birds of a feather flock together,"lunchroom tables self-segregate. It's only natural.

Against that impulse there is a kind of politically correct lip-service to diversity. In America right now, it's politics. Many of us would be appalled if people thought we only had conservative or liberal friends, or that we only talk to members of a certain political party. I recently heard the chair of the College Republicans on my campus express dismay at the idea that anyone would ever vote a straight party ticket. Sure, out there in the blogosphere there are the Dailykos.com's and the Redstate.com's, but we are more sophisticated, more open. Some of my best friends voted for the wrong candidate.

The problem, of course, arises when the discussion of differences in political affiliation or religious background or historical identification are understood to be something more than the equivalent of rooting for different sports teams. What happens when these differences reflect fundamental differences in human values? A friend is someone whose feelings I care about, whose thoughts I value, whose well-being is important to me. A friend can rely on me to come to their aid in a time of need. Can I have a true "friend" who denies the humanity of other friends? Who is a homophobe or a racist, an uncaring laissez-faire capitalist or a theocrat? How -- no really how?, through what set of discursive maneuvers and exercises in rationalization? -- can I have a "friend" whose respect for me is diminished because of others who are also my friends?

It is always easy, of course, to turn this into a kind of moral relativist ju-jitsu. "You see?," cries the homophobic religious zealot, "you claim to be tolerant and open-minded but here you are rejecting my beliefs!" There can even be a point at which this move carries some substance: am I more comfortable with the raving atheist who derides all religious believers as naifs than with the religious believer who accuses atheists of (as another old friend puts it) "epistemic blindness? Maybe. Ultimately, to quote yet another old friend, we choose our hypocrites, starting with ourselves. But that answers nothing. We still have to choose among our hypocrisies, and those choices require justification, if only to ourselves.

These are universal challenges. But among Jews they take a particular set of forms. I have friends - I think they're "friends" - who say things that go far beyond ignorance or wrongheadedness, the kinds of things that if one of my children said them I would immediate sit that child down for a long talk. "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people" is a good one. "Arabs have plenty of countries, it's only fair that we take this one,"there's another. This is not simply Jabotinskyite Revisionism (Jabotinsky understood very well that his Zionist project involved the displacement and defeat of a people). This is something later and uglier, a manifestation of an intellectual cancer that degrades historical memory in the service of recrudescent tribalism.

The Zionist version of the disease, like many others, goes beyond the basic symptoms of the disease by virtue of its selectivity. Curious that the same people never make the same argument about the Protestants of Northern Ireland, or propose that because there is no Gypsy nation residents of Romania should be forcibly displaced to create one. Fascinating - as writers on this blog, among other places, have noted - that genocidal violence fills us with existential horror when and only when it is directed against Jews. That same selectivity appears in the willful blindness, the resolute refusal to know what goes on in Israel and in the Territories. Is that in the same category of moral corruption?

I could go on, we could all go on. An American Jew who says he or she has not encountered this kind of ignorance and prejudice among their fellow Jews is either in denial or a liar. From my own experience I can quote examples of pure, outright racism: "Arabs only understand violence" and "Muslims don't have Western rationality" were popular for a time. Then there was the woman, my hostess for lunch, who simply described Palestinians as dirty. Followed, brightly, by "shall we bench, now?" I know what you're thinking. What did I do? Did I stand up self-righteously and howl in outrage? Make a scene? Refuse to join in prayers in the house where I had just been a guest for lunch? Actually, yes, and I have not spoken with that person since that date. But that's not very satisfying. And in other, less obvious cases I have remained silent.

When I think about these things, I always remember a little girl named Aisha whom I met in Bethlehem twenty years ago. I was staying with her parents - her father, J, was a journalist. He spoke Hebrew so we could communicate, but with Aisha I had only my 50 or so words of Arabic. She would not believe that I was Jewish for the longest time; everyone knows Jews are vile, horrible monsters who kill children and blow up houses and torture people, and as a guest in her house I didn't quite fit that mold. Eventually, though, we found a way to pass the time. You know the clap-slap-clap game American children play while reciting "Miss Mary Mack/All dressed in black," etc.? So I showed Aisha that game. After a while we starting making up more complicated versions; we got up to sequences of eleven and fifteen precise moves. When we demonstrated for the rest of the family she would shout out a number -"t'maanye"! "tish'a!" - and we would run through that particular routine to the cheers of the audience. I loved that household; full of love and warmth and commitment. Oh, and spotlessly clean, of course; on my best day I have never been able to keep a house as sparkling as that apartment.

It comes down to the children. To sacrifice a child on an altar was supposedly a Canaanite practice of Moloch worshippers; the story of Isaac is supposed to tell us not to follow those ways. So . . . can we have"friends" who would sacrifice children on the altar of their self-righteousness? Can I have a "conversation" with someone who would relegate Aisha to the ash heap of history for the sake of gratifying their own sense of tribal superiority? How about friends who would insist that the children of same-sex couples do not deserve families secured by the same legal protections as those afforded to the families of children born to mixed-sex couples? How about "friends" who relegate women to a second order of rationality and therefore deny education to girls? Are any of these things made more tolerable just because the people involved are Jewish? That question surely answers itself.

If you're a modern art lover and you're looking for some culture in Israel, it's likely that your fellow art enthusiasts will direct you to the nearest bus to Tel Aviv, which is adorned by modern art museums, galleries, and art students with high hopes. Now, though, there is an ever-growing group of young artists pioneering the cultural movement that could redefine the art scene in the holy land, and they're doing it in an unlikely place-- they're doing it in Jerusalem.

At the same time that the chalutzim were coming to Israel and starting the kibbutz movement that would be the backbone of Jewish immigration for years to come, there were cultural chalutzim that were attempting to communicate Zionist ideals by means of art. The roots of Israeli art stem not from the modern art museums that attract millions to the city of Tel Aviv today, but from Jerusalem, a city whose culture isn't generally considered to be its strong point. The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design was established in 1906 (then known as the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts) and by the time that the kibbutznik pioneers were coming to Israel in droves, students at Bezalel were participating in the push to bring Jews to the 'new' homeland, specifically by means of creating Zionist poster art. This propagandist art, among other forms of art stemming from Bezalel and beyond, is often looked at from a Zionist perspective and from a political perspective-- but its cultural significance, among other things, is simply that it was the very beginning of 'Israeli art.'

Despite Jerusalem's historic ties to the art world, many artists and art lovers have found the city to be lacking. A group of former Bezalel students set out to change this, and it seems that they're making some progress. A few years ago, three Israeli art students had just finished their degrees at Bezalel and decided that they would stay in Jerusalem rather than flock to Tel Aviv like most Bezalel students do upon graduation. They, too, were frustrated by Jerusalem's lack of an art scene and were worried about the fact that there were very few opportunities to exhibit their work and to have successful careers related to art and design. One of the founders, Yannai, describes the decision to stay in Jerusalem as an attempt to reinvigorate the modern art scene and sees it as an important decision made as an artist; he maintains that being an artist is about going against the grain and proving people wrong.

Three years ago, Yannai and his partners started an organization called Barbur and they are based in the beautiful, archaic neighborhood of Nachlaot in Jerusalem. They have, in fact, proven many people wrong by reinvigorating the modern art scene in the holy city. Barbur is funded partially by various foundations and also by the municipality in Jerusalem, which is looking to invest in the establishment of cultural venues within the city. The Barbur building serves as an art gallery that is a popular venue for all sorts of Israeli artists, and they offer art classes for people of all skill levels. In addition, the group has partnered with various Israeli organizations to organize modern art festivals and exhibits that had never before taken place in Jerusalem, being that Tel Aviv seemed like a more appropriate place. Barbur is putting Jerusalem on the map as far as the global art scene goes, and its founders are often traveling abroad to spread the word and to form artistic collaborations in a more global sense, which Tel Aviv artists have been doing for years.

Barbur itself has given Jerusalem artists a place to go and the city seems to be welcoming the change. New galleries have popped up at a relatively rapid rate over the past few years, and even local bars like Uganda-- a small pub frequented by Bezalel students-- now double as art galleries. Jerusalem has a long way to go before its art scene completely rivals that of Tel Aviv, but Israel was partially built by cultural pioneers from Bezalel and it seems like they've picked up where they left off.

Slavoj Žižek declares in his latest opus, In Defense of Lost Causes (Verso), that while postmodernism has caused (or allowed) every other kind of racial, social, and cultural identity to be in flux, Jewish identity appears to have become fixed in a simple equation in which Jews=Zionists=racists (thank you, UN). Jews are expected, he says (in his usual difficult prose) to “yield with regard to their name”—that is, “in the liberal multiculturalist perspective, all groups can assert their identity – except Jews, whose very self-assertion equals Zionist racism.”

Žižek, an internationally reknowned intellectual, has been at the cutting edge of social and political theory for almost two decades, and apparently strives to be an outsider. It is therefore no surprise that he has developed an interest in Jews, as such. Žižek cares so much about Jewish identity because he identifies as Jewish. Not literally. He is no more a Jew than Joe Lieberman is a liberal. Rather, Žižek, a product of Slovenia, a country torn by the last century’s wars, sees in the Jewish experience a representation of contemporary experience that is far more subtle than a chaotic and relativistic mash-up of identity politics. Was it not, as Žižek says, that “in the history of modern Europe, those who stood for the striving for universality were precisely atheist Jews from Spinoza to Marx and Freud?

Continue reading...

Chicago’s Jewish museum, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, is currently showing an exhibit called Imaginary Coordinates that focuses on maps of Israel and the Middle East. The Spertus website has this to say about Imaginary Coordinates:

Imaginary Coordinates is inspired by antique maps of the Holy Land in Spertus' collection. The exhibition juxtaposes these maps with modern and contemporary maps of this region, all of which assert boundaries. It brings these together with objects of material culture and artworks that question national borders, as a way of charting new spaces, fostering conversation, and imagining new communities.

Imaginary Coordinates: real controversy
Included in the exhibit are antique maps, a two-minute video-loop of a naked Israeli woman hula hooping with barbed wire, and video of a woman in Jerusalem asking people for directions to Ramallah.

Imaginary Coordinates opened on May 2nd, and closed after a week for “building maintenance.” Since the Spertus museum is a brand new facility opened in December after a $55 million renovation project, it seems unlikely that maintenance was really the issue. The exhibit reopened on May 15th, but now you can only be admitted to the exhibit as part of a guided tour every hour. The exhibit has also been rearranged, in order to “shift fragile items away from harsh light” according to the Chicago Tribune.

The exhibit presents both Israeli and Palestinian ideas about land ownership, cultural capital, and borders of all kinds. Predictably, there are elements of the Jewish community that are upset by the inclusion of Palestinian artifacts and art. These elements are pushing the Spertus to close the exhibit again, and are threatening to withhold funding if Imaginary Coordinates remains open.

I’ve been on one of the guided tours of the exhibit, and didn’t find the material to be particularly upsetting. Yes, there are pieces that imply that Palestinians feel a strong connection to Israeli land, and even a sense of ownership over land in Israel, but so what? In the immortal words of Marriage Encounter ‘Feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just are.’ What would be the point of denying that Palestinians feel strongly about land, that they miss the towns they used to live in, or that they don’t think Israelis have proper respect for their land? You can still think their political ideology is bad or wrong, you can hate their methods and call them stupid, but failing to acknowledge how they feel about the situation is just willful ignorance.

If you live in Chicago or are planning a visit soon, I encourage you to plan a trip to Imaginary Coordinates, and to leave your hopefully positive feedback for the Spertus curatorial staff. Admission is free on Tuesdays from 10 am-12 noon and Thursdays from 3-7 pm. At other times general admission is only $7, and $5 for students and seniors.

If you don’t live near Chicago, and don’t plan on seeing the exhibit, please email Rhoda Rosen, the museum’s curator, and give her your support. Here’s a sample email:

Dear Ms. Rosen,

Thank you so much for reopening Imaginary Coordinates. I’m glad to hear that Spertus is tackling issues of land ownership, mapping, and patriotism is such a balanced and thoughtful way. I know that you worked on this assembling this exhibit for three years, and I applaud your efforts.

I hope that you will keep the exhibit open to the public for its full run, through September 7th so that the community has plenty of opportunity to see these important pieces.

Sincerely,
Your name

Read reviews for Imaginary Coordinates here, here and here.

 

*** Update: Spertus seems to have closed the exhibit on the same day this post went up on the blog.  I encourage you to still email Rhoda Rosen, as it shouldn't be too late for it to be reopened. 

Jeffrey Goldberg steps into the debate over the nature of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's incendiary remarks about Israel, to call out Harvard Professor Stephen Walt of 'Walt-Mearsheimer' (in)fame(y) for downplaying the idea that Ahmadinejad is "inciting to genocide" (Walt's terms) in Israel. For reasons that a Persian speaker will readily comprehend (and a sufficiently deterimined non-sokhbako could figure out), I'm going to refer to the Iranian president by his nickname among his adoring people, 'Ahmaghinejad,' from here on out.

Goldberg's check and mate many times over is a tranche of Ahmaghinejad quotes, Call Him 'Ahmaghinejad' Or 'Avaleenejad': Iran laughs at, not with himfrom the notorious "wipe off the map" comment of October 2005, to a statement just this month, all of which are variously loathsome vamps on the old "Israel must cease to exist" standard. I've noted here at Jewcy before that Ahmaghinejad's "wipe off the map" remark of October 2005 is a mistranslation; my objections to repeating it are 1) it offends me as a student of Persian and 2) given the enormous supply of sickening comments from Ahmaghinejad re: Israel, of which Goldberg usefully provides a small but still representative sample, there isn't even a pragmatic rationale for persisting in mistranslating the remark. (We have an idea of what Ahmaghinejad says about Israel publicly; imagine what he says in private.) I'd hope Goldberg would credit the idea that, however merited objections to Walt and Mearsheimer are, fealty to the correct use and translation of Persian doesn't entail being an apologist for Ahmaghinejad.

The question, of course, is how best to interpret the comments. It's not a straightforward task, since Ahmaghinejad's speeches are littered with quotes from the Ayatollah Khomeini and from medieval Persian poets that involve idioms that don't correspond to anything in English, so figuring out what he meant involves either learning the language, or doing some careful inductive guesswork and hoping for the best.

Although I haven't been able to track down the originals of all the quotes Goldberg reproduces (there might be links on the Ahmadine-blog, in case somebody is willing to pore through the archives), I've looked at a few, and they have a number of recurrent features. Ahmaghinejad rarely if ever refers to Israel by name, but rather as رزیم اشفالگار (rezhim-e eshghalgar), the 'occupying regime', of which the first word is an obvious western import that only has a narrow, technical meaning referring to a particular governmental apparatus (generally, as in English, in pejorative tones). By contrast, the Persian words for 'country' and 'nation' in a broader, non-technical sense are کشور (keshvar) and ملت (mellat), respectively. Moreover, the stem of the key verbs in Ahmaghinejad's proclamations of Israel's doom (at least, in the ones I've looked at) is always شدن (shodan) rather than کردن (kardan). This is a major, not a minor semantic difference: the latter is used in active and indicative constructions; the former is used in passive and subjunctive constructions. Which means that, on strict semantics, Ahmaghinejad has been expressing either a belief that Israel will cease to exist or a desire that it will (or both), rather than stating a policy objective.

Now, none of this suggests for a moment that the narrow semantic values of Ahmaghinejad's declarations of the impending destruction of the state of Israel completely exhaust the messages he was communicating (that's the first lesson of practical linguistics). And the upshot of the fact that Ahmaghinejad, strictly speaking, fastened his attacks on the Israeli "regime" rather than Israel or the Israelis, and that he never explicitly signed on to the project of bringing about the destruction of that "regime," isn't that Ahmaghinejad was really talking about flowers and candy and has gotten a rough break in the Western press. On the contrary, it simply goes to show that a politician is a politician no matter where he's from, and what distinguishes even deranged racist ignoramus politicians from deranged racist ignoramus non-politicians is that the former will speak calculatingly, as the politicians that they are. So even though Ahmaghinejad isn't literally pledging the Iranian state to a policy of genocide, he is personally endorsing an event --- the destruction of the Israeli government --- that would very likely entail the slaying of large numbers of Israelis.

Furthermore, Walt's term 'incitement' is (unintentionally) spot-on. When a leader "incites violence," he or she seldom does so by literally telling those under his or her influence to go out and kill, injure or maim anyone (we would call that "ordering attacks," not "incitement to violence"). Rather, incitement standardly consists in pushing just the right buttons to spur violence while maintaining a veneer of deniability. And that, plainly, is part of what Ahmaghinejad has been communicating, i.e.: "While I, the terribly important president of this holy state don't have the time or inclination to get my hands dirty, it sure is about time somebody did something to remove the regime occupying Qods from the pages of time and history."

There's just no other plausible way of interpreting the comments while being simultaneously faithful to both semantics and to the pragmatic implications that enable us as human beings, rather than artificial intelligence, to communicate with one another. Call me crazy, but I have a feeling that if, say, an Afrikaner politician mused about how black rule in South Africa is shortly coming to an end and pre-emptively endorsed a campaign of violence and intimidation against Africans without literally pledging to be a part of it, nobody would have a difficult time understanding what was up.

But the heinousness of Ahmaghinejad's incitements immediately raises the question of just what influence he has, and this is where I break with Goldberg. Permit me this Godwin's law violation, since I'm committing it only to strengthen the case I'm arguing against. Suppose that Hitler had had all the beliefs about Jews that he did in fact have, desired to exterminate the Jewish people, etc., but lived out his days as a penurious mediocre landscape painter in Munich never committing so grave a crime as jaywalking. His beliefs themselves wouldn't be any less vile under those circumstances, but in such a scenario, the fact that he held those beliefs just wouldn't be very important. Indeed, it's a matter of simple statistical probability that there have been untold numbers of people whose personal antisemitism and genocidal fantasies were more virulent than Hitler's on some sort of one-to-one comparison of beliefs, but we just don't and shouldn't care about such people. What made Hitler a menace was not only the evil of his ideology, which on its own couldn't do anything, but also his control of the most powerful war machine in world history up to that point.

That's why fretting over Ahmaghinejad's remarks about Israel is a waste of energy, even as it's good to stay alert to the casual antisemitism that excuses such remarks but would never countenance equivalent incitements against other groups . Maybe --- maybe! --- there are some irredentists in Gaza or the West Bank whose Shi'ism is strong enough to overcome the hatred of Persians they've been taught since childhood, who don't recognize what a laughingstock Ahmaghinejad is in Iran, and who take the clear message of his remarks to heart. But how many such people could there be, who will engage in terrorism against Israel because of Ahmaghinejad, but wouldn't have otherwise? I strongly doubt it would take very many hands to count them all.

As for the significance of Ahmaghinejad's remarks for the Iranian government and Iranian society, it's basically non-existent. Despite the fact that his title is "President" --- as I'll continue to point out again and again --- Iranian state power is completely in the hands of the small circle of clerics around Ali Khamenei. Any power Ahmaghinejad exercises is at Khamenei & co.'s discretion, and can be rescinded on a whim. Indeed, as observers of the Iranian political scene well know, Khamenei's loathing of Ahmaghinejad is nearly as strong as that of educated Iranian society at large. Khamenei has barely tolerated Ahmaghinejad's presence in the government because he represented a significant, boorish segment of the Iranian "electorate" --- a term I bracket with scare quotes both because the pool of Iranian voters is not representative of the country, and the elections in which they vote do not have any practical effect on the composition of the real leadership. And now that Ahmaghinejad's buffoonery has destroyed whatever popular support he enjoyed, Khamenei and the clerics were swift to exclude him from the government in every respect except nominally.

To be sure, many of the interests the regime in Tehran is working to advance conflict with American interests, and the regime's suppression of liberal freedoms and abuse of women and homosexuals is abhorrent. Nonetheless, Khamenei et al., who do hold power, have demonstrated again and again that they are practitioners of realpolitik, unlike Ahmaghinejad, who is an apocalyptic fanatic but fortunately doesn't hold power.

And in fact, the United States and Israel have some significant interests in common with Iran. (Those Zionists who long for the days of the Shah can fill in the details of why Iran is Israel's only natural ally in the middle East.) American and Israeli strategic interests and security are threatened by militarized Sunni extremists; and so are Iranian strategic interests and security. Some of the worst disasters in western and central Asia that could befall the United States and Israel are the takeover of Iraq by Wahhabist fanatics, the recapture of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Talibanization of Pakistan, or any combination thereof; those would arguably be even greater disasters for Iran. And the Iranian regime wants to preserve its power, which in practice will mean delivering economic prosperity; likewise, the US wants Iran to scuttle its nuclear research and militarization, and holds important keys to helping Iran achieve prosperity. And just to conclude scratching the surface, the Iranian people themselves, whatever the positions of their government, are decidedly pro-Western and pro-American.

These features of Iran's polity and society and of the international relations picture by no means guarantee that diplomatic engagement with the Islamic Republic will be successful; but they do nonetheless come with some welcome sureties. As long as Iran is controlled by Ali Khamenei, the chances of a first strike on a nuclear power with massive deterrent capabilities (e.g. the US or Israel) are effectively null. Such a strike would be suicide, and the actual Iranian regime, as opposed to its court jester, is not suicidal. Moreover, the foundation already exists, and indeed has existed for decades, for engagement with Iran not merely at the highest strata of the government, but with the Iranian people themselves. Say what you will about Zbigniew Brzezinski --- but don't dare say it about the recently departed, much beloved William Odom --- they had exactly the right approach for dealing with Iran, and helpfully put Ahmaghinejad in his rightful, unserious place in the process.

As Brzezinski elaborated in a recent appearance on Morning Joe (sorry, no transcript available), applying the model of long-term cultural penetration through semi-official outreach like Radio Free Europe, encouragement of consumerism, exposure to the fruits of western liberties, etc., that was so successful in weakening the Iron Curtain, has even stronger prospects for success in Iran, where popular affinity for Western and indeed American values is pervasive. Iran certainly presents a major foreign policy challenge, and even if it poses no existential threats, its sponsorship of anti-Israeli terrorism is intolerable.

But stamping our feet won't do anything about that, and coming to a correct moral judgment about Iranian support for Hezbollah and Mahmoud Ahmaghinejad's eliminationist fantasies is not even the beginning, let alone the end, of policy to curb the Iranian threat. In particular, devoting vastly more attention than he deserves to an antisemitic circus act who can only be relevant to the future of US- and Israeli-Iranian relations if Americans and Israelis elect to make him relevant, threatens to obscure the full picture, in which engagement with Iran, in addition to being a challenge, is also an enormous opportunity.

A Neo Nazi group in Germany recently launched a website that expresses its solidarity with Israel. According to Ynet:

"A strong nation is worthy of life; an ailing nation deserves death," it said, before detailing an ideology sporting the traditional Nazi concept of purity of the race on the one hand, and calling on National Socialists to let go of their hatred for Jews and support the Jewish people's right to their own homeland on the other.

"Deportations, pogroms and inquisitions were all understandable acts which were carried out by nations merely trying to defend themselves," said the website of past persecution of Jews.

"That is also the context in which the event called the 'Holocaust' must be viewed… This does not justify it. Instead of destroying the Jews we should have taken every measure possible to support the Zionist movement."

The group goes on to harshly criticize the Nazi regime as the cause of the "unnecessary rivalry" between Germany and its "brethren neighbors," and slams the current leaders of Germany's extreme right as "cowardly reactionaries."

The group is called National Socialists for Israel, and among other things, they’ve started Reinhard Heydrich, "The Blond Beast": big Zionistdistributing stickers in Berlin with Israeli soldiers on them and the words, “A 2000-year struggle for survival. Respect those who have earned it." Another sticker has a picture of senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, and under the words, "As a Nazi, I'm a Zionist."

Though some bloggers doubt the veracity of the group, it is getting the attention of anti hate-group activists who are scratching their heads and expressing milder than usual outrage.

It’s possible to see this as some kind of silver-lining, I guess, but a group that openly sympathizes with the Nazis is not the kind of friend Israel, or any Jew, needs. As far as I can tell this group is embracing Zionism precisely because they see it as racism, which isn’t exactly a compliment. Plus, forced emigration to Israel is not an idea most Zionists would support. Also, “Respect for those who have earned it”? How did we earn it, exactly? By fighting for our lives while Nazis persecuted us? The logic is mind-boggling.

Thanks, National Socialists for Israel, but, um, the Jewish people and the State of Israel are really busy tonight/forever. We have to wash our hair.

Two weeks ago, I spoke with Barack Obama about the Middle East, Zionism, and his favorite Jewish writers. Since my blog is both fair and balanced, I had a lengthy conversation with Senator John McCain earlier this week about many of the same subjects.

The two candidates, who are scheduled to address the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C. early next week, have well-developed thoughts on the Middle East, and their differences are stark. Obama sees the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as one of America’s central challenges in the Middle East; McCain names Islamic extremism as the most formidable challenge. Obama sees Jewish settlements as "not helpful" to peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians; McCain does not offer a critique of the settlements, instead identifying Hamas’ rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot as the most pressing problem. And both men take very different positions on the issue of Philip Roth.

In our conversation, McCain took a vociferously hard line on Iran (and a similarly hard line on Senator Obama’s understanding of the challenge posed by Iran). He accused Iran of not only seeking the destruction of Israel, but of sponsoring terrorist groups – Hamas and Hezbollah – that are bent on the destruction of the United States. And he said that the defense of Israel is a central tenet of American foreign policy. When I asked him why he is so concerned about Iranian threats against Israel, he said – in a statement that will surely placate Jewish voters who are particularly concerned about existential threats facing Israel – “The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust.”

Here is an edited transcript of my talk with McCain:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is the Zionist cause just, and has it succeeded?

John McCain: I think so. I’m a student of history and anybody who is familiar with the history of the Jewish people and with the Zionist idea can’t help but admire those who established the Jewish homeland. I think it’s remarkable that Zionism has been in the middle of wars and great trials and it has held fast to the ideals of democracy and social justice and human rights. I think that the State of Israel remains under significant threat from terrorist organizations as well as the continued advocacy of the Iranians to wipe Israel off the map.

JG: Do you think the Palestinian cause is just?

JM: In respect to people like Mahmoud Abbas, who want to have a peaceful settlement with the government of Israel, to settle their differences in a peaceful and amicable fashion. If you are talking about Hamas or Hezbollah, which are dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel, then no. It depends on who you’re talking about.

JG: Senator Obama told me that the Arab-Israeli dispute is a “constant sore” that infects our foreign policy. Do you think this is true, and do you think that the Arab-Israeli dispute is central to our challenges in the Middle East?
JM: Well, I certainly would not describe it the way Senator Obama did –

JG: He wasn’t referring to Israel as an “open sore,” he was referring to the conflict.

JM: I don’t think the conflict is a sore. I think it’s a national security challenge. I think it’s important to achieve peace in the Middle East on a broad variety of fronts and I think that if the Israeli-Palestinian issue were decided tomorrow, we would still face the enormous threat of radical Islamic extremism.

I think it’s very vital, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I’ve spent so much time there. The first time I visited Israel was thirty years ago, with Scoop Jackson and other senators, when I was in the Navy. I visited Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust memorial) with Joe Lieberman the last time I was in Israel. So my absolute commitment is to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But the dangers that we face in the Middle East are incredibly severe, in the form of radical Islamic extremists.

JG: Do you think that Israel is better off today than it was eight years ago?

JM: I think Israel, in many respects, is stronger economically, their political process shows progress – when there is corruption, they punish people who are corrupt. The economy is booming, they have a robust democracy, to say the least. Bin Laden has not limited his hatred and desire to destroy the United States to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, though Israel is one of the objects of his jihadist attitude. What you’re trying to do is get me to criticize the Bush Administration.

JG: No, I'm not, what I'm --

JM: Yeah, you are, but I’ll try to answer your question. Because of the rise of Islamic extremism, because of the failure of human rights and democracy in the Middle East, or whether there are a myriad of challenges we face in the Middle East, all of them severe, all of them pose a threat to the existence to the state of Israel, including and especially the Iranians, who have as a national policy the destruction of the state of Israel, something they’ve been dedicated to since before President Bush came to office.

JG: What do you think motivates Iran?

JM: Hatred. I don’t try to divine people’s motives. I look at their actions and what they say. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the state of their emotions. I do know what their nation’s stated purpose is, I do know they continue in the development of nuclear weapons, and I know that they continue to support terrorists who are bent on the destruction of the state of Israel. You’ll have to ask someone who engages in this psycho stuff to talk about their emotions.

JG: Senator Obama has calibrated his views on unconditional negotiations. Do you see any circumstance in which you could negotiate with Iran, or do you believe that it’s leadership is impervious to rational dialogue?

JM: I’m amused by Senator Obama’s dramatic change since he’s gone from a candidate in the primary to a candidate in the general election. I’ve seen him do that on a number of issues that show his naivete and inexperience on national security issues. I believe that the history of the successful conduct of national security policy is that, one, you don’t sit down face-to-face with people who are behave the way they do, who are state sponsors of terrorism.

Senator Obama likes to refer to President Kennedy going to Vienna. Most historians see that as a serious mistake, which encouraged Khrushchev to build the Berlin Wall and to send missiles to Cuba. Another example is Richard Nixon going to China. I’ve forgotten how many visits Henry Kissinger made to China, and how every single word was dictated beforehand. More importantly, he went to China because China was then a counterweight to a greater threat, the Soviet Union. What is a greater threat in the Middle East than Iran today?

Senator Obama is totally lacking in experience, so therefore he makes judgments such as saying he would sit down with someone like Ahmadinejad without comprehending the impact of such a meeting. I know that his naivete and lack of experience is on display when he talks about sitting down opposite Hugo Chavez or Raul Castro or Ahmadinejad.

JG: There’s no rationale for sitting down with Iran?

JM: Yes. I could see a situation hopefully in the future if the Iranians would change the policies that you and I have just talked about, but there would have to be negotiations and discussions and all kinds of things happening before you lend them the prestige of a face-to-face meeting with the President of the United States of America. As you know, our ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has met with the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad on a couple of occasions. Those discussions, according to Ambassador Crocker, have been totally unproductive, because Iran is hell-bent on the destruction of Israel, they’re hell-bent on driving us out of Iraq, they’re hell-bent on supporting terrorist organizations, and as serious as anything to American families, they’re sending explosive devices into Iraq that are killing American soldiers.

JG: Tell me how engaged you would be as President in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and give me a couple of names of plausible Middle East envoys.

JM: I would have a hands-on approach. I would be the chief negotiator. I have been there for thirty years. I know the leaders, I know them extremely well. Ehud Barak and I have gone back thirty years. I knew Olmert when he was mayor of Jerusalem. I’ve met many times with Netanyahu. I’ve met with Mahmoud Abbas.

In terms of envoys, there are a large number of people who could be extremely effective, and I apologize for ducking the question, but it would have to be dictated by the state of relations at the time. For example, we know that there were behind-the-scenes conversations Israel was having with Syria. Now it’s broken into the public arena. So it would depend on the state of things. If they were more advanced in talks, which they are not, with Hamas, then you need someone like a mechanic. If it’s someone who needs to lay out a whole framework, it would have to be someone who commands the respect of both sides, someone who has an impact on world opinion.

JG: What is the difference between an American president negotiating with Ahmadinejad and Ehud Olmert negotiating with the Syrians?

JM: You don’t see him sitting down opposite Bashar, do you? (Bashar al-Assad is president of Syria.) I mean, that’s the point here. It was perfectly fine that Ryan Crocker spoke with the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad. The point is you don’t give legitimacy by lending prestige of a face-to-face meeting, with no preconditions.

JG: But Obama has shifted off that position.

JM: Sure, and the next time he sees where he’s wrong, maybe he’ll shift again. The point is is that he doesn’t understand. Look, in the primary, he was unequivocal in his statements. And now he realizes that it’s not a smart thing to say. I didn’t say he wasn’t a smart politician.

JG: Do you think that settlements keep Israel and the Palestinians from making peace?

JM: There’s a list of issues that separate them, from water, to the right of return, to settlements. Look at the Oslo Accords, which basically laid out a roadmap for addressing these major issues. And settlements is one of them, but certainly one of the issues right now is the shelling of Sderot, which I visited. As you know, they’re shelling from across the border. If the United States was being rocketed across one of our borders, that would probably gain prominence as an issue.

JG: Do you believe that Israel will have to go into Gaza in force to deal with the rockets, and if Israel did, would you support it?

JM: It depends on what you mean by force. They’ve responded with air strikes, and identifying Hamas leaders and, you know, quote, responding. Would they respond with massive force? I don’t know. I know from my conversations with them that they are deeply concerned. They’re a democracy. How would an American government, how would American public opinion respond, if there were constant shelling, and kids had fifteen seconds – fifteen seconds – to get into a bomb shelter. I don’t know what the government of Israel is going to do. It somewhat depends on whether these attacks will discontinue or if other things happen. I did get the distinct impression, nothing specific, but I got the impression that the patience of the Israeli government and the people is growing short.

JG: Let’s go back to Iran. Some critics say that America conflates its problem with Iran with Israel’s problem with Iran. Iran is not threatening the extinction of America, it’s threatening the extinction of Israel. Why should America have a military option for dealing with Iran when the threat is mainly directed against Israel?

JM: The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust. That’s a commitment that the United States has made ever since we discovered the horrendous aspects of the Holocaust.

In addition to that, I would respond by saying that I think these terrorist organizations that they sponsor, Hamas and the others, are also bent, at least long-term, on the destruction of the United States of America. That’s why I agree with General Petraeus that Iraq is a central battleground. Because these Shiite militias are sending in these special groups, as they call them, sending weapons in, to remove United States influence and to drive us out of Iraq and thereby achieve their ultimate goals. We’ve heard the rhetoric -- the Great Satan, etc. It’s a nuance, their being committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, and their long-term intentions toward us.

JG: Do you think their intention is the actual destruction of America?

JM: It’s hard for me to say what their intentions are, but the effect – If they were able to drive us out of Iraq, and al Qaeda established a base there, and the Shiite militias erupted and the Iranian influence was expanded, which to my mind is what would happen, then the consequences for American national security would be profound. I don’t know if their intention is to destroy America and what we stand for, but I think the consequences of them succeeding in the destruction of the state of Israel and their continued support for terrorist organizations – all of these would have profound national security consequences.

JG: A question about democratization in the Middle East. Imagine a continuum, Brent Scowcroft on one end, Paul Wolfowitz on the other. Where do you fall on that continuum, five years after the invasion of Iraq?

JM: I think that we’ve got to always balance the realism of a situation with idealism. I’m committed to that fundamental belief that we’re all created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. But there are times when realism has to enter into the equation as well. If you look at Darfur, we don’t want this to go on, but how do we stop it? And what would the consequences of our initial intrusion be? After the initial success, what are the long-term consequences?

I enjoy hearing this debate. There’s no one I love more in the world than Brent Scowcroft. He’s one of the most selfless people I’ve ever seen, never a trace of personal ambition, which is the rarest thing in Washington. But I lean also toward the historic idealism of America. Which means that every situation that confronts us, we have to try to maintain that balance. Have I always been right? No. But I try to learn from the lessons of history.

JG: You bring up an interesting question about the Holocaust, to which you say never again. But do you have an absolute commitment to stop genocide wherever it occurs?

JM: That has to be the fundamental goal, but it has to be tempered by the idea that you have to actually be able to do it, that you can succeed. If you fail in one of these efforts, that encourages others, and increases feelings of isolationism and protectionism in America. It’s hard to convince Americans to send young Americans into harm’s way, as it should be.

JG: It sounds like you’re talking about Iraq.

JM: Well, we haven’t talked about the four years of mishandling this war, which has been devastating, in particular to the families.

JG: A final question: Senator Obama talked about how his life was influenced by Jewish writers, Philip Roth, Leon Uris. How about you?

JM: There’s Elie Wiesel, and Victor Frankl. I think about Frankl all the time. “Man’s Search for Meaning” is one of the most profound things I’ve ever read in my life. And maybe on a little lighter note, “War and Remembrance” and “Winds of War” are my two absolute favorite books. I can tell you that one of my life’s ambitions is to meet Herman Wouk. “War and Remembrance” for me, it’s the whole thing.

Then there’s Joe Lieberman, who lives a life of his religion, and who does it in the most humble way.

JG: Not a big Philip Roth fan?

JM: No, I’m not. Leon Uris I enjoyed. Victor Frankl, that’s important. I read it before my captivity. It made me feel a lot less sorry for myself, my friend. A fundamental difference between my experience and the Holocaust was that the Vietnamese didn’t want us to die. They viewed us as a very valuable asset at the bargaining table. It was the opposite in the Holocaust, because they wanted to exterminate you. Sometimes when I felt sorry for myself, which was very frequently, I thought, “This is nothing compared to what Victor Frankl experienced.”

[Cross-posted from The Atlantic]

Making the desert bloom: Kibbutz Ein Hamfratz When the early settlers in Palestine vowed to "make the desert bloom," it wasn't the fight against global warming that inspired them, but the idea that the Jewish people could be physically and spiritually redeemed through farming the land. These days, though, the Israeli kibbutz movement is re-branding the famous collective communities as eco-villages in order to attract a new generation to live a rural life in Israel.

Considering the kibbutzim’s international image as bohemian communes, and considering today’s romantic ideas about country living, it might not seem all that strange that the kibbutz movement is embracing recycling, energy efficiency, organic farming or any other elements of sustainable living. Yet turning kibbutzim into eco-farms is a clear sign that the kibbutz movement is willing to part with its original ideals.

The kibbutzim have gone through several changes over the years. They started off as the vanguard of Zionist colonization of Palestinian land in the Yishuv and early state periods. From the 1970s on they tried to find a role as business enterprises, and now they are becoming eco-villages, advocating and implementing environmental policies and opening up to rural tourism.

The kibbutzim were integral to the Labour Zionist enterprise of creating a Jewish working class in Palestine as a way of ‘normalizing’ the Jewish people. The aim was for the Jewish state to have rural kibbutzim and moshavim (cooperative agricultural communities) and an urban Jewish proletariat, forming a nation with, as the slogan went, "Jewish land, Jewish labor and Jewish produce."

The absence of an environmentalist ethos in the original kibbutz movement was not accidental. Nor was it due to simple ignorance of the importance of sustainable development, of minimizing our carbon footprint or any other of the contemporary green movement’s mantras. The very notion of treading lightly on the earth was anathema to the early settlers, who strove to imprint the Zionist footprint as effectively as possible. They planted trees, drained swamps, and lifted rocks to help the Israeli state take root, so that the people who settled there could reap the benefits.

This guy is no Al Gore: An early Zionist poster From this point of view, the early Zionists can be said to have been more humane than today’s environmentalists. For green-leaning campaigners, man must bow to nature rather than shape it according to his desires; effectively, we should forego our own needs in the name of protecting the planet.

Today, the idea that humans should do with nature as they please is perhaps even more unpopular than Zionism, which might explain why the kibbutz movement has decided to leave both ideas out of its new advertising campaign. To be launched later this summer, the campaign targets a young, hip, eco-aware generation. It downplays the old ideas in favor of environmental ethics, replaces conventional agriculture with organic farming, and foregos old kibbutz poster boys like David Ben-Gurion for international stars like the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen (of Ali G and Borat fame) and US actress Sigourney Weaver, both former kibbutz volunteers.

This is the kibbutz movement’s first advertising campaign in a decade. Why is it going for a makeover now? Considering the general decline in the kibbutz population, which is also steadily ageing, it is not surprising that the kibbutzim feel the need for a new lease on life. The very first kibbutz, Deganya, was founded by a group of Jewish pioneers from Russia in 1909. By the end of 1948, Israel’s year of independence, there were 54,200 people (six percent of the population) living in 177 kibbutzim. The kibbutz population increased until the late 1980s, when the communes hit a collective low point after an economic crisis and after their image as socialist communities fell out of favour. By 2001, just 1.7 per cent of the total population in Israel were living on kibbutzim.

Younger Israelis understandably seem to prefer traveling or living in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv over picking avocados, wearing bucket hats and singing patriotic songs in the fields. The kibbutz establishment has given up trying to appeal to them through old ideals, avoiding mention of the Z-word entirely as if they themselves are ashamed of their ‘dirty past’. Perhaps they now view Zionism itself as unsustainable.

Former kibbutznik: Sasha Baron Cohen In fact, the kibbutz movement’s eco-friendly re-branding exercise is a clear snapshot of the hollowing out of Zionism, which can also be seen in other key institutions like the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The army has historically been a crucial and prestigious institution in Israel, defending the country against "the Arab threat." In the past it has done so remarkably successfully, but after the so-called Second Lebanon War in July 2006 it became clear that it takes more than sloganeering and military might to win a war, even if it is against a ragtag guerrilla force. In past wars and invasion the IDF didn't have access to the advanced weaponry it has now, but it did have far more advanced levels of commitment, zealotry and patriotism. Today, by contrast, well over one quarter of army-aged men avoid enlistment, while 43.7 percent of eligible women did not enlist in 2007. Last month, the IDF rolled out a series of initiatives to boost motivation for military service.

Internationally, Israel is commonly seen as an arrogant and ideology-driven state. It appears, however, that not even Zionism’s flagship institutions are able to stand up for their old ideals. This is less the result of revolutionary societal changes than growing political disillusionment and identity crises, and the Israeli elites’ attempts to re-invent themselves appear directionless, visionless and uninspiring. The very formation of the ruling centre-right party Kadima (Forward) in 2006, for instance, seems to have been a way of giving Israeli politics direction simply by naming a political party rather than by having a genuine sense of purpose.

There is little reason to feel nostalgic about the early days of the exclusivist kibbutzim, which were designed to colonize hostile Palestinian land. But neither is there anything inspiring about the current re-branding exercise, which cashes in on a regressive, Western environmentalist fad in order merely to keep the kibbutzim running. Those who seek out alternative lifestyles on eco-farms are usually disaffected with mainstream society and so it seems that, today, the kibbutz movement is helping cynicism about modern life bloom.

The 60th anniversary of Israel's founding has given rise to a vast tranche of American journalism about the occasion, all following one of two tropes: Can Israel Survive? and Let's use the anniversary to settle old scores!

Still going: Goldberg's Atlantic cover The archetype of the former genre is without question Jeffrey Goldberg's recent Atlantic cover story, in which Goldberg ties the old question --- 60 years old, in fact --- of Israeli survival to current Israeli political and cultural fissures, and to stark demographic realities, which he suggests are mutually reinforcing.

On the one hand, if present demographic conditions continue, Jews will make up less than half of the population "between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea" by 2020, which means it's simply a matter of time before it becomes unintelligible to speak of a Jewish State. On the other hand, the Zionists' profound success in creating and defending Israel, the vast shift in opinion (at least in the west) away from antisemitism, and the quiet but precipitous Jewish overthrow of WASPs as the dominant force in the American economy and society --- all these cry out for a reevaluation of the merits of Zionism and its relevance to the contemporary world.

Left-wing Zionists are caught up in a fairly shallow and ahistorical effort to recast Zionism as some kind of shiny, impotent hybrid of Mandela-ism and tikkun olam, while right-wing Zionists pretend to relevance through fantasy stories about the possibility of a Holocaust in the US (as Ehud Olmert did in interview with Goldberg) and the occasional bloodletting of the nearby Arab population.

Goldberg has no sanguine proposal for how to navigate between those unappealing poles, only the wisdom of Benny Morris, the most profoundly Israeli Jew in history, to share: "We are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies. We want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies." Which might, in the end, mean that the Israelis are tired of Israel.

Sort of Jewish, definitely rumpled, not a Zionist: HitchensChristopher Hitchens gives explicit voice to the dour conclusion Goldberg keeps implicit: It confounds imagination to think "that a Jewish state in Palestine will still be in existence a hundred years from now. A state for Jews, possibly." Hitchens comes at the problem as an erstwhile pamphleteer for the Palestinian cause who found out late in life that he is, under the Law of Return and the Nuremberg Laws, a Jew. More recently still, he's moderated his views on the Israel-Palestine question (but remains a self-described "non-Zionist.") A more urgent question of Israeli identity, he argues, is "whether...Israel should be defended as if it were a part of the democratic West...to which Israelis themselves have not yet returned a completely convincing answer."

Moving from tragedy to farce, other Israel-at-sixty articles trot out barely reheated ancient talking points. Leading the pack here is Charles Krauthammer, whose Washington Post column today commences with a trumpet blast about "the return and restoration of the remaining two tribes of Israel -- Judah and Benjamin, later known as the Jews -- to their ancient homeland." Is it too much to ask that a Likud cheerleader get basic facts of Israelite history right?

There is scant purpose to Krauthammer's piece apart from bashing Palestinians. Sure enough, after reciting an alternate world history in which the dispossession of the Palestinians was solely the consequence of their rejectionism in 1948, without the slightest assist from the seraphic Israelis --- do consult with Benny Morris on that one, Charles --- we get to the crux: "One constantly hears about the disabling complexity of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Complex it is, but the root cause is not."

That's wrong, not to mention completely backwards. The root cause is exceedingly complex, thanks in part to the obfuscatory efforts of Krauthammer and his ilk (he has a surfeit of counterparts on the Palestinian side to be sure). Whereas the dispute, or at the very least, the nature of the only possible resolution, is simple as can be: Either a two-state solution, or the indefinite perpetuation of the status quo until Israel quietly ceases to exist.

The Nation's Israel cover: Kumbaya? For the sake of bipartisanship, let's take a look, lastly, at The Nation's commemoration of the occasion, consisting in a pair of articles by Oxford professor Avi Shlaim and Ben Gurion U. professor Neve Gordon (a piece by erstwhile Barack Obama acquaintance Rashid Khalidi, "Palestine: Liberation Deferred," completes the troika).

Shlaim's piece, a funhouse mirror inversion of Krauthammer's, begins with a stirring appreciation of the flawed but flourishing Israel that really exists, as opposed to the concoction of fantasists. It proceeds the the well-known but always worth repeating point that "[t]o its credit, the Israeli public has never been as implacably opposed to an independent Palestinian state as the politicians of the right."

But Shlaim gets carried away reveling in self-criticism, and succumbs to an equal and opposite departure from reality versus his opponents on the right. "The Palestinians learned from their own mistakes," he writes, "they put rejectionism behind them, moderated their program and opted for a two-state solution." Really? It's that simple? If for no other reason than they'll need to if they want to make the peace process saleable to the Israeli public, leftist Zionists really ought to come to grips with the fact that it's not social inequality, but people --- specifically, Palestinian people --- on the giving end of those Kassam and Katyusha rockets, and those people have a religious and political agenda. Firing rockets isn't just the sublimated expression of their desire for self-determination; they will ratchet up the violence the closer they get to self-determination.

Gordon, on the other hand, offers up an unintentional classic of saccharine flower power Zionism. Did you know that Zionism is really a universal humanism for the whole world? And that its core value isn't anything religious, but social justice? This, apparently, is what happens when the folk-guitar-playing kids at summer camp grow up. Still, though Krauthammer and Gordon's visions of Israel and Zionism are deeply unappealing in countlessly many incommensurate ways, I can't help but think that the world would be a better place if Gordon's ideas had the purchase that Krauthammer's actually do, and vice versa.

Don't say a prayer for me now: Save it 'til the morning after What kind of prayer suits the relationship that American Jews have with Israel, a country they don't live in, but that many feel an affinity toward? What kind of prayer is appropriate where national politics, ideological differences, and theological concerns all vie for the attention and intention of the person praying?

Mishna (Avot 3:2) tells Jews to pray for their government regardless of who is in charge, and Jews have been doing so for hundreds of years—but we do not live in Israel. Why a prayer for a state and a government which is not the place where we live?

When the Prayer for the State of Israel was published in Israel in 1949, not everyone was immediately on board. The prayer was omitted from the 1951 Conservative High Holiday prayer book, and it does not appear as a formal element in Conservative worship until the 1957 edition of the Conservative Prayer book. In its 1975 prayer book, Gates of Prayer, the Reform Movement included a paragraph, in English, under the heading “For Our People and Our Nation,” praying for Israel’s peace and protection. The first stand-alone Prayer for Israel in American Reform liturgy doesn’t appear until 1978, when the High Holiday Prayer book, Gates of Repentance, includes it.

Even Orthodox Jews, who are the most inclined to closely follow the liturgy, exhibit some hesitation around the prayer’s inclusion in worship. The ArtScroll Siddur, one of the most popular prayerbooks among the Modern Orthodox set, comes out in two versions: One that contains the prayer, and one that does not.

As you might expect, the contents of the prayer differ from prayerbook to prayerbook. Each of the four major American denominations has its own version of the prayer, and organizations and publications like Rabbis for Human Rights and Tikkun magazine have penned and published their own versions of the prayer to suit each of their respective relationships with Israel. Some might be considered revisions; others are totally new creations.

Can You Hear Me Now? What can we learn from the history of this prayer that might help us make sense of why we—who live at a distance and who feel ambivalent at best about Israel’s political leadership and policies—might want to offer a prayer at all. And what, finally, should American Jews pray for when they pray for Israel? I’m reminded of that joke from early on in Fiddler on the Roof:

Jew: Rabbi, what kind of prayer should one say for the Czar?
Rabbi: May the Lord Bless him and keep him…. Far away from us!

Essentially, the original version of the prayer beseeches God to bless and protect the State of Israel, guide and counsel its leaders, strengthen its defenders, and so on and so forth. Pretty typical of prayers for one’s country, written by inhabitants of that country. In fact, it resembles (in sentiment) other traditional prayers for one’s Jewish and broader communities. This semblance is reinforced by its placement within the structure of a worship service, where it appears alongside prayers for the Jewish community, the community of worshippers, and for the government of one’s home country.

There is however, one striking difference: It does not stop with supplications for the land itself, its leadership and governance, but adds a paragraph for Jews in the Diaspora and for the hope that they will “return” to the land.

When the Conservative Movement issued its new prayer book in 1985, it decided to omit the prayer’s lengthy paragraph about “speeding the return” of Jews to Zion, focusing instead on Israel’s well-being, peace, and strength. Oddly, however, the Conservative Movement retained a phrase that has recently raised questions and eyebrows about whether or not it belongs in American Jewish prayer. The phrase refers to Israel as “reshit tzmikhat ge’ulateynu,” or “the dawn of our redemption,” which sounds a little too messianic for many American Jews. Moreover, and maybe more troubling: Why would our spiritual redemption be connected to the State of Israel?

Is the State of Israel—this State of Israel—really a sign of the dawn of the messianic age? What does that mean for the majority of American Jews, for whom Israel is more a vacation destination or an ideology than a sign of the messianic age? Is there a more suitable metaphor for the State of Israel, whose imagery and echo might resonate more deeply with Jews in the diaspora?

May the Lord Bless him and keep him: Far away from us! To be sure, this is not exactly a crisis for American Jews. Traditional worship is full of strange phrasings and theological assertions that I would venture most of them do not exactly believe (the issue of God’s “chosen people,” to name just one). So why does the phrase “the dawn of our redemption," with its eschatological overtones, appear so troubling that it's become the subject of debate at this moment?

Israel holds a unique place in the minds and hearts of Jews. Even amidst reports that illustrate a declining attachment among younger Jews to Israel, such a finding is “news” only because certain segments of American Jewish life are worried about this changing attitude. Since the early 20th century, American Jews have invested a lot of time, money, and energy in Israel. Buying trees, donating to UJA, sending teenagers to visit, volunteering on kibbutz, eating falafel, and learning Hebrew all illustrated American Jews’ commitment to Israel. So what now, that American Jews’ relationships to Israel are in the midst of a moment of significant change and interrogation?

Many American Jews’ attitudes about Israel are best characterized as ambivalent or contradictory. The “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” rhetoric that organizations like AIPAC and others like to throw around don’t serve us particularly well when trying to describe the complicated feelings that many American Jews hold toward Israel. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here, but most American Jews—even those most critical of Israeli politics—are not “anti-Israel” any more than they might be “anti-China” for its violations of human rights.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the mish-mash of feelings goes something like this: I like the idea of a Jewish home, but I’m pretty uncomfortable with the policies of the State, particularly as they pertain to the treatment of Palestinians. It’s a beautiful place, but so is Paris. It’s an historical place, of particular importance to “my people,” but most of my immediate family has never spent a whole lot of time there. The historical importance of the place is ancient, which makes it important, but I can probably name more famous Greeks than I can Ancient Israelites who lived in Canaan, back in the day.

Israel At 60: A Prayer From Afar To be sure, ambivalence is not new for American Jews—nor is it only directed toward feelings and attitudes about Israel. The majority of American Jews have felt and acted on a commitment to Israel since the establishment of the State in 1948, but most American Jews never planned on moving there. So much so, that in 1950, American Jewish Committee President Jacob Blaustein had to tell Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to stop hawking the idea of aliya (migration to Israel), or he would alienate too many American Jews and sabotage his own fund raising efforts.

Israel, in the minds, hearts, and actions of American Jews, has best been observed at a distance.

Which brings us back to the central question of what, precisely, American Jews ought to be praying for when they pray for Israel on her 60th anniversary, and into the future. Maybe the new versions of the Prayer reflect and give voice to the conflicting emotions American Jews hold toward Israel. And maybe that fictitious rabbi from Fiddler (itself a modern American re-visioning of a place and a past) revealed more than a quick wit and a sense of humor.

Maybe it’s the things that we find most challenging that are most in need of our prayer.

שלום עכשיו: organizing stickers for peace nowAnother week, another protest against Israelis on University campuses. In the last few years, Jewish students have become accustomed to campaigns against virtually anything Israeli–from avocados and computer chips to professors. But this time it’s an Israeli peace activist who found that she was unwelcome at the University of Texas’ Hillel House, where she was due to speak yesterday.

Hagit Ofran, from Peace Now, the left-of-center group which campaigns for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, is due to give a series of talks aimed at Jewish students entitled, "Israel at 60: Settlements, The U.S., The Peace Process, and the Last Chance for a Two State Solution." An alternative location at the University was eventually found after Texas Hillel pulled out, but the incident underlies tensions between Jewish students on US campuses.

One of the organizers had this to say: “Texas Hillel is supposed to be a space for Jewish students, however, and we will work with Hillel staff and involved students with whom we may differ politically to hold Texas Hillel to its stated commitment to pluralism… we care about and support Israel but do not feel represented by the current dominant mode of Israel advocacy, which we find to be counterproductive.”

Hagit Ofran: banned from hillel

Earlier this week, I chatted with Ofran in the back of a minibus as we made our way from Jerusalem to a Tel Aviv exhibition marking 30 years since the Peace Now movement was founded . Mild-mannered and articulate, she’s proof that you don’t have to see eye-to-eye with someone to hold a civilized discussion.

Last year the Zionist Organization of America tried to expel the Union of Progressive Zionists, who organized Ofran’s speaking tour, from the Israel on Campus Coalition following their links with another Israeli peace group, Breaking the Silence.

There is a heavy irony surrounding the decision of a Hillel House to bar a visiting Israeli, not to mention the efforts of far-left anti-Zionist groups who have been calling to exclude academics and other Israelis from campus life. It brings to mind the delights of Israeli Apartheid Week and the occasional noises made by a handful of my brethren in Britain—before I made aliya last summer—under the banner of ‘Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods’.

Regardless of what position one takes vis-à-vis Israeli politics, it’s a sad day when those who love Israel find themselves adopting the same defensive tactics as those who don't.

Michael Lucas, born Andrei Treivas Bregman, is a 36-year old graduate of the Moscow State Law Academy. But rather than pursue a career as a barrister, he journeyed first to Germany and then the United States, and somewhere along the way discovered his true calling --- gay porn. As an actor, director, and producer, he built his own company in Manhattan, Lucas Entertainment, which has grown into the largest gay porn company in New York, as well as one of the most prestigious, garnering numerous GayVN and Adult Erotic Gay Video ("Grabby") Awards.

Interviewing Lucas recently, Jamie Kirchick discovered what Lucas loves even moreMichael Lucas: for safe sex and Israel than pornography --- Zionism:

Like many Russian Jews who were forced to repress their identity under Soviet rule, Lucas's Jewish heritage is the anchor of his worldview. He visits Israel annually. Not long after touching down there last month, he penned a manifesto on his website titled, "I stand with Israel, I stand with Jews." Shortly after the Lebanon war in 2006, he put on a live sex performance in a Tel Aviv nightclub where IDF members were given free admission ("in the tradition of American USO-style shows," as a Lucas press release described it).

"He's so deeply invested in, and in love with, his roots and his people," says Heather Fink, a former publicist for Lucas who is writing a memoir about her experience working for him.

Lucas is also not afraid to turn fire on his own side, excoriating Republicans as "homophobic and anti-Semitic," and ultra-Orthodox Israelis as "anal warts on the body of Israeli society." The latter remark comes from a July 2007 New York Blade column on what he calls "the Hassidic scourge," of which he warns that "if somebody doesn’t stop the vermin from breeding full-time, there’s no telling what could happen in the future."

But it's a toss-up whether the majority of his contempt is reserved for peacenik liberals, particularly gay liberals, who don't recognize the threat of Islamic extremism for what it is, or Islam itself. When gay artist Charles Merrill burned a $60,000 edition of the Koran that had once belonged to the King of Jordan, Lucas opined:

The Koran is today’s "Mein Kampf." By the way, "Kampf" and "jihad" are, respectively, the German and Arabic words for "struggle." If enough Germans had burned Hitler’s book before the Nazis overpowered Germany, perhaps the Germans wouldn’t have wound up having to rebuild their entire country over the ashes of countless millions of dead. So I salute Charles Merrill for his artistic and social bravery in burning a Koran.

The rest of Kirchick's profile is here, including a deadpan look at what passes for mundane office work in a porn studio.

Why'd You Have to Go and Make Things So Complicated: American Jews in IsraelThere’s a small but significant slice of American Jewry with an unwavering devotion to Israel and Israeli policies. This is mainly the Modern Orthodox crowd. For the rest of us, trying to sort out how we feel about Israel in the midst of an intifada, a war, a peace process, or a political scandal can be complicated and painful. A new documentary called Eyes Wide Open is getting rave reviews for its thoughtful and evocative treatment of this issue. Directed by Jerusalem-based filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman, Eyes Wide Open follows a handful of American visitors to Israel: A birthright group, a New Israel Fund mission, two Americans working for Palestinian rights, a delegation from New York's Bnai Jeshurun synagogue, and a lesbian couple—and tries to explore their feelings and thought processes as they struggle with the reality they see in Israel, and their often contradictory liberal leanings.

The film premiered in New York at the JCC in Manhattan, and will soon be shown at the 92nd St. YMCA, Jewish film festivals, Hillels, and synagogues across America. Weiman-Kelman and the film’s writers and producers have created educational materials to go along with the documentary that they hope will raise questions and get people talking about Israel in a real way. The film is also being screened in Israel, so Israeli audiences can get a glimpse of what’s going on inside the tour buses that so often clog the streets of Jerusalem.

To bring “Eyes Wide Open” to your community, head to the film’s website. You can also read reactions to the film from the Jerusalem Post, Ynet, and Ha’aretz.

Here's the trailer:

Related: Is Zionism Still Relevant to the American Jew?

Our Tour Guide Shows Us What Masada Used to Look LikeWe wake at 4:45 to climb Masada for sunrise. It’s a bit cloudy so the sun isn’t as spectacular as I'd hoped, but it's spectacular enough to inspire me to snap about 7,000 pictures of it. I’m supremely irked by the fact that our counselors choose the exact 30 minutes during which the sun slowly emerges into blazing glory as the perfect time to lead songs and prayers. I routinely tune them out and am one of two or three people who completely ignore their request to put cameras away at the start of the service. I just can’t help myself: Here I am, standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, and the Judean desert—the likes of which I’ve only seen in nature documentaries. The sunlight is coloring the cliff faces rich shades of red and orange, and I’m supposed to turn my back and listen to singing I don’t understand or give a shit about? I don’t think so.

We spend about three hours on top of Masada. Though I can’t adjust to the beauty of these surreal surroundings, it’s our tour guide Offer’s lecture that really makes my visit memorable. He tells us the story of Masada in cliff-hanging detail (no pun intended) as he leads us through the ruins. I'm surrounded by remnants of a fabulous palace inhabited by a group of Jews called the Zealots 2,000 years ago. Descending Into the Zealots Ancient Water SystemPositioned at the edge of a cliff in the middle of the desert, the palace offered views of approaching enemies, a sophisticated water system, glorious balconies, and even a sauna. Life was dandy here until the Romans came and set up twelve camps at the bottom of the cliff, surrounding the Zealots, ready to conquer. The Zealots could either fight or surrender. They talked it over and reasoned if they fought, they’d lose and die. If they surrendered, they’d watch their wives get raped, be enslaved, and die. Since death was inevitable, they decided to die with dignity by committing mass suicide. They killed the women first, since the worst thing for a woman is to watch her child die. Then they killed the children, and then the men killed each other.

The account is probably an inflated, idealized version of history, but I’m not really thinking about that, because it was a good-ass story and I’m in awe of it. I recognize that I will never forget Offer’s final point, partly because he asked us to remember, and partly because of the natural phenomenon he demonstrates at the last stop on the mountain. We’re overlooking the valley where many Zealots supposedly plunged to their death. We face a smooth cliffside that looks like a paintbrush has freshly streaked it with burnt oranges and grayish browns.

Echoing Cliffs Around Masada“I’m going to tell you a phrase in Hebrew I never want you to forget,” Offer says. He teaches us the phrase. “Now, we’re going to shout these words as loudly as we can over this valley.” We face out and shout with all our might. Even I join in. A few seconds later our words echo back per-fect-ly. It’s like a Bizarro Birthright group is shouting back at us. We do it again. And again. “It means: Masada shall never fall again,” Offer says. “I want you to remember it because it means let us never have to choose between death and death. Let Israel never have to choose between death and death.”

At the end of the day, I want this place to be my “homeland” because I’m so amazed by what I've seen. Though I can’t say I feel a connection yet, I can say I’m finally thrilled and delighted to be here.

Previously: Day 3, or Judaism Vs. Feminism At The Western Wall 

The Southern WallIn Europe you see 500 year-old shit. In Israel you see 2,000 year-old shit. Today we’re at such a spot: The Western Wall in Jerusalem. Our tour guide Offer calls it the place “closest to God on Earth” and “the holy of holies.” We visit the Southern Wall first, probably because it’s less crowded and allows us to have time to hold hands and sing, which Offer has us do while ascending the steps to the Southern Wall. I don’t sing because I don’t know these prayers, melodies, or any Hebrew. And I don’t even pretend or try to participate because I don’t see the point. So when prayers and singing happen, which are all in Hebrew, I zone out.

After we touch the Southern Wall, we write notes to put in the Western Wall. Offer tells us it should be our greatest wish in life. Now I don’t believe this is going to affect my life but I figure it can’t hurt so I jot something down. It goes something like:

Dear Wall:
My greatest wish is to be as happy as possible. I hope you’re feeling well with all these people feeling you up all day.
Best,
Amy

Yes, it’s business-like, but that’s what comes out without me thinking about it. I don’t believe in God and don’t know the wall personally so a colon seems most appropriate.

I do, finally, have one surreal moment standing at the Southern Wall. (The way people talk about Israel you expect to have surreal moments all day long, but this hasn’t been the case for me.) My surreal moment occurs while hearing the Muslim prayer call, which originates from somewhere right above our heads and echoes over the whole city. I’ve never heard anything like it, and it seems so mystically appropriate to my surroundings. Finally I feel like I’m in a very foreign land, standing on a 2,000 year old fortress (or at least, the reconstructed version of it).

The Western Wall: men on the left, women on the rightOffer explains the story behind the wall so nicely that I don’t even mind that I have to listen to it while standing in the rain all day. I hardly even mind that it’s biblical rather than historical, and am even thinking the pointless exercise of sticking my stupid note in the wall will be kind of fun.

My note is neatly folded in my hand as I approach the Holy of Holies, and suddenly I realize I’m up against a partition. Men are on the other side. Division of the sexes always pisses me off, but noticing how much larger the men’s side is infuriates me. I immediately exit to get a better view of this appalling relic of sexism. With my view of both sides, I easily see that the men enjoy about four times as much wall as the women. They can spread out comfortably. Little boys chase pigeons in big circles and kick shit around on the ground. Meanwhile, the women huddle seven deep against their wall section. They have no room to run. No gleeful children are visible.

All the other women in my group are fine with this. “That’s how it is,” they all agree. Right, that’s how it is. But it’s like that because y’all don’t give a shit, which is really sad and you should feel sorry for yourselves, I think. Religion is no excuse for sexism. This is 2008. Get with it.

When everyone finishes praying, or whatever it is you do at the wall, I ask Offer about the partition. He explains that men have more space because they daven three times a week—way more than women. I ask why. He says that women are supposed to be home doing other things. They don’t need to daven because they are considered to be innately pure. Men need to make themselves pure, so they need to pray more. OK. But why shouldn’t there be equal space? Aren’t most visitors to the wall tourists, anyway? If the men really needed the extra space, wouldn’t the women’s side be comparable in crowdedness rather than looking like a refugee camp?

No, these answers are not satisfying. They are bullshit.

I am more of a feminist than a Jew and refuse to approach the wall.

Previously: Day 2, or Is This Really My Homeland?

Next up: Day 4, Falling in Love with Israel at Masada