Israel Matzav

Beinart ostracized?

Peter Beinart may be the darling of the radical-liberal-academic Left, but the established Jewish community to which he is trying to appeal appears to be fed up with him. I received this by email last night.

Statement from the JCC of the East Bay March 21, 2012

We have withdrawn our sponsorship of the Peter Beinart lecture on April 17 at the Hillside Club in Berkeley. Organized by KPFA, we initially committed to co- sponsoring this lecture as we are interested in facilitating intelligent dialogue about democracy in Israel. We think Peter Beinart’s provocative and informed perspective was a natural one to explore in our Jewish and broader community, particularly here in Berkeley.

We made a programming error. KPFA selected a moderator for the evening to speak with Peter Beinart whose organizational affiliations were not disclosed to us proactively. We do not support the activist platform of an organization on which the moderator serves as a board member, and it is for this reason we are withdrawing our sponsorship. We believe everyone should rightly have their say and participate in debate and decisions about how to best support democracy in Israel. However, we will not sponsor a speaking platform for a representative of an organization that calls for withdrawal of economic support for Israel.

We are reviewing our internal processes to ensure a more thorough vetting of our sponsorship and other programming due diligence is more robust in the future. We apologize for any confusion. We welcome your comments and feedback and look forward to continuing to serve our community.

JCC of the East Bay
1414 Walnut Street Berkeley CA 94709
(510) 848-0237 president@jcceastbay.org

The 'moderator' at the event is Penny Rosenwasser, who is a board member of Jewish Voices for Peace and Events coordinator of Middle East Children’s Alliance. Here's Rosenwasser recently speaking out against antisemitism:

"I was at a peace demonstration recently and I saw someone with a sign that had a Nazi swastika inside a Jewish Star of David. It breaks my heart what the Israeli government and army and settlers are doing to Palestinians. Some of these things are similar to what was done to Jews by the Nazis-but it's not on the same scale as the Nazi genocide. And this is an example of how some people blur the distinction between the Jewish people and the policies of the Israeli government. So I try to make it a teaching moment, and I went up to the person and pointed this out and explained that it doesn't help anyone or anything to have those types of hyperbolic signs."

Moderator? Sounds like an advocate to me.

I'd be pleased to see people like this pushed aside and shunned by the organized Jewish community. As the prophet Isaiah said, 'those who would destroy you will come from among you.' We have to recognize that even if they are from among us, their goal is to destroy us.

Labels: Jewish Voice for Peace, Leftist Jews, Peter Beinart

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:38 AM